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.

Musical Twins?

While I don't think of myself or my immediate family as particularly musical (let's just say we're much better listeners than producers), perhaps we were just lacking the opportunity to play in a flute band!

The photo above shows the boys with the whole band: 2nd row (after drums) Jim (James) right and Jack (John) left. The caption on the photo reads "We didn't want to get our picture taken that day. Grade 10 at Princess Alex School, Saskatoon".

If this truly was Grade 10, the boys would have been about 15 (circa 1941). I searched Wikipedia and found the following information about the school:

Princess Alexandra School is a public elementary school which is a part of theSaskatoon Public School Division.^[18] The school first opened in 1906.^[19]Construction began in 1906/07 of 'Riversdale School which was re-named Alexandra School; a four room school house was erected, and doubled in size by 1908.^[20] In 1922 there were both Princess and Alexandra schools in operation on the same land allotment. Princess school was sold and torn down in 1961. In 1962 a new school building was erected on the same property site, and re-opened.

I don't know if any of Margaret and William Gilmour's kids went to school after immigrating to Saskatoon - perhaps Tom will know? If the younger kids (David and Mary) did have a chance to go to school, then they would also have attended this old brick school.

The photo below shows the twins posing in their Pipe Band uniforms with their flutes and was taken in the backyard at 428 Avenue E South in Saskatoon.

Pauline and her Dad, James (Jim) Gilmour, Spring 1975

Pauline (only daughter of James and Helen Gilmour) with her Dad on the back deck of their house in Victoria, BC.

Pauline would have been about 13 when this picture was taken in the spring of 1975; James was 49 years old.  

Chloe Straw

Chloe is the daughter of Margaret Rose Gilmour,  the granddaughter of John Gordon Gilmour, and the great-granddaughter of James Gilmour. 

I was actually searching for the announcement of Chloe's recent engagement (to Jules Molloy) but instead found this article published in the University of Victoria's "Ring" newspaper.)  

April 2005 · Vol 31 · No 4

Chloe’s excellent adventure

 

A co-op student fundraises her way to a work term in Costa Rica

 by Lynda Hills

 

Straw

Funding your own trip to work overseas and bringing money to a project can be a challenge, but UVic arts and writing co-op student Chloe Straw found a way to do it.

 

Straw wanted to work and travel, so she conducted research on organizations that were involved in overseas community development, and settled on one in Costa Rica called Youth Challenge International (YCI). Then she set to work.

 

The fee for three months in Costa Rica was $3,535, which covered building materials for the project. Straw took a multi-faceted approach to fundraising. Starting off with family assistance, she branched off to canvassing local businesses for support. Next, she networked with friends and contacts on campus and hosted a ‘Battle of the DJ’s’ event at Felicitas, which included a dance team performance. She then undertook a campus-wide bottle drive.

 

To help with her travel expenses Straw applied for, and won, the Graham Branton Endowment Fund. The $750 award supports co-op students who volunteer for placements overseas.

 

During her first five weeks in Costa Rica, Straw helped re-locate a retaining wall at a children’s rescue centre in Vista Azul. “It was pretty intense,” she says. “I’d never had such a physical task, but the kids who lived there were our continued motivation.”

 

Straw’s second project took her near the Panamanian border and an eco-lodge called Casa Calateas in the small town of Carbon Dos. The group built a green filter to clean grey water coming from the kitchen and filter it into the jungle. They also built roads to improve the lodge’s accessibility and painted the lodge buildings.

 

As part of both projects Straw taught English to local communities, and while at Casa Calateas, she organized a conference for women and youth.
Straw believes the experience was important for her career goals and is now looking into a postgraduate program in international management.

 

“I learned not to put limits on my own expectations because I did things on this project that I didn’t think I would even attempt to do,” she says. “It was easily the best thing that I’ve done.”

Jan and Dad, Summer 2009

Here's Janet (named after our grandmother, Janet, wife to James) and Dad out for dinner in Vancouver, August, 2009. 

We were visiting with Tom and Laurie Henry (Tom's grandfather, William, was our grandfather James' brother; Tom's Mom was Dad's cousin - which makes Tom Dad's first cousin once removed (because they are from different generations) and makes Tom our second cousin (because we share great-grandparents but not grandparents). 

Got that? Whatever the relationship, it's been very nice for all of us getting to know another branch of the Gilmour family - Tom is responsible for most of the genealogical digging and many of the photos I've posted so far. 

Cath [sister to Elizabeth, John Callaghan's wife (John is also Dad's cousin; his Mom, Helen, was James' younger sister)] was visiting from England and also came out to eat - will ask Jan for a photo of all of us together. 

Sometimes a Great Notion - Canadian Style

James and John Gilmour trained as foresters at the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1950 thanks to the free university education that the Canadian government offered to WW II veterans. 

While the twins were lucky enough not to have shipped overseas, they both took advantage of the free post-secondary education.  

