Lynn Valley. From Lynn Peak to Lynn Creek, it’s made up of Lynns. There is Lynn Valley Road, Lynn Valley Centre, Lynn Valley Library, Lynn Canyon Park, Lynn Valley Suspension Bridge, Lynn Valley Ecology Centre, Lynn Headwaters, Lynnmouth, Lynmour, Lynn Avenue. And there is Lynn Creek where it all started with John Linn and his promised land.
The name Lynn is also attached to many local businesses, organizations and streets in the valley and each June, the community comes together for Lynn Valley Days. The name Lynn was adopted and adapted from the name of John Linn, a Scottish Sapper and settler, who earned end-of-military service reward land next to a creek on the north shore of Burrard Inlet – it became Lynn Creek.
View of Lynn Creek today from Burrard Inlet. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence.
Let’s look back to the time before John Linn settled on the North Shore, and why he arrived to the colony of British Columbia in the first place. In August 1858, the British Crown colony of British Columbia was formed. The Californian gold rush was in decline and American miners were turning their sights north causing growing unease in Victoria that for this, and other reasons, the Americans might march in and lay claim to the area. In London, the British Government determined that if B.C. were to succeed as a Colony, it must be actively colonized and that required implementation of infrastructure through surveying, mapping, engineering and technical support to construct bridges and roads. For example, roads we now know as Cariboo, Canada Way and Kingsway. To that end, the British Royal Engineers, known as “Sappers”, were dispatched from England to New Westminster to do the work. Colonel Richard Clement Moody was the Commander of the Royal Engineers and his eponym, Port Moody, was developed to ward off potential U.S. attacks on the B.C. capital at the time (1859-1866), New Westminster. He also became the first Lieutenant Governor of B.C.
John Linn was born in 1821 in Corstorphine, Scotland. Today, Corstorphine is a western, mainly residential, suburb of Edinburgh. At the time of John Linn’s birth, it was a separate parish. I grew up in Edinburgh and know the Corstorphine area. There is a 15th century parish church that would have been at the centre of the farming village when John Linn was a boy. It is probably fair to say that his background was poor but not destitute as he apprenticed as a stonemason and being a stonemason gave him the qualification to enlist in Glasgow with the British Royal Engineers in 1846 at age twenty-five.
Linn’s first overseas deployment with the Royal Engineers came two years later, taking him to Halifax in the colony of Nova Scotia for nine years. It was there, in 1857 at age 36, that he married, Mary Robertson, a young woman born in Broadford in the parish of Strath on the Isle of Skye. At that time, Broadford would have been a hamlet of small, thatched roof cottages. But how did Mary get to Halifax from Skye? More than likely an unfortunate victim of “the Highland Clearances” that continued well into the 19th century with forced emigration to the New World. Today we read about renovictions; this was rent-evictions. The increased value of wool meant that wealthy landowners replaced peasant tenant farmers with sheep, as it proved more lucrative than rents.
John and Mary Linn, CVA 371-1257, Courtesy City of Vancouver Archives, Major Matthews Collection.
The Royal Engineers, with the Linns, returned to Britain from Halifax the year of their marriage. Subsequently Linn volunteered for a deployment to the newly created British Crown colony, British Columbia, with the promise of receiving land there at the end of the tour. The promise of becoming a land owner must have been persuasive. The regiment left the London port of Gravesend 10th October 1858, on the clipper SS Thames City, for a six-month voyage round Cape Horn.
In addition to the regiment and crew, there were 31 wives and 37 children. Those on board lived in tightly cramped bunkbed quarters. “The Men (sic) and women were separated for sleeping compartments, the Men on the Troop Deck and the women and children in a section near the bow". Only two stops occurred for provisions, one in the Falkland Islands and the other in Chile.
It was under these trying conditions that Mrs. Linn gave birth to her first child, Hugh, the eldest of the Linn's six children. Mary Linn was not the only woman to give birth on that long voyage - eight children were born at sea while one woman and one child died. For entertainment and education on the voyage, 2000 books had been supplied. In later coverage about the Linn family, it is suggested that Mary was illiterate. In 1859, after being at sea for six (unimaginable) months, John and Mary Linn, with their young son, settled into barracks life at Sapperton, New Westminster. Modern Sapperton is home to the Royal Columbian Hospital.
It was John Linn’s last tour of duty. At the end of the Royal Engineers' deployment in 1863, Commander Moody, with his wife Mary, their seven children and most of the officers chose to return to their lives in Britain. Moody had arrived in New Westminster a year ahead of John Linn. Moody left two children here, their First Nations mother having been the family’s housekeeper. But most of the regular sappers decided to remain as there was probably not much of a life for a poor sapper to return to.
In recognition for their service, the remaining sappers had been promised land. Sapper John Linn eventually received his promised land in the late 1860’s. But it became a bureaucratic rigmarole that took years of letter writing and paper work. While Linn initially received the land in 1867, he failed to “improve” it and his claim lapsed and he had to re-apply. Eventually, in 1871, he was allocated 150 acres of creek-side land on the north shore of Burrard Inlet, District Lot 204, that became known as Linn Creek and then changed to Lynn Creek. The delay meant that after the regiment disbanded in 1863, the Linns remained in the barracks.
