Do you remember the fountain at Lonsdale Quay? It had sails on top of a tiled base of green and blue swirls and whales and octopus and starfish. When my kids were small it was the best part of a visit, next to ice cream and the ball room.
“White Winds,” the fountain, was created in 1985 by Gerald Gladstone. The metal sculptures in the centre represented sails in a nod to the boats in Burrard Inlet.
The fountain broke down in 2020 and the cost was $300,000 to fix it. So we didn’t. Now the only thing left to remember it by is a round piece of asphalt used to patch the hole in the concrete.
I was thinking of the fountain last week as I was standing where it used to be trying to take a photo of Dennis Washington’s $200 million yacht. Washington heads up the U.S.-based Washington Companies which owns Seaspan and the former headquarters of Cates tugs, where he parks his superyacht alongside the market. According to Forbes Magazine, he has a net worth of $7.8 billion and ranks No. 448 in global wealth.
The problem was I couldn’t fit all of the superyacht’s 95 metres into the photo, which is roughly the same length as a Canadian football field. I had to climb up the red staircase under the Q to get a look at the helicopter pad and then walk to the pier below the Polygon Gallery to get the whole superyacht in one photo. The Seabus that was coming into the Quay behind it looked like a small ferry.
Speaking of ferries, if you’ve lived on the North Shore long enough you might remember the Seven Seas Restaurant that was docked in roughly the same spot as the superyacht.
It was moored at the foot of Lonsdale from 1959 to 2002. The restaurant had a crazy 15-metre neon sign easily visible from East Vancouver, and it was the place where locals had their first drink, got engaged, and ate at the city’s biggest seafood buffet.
Before it was a restaurant, the Seven Seas was Ferry No. 5 – the last of the North Vancouver ferries. Ridership went into steady decline as people chose to drive, and Ferry No. 5 made its final run across the inlet on Aug. 30, 1958.
When the ferry service ended, the City of North Vancouver sold No. 5 to restaurateur Harry Almas, who owned the King Neptune Seafood Restaurant in New Westminster. Almas paid $12,000, which included a five-year lease for the waterfront lot. He then spent ten times the purchase price converting the car deck into two dining rooms and a kitchen. Almas kept the two wheelhouses on the upper deck and the ship’s funnel.
The ship’s heritage significance was recognized on the City of North Vancouver’s heritage inventory in 1994. But the vessel was aging, and the cost of repairs became a court battle between the Almas family and the city. It ended in federal court in 2001. The following year the restaurant was dismantled, towed to Vancouver Pile Driving at the foot of Brooksbank Avenue, and demolished.
The neon sign, it seems, was lost to history.
According to the SuperYachtFan website, which reports on such things, Washington’s yacht was built in 2010, christened the Palladium, and its first owner was a Russian Oligarch.
There are no names like My Way or Destiny or Carpe Diem indelicately scrawled across the side or the bow (three of the most popular names favoured by billionaires, according to Boat International). Washington’s yacht just has an elegant AV on its funnel. The A stands for Attessa and the V stands for five, because there’s already an Attessa one, two, three and four out in the world.
SuperYachtFan pegs annual running costs at between $10 and $20 million a year, which includes the 33 crew members needed to drive the boat, clean the pool, maintain the gym equipment, cook the meals, set up the cinema, sweep the helipad, and otherwise keep AV afloat.
Eve Lazarus is a North Vancouver resident and author. Her latest book is Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck. [email protected]
