Letter from the Honourable William Vander Zalm, Ministry of Municipal Affairs, which appeared on the Agenda for the 1979 June 18 Meeting of Council re: 1979 Municipal Planning Grants and Origin/Destination Travel Pattern Study
Permission for the Director Recreation and Cultural Services to travel on the 1983 Study Tour - Sport and Recreation Management and Practice in Britain
Burnaby North and Burnaby South were the first high schools built in the City. Before the high school opened, Burnaby students had to travel to Vancouver if they wished to pursue education beyond an elementary level. In 1921, arrangements were made to use the basement of the Presbyterian Church for instruction of local students. By 1922 the Burnaby North High School opened at its first permanent location (4375 Pandora Street - which is now Rosser Elementary). In 1945, the Willingdon Avenue site was built and was used until a new building was constructed in 1961 on Hammarskjold Drive. From 1962, the school was used as Burnaby Heights Junior High school, but it closed in 1982 and the junior high students went to the new Burnaby North on Hammarskjold.
By 1961, three new elementary schools had been built in the northeast section of Burnaby - Armstrong, Seaforth, and Lyndhurst. With growing enrolment at each, too many students were required to travel a farther distance to attend Edmonds Junior High School. As a result, the Cariboo Hill Secondary School was built in 1961 and opened with 410 students. Its peak enrolment was during the 1974 school year when over 1100 students attended. Additions to the school were made in 1969, 1971 and 1974.
In peak years, upwards of 100 million salmon would swim up the Fraser River - the largest salmon-bearing river in the world. In August and September sockeye salmon would be pursued by almost 1000 canoes of fishers from all over the coast; people from Sechelt, Nanaimo, Cowichan, Saanich, Lummi Island, Skagit, Snohomish, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh. The estimated peak year sockeye salmon run was 60 million and the estimated yearly consumption by Natives was at least 4 million. In 1808, Simon Fraser became the first known European to travel in the Lower Fraser River.
The Burnaby Lake Line was constructed due to the advocacy of Burnaby residents and the Municipality of Burnaby to build the line. A petition was circulated by residents in 1907, and eventually substantial land bonuses were given to the company to induce them to build the line. Property owners in the area hoped the construction of the line would increase their land values. Construction of the 15-mile line was announced in 1909, and the line opened in 1911. The line travelled from Vancouver to New Westminister through central Burnaby.The last day of service was October 23, 1953. When the Trans Canada highway was constructed in the 1960s, it followed the right of way of the Burnaby Lake Line through Burnaby.
In the 1890s, local entrepreneurs launched electric railways in Vancouver, New Westminster, and Victoria, eager to cash in on the promise of future growth in the major cities of the time. In the Lower Mainland, two companies started building electric rail in 1890: the Westminster and Vancouver Tramway Co., which undertook the ambitious project of building the first real interurban line from New Westminster to Vancouver, and the Westminster Street Railway, who eventually built streetcar service and installed electric lighting in New Westminster. By April 20, 1891, both companies merged to form the Westminster and Vancouver Tramway Company. Local entrepreneurs Henry V. Edmonds, David Oppenheimer, Benjamin Douglas, and Samuel McIntosh, were the directors, all of whom had extensive real estate holdings in the area. Interurban service launched on June 3, 1891, travelling along 12 miles of track from New Westminster to eastern Vancouver, running through Burnaby – which was then an unincorporated area. Installing the single-track line from Vancouver to New Westminster through uneven, forested terrain was a mammoth undertaking. The clearing of the 100-foot right of way and laying the track called for a large work force, some of whom were Chinese "gandy dancers" who had worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway lines. The line was eventually taken over by the B.C. Electric Railway Company in 1897, who remained the owners until the line was finally closed on October 23, 1953 and replaced with the modern bus system. The construction of the SkyTrain along the old route in 1986 reintroduced passenger rail to this historic transportation corridor.
The Dr. William & Ruth Baldwin House is a two-storey modern post-and-beam structure, located on the southern shore of Deer Lake in Burnaby's Deer Lake Park. The site is steeply sloped, and the main entrance of the house is at the top of the slope facing onto Deer Lake Drive.
