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North Shore Farm to Table Tradition

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Farm to table daily fare is rooted in the history of the North Shore’s early settlers and their farms when to “eat local” was what locals did!

It started in 1864 when Hugh Burr, an Irishman and former Hudson’s Bay employee and teacher, purchased 169 acres on the east side of the Seymour River where he established a dairy farm along with some vegetable cultivation. He was one of the first European settlers in the area and his farm to table delivery was primarily across Second Narrows Inlet to Hastings Townsite, where New Brighton Park stands today. Burr is also recorded as supplying Sewell Prescott Moody’s town of Moodyville where, at the end of long work days, hungry lumberjacks, longshoremen, mill workers and sailors required top up rations over and above the provisions shipped from Victoria and the local fish catch.

The Seymour Creek Milk Ranch House with owner Reeve Phibbs and cows 1892. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #1450.

The Seymour Creek Milk Ranch House Charles Phibbs and Fred Thompson in 1898. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #3888

A few years later the Seymour Creek Milk Ranch was developed by Fred Thompson and Charles John Peyton Phibbs. The men, long time friends hailing from Sligo on the West Coast of Ireland, had homesteaded in Manitoba before making it to the West Coast and the Seymour River. Phibbs Bus Exchange has been a fixture on the North Shore since the early 1970’s. How many bus passengers or passers-by know that the bus loop is named after North Vancouver’s first reeve, or mayor, and that before bus stops and buses, there were pastures and cows?

The second half of the 19th century saw growth in speculative land investment and population on the North Shore. Being an unorganized territory, with no local government, the area was overseen by Victoria. In 1891, North Shore residents from among the settler community decided it was time to incorporate and the first election of reeve and council was held August 29th at a small farm house owned by Englishman Tom Turner that he had inherited from his uncle, Tom Bridges, who was said to be the first European settler on the North Shore. The new Municipality of the District of North Vancouver stretched from Deep Cove to Horseshoe Bay, with the exception of Moodyville which opted to stay apart. Three weeks later, on Sept 18, 1891, the first council meeting occurred at Reeve Phibbs’ Seymour Creek Milk Ranch and among the newly elected councillors was Tom Turner.

Tom Turner’s house at the foot of Chesterfield in 1892. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #251

The late Vancouver author and historian Chuck Davis described Tom Turner’s house and farm as the birthplace of North Vancouver, where discussions about the incorporation had been held leading up to the event. He described Tom Turner as an early settler who was concerned about the development of the area. And, it seems, Tom Turner and Hugh Burr competed for produce sales to Hastings Townsite and Moodyville’s waterfront sawmill and community. An ad appeared in the Moodyville newspaper, The Tickler, urging readers to Buy Burr’s Butter.

The Seymour River estuary was seen as an ideal place to graze cattle. This land use was helped along in 1865 when Sewell Prescott Moody of Moodyville applied to Victoria for 5000 acres for logging expansion. The request was granted minus one thousand acres for “other purposes” in the Second Narrows area. Other purposes included cattle grazing! At the time, the Governor in Victoria was coincidentally Governor Frederick Seymour!

About the time that the Phibbs Bus Exchange was built (1973), the District of North Vancouver - not to be confused with the original Municipality of the District of North Vancouver - secured the continuation of Maplewood Farm which formally opened in 1975 to provide urban children with an opportunity to touch real sheep, goats, pigs, horses and cows. Today the farm is surrounded by suburbia but in the early 1900’s Maplewood Farm was owned by Akiyo Kogo (presumably of Japanese descent) who, it is said, had found an idyllic spot nestled on the banks of the Seymour River. Early North Shore farm owners were for the most part European. There were Japanese workers in logging camps in the area and there was also, deep into the Seymour River Valley, a secret community of Japanese families living in structures suitable for a traditional Japanese lifestyle.

