Independent Corner Stores, once familiar features of local life, are gradually fading from our street corners. Owning a corner store often gave newcomers not only a livelihood, but also a roof over their heads and, for many, they served as a gateway business to move up the socio-economic ladder. A sad reminder of fading corner stores in North Vancouver is the former Keith Market at 353 West Keith, now fenced off and in a neglected state, it has been out of commission for several years. It was built in 1912 as a “live above the store” building; today we call that a live-work space.
The former Keith Market, now closed, 353 West Keith. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
Early settlers might have kept a cow or two, and some chickens to sell milk and eggs and other basic provisions from their front parlour, that in turn became a meeting place for locals. Front rooms evolved into brick-and-mortar shops where it made economic sense to have a live-work situation. Newcomers to Canada facing language barriers, who had perhaps held professional positions in their land of origin, bought into starting out behind the counter of a corner store where they could become anchored within a local community and where their children could attend the local school; kids with other local kids.
The hit T.V. series Kim’s Convenience is where art imitates life. The fictional store owner Kim-Sang-il trained as a teacher in Korea but now as an immigrant to Canada, he and his wife owned and ran a live above the shop corner store where they raised their family. They knew the locals, the locals knew them. Kim Sang-il the family patriarch was played by actor actor Paul Sun-Hyung Lee whose parents trained as teachers in Korea before emigrating to Canada where his father opened up a fish and chip shop and his mother ran a convenience store. Actor Paul understood the reality of being Mr. Kim behind the counter.
Today’s reality is that the mom-and-pop shop is becoming part of the past as corporate chains corner the market (pun intended!). There are many contributing reasons for their demise but in B.C., it probably started in November 1982 when the “Lord’s Day” ban on Sunday shopping was amended. Prior to that, the corner store was a Sunday godsend, being the one place you could pick up provisions from bread and butter to candy and comics. Then came escalating land values and higher taxes along with the drive-to convenience of large Supermarkets and Big Box stores and that eventually saw doors closing on what was once a gateway business for newcomers.
Speaking recently with a local man who had grown up living above a store, who asked not to be identified, he told me that his immigrant mother had to constantly re-invent the business to keep afloat and that today the small independent corner store is no longer viable because of the complex supply chain and suppliers who are reluctant to supply a single store. He noted wryly that the atypical live-work model he grew up with as a child has recently been adapted, adopted and then accepted by society as a new idea.
So, what’s the story of some of North Vancouver’s Corner Stores? Let’s start in the Lower Lonsdale area at 51 Lonsdale Avenue. Today it is known as Mo’s General Store. But in 1905, that address was J.A. McMillan Grocery. At that time the grocery store was one of several businesses in North Vancouver’s first commercial building, the Syndicate Block, with the grocery being a very early retail business and the first corner store. The Block builder was an English settler, Arthur Diplock, President and Managing Director of the Western Corporation. The CNV Heritage Registry says that the main objective of the company was to build housing for those of moderate means.
City of North Vancouver Councillor Shervin Shahriari’s book, North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Neighbourhood, shows a 1905 photograph, also shown here, of the J.A. McMillan Grocery with staff gathered at the front door. Shahriari draws attention to the window above the front door where we can see a young boy, Lee, peering out from window of his home above the shop. Early settlers, possibly from Scotland given their surname, there is record of a Lee McMillan attending the 1902 opening of the first public school in North Vancouver at West 4th and Chesterfield, the site of Presentation House. Not only was this the first corner store in North Vancouver but a live above the shop business.
Exterior of J.A. McMillan Grocery at NW corner of Lonsdale Ave. & Esplanade - Winter 1905. Courtesy of MONOVA/ North Vancouver Archives, Inventory no. 527
Comparing the photo of today’s 51 Lonsdale with the 1905 photo, the two corner stores look almost identical but in the mid 1990’s the N.W. block of Esplanade and Lonsdale underwent significant densification with the addition of a mixed-use commercial and townhouse development. Historic Places Canada says the new development retained, “the historic form, scale and character within the context of the Lower Lonsdale area… some original decorative and structural wooden elements were salvaged from the original Syndicate Block and incorporated in the reconstruction.”
Exterior of 51 Lonsdale Ave, The Syndicate Block, now Mo’s General Store, Photo courtesy of Jennifer Clay.
