Written/sketched 2001: Another of those ancient, isolated Vancouver houses with a very contemporary billboard beside it – the house next to the David Hunter Garden Centre on West Broadway between Maple and Arbutus in Vancouver. The watercolour is from the IGA parking lot next door, onto which the billboard faces. I thought when I painted this in the summer of 2002 that the business was closed, as the house was boarded up and there was a For Sale sign in front, but these rumours of death were premature – the property changed landlords and the garden business, occupying some additions in the back and side yard, is still open. However, the house was demolished at the end of February, 2003.

The house was a real curiosity, built for a dairyman named Samuel Swann Fearn in 1907, the early days of settlement in what had just been named Kitsilano. Born in Brassington, Derby, in 1860, Fearn immigrated to Canada when he was about 20, settling first in Saskatchewan, where he fought during the Riel Rebellion. He evidently had married before moving west to Vancouver, but had his family of seven children quite late in life, with one daughter born in the house in 1911 when he was 51. At the time he built on what was then West 9th Avenue, the area was on the edge of the forest, and a family story recounts bears getting under the floor and causing "quite a concern to the family." (James Quiney, who lived at 4th and Dunbar in 1907, had a bear cub as a pet, which he later donated to the Stanley Park zoo.) Fearn had a barn behind the house and kept horses there. (Thanks to grandson John Lofquist and great-grandson Steve Darvell for the information.) Fearn died in 1931 at the age of 70.

[...From Michelle Nelson, 2011: John Lofquist is a cousin via the 'Fearn family' of Vancouver

It sat beside the old interurban tracks, laid in 1902 by the CPR to connect Vancouver with Steveston. The proximity with the rail line made the surrounding area very attractive for industry – including Henry Reifel's Vancouver Breweries plant built on the block bounded by 11th, 12th, Yew and Vine in August, 1909. Its neighbours included a couple of sawmills, a shingle company, a tile and brick works, a dairy (Jersey Farms Ltd., which perhaps employed Fearn) and a prefabricated house plant, all linked by spurs from the B.C. Electric Railway's Lulu Island interurban and freight line. Another potential employer of Mr. Fearn was Associated Dairies, whose barn and wagon stalls occupied the lots from the modern 2134 to 2156 West 12th Avenue.

The brewery's nine-story brick tower straddled the rail line and became a neighbourhood landmark (it was demolished but has been replicated as part of the new development there, with Salal Drive following the route of the tracks). The brewmaster's house stood on 11th Avenue, now the Greenway, while other tradesmen, including the fireman and the carpenter, lived in houses on the south side of 12th Avenue. On 13th Avenue, modest houses survive from that period. A Model 'L' BC Mills, Timber, & Trading Co. prefab bungalow from 1909, erected by D.W. Hutchison, stands at 2167 West 13th, with a double-bay-windowed bungalow from 1915 next door. The four identical houses across the street, at 2144 through 2158, were all built in the summer of 1913 by carpenter Robert Riley, likely with financing from the Dominion Trust Company, whose spectacular bankruptcy the following year almost brought down the provincial government. Isaac Dolby, the first owner of 2177, signed his water application with an 'X.' Other nearby landmarks included Lord Tennyson School (1911), Kitsilano High School (1917), Connaught Park (1912) and the Connaught Grocery (1912) at Broadway and Vine. The brewery, soon under the control of Reifel's son George Conrad, employed from 80 to 100 men during the 1910s through the 1930s. They brewed 'Cascade – The Beer Without a Peer.' On 11th Avenue immediately south of the "David Hunter house," the Bessborough Armoury stood across the street from the multistorey Jones Tent and Awning plant – the latter converted into condos a dozen years ago.

About 1945, a man by the name of M.E. Vanden Hurk (also possibly Vanden Heryk or Van Heryk) apparently bought the house and the property next door and built a coffee shop there, with the enticing name Midget Lunch, which continued in operation until about 1955. Subsequently, the David Hunter Garden Shop opened, probably by Mr. Vanden Heryk. There was a Van Herrick's garden shop at about 10th or 11th and Arbutus for many years – am I dreaming that there's a connection here? An elderly woman lived for many years until recently in the Fearn house.

Note from Dawn Lessoway, 2005: I am so glad to see this house memorialized somewhere. I live a block away from that home and loved looking at it. My son and I would go visit the house for Hallowe'en just to feel the 'true' spookiness of the season.

I was so disappointed when it was torn down. I watched for about an hour while they tore through the beautiful wood ceiling then had to leave because of the violence of the act. I took pictures of it being torn down as well as some video I think my meager attempt to retain some personality in this otherwise bland characterless neighbourhood.

One day at work I somehow found myself discussing this house with a colleague at work. He looked at me with surprise and said that the house was in his family – his aunt (or someone) had owned it back in the day when the railway station was on the west side of the house for the line going down the Arbutus railway tracks. A nephew of his had tried to clean up the house a few years and had started a fire in the stove only to burn part of the house because the chimney was plugged! The house had been in decent condition before that.

I traveled across some of Alberta and BC this summer myself and was saddened by all the changes. I have grown tired of the constant growth in Vancouver and was looking for a little nostalgia I guess. Imagine how I felt when my small town outside Edmonton had a Walmart! Well, this is a long way of saying thanks, but I mean it if only to acknowledge that my interests in these unique places is not as strange a hobby as I sometimes feel.

Update 2009 from Steve Whysall's blog in the Sun via Sharon Hanna:
The David Hunter garden store at 2084 West Broadway in Vancouver will close on Christmas Eve after 49 years in business. Ron Hunter, the owner of the company, which was started by his father, David in 1953, says the Kitsilano store with 10,000 sq. ft. has to close because the lease could not be renewed. "We are naturally very disappointed. We have been in this location for almost a half century, but the owners of the property want to develop it into a mixed retail-residential project," Hunter says. "We've been looking for another location for the past two years without success. Either the properties we have found are too expensive or don't have sufficient space for all the green goods (plant material) and not enough parking space.

"We¹ll continue to search for a new location because we would like to still have a store in Vancouver. If we can't find a place, we will start to look out in the Fraser Valley." The closure means there is will now be only one David Hunter garden centre. David Hunter started the business in 1953 with a store at the corner of Kingsway and Rupert in Vancouver.

He called it The Kingsway Garden Shop. In 1960, he took over the store on Broadway, which was then called The Broadway Garden Shop. Soon after this, David Hunter gave the stores his name. In 1978, he and his wife, Margaret retired to the Sunshine Coast. They sold the business to their son, Ron, who has run the it ever since the help of his son Miles, the general manager.