In 1924, Maplewood Farm was acquired by Joseph Ellis and Walter S. Young who developed it into a thriving dairy farm that delivered milk and cream from Lonsdale to Deep Cove. Research has taken me down several rabbit holes but none have led to further information about Ellis and Young’s involvement in the 20 year period leading up to 1944 when the six-and-a-half-acre property was sold to John and Helen Smyth. The Smyths ran it with a herd of twenty-five dairy cattle, selling milk at 12 cents a quart. Two years later, legislation was adopted requiring milk to be pasteurized, spelling the beginning of the end of small, family owned, dairy farms and the farm switched over to become a dog kennel, before it became a children’s farm 3 decades later.

Smyth Farm/Kennel 1946 – 49. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #15424

Back in the area where Tom Turner’s farm was situated, Peter Larson, a Swedish sailor who had jumped ship in Victoria, opened the impressive Hotel North Vancouver on West Esplanade in 1902. Land for the hotel had been purchased from Tom Turner and it overlooked his orchard. The Larson name remains today with Larson Road, Larson School and Larson Bay. Over by the Capilano River, where the dam is today, Larson also built the Canyon View Hotel which he advertised as, “the finest tourist resort on the B.C. coast.”

Larson’s hotel kitchens were supplied with fruit, vegetables and dairy from the farm/ranch he established where Gleneagles golf course and The Orchard restaurant are now and where part of the original orchard still stands. The previous restaurant at Gleneagles was called Larson Station. Initially the ranch was by boat access only but in 1914 Larson saw a better way. He sold 11 acres of his 223 acre property to facilitate the new train line for the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, which in return put in a stop named Larson Station enabling a reliable means of transporting produce.

First caretaker at the Larson Ranch – Old Dutch Bill with calf 1910. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #6823

Hotel North Vancouver circa 1906. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #2897

Outside Larson’s North Vancouver Hotel, West Esplanade, power poles and cows. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #6852

From Larson’s hotel on Esplanade, an uphill walk to 1541 Chesterfield would have taken you to another small farm that came into existence in 1911. The house was built for Thomas and Elizabeth McClelland and, as Elizabeth is recorded as being a member of the Scottish Ladies Society, it is likely that they came from Scotland. Thomas owned a butcher shop at 1527 Lonsdale and while his shop and the building no longer exist today, the address is for the B.C.A.A. Rather than aged beef being sold at the shop, it was fresh beef, as they slaughtered cattle on site at 1541 Chesterfield to sell at 1527 Lonsdale!

The McClelland residence, 1541 Chesterfield, 1914.  Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #13891

Thomas McClelland in his butcher shop 1932. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #13911.

Two blocks east of the McClelland’s Lonsdale butcher shop, at 234 East 15th Street, Alfred* and Agnes Crickmay, he from Surrey U.K. and she from Yorkshire, ran a small family farm where they also raised six children. Their home was across the street from where L.G.H. is today. Crickmay Park, close to the Memorial Gym, is named after Alfred. Their next-door neighbour at 15th & St. Georges was another Englishman, William L. Keene and his wife Catherine, the sister of Alfred Crickmay. In the late 1800’s, Alfred and William acquired and cleared the land, built homes and raised dairy cattle to sell milk to other settlers. Both men became involved in aspects of local North Vancouver government with Crickmay an alderman and Keene a police commissioner.

The Crickmay farm 234 East 15th Street, 1915, Alfred and his son Colin. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #5545.

William and Catherine Keene, circa 1900, with calves at 15th & St. Georges.  Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #4079.

Before continuing up Chesterfield to the Stoker Farm, mention should be made of the Wilkins. Gloucestershire dairyman William Wilkins married North Shore-born Olive Newman in 1912 and together they established a 7-acre dairy farm where the Meridian Market is today on Marine Drive. Their house was built in 1911 on Marine Drive and then it was moved in 1915 to 1560 MacGowan where it still stands. Records show that the Wilkins operated both the Acme Dairy and North Vancouver Dairy with milk delivered to households and small grocers by horse and cart. Later the Wilkins diversified into a different type of horse power with Capilano Garage at 1635 Marine Drive!

