Janet Nairn Gilmour and the Cottage on St. Kilda Avenue, North Vancouver

In 1946, John and James Gilmour (aka Jack and Jim) were discharged from service in the army and were able to go to university, courtesy of Veterans Affairs.

Dad told me that they originally planned to go to ranger school in Saskatchewan, but the man at the office asked them "Why don't you become foresters?", and so they did, moving to Vancouver to attend forestry school at UBC where they lived at Fort Camp (see photo of residences at Fort Camp below).

James had died in 1942, and so the boys' mother, Janet Nairn Gilmour, moved out to Vancouver with them. At first, she worked for an elderly woman who owned a parrot but soon moved to cook and do light housekeeping for Judge Lennox, who lived at 2905 St. Kilda Avenue in North Vancouver. Janet lived in a cottage beside the main house for almost the whole 4 years that the boys were in forestry school.

Today, Pauline (Jim's daughter and my cousin), Dad and I went for lunch in Deep Cove and then set off on a drive to see if we could find the old house. Although the area has changed a lot, Dad did remember rummaging in Judge Lennox's drawers while he was away and finding his old WW I pistol - the boys visited their mother at the house often, taking the streetcar up Lonsdale. Here are some pictures of the house and the cottage (now barely visible from the street; see top photo). The last photo shows Pauline by the "licht gate" leading down to Judge Lennox's former house.