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Longtime West Vancouver realtor remembers the early days

With a little help from everybody, Tom Wardell moved house in West Vancouver. Residents looking for alternatives to the North Shore’s current development method: “tear down the original, throw it away and build new,” take heed.
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With a little help from everybody, Tom Wardell moved house in West Vancouver.

Residents looking for alternatives to the North Shore’s current development method: “tear down the original, throw it away and build new,” take heed.

It was 1986, summer of Expo. Tom, a realtor in his home community, found a new home for his family.

He bought a house slated to be demolished and moved it from 13th and Haywood to 11th and Gordon. To accommodate the 90-ton load, the route went up to Kings Avenue, over to 11th Street and thence to the site on Gordon Avenue.

There, the real expertise in an already complex endeavour was demonstrated as the house was laid atop the foundation.

Tom recalls, “The drift allowed was between four and six inches, so there was no room for error.”

While electricity and utilities were installed in their new home, the Wardells relied on friends for bathing purposes and on neighbour Jack Munro, the labour leader, for electricity.

It was the biggest thing ever moved in West Vancouver, says Tom, and made the front page of the North Shore News.

While this is the most spectacular of Tom’s real estate stories, he has others about West Vancouver. 

Here is one about Air Vice-Marshal Raymond Collishaw, a neighbour at 26th and Ottawa, where Tom grew up: Wearing puttees and sporting a swagger stick, his terrier, Bull, at his side, “Collie” made a daily patrol of the steep streets of upper Dundarave.

On one of those patrols, Bull nipped young Tom. Given his age, Tom would not have known Collishaw was born in B.C., nor that he was a highly decorated Second World War flying ace.

He doesn’t even remember Bull’s bite. He does remember the Air Vice-Marshal’s admonishment: “Don’t bite the child, Bully.” 

Tom Wardell, born, raised and still making his home in West Vancouver, is a rare bird. He is also a born salesman.

Tom was about six years old when he made his first venture into sales. This was around 1950, before the Upper Levels highway went in, and 26th Street continued up Hollyburn Mountain, turning the street into a popular ski and sledding run back in the days of heavy snowfalls.

In the spring, young Tom lined up pots of plants along 26th Street, and sold them to passersby.

Sales were brisk until his mother realized her garden was the source of the plants.

Tom went on to work after school at the gas station at 24th and Marine Drive, at Woodward’s and at Hole-in-One Donuts at Park Royal.

His career in sales officially began with selling Collier’s encyclopedias door-to-door (four sets in one day has to be a record somewhere).

He moved on to sales and marketing in the appliance sector – Sunbeam and Hoover, and a stint in the family business, a women’s clothing importer.

In 1975, Tom launched his career in real estate with a hat trick, receiving his licence, acquiring his first listing, and making his first sale, all on the same day: March 7, his birthday. 

Since then, Tom has served 17 terms as director of the North Shore, Sunshine Coast and Sea to Sky division of the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board.

Tom’s skills are in sales; his interests incline towards history. Family albums share the book-lined shelves of his home.

They chronicle Tom’s and his brother’s boyhood, and that of Tom’s children, and thanks to his mother, life as it was in Vancouver in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s.

Tom was appointed to West Vancouver’s Heritage Committee and was elected chairman for several terms until the committee was dissolved in 2011.

He is also a long-serving member of West Vancouver Historical Society. Tom remembers West Vancouver as it was.

“A great place to raise children: two theatres in Ambleside, a pool hall and a bowling alley. We would fish at Dundarave pier, ride the logs off shore, all things you can’t do anymore. West Vancouver looks perfect now; nothing is out of place. Back in those days, West Van was easy-going, a little rough around the edges and a whole lot more fun for kids.”

Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. Contact her at 778-279-2275 or e-mail her at lander1@shaw.ca.