Between 1859 and 1869, Mary gave birth to another boy and four girls. The youngest, Maria Ellen, born in 1869 in New Westminster, lived until 1963. At age 3 months, Maria moved with her family to Linn’s assigned District Lot to a basic creek-side cabin that is thought to have stood in the area of where the train tracks now cross Lynn Creek. It was not far from North Vancouver’s first established community, Moodyville - where the grain elevators are presently - with a hotel, church, prison, electricity and a one room school that the Linn kids attended.
Men and women assembled near shore at Linn's cottage. Photograph shows men and women standing behind rowboat on shore, watching two men wearing women's bathing suits dip their feet into the water. SGN 1040 Courtesy City of Vancouver Archives, Major Matthews Collection.
According to some reports. John Linn was an affable, hard-working fellow who always had jobs including being a stonemason to becoming a logger on the North Arm of Burrard Inlet in the area of where the Wigwam Inn would later be built. From there, he supplied logs for piles for a wharf at Hastings Mill on the south side of the inlet. The creek property was primarily developed by Mary, who, while raising six children, grew vegetables, kept chickens and raised cattle and oxen. Gossip of the time indicated that while John held down work, he was also known to head over to New Brighton with its hotel to enjoy a drink or two. Mary was known, at times, to have rowed across the inlet to fetch him home. But, to be fair, some accounts describe him as a man of sobriety with others saying he took the occasional drink.
New Brighton Park today from Lynn Creek, Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
It is also written that Mary had a terrible time with her sons, Hugh and Thomas, especially Hugh. He was the boy born in 1858 off the coast of Brazil on S.S. Thames City who reached adulthood with an aversion for work and an appetite for whisky. The previously mentioned prison in Moodyville is where Hugh frequently found himself. His mother would often pay the fine to release him. In 1894, Hugh Linn became the first white settler in B.C. to be convicted and hanged for murder. The double murder he was found guilty of, took place on Savary Island, in October 1893. One of my neighbours has a cabin on Savary Island and he directed me to the author of Sunny, Sandy Savary, Ian Kennedy, who also wrote a look-back account in The Vancouver Province, July 29, 2001, about the discovery of the murder of the Island’s first settler and store owner, 76-year-old Jack Green and his store assistant, Tom Taylor.
The article describes the events saying that initially what looked like deaths by shotgun unraveled when inspection found the shotguns had not been fired for months and that a rifle had been used. Linn had set up the gruesome post-murder crime scene posing the victims with shotguns as a cover up for his actions. However, he left several empty whisky bottles lying around the scene, evidence indicating that robbery had been a factor in the killings. At the time, Hugh Linn was in a relationship with a First Nations woman who had a son from another relationship. It was their testimony against Linn’s testimony that led to the guilty verdict.
Kennedy describes Hugh Linn as a general reprobate who was unlike his hardworking father. The other son, Thomas or Tom, is described in accounts as handsome, and as a captain on a Burrard Inlet ferry. Tom, who was born in Sapperton before brother Hugh had reached age two, ended his life in 1895, the year after his brother’s death. One of the four daughters, Allison Ann Linn had died in 1882.
It was Mary Linn and her three surviving girls who had to face and deal with these events. John Linn, the Scottish Sapper and settler, had succumbed to a stroke on 11th April 1876. After his death, Mary Linn stayed on at Lynn Creek continuing to raise cattle for market and draft oxen for transporting logs until 1891 when she sold to Edward Mahon for $22,000. Affluent Irishman, Edward Mahon, was a director of the North Vancouver Land and Improvement Co. and his name lives on in Mahon Park, Mahon Avenue, the Green Necklace and the West Kootenay town Castlegar, named after the family’s Irish country seat.
In 1912, the Lynn Valley area, including Lynn Creek and Lynn Canyon, was officially renamed after John Linn by the District of North Vancouver. Prior to 1912, X̱á7elcha was the Squamish name for Lynn Creek. Despite the prevalence of the name Lynn in the area, there does not appear to be any commemorative recognition of the origins of the name being associated with John Linn.
Two of the surviving daughters lived into their eighties and the youngest, Maria Ellen Linn, lived into her nineties and in later life owned an apartment building on Robson Street called Lynnada Apartments. In 1953, the Vancouver Sun published an interview with Maria at age 84 by Sun writer Mac Reynolds. She went on to live until 1963. She notes in the interview that the cabin has completely disappeared, replaced with rail lines, but said she was left with the memory of the cabin’s porch, “decked out with Chinese lanterns.”
Group assembled on front porch of John Linn’s Cabin (Lynn Creek) with Chinese Lanterns hanging from cabin. SGN1043. Courtesy City of Vancouver Archives, Major Matthews Collection.
While writing this article, North Shore Heritage coincidentally received an email from an individual on Vancouver Island who wondered if their great-grandfather, with the surname Peters, might be connected to Peters Road in Lynn Valley. Investigation revealed that the wife of his great-grandfather was Maria Ellen Linn Peters!
