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Dollarton squatters' shack saved

For decades, the little blue cabin where artists Al Neil and Carole Itter drew their inspiration stood on pilings at the water’s edge, a cultural outpost nestled among the cedar trees.

For decades, the little blue cabin where artists Al Neil and Carole Itter drew their inspiration stood on pilings at the water’s edge, a cultural outpost nestled among the cedar trees.

Al Neil, an experimental artist and freestyle jazz musician, first moved to the cabin near Cates Park almost 50 years ago, and lived there when the Dollarton waterfront was dotted with squatters’ shacks and a counterculture thrived there.

This week, the cabin that represented the last of that era was moved from the waterfront to a storage site.

A group of artists who rallied to save the cabin hope to find a new home for it as a working space for artists.

“Our hope is to get it back into Cates Park,” said Glenn Alteen, a director of the Grunt Gallery who has been working on the project.

The cabin move was prompted after the McKenzie Barge site immediately adjacent to the cabin was sold to the Polygon development company, which plans to build a condo project on the old industrial site.

In November, Port Metro Vancouver which owns the land the cabin sits on, told Neil and Itter the cabin had to go, so that a habitat restoration of the foreshore could proceed.

That’s when younger artists stepped in to try to save the cabin, pointing to it as the last piece of a particular history along the North Vancouver shoreline.

During the 1930s and ’40s, the shores of Burrard Inlet were home to about 1,000 people living in squatter communities. The writer Malcolm Lowry was one of those who famously lived along the Dollarton waterfront.

Most of the cabins were destroyed in the 1950s. But in the early 1970s, a counterculture community of artists flourished on the Maplewood mudflats and adjacent areas. The blue cabin was the last of those remaining.

Alteen said efforts to save the cabin were given a huge boost when Canexus  — which operates nearby a chemical plant — offered to store the cabin on its property.

Polygon paid to move the cabin and to build an access road to the shoreline — previously hidden at the end of a forested trail.

On Monday and Tuesday, Supreme Structural Transport — a company that specializes in moving heavy equipment and houses — set to work, using industrial jacks to raise the cabin up on blocks, then sliding it over steel beams to a heavy-duty trailer.

The cabin was to be trucked to the Canexus site early Wednesday morning.

Alteen said the group has been given a year — and possibly more — to assess the cabin for structural problems and find a new home for it.

Krista Lomax, a friend of Itter who has worked with her on film projects at the cabin, was on site this week to film the move.

“It was emotional,” she said, adding she felt “sadness balanced with a relief that it’s going to a new home.”
Itter — who lives in a Vancouver co-op — said she’s glad the cabin wasn’t bulldozed, but chose not to watch the move this week.

“One of the things that I really learned there is that place is so important in our lives,” she said. “To find a place that gives you meaning and gives you roots, it changes everything. That’s one of the gifts the cabin gave to me.”