"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."
- Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi (1970)
Back in May 2011, we looked at Port Coquitlam's west side and saw how the area is slowly changing with the times. Today, we'll journey to the northeast sector of town, where a flurry of development is happening around the Fremont Village/Dominion Triangle area.
Once a pastoral landscape of farms and meadows, that area is giving way to highway commercial, light industrial and residential use. Ironically, this was the original plan for the northeast area 100 years ago, when Port Coquitlam was to become "The Industrial City."
In April 1913, the Toronto Weekly Globe published an article stating "Level land in a 'Sea of Mountains' is more valuable than in any part of the Dominion. Considering there are 6,000 acres of level territory, with more than 6 miles of frontage on Pitt River, the possibilities are unlimited."
To access the sawmills and grain elevators planned along the Pitt, a rail spur line was laid down beginning at the CP Rail yards on Coast Meridian Road and running northeast through the neighbouring farms to the river. Historical records show little activity along this line as the projected development never materialized, and the tracks were lifted before the middle of the 20th century.
Let's take a closer look at some of the farms in the area and their history.
Ed and Minnie Thatcher arrived in 1906 and had a large farm just west of the Pitt Bridge. Ed also worked for the Foundation Company in 1913, building the CPR's new swing-span bridge to replace the old wooden one that was staffed in the early days by bridge tender John Ross. He and wife Sarah Bailey had a daughter, Alice Ross Carriere Heckbert, who was born in 1884 and witnessed much change in Port Coquitlam before her passing in 1988 - literally, from sawmill to skyscraper.
Percy Jackson and his family moved from Brandon, Man. in 1916 and ran a small dairy farm on Dominion Avenue for a few years, and were relatives of the Thatchers. The Jacksons later moved to the old Jesse Flint homestead near Oxford and Prairie Avenue, which was the first house built north of the CPR mainline in 1887; the house was still standing well into the 1960s.
George Willcox and his brother Harry emigrated from England to Port Coquitlam around the time of incorporation in 1913 and each owned dairy farms, George to the south of Dominion Avenue and Harry to the north, around Burns Road. They delivered milk to customers in Port Moody and Ioco until they sold their farms to the Shymkowich and Sawyer families around 1940. Other farmers in the area were Andy Kleven, John Riley and Peter Fleming, who all bought acreage after retiring from Imperial Oil.
Ted Poirier had a 15-acre dairy farm in the Dominion Triangle area and when he needed help, his niece Alice LeRoux and her husband George moved from Maillardville to the farm in 1945.
George LeRoux bought more property in the area in subsequent years and eventually owned a total of 53 acres, part of which he developed into a wildlife sanctuary. Three small ponds connected by streams held thousands of fingerlings and a penned corral hosted 50 wild geese and 100 ducks. When Alice died in 1964, he landscaped a beautiful "garden of memories" with the flowers she loved. George LeRoux passed away in 1988.
The new development happening in the Dominion Triangle will be an enormous boost to our rapidly growing community, with plenty of business and employment opportunities. The "Industrial City" has indeed arrived, albeit 100 years later than originally planned.
And no doubt complete with a boutique and a swinging hot spot.
Your History is a column in which, once a month, representatives of the Tri-Cities' three heritage groups writes about local history. Bryan Ness is with the Port Coquitlam Heritage and Cultural Society.
