Kay Dixon is at her kitchen table across from her husband, Del, in the house he built for them in North Vancouver's Pemberton Heights.
At 87, Del is handsome and Kay, 84, is as beautiful as when she was crowned the first Miss North Vancouver in 1948.
Kay was on a break from her job at B.C. Telephone, enjoying a banana split at Harbottle's on Lonsdale when in walked Des Archibald and John Sales. Des and John talked Kay
into entering the beauty contest and she was crowned before an enthusiastic crowd at the Odeon theatre on Lonsdale.
It was thrilling to wear the Miss North Vancouver crown and join the Miss PNE contestants in the parade downtown, waving to the crowds from their float, a cornucopia representing "The Full Harvest of Western Progress."
"We got to meet Jimmy Durante and Frankie Laine. We stayed in the Vancouver Hotel and went to the Palomar and the Cave," recalls Kay. "Del and I were used to going to a show downtown on Saturday and to the White Lunch after, then going back to North Vancouver on the ferry."
Kay Spees and Del Dixon were saving up to finish building their house. He had purchased the lot from the Weddells, who lived down the street, across from Lloyd Market, now the Corner Store. The Spees family shopped there and at McLeod's general store and post office, the Red & White store and Murphy's Butcher shop at the top of School Street, all gone now, including the street itself. Katie grew up on West Keith Road, in a house that's still standing, and attended Capilano school, where she announced in Grade 8
that she would be known henceforth as Kay.
Del and his father worked at the shipyards alongside Kay's father. On weekends, Del played baseball with Kay's brothers, Ken and Ivan. Everyone played baseball in those days, including Kay who played catcher and centre field because she was the player who could throw the furthest.
When there was no baseball, the Capilano River was the gathering place. A steep trail led from School Street down to a little beach at the river's edge. With carrots and potatoes roasting in a fire, there was time for the kids to weigh themselves down with heavy stones and make their way across the river to the opposite bank or to hike up to the Capilano rapids and bounce all the way down under the wooden bridge that crossed the river at Keith Road, past the salmon pool to the clay bank where another path led back up to the road.
Kay and Del first met at the Capilano community hall on School Street in 1943 when she was 14 and he was 17. On their first date and on most others, Del biked from his house to Kay's. The Dixon family lived in a wartime house on Churchill Street, south of Marine Drive at Fell Avenue, another street and neighbourhood long gone.
From Pemberton Heights, Kay and Del would walk to Lonsdale for a movie, to the Tomahawk restaurant afterwards for a hamburger and milkshake and back up the hill to Kay's home. There wasn't much time for dating - Del joined the army in 1944 just before his 18th birthday and was posted to Ontario and then Victoria with the Princess Pat's before he was discharged. They were married at Capilano United Church in 1949.
The house wasn't finished until about 1954, Kay remembers, but there would be room for the four children that came along and for all their friends and family to visit. "We lived very sparsely, building on when we saved enough money. We had parties when there were still studs in the living room. It didn't matter. In those days, nobody had anything."
"I didn't go very far, did I?" laughs the former beauty queen, as the sun shines in on the family gathered in the kitchen. Del is feeding the local seagull, sister-in-law Doreen Spees is visiting and son Scott has just finished putting up the Halloween decorations. Kay is right. She did not travel far but everything that matters is within walking distance of the little house in Pemberton Heights.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