The Dr. William & Ruth Baldwin House is a two-storey modern post-and-beam structure, located on the southern shore of Deer Lake in Burnaby's Deer Lake Park. The site is steeply sloped, and the main entrance of the house is at the top of the slope facing onto Deer Lake Drive.
Heritage Value
The Baldwin House is valued as a prime example of Burnaby’s post-Second World War modern heritage and progressive architectural style, as well as for its personal connections to internationally-acclaimed architect, Arthur Erickson.
Inspired by the modern domestic idiom established earlier in the twentieth century by Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra, Erickson conceived his architecture as responding directly to the site. A cohesive expression of simple orthogonal lines and ultimate transparency, this structure reduces the idea of post-and-beam West Coast modernism to its most refined elements. A fine example of the evolving talent of Erickson’s earlier work, this house is a landmark modern house in Burnaby and is unique in terms of siting and context.
Having just won the 1963 competition for the new Simon Fraser University in Burnaby with his partner, Geoff Massey, and having built fewer than half a dozen homes previously, Erickson’s reputation was growing and his skill as a designer of modern buildings was in great demand. The same year that Erickson/Massey Architects designed SFU, Dr. William Baldwin and his wife, Ruth, personal friends of Erickson, commissioned him to design this house. Erickson was already familiar with the site; as a child he had spent time at this spot when his family visited friends who lived on Deer Lake. Both the Baldwin House and the university were completed in 1965. SFU became internationally famous; the Baldwin House was also considered an architectural success and was recognized in publications of the time.
Only a single storey of this two-storey house is visible from the road, as it is built into the hillside in response to its steep site and proximity to Deer Lake. Like many other Erickson designs, this structure was conceived as a pavilion. Constructed of glass and wood, its transparency facilitates visual access to the lake’s edge, acting as an invitation, rather than a barrier, to the landscape. The house blends into the natural surroundings and the site includes other man-made landscape features such as a reflecting pool. As a reaction to the often grey quality of light in the region, Erickson exploits flat planes of water as a source of borrowed light.
The refined and purposeful design, transparency, openness of plan and adjacency to the lake combine to give the house a floating appearance at the water's edge. The concept of a floating house set within an accompanying garden was inspired, in part, by the palaces and house boats of Dal Lake in Kashmir and the famed nearby Mughal Gardens. Although Erickson never visited Dal Lake, he travelled extensively throughout India, and specifically mentions the Kashmir reference in relation to this house. There is a rich complexity of other allusions worked into the fabric of the house, unified by a feeling for the conjunction of light, water and land at this special location.
Widely renowned as Canada’s most brilliant modern architect, Erickson’s reputation is important to the development and growth of modern architecture in Canada and North America.
Defining Elements
The elements of the Baldwin House that define its character are those materials and details which respond to the location of the building and determine the relation between landscape and building, combining to create a single cohesive site. These include its:
- close proximity to water
- orthogonal plan and massing, with flat tar-and-gravel roof
- stepped down massing orienting the house towards the water
- post-and-beam construction, with the width of the beams matched to the width of the posts
- wood and glass used as primary building materials
- transparency and light achieved by the abundant use of glass
- large undivided sheets of single glazing
- butt glazed glass corners
- abundant and generous balconies, which blur the transition from interior to exterior
- horizontal flush cedar siding
- use of salvaged brick for chimneys
- use of chains as downspouts
- built-in rooftop barbeque
- built in furniture and fittings dating to the time of construction, such as original hardware, benches, bathroom vanities and kitchen cabinets
- landscaped site including reflecting pool, plantings and a dock protruding into the lake
The Wintemute House is a large two-storey wood-frame Victorian era country farm house with Victorian Italianate detailing. Designed in a symmetrical Foursquare form, it features a low-pitched hipped roof with deep eaves. Later additions to the rear of the house, and the extensive wraparound veranda…
The Wintemute House is a large two-storey wood-frame Victorian era country farm house with Victorian Italianate detailing. Designed in a symmetrical Foursquare form, it features a low-pitched hipped roof with deep eaves. Later additions to the rear of the house, and the extensive wraparound verandah and porte-cochere, were Edwardian era additions. It is located on its original site, in the modern subdivision of Buckingham Heights in southeast Burnaby. The Burnett House is one of the oldest surviving houses in Burnaby.