This picture shows James Gilmour (left front wearing a floppy hat) and several other forestry students working somewhere near Cranbrook, BC, in about 1948 (presumably a summer job before they graduated in 1950). 

The young men were cruising Christmas trees for various operators wanting to harvest them. 

(Postscript - to James' left, you can just see  the head and shoulders of Roy Flannigan - he went on to become a Park Superintendent for Parks Canada; many, many years later, I worked in the Northwest Territories and became friends with his son, Brian - small world, eh?).

James Robertson Gilmour

James Gilmour -
GILMOUR, James Robertson On August 12, 2008, James passed away peacefully, surrounded by family and friends, in Victoria, B.C. He was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on December 15th, 1926, and he resided in various communities throughout BC while working as a professional forester. He is survived by a daughter, Pauline of Edmonton and two sons, Glen of Needles, B.C. and James of Ottawa; his twin brother John; and his longtime friend and partner, Wanda. He is loved and will be missed. "Have we told you that we love you today? From the Victoria Times Colonist

Identical Twins

John and James - identical twins (sons of James & Janet Gilmour) born December 15, 1926 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  

The first photo was taken on the porch at 428 Avenue E in Saskatoon (Gilmour family home) - the photo says that Jim (James) is on the left while Jack (John) is on the right - from the age of the babies, this looks like spring or summer 1926. 

What beautiful boys - James was 44 when they were born, and I believe Janet was in her early 40s - two for the price of one! They must have been such proud parents!

(It's possible that James Sr. was also a twin - he had a sister, Margaret,  who was born in the same year, 1882, but died as an infant. See Tom Henry's research on the Gilmour family). 

Second photo:  Mrs. Henderson (left side of photo - a friend of Janet's - I think she may have emigrated with her to Canada) with Janet and the two boys - hard to tell which is John and which is James. 

From the age of the boys, and the background, I assume this is summer, 1926. 

Don't you love the ladies' hats? 

 

 

First Flight, circa 1938

Jim/James Gilmour dictated these comments about this photo to his partner, Wanda: 

"My Dad took this photo. My brother (Jack) is jumping off the float, and I'm just getting out of the cockpit. The pilot is talking to me, probably telling me how to close the door. We used to go to Waskesiu (Saskatchewan) quite often, I think. We used to tent. I would estimate that the picture was taken in 1938.

 The plane is a Fairchild KR-34C, a bi-plane on floats. The pilot and his mechanic were barnstorming--flying around, soliciting people for rides for 20 minutes for $5 each. They could carry two passengers in the front seat. They flew into Waskesiu Lake. The mechanic walked along the beach, asking the bathers if they wanted to go up. My Dad asked us if we wanted a ride and we were quite enthusiastic--a little apprehensive, but enthusiastic. We were 13, and it was our first ride. So we climbed into the open cockpit, took off, circled over the town of Waskesiu, and came back for a landing. We had to abort the landing because a motorboat came out into the landing path. We went around again, which was fortunate, because we got a ride that lasted longer than 20 minutes. We couldn't speak to the pilot during the flight. Both cockpits were open and you couldn't hear a thing with the roar of the engine and the wind. We had to use hand signals to point to a boat that was crossing the lake. Another memorable thing was that we had no helmets, so our hair just became tangled in knots. We were probably flying at about 80 mph. I remember that the mechanic was particularly friendly. The pilot didn't say much, but the mechanic was a nice fellow. He's at the edge of the photo. Not too many kids went up in airplanes in those days."

[As dictated to Wanda in November, 1986. Years later, James researched the plane's history. It had been built in Montreal in 1930. Its owners in 1937 were W.J. McDonough, Toronto; Brockton Ltd., Winnipeg; McDonald Bros., Winnipeg. In 1938 it was owned by L.J. Waite, Big River, Saskatchewan. It crashed and was withdrawn from use after it was severely damaged in a forced landing on Dore Lake, Saskatchewan. In December 1939, it could not pass the test for a Certificate of Airworthiness.]

 Chris' note: After Dad (John Gilmour) graduated from forestry school and was working from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, he often had occasion to go timber cruising near Dore Lake, site of the forced landing for this Fairchild. 

Was it this early flight that sparked their interest in planes? Both John and James had the "airplane bug" - both took flying lessons, held pilots' licences (Jim was a co-owner of a plane, too, but that's a different post), and maintained a lifelong knowledge of and interest in aviation. Tom Henry (their cousin Annabelle's son) also has the "flying bug". Genetics? You decide.   

Cousins

James/Jim (son of James and Janet Gilmour ) and his cousin Connie (daughter of William and Annie Gilmour). 

James Sr. was the oldest son in the Gilmour family, while William was the third son. 

 

This photo came from Uncle Jim and was taken in Saskatoon during a visit to Connie (and her husband, Cal). 

Three Cousins - 1999

Three cousins from right: Esson Bruce (the oldest cousin - son of Samuel and Bella); James/Jim Gilmour (son of James and Janet); and John Callaghan (the youngest of the cousins - son of Helen and William). This photo was taken in Calgary in 1999.