A lot has changed in Burnaby in the last century, and the Brown-John family has been here to see it all.
Next month a reunion of family and friends will celebrate the arrival of patriarch Victor Brown-John, who settled here in 1912 with his young family.
For Lyle Brown-John, Victor's grandson, it will be a chance to look back at a colourful history of both his family and his hometown.
Victor, or "Grandpa," was a carpenter/cabinetmaker who immigrated from Cardiff, Wales, to find new opportunities in Canada.
While crossing the Atlantic, he and three other men on the ship heard of a chance to draw for property going cheap in a place called Burnaby, just east of the town of Vancouver. Brown-John drew the first two lots, and set about building himself a house at 4076 Napier Street when he got here.
When his young wife, Winnifred, arrived later with the couple's two boys, Victor, 2, and Archie, 5 months, she was in shock for a while because the house was a rough-hewn shack in the woods, about a mile from any reliable transportation.
There was no running water, no electric lights and the toilet was out back.
Getting groceries meant having to get to Boundary Road where a streetcar would take you to Woodward's store on Abbott Street in Vancouver.
It was a much different life than the one she'd left in Europe.
However, it wasn't long before the pioneering spirit took over, and the Brown-Johns began cultivating a life of ingenuity and hard work.
Victor worked different jobs, including a stint with the army, and Winnifred kept the household running.
The couple had three more boys - twins Frank and Roy, born in 1914, and Clive, born in 1915 - before Victor went off to war in 1916, and then two more children when he returned: Elsie (the only girl) was born in 1921 and Gwyn (aka Jerry) in 1923.
The kids all enjoyed living in the woods, according to a memoir written by Clive, which was published in the 1980s and can be found at the Burnaby public library.
They grew up playing on the Burns' Acreage (Willingdon Heights today) and the Masonic Cemetery, across from what is now the Brentwood Shopping Centre, and skinny-dipping in the Still Creek swimming hole.
Today Elsie, who is Lyle's aunt, fondly remembers Burnaby Lake as a wonderful place to swim in the summer and ice skate in the winter, "in the good old days when there wasn't all that stuff down there."
Unfortunately, tragedy struck when Archie, who would later become Lyle's father, had four fingers on his right hand blown off in an accident with a blasting cap at the cemetery. He also lost one eye.
In December 1925, the family's fate worsened when Winnifred had to be hospitalized with pneumonia and Victor was killed after falling 40 feet into the hold of a ship he was working on.
The mother of seven was sick, widowed and not sure what the future would hold.
But as so many tenacious pioneers of that era, she carried on in spite of hard luck.
Elsie, who is now 92, remembers her mother as a small woman of just five feet and 110 pounds who did her best to make a good life for her family, and she is proud of her family heritage.
"We held down the corner of Napier and Gilmore for 49 years," she said.
To make up for the lack of income after their father died, the Brown-John boys all quit school after Grade 6 or 7, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and got work as truckers, loggers, machinists, trappers, ranch-hands and miners. They all eventually married and had their own children, including Archie, who had three boys: Lyle and his two brothers, Barry, who lives in the Kootenays, and Ken, who passed away in 2001.
Despite his injuries from childhood, Archie had a coal and wood business, worked as a logger on Burnaby Mountain, and later got into scrap metal and demolition.
"Most of us have been blue-collar working guys all our lives," said Lyle.
"(My uncles) were certainly independent guys. I believe the legacy of this family is hard work, a good work ethic, contrib-uting what we can, and a real love for Burnaby."
Lyle has worked for Safeway Canada for the past 30 years and lives on Lougheed Highway in North Burnaby in a house his mother used to own.
He said he has always enjoyed being a Burnaby resident, going to school here, marrying a woman who lives in Burnaby and watching his daughter's sporting events here.
"For me, it's been a wonderful life," he said. "I've never been without a job, and I've been privileged to have grown up here and call this my home."
His only regret about living his whole life here?
"I wish I'd bought some more real estate," he said with a laugh.
Though only he and one cousin are still living in town these days, Lyle said he is looking forward to the family gathering when more than 20 cousins and a host of nieces, nephews and other friends and family will journey from as far away as Fort Saint John to remember the last 100 years of the Brown-Johns of Burnaby.
editorial@ burnabynow.com