As is often the case with historical records, women are not well served. But we can try to imagine what Mary Linn’s life must have been like. Hard. She was a young, impoverished woman from the Isle of Skye who in Halifax, N.S. met Sapper John Linn from Edinburgh. Mary, who had already crossed the Atlantic to a new life in the New World, married him and then returned with him to England, to then embark on a six month voyage to New Westminster, B.C . where she arrived with one baby, born at sea, going on to be the mother of five more. Through her industrious lifetime she lost her husband and three children, one a murderer. Looking closely at the photo of Mary and John, she looks at least a decade younger than her husband and possibly younger than that. All of the Linn’s final resting places are recorded – except for Mary Robertson Linn, who died in New Westminster in 1907. There is no record of where she is buried.
John Linn’s burial at Sapperton in 1876 is reported to have been attended by the New Westminster Rifles and Seymour Artillery. I discovered, through the website, Find a Grave, that John Linn, Hugh, Thomas, and Alice are in the Masonic area of Fraser Cemetery, Sapperton. The three other daughters are recorded elsewhere. I decided to go to see John Linn’s gravesite and located it. Each one of the above named has their name and dates on the grave stone. Then, on one side, I saw the word. MOTHER. That is the extent of recognition given to Mary Robertson Linn, a girl from the Isle of Skye and the hard-working woman who homesteaded at Lynn Creek with her husband, Sapper John Linn.
The Linn gravesite at Fraser Cemetery, Sapperton, Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
Opposite the Sapperton Skytrain Station, on a building above Brunette Avenue, facing the Fraser River, is a recent graffiti style installation, illuminated at night, with the words: The Sappers Were Here.
The Sappers Were Here, Installation at Sapperton. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence
A few days ago, I walked along the banks of Lynn Creek, from Main Street south to Burrard Inlet, on a path that took me under the rail lines that run over where the Linn cabin once stood.
Rail lines across Lynn Creek where the Linn cabin once stood. Courtesy, Colin Lawrence.
While there are some park area information boards, not one indicates that: The Linns of Lynn Valley Were Here.
Fun facts:
The name Sapper is derived from the French word sappe (“spadework,” or “trench”) and became connected with military engineering during the 17th century, when attackers dug covered trenches to approach the walls of a besieged fort.
Sappers’ barracks later became the site of the BC Penitentiary (corrected).
Colonel Moody was the Commander of the Royal Engineers, the Sappers. Port Moody and Moody park in New Westminster are named after him. Mary Hill in Port Coquitlam is named after his wife Mary, Burnaby is named after his secretary, Robert Burnaby.
Nova Scotia is the one North American region with a Latin name.
Except where indicated, text and images Copyright @ North Shore Heritage and Anne-Marie Lawrence. All rights reserved. Republication in whole or in part is prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder.
Sources:
Primary Source
http://www.royalengineers.ca/Linn.html
“Jock” Linn of Lynn Creek by Athelstan George Harvey (1884-1950), located in BC Archives, MS1925, Box 26, File 5) (apparently written circa 1945)
The Vancouver Province, Saturday, October 27 1945, page 42, Article, A.G. Harvey about the Linns and Lynn Valley. (Sidenote: Englishman Athelstan George Harvey, became a distinguished Vancouver politician, and a historian. In his account about John & Mary Linn he includes interviews with family and others who had known the Linns.)
The Royal Engineers – Sappers -
http://www.royalengineers.ca/Journal.html
Other Sources
Sappers Barracks New Westminster
https://www.newwestcity.ca/database/files/library/Sapperton_Landing_History.pdf
https://scoutmagazine.ca/2018/07/30/once-a-local-prison-now-a-preschool-and-pub/
Lynn Creek Land
Correspondence between John Linn as he tries to obtain his Promised Land
KM Woodward-Reynolds,1943, Thesis UBC, page 40.·
https://open.library.ubc.ca/media/stream/pdf/831/1.0098663/1
The Linns : Vancouver Sun interview with the youngest of Linn children, Maria Ellen Peters, at age 83 , Saturday, March 28, 1953.
Savary Island Murders: Sunny, Sandy Savary, Ian Kennedy,
The Vancouver Province, July 29, 2001, Murder and a Treasure Hunt on Savary Island, Ian Kennedy, https://www.newspapers.com/article/53149568/savary_island_murders/
1912 naming of Lynn Valley: The Lynn Valley area, along with Lynn Creek and Lynn Canyon were renamed after John Linn. In 1912, X̱á7elcha is the Squamish name for Lynn Creek
https://ecologycentre.ca/general-information/
http://benjielayug.com/2022/08/lynn-canyon-park-vancouver-british-columbia-canada.html
John Linn’s Gravesite
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/181374069/john-linn
Fraser Cemetery Office with thanks to Eric - nwcemetery@newwestcity.ca.
City of Vancouver Archives
https://vancouver.ca/your-government/city-of-vancouver-archives.aspx