Kate Clifford shares a memory that exemplifies life as it was in West Vancouver.
In the 1940s, the family business, Clifford's Picture Framing, was located at Marine Drive and 25th Street where the IGA now stands. Dundarave businesses were notified that Marine Drive was to be made wider, but the frame shop obstructed the expansion somehow. The merchants got together, raised the building onto logs and rolled it back several feet. When the roadwork was complete, they rolled the building back into place.
"Life in West Vancouver was totally different to what it is now," remembers Kate, who was born in 1934. "Everyone knew everyone. We were accepting of one another and we helped each other out."
Her parents, Hugh Clifford and Jane Billaux, were well-known in the close-knit community. A socialist by politics and by nature, Hugh was a perennial NDP candidate and an early advocate of environmental causes. He turned to fitness after retiring from the framing business, winning the Canadian masters medal at the 1981 Vancouver International Marathon at the age of 74.
Kate's mother was an artist. Jane's portraits of family, friends and neighbours, some in the West Vancouver Museum's collection, are an invaluable visual record of the people
of West Vancouver from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s.
Kate's parents were London born: Hugh, an adventurer with six brothers, all dentists; and Jane, raised in luxury and determined to be an artist. In 1934, the two individualists with their daughter Julia in hand and Kate on the way, left England aboard a tramp steamship bound for Vancouver.
Friendship provided the family with a home, one of two beachfront cottages at 2264 Bellevue Ave. owned by fellow socialist and lawyer W.W. LeFeaux. Architect Ned Pratt and his wife Bunny lived in one cottage. The other, with its canvas roof and sawdustburning stove, fronting the beach from a patch of berry bushes, would be the Clifford's home for 17 years.
In 1952, to accommodate the needs of their growing children - now including brother Ben, born in 1944 - Hugh and Jane built a Pan Abode house on 22nd Street, which is still standing.
In a memoir of her mother, Kate writes, "Those fond memories of both of us creating together. You painting at your easel and I at the table with pastels, crayons, paints and paper unless of course I was your next model - five cents an hour! Maggie Muggins on the radio helped pass the time, as I tried to sit motionless for yet another of your wonderful portraits."
Kate graduated from West Vancouver high school in 1952 inspired by her parents' influence to become a hand-lettered sign writer. After a couple of years of learning her craft, she set up in the frame shop and later at her home.
Making her way as a commercial artist, working on commissions with her babies beside her in a box, Kate would remember those days at her mother's side - the smell of paint and turpentine, the postage stamp-sized easel, everyone crammed into the cottage's tiny kitchen after a day on the beach.
When Kate was in her late 40s and on her own, her two children grown, she joined the North Shore Hiker's club. Hiking gave Kate two gifts: a restored appreciation of the natural world and her life partner, retired teacher Henry Meester. Kate's eyes light up as she describes their life together - folk dancing, meditation, music and travel, including an annual backpacking journey in Asia.
Kate and Henry share their creative gifts with the community. Henry plays clarinet with the Dundarave Players in concerts at seniors' residences. This year, Kate dug out her paints and brushes to help West Vancouver's Pumpkin Fest. Look for the Coffee and Hot Dogs signs, they're Kate's handiwork. She wishes it would be as easy to refresh the West Vancouver sign at 13th Street and Marine Drive, commissioned in 1990. "It's a good sign," says Kate, "It just needs a facelift."
Care, creativity, and generosity, qualities that defined the community of West Vancouver as it was, are personified in Kate Clifford and Henry Meester, and in others who came for the natural beauty and stayed to build a life here.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
