Editorially speaking...
Yes!
It’s not often that I read the news these days and have a truly positive reaction, but today’s front page of the Times Colonist is a double-header.
First, there’s a full-width photo of the opening of Esquimalt’s reborn Gorge Park Pavilion, site of the once-famous Japanese Tea Gardens that were trashed by hysteric, self-proclaimed patriots (drunks, probably, from the beer parlour across the road) after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941.
An early (1890s or turn of the last century?) postcard of the renowned Japanese Tea Gardens at the Gorge; once they were almost as famous as Butchart Gardens. —Author’s Collection
The design of the new $10 million, two-storey pavilion takes its theme from the original Takata tea house (named for the family that built and operated the tea gardens). As icing on the cake, Esquimalt Municipality funded the new construction with monies received for “hosting” the regional district’s sewage treatment plant.
A win-win if ever there was one.
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The other (for me) heartwarming story is about, of all things, demolitions and the disposal of construction materials.
Now, you may not think this has anything to do with history and really isn’t fodder for the Chronicles, but please bear with me.
Back in the early 1970s when my family and I, then living in Saanich, decided to buy property and move to Cherry Point, Cobble Hill, my father, brother and I went into the house demolition business. In truth, we didn’t demolish several houses and an apartment building for the sake of tearing them down, but for their prime, aged first-growth lumber.
I’m talking quality here such as you simply can’t buy today regardless of the size of your wallet.
(In truth, you couldn’t buy that quality then, either, as it was reserved for export.) As proof, I offer you my former office and print shop (picture a summer cottage) that I built with salvaged lumber.
The 2x4s (real 2x4s of that dimension, not today’s skinnier version) had been rafters from a modest Central Saanich house that were so long—28 feet!—that I had to buck into three eight-foot lengths to fit into my pickup truck.
(That’s stud-size which I wanted, anyway) The siding was shiplap from the mansion of Gordon Wismer (a onetime B.C. attorney general).
I bet you there aren’t two knots in my entire shop which has since been converted into a home.
I have helped to deconstruct onetime Rockland Avenue mansions that had been converted to boarding houses then sold for development. I have helped to remove floors of Australian gum wood so as to expose the 2x10 joists. (The gum wood went to a boat building company in Sidney, I’m happy to say.)
I have almost wept upon finding myself the first one to begin the actual job of demolition of what had once been a rich family’s mansion, a house that even after years of conversion to apartments, still retained something of its regal character of a bygone day.
Or taking that first swing with my hammer, or, say, jamming my pry bar between the moulding and the wall.
Or, worse, simply tearing up the fir floors because they were secured with twist-nails that don’t allow for salvage, because the flooring was in the way of those valuable joists. (That was the first time, by the way, I ever saw the name, Victoria Lumber & Manufacturing, stencilled on their backs. Despite its name, VL&M, once one of the three largest lumber mills in the province, was based in Chemainus.)
Delivering logs to the VL&M mill at Chemainus. (Thank God for postcards!) —Author’s Collection
Quite simply, Victoria was on an apartment-building binge in the early ‘70s and I and my family (with a lot of hard work—have you ever stripped black shingles from a roof in mid-summer?) cashed in on the salving of the wonderful used lumber opportunities.
(My mother even rescued many landscape plants from inevitable destruction by bulldozers.)
For decades, I’ve watched the wanton destruction of old homes and buildings by the use of heavy equipment, such as an excavator, that scrunches everything into rubble for trucking away to land-fills, now that burning is no longer an option.
Do you remember the old Safeway in Duncan with its massive laminated beams that supported its lazy-arch roof line? When demolition began I was convinced that these would be salvaged for some other purpose. No, they were chain-sawed into manageable lengths then trucked away for disposal.
All in the name of saving the costs of demolition by hand, and of speeding up the construction project, of course.
Everything you see in this photo—and much more—is slated for demolition and the Hartland Landfill if things go according to the government’s recently announced plan. —Wikipedia
When, a month or so ago, the provincial government made its disastrous announcement that the Royal BC Museum and Archives are to be nuked for a new building, my second thought, besides what this meant for the future preservation of history, was the incredible amount of inexcusable waste it was going to create.
What prompts this ramble is the report in the Times Colonist that Victoria City Council has just passed a bylaw designed to “divert more construction material from the dump by rewarding those who salvage wood rather than scrapping it”.
That’s what I mean by my introductory, Yes! I rarely agree with Victoria Council’s decisions, many of which seem to be from outer space, but this one’s a winner that’s long overdue.
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