3020 Quadra Street

ARCHITECTURE:

This meticulously detailed, symmetrical, cross-axial, Chalet-style house features dogtooth shingled gables and a brick main storey above a cut granite foundation. A hint of classicism is introduced at the central entrance porch with reverse curve brackets flanking the low stone stair parapet, and double Tuscan columns flanking the panelled entrance porch and the bracketed sleeping porch balustrade, and the circular front walkway. Ornate sandwich brackets support the gabled eaves, and finely detailed string courses articulate the major structural and textural components. The house is set far back on the lot.

The plumbing record dates from only 1937, when the owner was T.W.C. Hawkins, a retired electrical contractor, formerly the president of Hawkins & Hayward Ltd, who lived on Gorge Rd.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

Robert Chapman Dinsdale lived here with his wife Annie until construction of 3012 Quadra St was complete in 1919. Alexander McLeod and Jemima (Dick, then Houston) Florence lived here until the early 1930s, with Alexander’s widowed mother, Mary, his brother, George Reid, and his sister, Desma. Born in Scotland, Alexander came to Victoria in 1920. His father, Thomas, was deceased and his mother, Mary, died in 1937 at 74. Alexander married fellow Scottish native Jemima in Esquimalt in 1927. Alexander served with the 13th Battalion Black Watch, CEF for three years during WWI. He was a yard foreman at the Victoria Machinery Depot for about 20 years until his sudden death in 1950 at 55. Jemima died in 1966 at 74.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

By 1935, Sidney Gower and Madeleine Anne (Strang) Gurney were the residents. Sidney was born in Kingston, England in 1892 and served for four years in India during WWI. He came to Victoria with Scottish-native Madeleine in 1926 and joined BC Electric, and then BC Hydro. Sidney was a member of the Arion Male Voice Choir and First United Church Choir. He died in 1981. Madeleine was a long-time member of the Schubert Club and The Georgian Choristers. She died in1974 at 80.

Clyde and Rose (Heal) Gillies married in 1935, and lived here in the late-1930s. He ran a vocational advisory service and died in 1970 at 61. The Beestons lived here through the early and mid-1940s. Born in Southport, England in 1885, William James Beeston came to Victoria in 1911, and married Maggie Abercrombie from Glasgow, Scotland, in 1914. She died in 1955 at 69. William, a long-time employee of Canada Post, then married Doris Gwendolyn Flint. He died in 1974.