"YOU should talk to my mom," said George Robinson, a butcher at Queensdale Market. "She and my dad looked after most of the Cubs and Scouts in North Vancouver for years."
Margaret Robinson shows me a treasured family photograph. There is Margaret with her husband Byron and their 12 children - eight boys and four girls - each in their Brownie, Guide, Cub or Scout uniform.
Margaret herself came from a family of seven children and there had been 10 in her mother's family back in Scotland. Born Margaret Steward in Drumheller, Alta., in 1920, she came to Vancouver at 16 to live with her grandmother.
The rest of the family followed a year later.
She met Byron Robinson during the war. They married in 1943 and in 1947 purchased a house on Tobruk Avenue in North Vancouver. This was wartime housing built for shipyard workers. A workforce that swelled to 14,000 during the war had decreased dramatically by 1947, making the houses available to returned servicemen and their families.
The house on Tobruk was home to more than the 14 Robinsons. "It was never just us," says eldest daughter Pat Edwards. Two foster sisters lived with the family for years and friends of her brothers stayed sometimes for weeks, divvying up sleeping bags with over-nighting Cubs and Scouts.
In 1951, Byron decided he'd like to join Scouts Canada. Margaret joined in 1953 and for the next 35 years, every Tuesday night found them presiding over the 8th Heywood Cub pack, between 15 and 30 boys. For his work with Cubs, Scouts and Venturers, which included frequent camping excursions and trips to jamborees, Byron was awarded the Medal of Merit and the prestigious Silver Acorn for especially dis-tinguished service to Scouting.
How did they manage with 12 children and the responsibilities of Scouting? "To start with, I had a good husband," Margaret tells me. "You should have seen what that man could do."
Byron could turn his hand to anything. He built dorms for the boys in the basement of the house on Tobruk, turned out furniture in his workshop, and sewed curtains and clothes for the children. "He'd bring me the baby and the littlest children in the morning, then he'd get the other kids ready for school," Margaret remembers.
The children went to 'St. Ed's' (Saint Edmund's elementary on Mahon) and attended different high schools in North Vancouver.
Every week, Margaret made 10 loaves of bread and every day she baked. One day, she counted 42 diapers on the clothesline.
As the children got older, they helped around the house.
"Everyone looked out for the others in those days," says Margaret. "My kids were the same and they still are that way."
"Try making lunch for 12 every day like I did," Edwards laughs. "Pitching in is how we were brought up."
That job passed down through the sisters and the brothers helped out with paper routes (The Citizen in those pre-North Shore News days) and part-time jobs.
It wasn't all work. The Hudson Bay Company, where Byron worked, displayed assorted Robinson children in the store's advertisements for clothes and camping gear. Son George recalls convivial family dinners and thinks nothing of cooking for a crowd that frequently includes a few brothers and sisters, and his mom.
By 1988, after 42 years, the Robinsons' time in North Vancouver came to an end. They were empty nesters, their children grown and flown and their neighbourhood was slated for conversion to townhouses.
Margaret, widowed in 1999, lives in Surrey, visiting with her children, 27 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren and four greatgreat grandchildren.
"I wouldn't have traded it for anything," Margaret replies when I ask about her life as an "Akela" to so many children, including her own. "The most wonderful was when I was told not to pay my dues anymore."
Yes, Margaret had continued to pay her Baden Powell Guild dues until Scouts Canada made her a life member.
Margaret and Byron Robinson raised a family of 12 but the number of adults who remember the Robinsons and the house on Tobruk Avenue where children were always welcome is impossible to calculate.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. Contact her at 778-279-2275 or email her at [email protected].
