#fraserview

A new book by a self-confessed non-writer does something no author has done before: a deep dive into Canada’s largest, detached home, government housing project – the 1950s subdivision of Fraserview. Ken Creamore’s memoir, My Stuff and Welcome to It, is a brave, personal account of growing up in one of Vancouver’s most intriguing neighbourhoods.

Fraserview was a sprawling master-planned community built by the newly created Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the 1,100 homes spread over 400 acres were the direct result of a soldiers’ sit-in protest held at the old Hotel Vancouver (Georgia and Granville). Ottawa caved to the war vets’ demands for affordable housing and built the smaller subdivision of Renfrew Heights before creating the South Van hamlet with tree-lined curving streets and killer views of the Fraser River delta. Long before the feds conceived the project, a Vancouver councillor had gazed at the rural slopes and envisioned a working man’s Shaughnessy. And that’s what the CMHC tried to create.

Others have explored Fraserview’s past. The Museum of Vancouver has a display that shows a replica of a typical living room from one of those “apple box” houses that rented for $30 a month. The talented photographer Phil Hietanen, who grew up the ’hood, has shown candid and artful street shots of his friends goofing off on hillside playgrounds and lawns. The active facebook group Fraserview Baby Boomers is a forum for childhood memories and the members have organized reunions. Retired judge Wally Craig devotes a few chapters in his autobiography Short Pants to Striped Trousers to growing up in Fraserview, but his time there was before Pleasantville exploded across the landscape. Only Creamore dares to take us inside one of the “chicken coop” houses that a Vancouver builders’ association president predicted would become a slum within five years.

Creamore was one of 6,000 kids who found themselves in the newly seeded neighbourhood. The rambunctious tykes tried to stay on the good side of their post-war dads, many of whom struggled with PTSD. Ken’s dad had been in the army and did not see action, but became an alcoholic anyway. The author’s mom had the Sisyphean task of feeding, bathing and clothing eight kids in a tiny three-bedroom home with one bathroom. They stacked the kids up in bunkbeds. On freezing mornings, the family gathered around the solitary heating grate in the floor, like mourners at a wintry grave.

Fraserview did not become a slum, but it had its problems. With so many kids and so few amenities (the parks, schools, etcetera came online slowly, after the homes were built), it is not surprising that youth crime was an issue. The VPD created its youth squad in 1963 specifically to address the swarm of red pushpins that clouded Fraserview on the department’s crime map. The arrival of the counter culture revolution only added fuel to the fire.

Creamore was an insecure, epileptic kid.  He never knew whether his five brothers were going to embrace him or split his lip. And he never knew when his next blackout seizure would arrive. With the potent mix of drugs, alcohol and the call for rebellion swirling around the neighbourhood, Ken could easily have ended up dead, like some of the neighbourhood youths who gravitated to skid road.

Instead, the author grew up to become a loving father and director at a huge software company. He largely attributes his success to his childhood sweetheart Helen McKie­, who he met in Fraserview at age 15. My Stuff is as much a love letter to her as it is to the strange Brady Bunch-meets-post-war-housing experiment. The book will interest those curious about the tightly bonded neighbourhood and the epic marriage that blossomed from it.

My Stuff and Welcome to It will soon be available on Amazon.

Those are not mermaids swimming around the second floor of this bewitching Fraserview home – they are sturmaids, as in sturgeon. The home owner commissioned local artist Lance Webb to create the sculptures and the sea maidens’ faces are based on the patron’s daughter.

Sturmaids, as whimsical as they are, make perfect sense for a South Van home, because a few of the knobby-backed fish still lounge in the muddy depths of the Fraser at the base of the hillside neighbourhood.

According to the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society, sturgeon can live to be 150 years old, which means there may still be creatures along the shoreline that were here in 1868 – before Vancouver existed.

The fish are super agers because they have mastered suspended animation.  Author Terry Glavin explains in A Ghost in the Water that sturgeon can enter a state “... not unlike death, willed upon itself, and from which it can emerge at will.”

Les Vogt and the Prowlers, Vancouver’s first Elvis-style rock band, performs at a track meet pep rally held in John Oliver Secondary’s gym in 1956. Shortly after this photo was taken, the band opened for Bill Haley and the Comets at Kerrisdale Arena – Vancouver’s first rock concert. 

Unfortunately, the Prowlers did not ride the Comets’ plasma tail to success. The local heroes peaked in 1960, when Les Vogt’s song “The Blamers” knocked Elvis’ “It’s Now Or Never” from #1 on the C-FUN radio station’s Top 40 chart.

The Prowlers broke up and Les went on to become a nightclub owner (The Grooveyard, Purple Steer) and a concert promoter with Jaguar Enterprises, a company he co-founded with iconic Vancouver DJ, Red Robinson. Today, Les continues to stage concerts through his Legends of Rock and Roll series, that includes Elvis, Buddy Holly and Tina Turner tribute artists.

As for South Van and J.O. being the birthplace of Vancouver rock and roll, we shouldn’t be surprised. The entire southeast corner of the city was the epicenter for the region’s post-war baby boom. Large tracts of available land close to downtown quickly gave way to affordable housing and young families. For instance, Les grew up on the south slope, in the Fraserview neighbourhood – a sprawling government housing project comprised of 1,100 humble but functional bungalows. Each house had, in accordance with CMHC requirements, at least two kids in it, many had four to eight. Those youngsters had a lot of time to dream about rock stardom as they walked, biked or bussed to J.O. at 41st and Fraser. 

There are only a few days left to Christmas and less than 200 war vets homes of the original 1,100 left in Fraserview, which is why a string of old-school, incandescent bulbs on any of the 1950s bungalows becomes a more poignant sight with each passing year.

This home is the last of the government-built rentals on Hoylake Place – the horseshoe cul-de-sac across from Bobolink Park.

In 1987, city councillor Gordon Price led The Vancouver Sun’s Pete McMartin on a tour of Vancouver’s heritage houses. Their jaunt ended in Fraserview, where they both marvelled at the extreme contrast of housing types in Hoylake Place.

McMartin writes: I say, “Holy cow!” when I see it. Price says: “I want to preserve this in glass.” Every house on the street is what could be classified as a Special, arranged in exact archaeological order. The first is a 1930s bungalow, the second a 1940s Veterans Land Act house, the sixth a 1970s Vancouver Special and the last four are 1980s superhouses.

In 1949 the federal government expropriated land to create the Fraserview subdivision. There was little negotiation with property owners.

In 2016 city hall was looking for a place to build a daycare in the same area. They had promised to build at least three in Wesgroup’s massive River District development, but instead they announced they would put the first one in the West Fraserlands – on the neighbourhood’s only large grass field.