Claire Babcock has little time for reflecting on the past, she has too much to do in the present.
Her garden is beginning to wake up. Family, friends and neighbours visit. And there is her work. Claire is an artist. It is clear, however, that creative expression in Claire’s world is not limited to paint and pencil on paper.
Her home is an ever-changing gallery. Everywhere the eye is drawn to something beautiful: bits and pieces grouped together on a shelf; a vase of flowers on a table. Every object, including the profusion of oil paintings and watercolours and sketches on the walls, can shift from room to room, often from one day to the next. Everything always looks right, exactly where it is, because change and flow define how Claire lives and how she works.
Born in 1928, Claire is living in her 90th year. She is one of the 480 people born in Anyox, a mining town in the far northwest of British Columbia that no longer exists. Claire was about seven years old when she and her parents, Sylvia and “Mac” Macdonald, moved south.
Their first home was in West Vancouver’s first apartment building. Appleton Court, built in 1927, stood at 17th Street and Fulton Avenue on the site of the municipal hall. According to local memory, the other five suites in the building were let to teachers working in the community.
The Macdonald family lived at Appleton Court until their new home at 1519 Duchess Ave. was built. It was the depths of the Depression but Claire’s father had invested successfully in the Irish Sweepstakes, his winnings sufficient to purchase the lot on Duchess and build the house.
An apartment tower now stands at that address but in the late 1930s, when the Macdonalds moved into their new home, they also moved into a neighbourhood, one of many that existed in West Vancouver.
Among the neighbours were Dick Culbert, a geophysicist and Mr. McNair, occupation unknown. Mr. de Gruchy worked on the trains; he had a daughter named Charmaine. Mr. Hodge was a ticket taker on the Lions Gate Bridge and Claire studied music theory with Mrs. Hodge, at 25 cents per lesson. The Michaelson family lived across the lane. Doctor Michaelson was a dentist like Claire’s father. Mrs. Betty Michaelson and daughter Andrea became great friends with Claire’s mother.
Mac Macdonald died soon after moving into the family’s new home, leaving Sylvia and Claire on their own. Claire took on part-time work when she started high school and after graduation, worked in an insurance company to cover her tuition at the Vancouver School of Art.
Claire enrolled at the VSA around 1950. It was a fruitful time for the school and for art. Many of the educators were veterans. Some had been in the services, others were war artists. Many returning veterans were newly married and starting families, embarking on new careers. They built homes on the forested slopes of the North Shore where the lots were large and affordable. Among the teachers were Jack Shadbolt, Bruno Bobak, Don Jarvis, B.C. Binning and the Mayrs brothers, all of whom lived on the North Shore, and went on to influence the direction of Canadian art.
It was a fruitful time for Claire too. She was a student, and an employee, at VSA, subbing for various instructors, marking correspondence courses, re-writing the school’s correspondence course. On weekends, after her shift at the insurance company, Claire would pack up paper, pencils and watercolours and head off from 1519 Duchess to sketch and paint her way across the North Shore.
Claire met artist Don Babcock at art school. Married in 1951, they headed to Europe, travelling from city to city, from gallery to gallery, by bicycle and motorcycle. They rode home across Canada on that motorcycle, with their belongings, a tent and a paraffin stove crammed somehow into the bike’s saddlebags. “It was lovely,” Claire recalls. “The sky is blue, the clouds roll over you, we had our little tent. It was October, though, and we rode out of Hope behind a snowplow.”
The artist’s life can be economically precarious, even when supplemented by teaching salaries, but sales and commissions came along over the years. Claire and Don raised their four children in a house in Lynn Valley which they restored, Don hiking from their rented house in Lower Lonsdale to work a few hours on their home-to-be.
Claire’s working relationship with the school continued through its evolution to the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design, culminating in a decade long period of travel, teaching art in B.C.’s rural communities, as part of ECIAD’s outreach program.
Over the years, she taught art all over the city, from Capilano College to UBC, and privately in the studio at her home in Lynn Valley, after she and Don parted ways. Claire continued with her own work, painting and sketching, exploring her interest in faces and figures, including a series of portraits done at the Carnegie Centre 25 years ago.
The Carnegie portraits were part of a retrospective exhibition at the Unitarian Church in Vancouver last fall. It was a time to come together to celebrate Claire and her work. For friends and family, it was a time to renew friendships forged in the old neighbourhood around 1519 Duchess Ave. More than 80 years have passed since Mac and Sylvia and Claire moved in to their new home. The parents are gone now, but their children remember.
Claire returned to West Vancouver at the age of 70 to live in the house where her mother lived after leaving 1519 Duchess. Over the past 20 years, Claire has transformed the garden from an expanse of green lawn with a single tree in the centre into a lush and vibrant creation, infused with her unique vision.
Inside, Claire works at a table with a bright light focused on paint and brush and paper, with some of the Carnegie portraits keeping her company. Just now, sheets of drawings have been pulled from her cache. Claire is sifting through drawings from her student days, seeking matches with images in a recent gift, Cottages to Community, the book of West Vancouver’s story. Two sketches, dark with charcoal, catch the eye: Ambleside and Dundarave as they were back when trees were the primary feature of the local landscape, only 70 short years ago.
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.
