Ray and Ann Frost's West Vancouver home is a shady oasis, thanks to a leafy maple tree and two majestic cedars.
The maple was planted about 30 years ago. The cedars have been there much longer, over a century by Ray's calculations.
The Frost family moved into their new home in 1960 after buying the lot in 1958, the year Ray applied for a teaching position on the North Shore. He was in luck. West Vancouver's new junior high school, Hillside, was to open in September. While construction slowdowns delayed the opening until January 1959, Ray, his fellow teachers and their students did morning and afternoon swing shifts at Inglewood junior high school. Ray taught English and drama at Hillside until he retired in 1986. "We feel blessed for living here and for Hillside, with its interested, engaged parents and good students."
A post mentioning Ray's upcoming profile prompted comments on the Facebook page, I Grew Up in West Vancouver: "I love Shakespeare because of Mr. Frost" and "a great guy, light years ahead of his time."
Ray came to the teaching profession by way of sports, journalism, family influences and marriage. As a youth, he played box lacrosse, basketball, and pick up baseball, and was editor of the Britannia secondary school student newspaper. While at the University of British Columbia, he rose from sports editor of the Ubyssey to editorin-chief. When Ray and Ann married in 1952 and started their family, he traded journalism for teaching.
By 1958, the growing family needed more room. "On the weekends, we visited our friend Marion Wylie in West Vancouver. We loved it over here - the coolness and freshness given by the trees. Plus the lots were larger than in Vancouver," says Ray.
Architect Don Manning, known for livable, efficient, reasonably priced houses, designed their home, incorporating Ray and Ann's ideas with innovations of his own. A downturn in the industry, almost impossible to imagine from the perspective of today's fevered housing market, ensured that master tradespeople and quality building material were available. The result was a West Coast post and beam design, with a modest footprint yet spacious enough to include five bedrooms.
Ray and Ann decided to renovate in 1990. Ray remembers "tremendous co-operation from the inspectors. They would come out and advise me; I would do the work as they suggested."
"Yes, and the final inspection could be done over a cup of coffee," adds Ann.
"Well, almost," says Ray.
The renovation took five years but Ray was in no hurry and he had the skills. The Frost men were builders. Alongside their father, Ray and his brother Ron, with help from their uncles, raised four houses for the family on Vancouver's east side.
"It was the end of the Depression," Ray remembers, "and it was OK to build your own house. You could move into a house when it was just tarpaper over shiplap and finish building bit by bit. We built with used lumber and nails that I pulled out of boards and straightened. We could create our own housing and do it economically."
Ray's grandfather was an accountant who came out from Ontario to work in the cannery industry. About 1900, he opened a trading post at the foot of Gore Street where First Nations people could tie up their canoes.
He raised a daughter, Ethel, and four sons. Harold, Ray's father, was a painter for the B.C. Electric company. Brother Ab (Albert) was a tugboat captain and Uncle Herb, a teacher. Uncle Walter was a machinist whose photographs of trains, ships and cityscapes are in the Vancouver Archives.
"My dad and my uncles and aunt were born in Vancouver between 1898 and 1908, around the time the first airplane flew."
Around that time, a grove of cedars were taking root in what would become the Frost family's neighbourhood in West Vancouver.
Ray, himself a father of four and grandfather to seven, was born at his family home in 1929. Today, he and Ann enjoy their home and garden, and the shade of their trees. "Why would we sell up and move? This is where the family gathers. This is our family home."
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
