Written/sketched 2001: A favorite old house of mine in South Burnaby, on the flats in a spooky area just right for a remake of the movie "Deliverance." At night, according to local authority Jim Wolf, you can hear banjos and see flickering bonfires in the distance. This part of Byrne Road is between Marine Way and the Fraser River, today a combination of light industry, golf courses and institutional uses including the women's prison. If there were a prize for "Most Dilapidated House in the Lower Mainland," I might enter this place. In fact, I'd have some difficulty entering it at all, because the front steps have been removed, probably to make it slightly more of a challenge for squatters.

I hadn't been down Byrne Road for a long time but one day when I was passing curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to go see whether the house still existed. I had painted it as part of the Vanishing Vancouver project in 1988, but ended up pulling it from the book and, as I recall, replacing it with the St. George's Junior School, aka Sacred Heart Convent, which was then threatened with demolition. Below is the note I wrote at the time. That watercolour--which became a victim of a leaky garage roof--was done from a different angle from this one, looking south down Byrne Road, explaining the references to the CNR line). It had been advertised in the west-side edition of the Real Estate Weekly, attempting to appeal to somebody who wanted some country peace and quiet.

"4838 Byrne Road, Burnaby
November, 1988
2.34 acres with exceptionally dilapidated old farmhouse, willow tree, scrub alders, salmonberries, open ditches, property probably floods in the heaviest rains. CNR spur line crosses the road in the right middle distance of the painting. Fraser River about 300 yards to the south (right). Immediately north are vegetable farms on the roadside, the last ones in that particular area, as nearly all the land has been turned industrial. Berry farms? New women's prison facility going in at the bottom of the road along the river. Trucks constantly using Byrne Road. Foreshore park at the end of the road. See clipping in file about the cadmium in the soil due to the proximity of the GVRD incinerator. Real estate agent said that the property was being caretaken, generated no rent. They were asking $250,000, and one week tried the Chinese price of $248,888."

Update late 2003: it's still there!

It was demolished sometime around 2006