William and Olive Wilkins’ House, 1560 MacGowan in 1915. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #14196

1560 MacGowan, March 2023, Photo courtesy of Jennifer Clay.

Wilkins’ North Vancouver Dairy delivery 1913. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #1980

The four-acre Stoker Farm between Lonsdale and Chesterfield at West 29th was among the last to disappear, but not without an outcry against it being demolished to make way for the seniors’ condominiums we know as Somerset Green. The neighbourhood had, and still has, collective fond memories of times spent there. In 1980 the North Vancouver Community Arts Council became involved, initiating a campaign to try to save the farm with the aim to see it become a heritage site. The District of North Vancouver offered to buy it for $1.7 million subject to it being re-zoned as a park and for it to become tax-exempt. But while the farm bordered the DNV, it sat on City of North Vancouver land and the City rejected the offer as it would lose $30,000 in property taxes per annum.

Stoker/Archibald Farm, 2801 Lonsdale Ave., 1908, originally named Dearne House.  Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #8603

Stoker Farm, 1970. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #300

Dearne Dairies was the original name of the Stoker Farm business. It was started at the end of the 19th century by Master Mariner Captain Rupert Archibald who was born in Newfoundland in 1852 and married English woman Margaret Beaumont in 1888 in Yorkshire in Wath-Upon-Dearne, hence the name Dearne Dairies. The Archibalds started the farm at the end of the 19th century where they raised five children in the twenty-eight room farmhouse. It was the third child, Marie Scott Archibald, whose 1913 marriage in Quebec to Englishman Howard Burden Stoker from Newcastle-Upon Tyne gave the farm the name Stoker. Dearne Dairies operated until 1951 when the farm switched to chicken and eggs. Marie lived there until 1980. In 1921 her parents moved a short distance from the farm to a house at 2735 Lonsdale designed by Irish architect George Curtis of Honeyman and Curtis. In the 1950s, it was purchased by Holy Trinity Church to serve as a convent to house the Sisters of St. Joseph, who were the teaching training staff of the Holy Trinity Elementary School. The house still stands today and remains a part of the Holy Trinity Parish.

Marie Archibald, circa 1912, married name Stoker, the Dearne Farm became known as Stoker. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory #8616

Archibald Residence at 2735 Lonsdale  - Honeyman and Curtis Architects. Courtesy of Colin Lawrence.

Loutet Farm is a recent addition to the North Shore. This urban farm takes its name from neighbouring Loutet Park which is named after Scottish born Jack Loutet who, while involved with land through real estate and who served both as reeve of the District of North Vancouver and mayor of the City of North Vancouver, was not a farmer. Loutet Farm is part of the edible garden project in partnership between North Shore Neighbourhood House, the City of North Vancouver and U.B.C. and is operated as an economically viable urban farm to table within a residential community. Market days at the farm are a hive of activity as locals line up for fresh from the garden carrots, tomatoes, lettuce and garlic depending on the season.

“Eating local” using farm to table produce from Loutet Farm, has its roots in the history of the North Shore's early settlers and their farms. The aforementioned settler farming families were for the most part English, Scottish, Irish and Swedish folks who left difficult economic times to seek out a better life. Chances are that for some of them, owning backyard cattle was a new experience, a needs-must necessity. They established a new life, far from their home country, where owning land, being elected to a government or living on in memory by having a street or a park or even a bus loop named after you, would have been unimaginable. It became a reality for many of the white settlers and a part of our North Shore heritage.

Fast Facts

  • Dairy farming in BC began in 1827 with the arrival of cows at the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Langley.

  • Raymond Burr, b. 1917, the star of the Perry Mason Show and celebrated son of New Westminster, was  part of the same extended Burr family mentioned above.

  • Seymour River Japanese Community site was excavated and protected of the site by Capilano University  Professor Muckle and Cap U students.  https://monova.ca/bob-muckle-is-bringing-stories-to-life/ and https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/vancouver-book-archeology-seymour-valley-japanese-logging-camp-5972881

  • Alfred* E. Crickmay was also named Arthur in some accounts.

  • 19th century difficult economic times with over-population and unemployment in Britain plus improved steamships and the expansion of the CPRailway enabled an increase of emigration/immigration.

Acknowledgments, Resources and Notes

 

 

 

 

 

 

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