Today, we can still see a second storey double-hung sash window above the front door of the store just like the window that Lee is looking out from in the 1905 photo. After primary school, Lee might have attended the first North Vancouver High School, the classroom was upstairs above Barlow’s Meat Market on the S.E. Corner of 8th and Lonsdale 1909-1910.
Photo: Barlow’s Meat Market in the Morden Block, S.E. corner Lonsdale & 8th St. First High School in North Vancouver was upstairs above the shop 1909-1910. Courtesy of MONOVA/ North Vancouver Archives, Inventory no. 2783
A short walk from his primary school to his high school would take him past a new shop, Mr. Hoy’s Dome Grocery at the N.E. corner of 5th Street and Chesterfield, where co-housing Quayside Village is today. Built in the mid 1990’s, the Quayside Village structure incorporates a dome to reflect the original 1911 building. In 1997, prior to the demolition of the original 1911 building, which had been covered in stucco in the 1950’s, the dome and part of the building were removed and taken to Merritt to be repurposed. While a corner store was opened in the new building, it failed to succeed and today the corner store is a lively coffee shop for locals.
A 1975 photo of the 1911 Dome Market at 5th St. & Chesterfield Ave. Courtesy of MONOVA/ North Vancouver Archives, Inventory no. 11744.
July 2023 Quayside Village Co-Housing building with a dome, and a coffee shop where the Dome Grocery and the Quayside Village Grocery once were. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence.
A common trend seems to be the emergence of a coffee shop from a corner store. In 1912, a year after the Dome Grocery opened, a Prussian named John Dierssen built a small-scale commercial building in a residential neighbourhood at 277-279 East 8th Street that today is the popular, corner coffee shop, Andrew’s on 8th. The building is listed as an “A” ranking on the City of North Vancouver Heritage Register where it says, “it was built as a retail block with apartments above at a time when intense speculation and development in the area could barely keep pace with the demands of the burgeoning local population. The apartments on the second floor provided necessary housing for the large number of workers needed to support the economic boom. It displays an eclectic mix of Edwardian era features and distinctive corner towers.” One cannot help but be struck by the similarity of the then and now when it comes to development barely keeping pace with a burgeoning population.
1980 photo of the J.& J. Market in the 1912 John Dierssen building, now the Hodson Block – Andrew’s on 8th, at 277- 279 East 8th Street. Courtesy of MONOVA/ North Vancouver Archives, Inventory no. 5834
Known now as the Hodson Block, named in honour of current owner Brad Hodson’s father, its journey from 1912, before opening as a coffee shop in 2012, saw it as St Andrew’s Grocery Store owned by Fred and Lillian Keates in the 1920’s, followed by another grocery and then as a butcher. When I moved to North Vancouver in the 1970’s, I lived nearby on East 9th and at that time the entire building had been painted a bright turquoise blue that managed to distract from recognizing the value of the Edwardian style.
Photo of Brad Hodson outside 277-279 East 8th when it was painted turquoise blue.. Courtesy of Eve Lazarus.
July 2023, Andrew’s on 8th, the Hodson Block, at 277-279 East 8th. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
In 1912, just a short walk from Andrew’s on 8th, you could catch the Grand Boulevard Line 2 Streetcar to Lynn Valley where J. Barker’s Hardware Store and Centre Coffee Shop, with apartments above, had opened on the corner of Lynn Valley Road and Mountain Highway. Barker’s store was one of several businesses in the newly constructed Fromme Block, built by lumber company owner and North Vancouver reeve, Julius Fromme. It is one of the last remaining commercial structures in the District of North Vancouver and is an important fixture in the centre of Lynn Valley. Today the corner business is a T.D. bank with a renovated interior. Between Barker’s store and today’s bank, the Fromme Block has seen several businesses including a barber shop and an antique store. I loved visiting the antique store not just for its treasures but because the interior plastered walls and fir planked floor did not appear to have seen much change since day one. Below is an early photo of the store taken in 1913, and 110 years later a recent photo showing not much has changed on that corner since those early settlers set up their corner shop.
