Malcolm Lowry: A Dollarton Legacy

Dollarton’s Cates Park/Whey-ah-Whichen has been a North Shore forest and seaside escape since the 1950’s when squatters’ shacks were removed and the park established. Recently, amid sweltering temperatures, the park’s beaches were crowded with young people who had made their way there along the Malcolm Lowry Trail.

Photo courtesy of Colin Lawrence

Perhaps some wondered, who is Malcolm Lowry and why is there a trail in his name? East of Little Cates Park there is a Lowry Lane and a Lowry Waterfront Park.

Photo courtesy of Colin Lawrence

There is also a large, modern, gated waterfront house that has taken the name, Lowry House.

Lowry House, a private residence on Lowry Lane

It is a dwelling at the opposite end of the spectrum from the waterfront shack where Lowry lived from 1940 until 1954 and where he completed his literary tour de force, Under the Volcano. From 1990 until 2010, an annual Under the Volcano arts festival was held in the park.

Lowry’s Cabin, a site specific, 360° virtual recreation of author Malcolm Lowry’s cabin based on research by Stan Douglas for his photograph Lazy Bay (2015), Cates Park, 4141 Dollarton. Photo courtesy of the Polygon Gallery

But before it became a park, the area was an escape for artists and writers. Lowry, a British novelist and poet, arrived in Vancouver in 1939 from the United States with his second wife, American Margerie Bonner, an actress and scriptwriter. They thought it would be a temporary stay and that they would return to the U.S.A. when his American visa was renewed, but that did not happen. As well as being a superbly talented writer, Lowry was also a chronic alcoholic and a remittance man, receiving regular income from a small allowance from his wealthy, industrialist English father - one of his brothers said it was “stay away pay”.

1-0214787 Ron Photograph of Malcolm Lowry. Photo courtesy of University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections.

In 1940, he and Margerie rented a small, basic off grid foreshore cabin at Lazy Bay in an area of Dollarton that later became a part of Cates Park. There was one fairly large room, windows on three sides and a porch across the front; it was built just below the shoreline on high piles to withstand rising tides.

1.0214801 Ron Stewart, View of Malcolm Lowry's cabin], 1973, Image courtesy of University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections.

Inside there was a cook stove with a stove pipe through the roof, a table with two chairs, and a sink, and a bedroom with a small double bed. Over the years their shack dwelling neighbours included Canadian literary giants such as poets Dorothy Livesay, Earle Birney and Al Purdy. It was a literary community where Malcolm Lowry was recognized for his remarkable abilities and where he fitted in because of his appreciation of his surroundings and literary neighbours, rather than being thought of as an English interloper. He said that his time at Lazy Bay provided him with a happiness he had not found at any other time in his life. 

This stone trail marker stands on the trail near Little Cates Park close to where Malcolm Lowry’s squatter’s shack once stood at Lazy Bay, now part of the park. Photo courtesy of Colin Lawrence.

At Lazy Bay, with editorial input from his wife Margerie, Lowry finally finished his literary triumph, Under the Volcano, despite the manuscript almost being lost to a fire that destroyed their first shack in 1944. It was published in 1947. Under the Volcano is set in a Mexican town on the Day of the Dead in November, 1938. Under the oppressive shadow of two volcanoes, it follows the final hours of a British Consul who has succumbed to alcoholism, an account foreshadowing the cause of Lowry’s demise in England in 1957.

What would Lowry have thought about a park, trail, street and a residence having been given his name? And what is the relevance today? Perhaps without these appellations, we would not take the time to consider a short, but significant, time in North Vancouver’s history. But the much longer and more significant history is that for generations, the area we know as Cates Park, was the ancestral village site of the Tsleil-Waututh nation. How many of the squatters considered that and, how many seaside fun-seekers today know what history lies below their feet?

Memorial plaque on the trail celebrating Malcolm Lowry’s stay in Cates park - Whey Ah Wichen, dedicated by Mayor Marilyn Baker, May 13, 1987. Photo courtesy of Colin Lawrence

Fast Facts:

• The squatter community at Cates Park had almost one hundred shacks. Most were removed in 1958 by the District of North Vancouver to make way for Cates Park.

• Tsleil-Waututh Nation means People of the Inlet and their ancestral village site, that was located at Cates Park, was known as Whey-ah-wichen and means facing both directions or facing the wind. The park’s entrance sign carries both names. For more information about the area from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, please refer to their Park Master Plan and Cultural Resources Interpretation Management Plan, May 2006 – it also includes a photo of Malcolm Lowry’s shack.

• The “Day of the Dead” (Spanish:  Día de Muertos or Día de los Muertos) is a Mexican holiday celebrated in Mexico and elsewhere associated with the Catholic celebrations of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day and is held on November 1 and 2.