Heritage Value
Built circa 1891, the Joseph and Jane Wintemute House is valued as a representation of the early history of Burnaby and its agricultural origins. Built prior to the civic incorporation of Burnaby in 1892, the house was situated to face Douglas Road (now Canada Way), one of the first roads built to connect the rural farmlands of Burnaby to New Westminster. The original large property has been extensively subdivided and the house is now isolated in a modern subdivision. Designated in 1977, the Wintemute House is also significant as Burnaby's first protected municipal heritage site.
The house is valued for its association with Joseph S. Wintemute (1832-1911) and Jane Wintemute (1832-1910), who came to British Columbia from Port Stanley, Ontario in 1865, traveling via the Isthmus of Panama. Joseph Wintemute, a skilled carpenter and contractor by trade, operated the Wintemute Furniture Factory in New Westminster, the first furniture plant established on the mainland of British Columbia. In 1891, he acquired this property, where he set up a cord wood sawmill to supply his factory. Wintemute was likely responsible for the design and construction of this commodious structure, as it was built in an Eastern Canadian style he would have been familiar with. After the lands were cleared of timber, the Wintemutes developed the property into a typical small-scale 'market garden,’ involved in the production of vegetables and fruits, such as strawberries, for sale at the New Westminster City Market.
The Wintemute House is additionally significant for its association with the speculative land boom that occurred prior to the First World War, and ongoing suburban subdivision. Charles Gordon, a real estate agent, acquired the Wintemute farm and subdivided the acreage, which he marketed through the People’s Trust Company as 'Montrelynview' and offered this house as a draw prize to lot purchasers. With the collapse of the land boom, the house remained in Gordon’s possession until 1929 when it was purchased by his brother-in-law, Geoffrey Burnett, a local surveyor responsible for many of the original land surveys of Burnaby. David Burnett, Geoffrey's son, requested designation of the house when the family decided to subdivide the remaining 1.4 hectares of property in 1977.
Furthermore, the Wintemute House is valued as an excellent example of a Victorian era country farm house, based loosely on the traditional farmhouses seen commonly in nineteenth century Ontario. Designed in a vernacular version of the Victorian Italianate style, the house displays restrained detailing, including several original multi-paned windows notable for their vertical proportions. The house retains many original exterior features, and the original interior layout, although modernized during the Edwardian era, is substantially intact, including finely crafted maple and cedar interior millwork that was produced by the Wintemute Furniture Factory. From 1904 to 1910, Charles Gordon, the second owner, made a number of alterations to the house including the addition of the wrap-around verandah, a porte-cochere and a 7.6 metre by 9 metre billiard room in the Arts and Crafts style, beamed and panelled in Douglas Fir. These later additions and alterations have value in demonstrating the evolution of the house and property and changing tastes at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Defining Elements
Key elements that define the heritage character of the Wintemute House include its:
- picturesque original setting with views to the North Shore
- residential form, scale and massing as expressed by its symmetrical cubic form and two-storey height, with later additions to the rear
- Victorian Italianate architectural features such as the vertically-proportioned original windows with vestigial window hoods, low-pitched hipped roof and Classical Revival details such as the corner boards articulated as pilasters
- hipped roof with deep boxed eaves
- horizontal lapped narrow wooden siding
- second storey balcony over front entry
- wide wraparound columned verandah with porte-cochere, with square trimmed columns
- irregular fenestration: original Victorian era double-hung 6-over-6 wood-sash windows with vertical proportions and segmental arched tops; Edwardian era double-hung 1-over-1 wooden-sash windows; and Edwardian era wooden-sash casement window assemblies with leaded transoms
- central front entry with sidelights and transom
- multi-paned French doors opening out to verandah
- interior features such as its 3.7 metre ceiling height on the main and second floors; the coal grate fireplace with elaborate woodwork and glazed tile surround in the front parlour; five other fireplaces throughout the house; maple and cedar interior millwork; and the Douglas Fir panelled and beamed billiard room with hidden doors, seven-panelled doors, original light fixtures and mouldings
- internal red brick chimneys with corbelled caps