1913 photo of Barker’s Store (Lynn Valley General Store) in the Fromme Block, with Jack & George in the picture. Courtesy of MONOVA/ North Vancouver Archives, Inventory no,12464
July 2023, the Fromme Block at the corner of Lynn Valley Road & Mtn Highway. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
From the Fromme Block, the streetcar continued up Lynn Valley Road to the end of its line close to Dempsey Road, stopping outside a corner store. The streetcar is long gone but there remains an end-of-route bus stop close to the corner store that today is The End of the Line General Store and coffee shop. LynnValley Life, an online publication, quotes from Lynn Valley settler’s Walter Draycott’s Early Days in Lynn Valley, “More than a hundred years ago, one of the area’s first stores was built at this site – the end of the streetcar line. (While passengers paid a nickel to get from the waterfront all the way into central Lynn Valley, they had to pay an extra two cents for a ride up the final hill!) In the early days, hikers could load up with provisions at the grocery before hiking in to camp on Mount Seymour.” While the existing store is not original and the bus end line is now around the corner, much is the same as today, hikers and day trippers stock up with supplies and treats.
1947 – the end of the streetcar on its last day in service at the end of the streetcar line on Lynn Valley Road, outside Willetts Grocery where today’s End of the Line General Store Coffee Shop is situated. Courtesy, MONOVA/ North Vancouver Archives, Inventory no.6567.
July 2023, The End of the Line General Store & Coffee Shop – where Willetts would have been and where the streetcar parked. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
West of Lonsdale, the Line 3 streetcar took to the rails in 1912, travelling down West Keith, past the now fenced off 1912 corner store, it then proceeded up Fell Avenue to 20th St. where it travelled across a trestle bridge which spanned McKay Creek linking Hamilton Heights to 22nd Street and Lloyd Avenue in Pemberton Heights. A corner store has existed at that corner since the 1920’s and was a streetcar stop. There was a rebuild in the 1970’s, and in 2005, the corner store was transformed into today’s Cornerstone Bistro. And that’s what the original corner stores often were, cornerstones of their community.
July 2023, The Cornerstone Bistro, 22nd Street and Lloyd Avenue, Pemberton Heights. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
When I arrived from Edinburgh to settle in North Vancouver, “my” corner store was at 466 East Keith. Just a short walk from Ridgeway School, it was a favourite with school kids and a go-to on Sunday for a pint of milk or some eggs or a magazine when only corner stores were allowed to open on the sabbath. Built in 1914, it was given a makeover in recent years to emerge as a flower shop.
Taken in 1975, the Corner Store, 466 East Keith. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives, Inventory no. 11703
July 2023, 466 East Keith as it is today. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
Two perfect examples of busy, independent, local, almost on a corner, still in business stores with accommodation above the shop are Lynn Valley’s Mountain Market at 3620 Mountain Highway and Hardy’s Grocery at 1127 Montroyal Boulevard. Both purpose built as live-work markets, the former in 1952 and the latter in 1941, their architecture is decidedly utilitarian. Hardy’s Grocery, a popular stop with local high school students, is a good example of survival in the face of nearby competition. These days both stores use the flower-power of fresh cut bouquets and hanging baskets to attract custom. And, both stores could almost be the store in Kim’s Convenience!
The Mountain Market, Lynn Valley. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
Hardy’s Grocery, Montroyal Blvd. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
If you have had a favourite North Vancouver family run corner store in your life that in the past, or is still around, please feel free to write a comment about it in the comment box at the end of this post.
Except where indicated, text and images Copyright @ North Shore Heritage and Jennifer Clay. All rights reserved. Republication in whole or in part is prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder.
Acknowledgements & Resources
MONOVA, North Vancouver Museum and Archives are an excellent and valuable source of information and photos. Special thanks to Christy Brain. https://monova.ca/archives/
City of North Vancouver and District of North Vancouver Heritage Registers.
North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Neighbourhood, by Shervin Shahriari.
Canada’s Historic Places: A Federal, Provincial and Territorial Collaboration.
· https://lynnvalleylife.com/life/history/
North Shore News.
North Shore Heritage posts https://www.northshoreheritage.org/hodson-block https://www.northshoreheritage.org/blog/2023/4/4/404-somerset-a-tale-of-pioneers-and-crime-busters
The Ambitious City, A History of the City of North Vancouver, by Warren Sommer.
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