Heritage Register
Gonzales

610 Foul Bay Road (ex-602 Foul Bay Rd)

Built 1924
Heritage-Registered

For: Margaret & Alexander Proctor

Architect: Samuel Maclure

ARCHITECTURE:

This two-storey house with a hipped roof and closed eaves is basically a Georgian Revival. The style was popular in the period and Maclure designed several examples around this time. The front façade is typically symmetrical and the entrance is in a central projecting hipped bay, also a typical feature. Like most 20th C Revival houses it departs from the original Georgian pattern of single windows with two triple windows on the ground floor and one triple and two double windows on the second floor, all 6-over-1 double sashes. Whimsically, Maclure’s entry is an off-centre archway into a recessed porch balanced by a small stained-glass window, a feature more in keeping with a Tudor Revival home but which Maclure almost never used in his hallmark Tudoresque designs. A beltcourse runs around the stucco-clad house, with modillions on the central bay. There are hipped-roof square bays on each side. What appears to be a later addition on the rear has a porch on the second storey, open on the right and glassed-in on the left.

ORIGINAL OWNERS:

Original owners Alexander Forbes (1865-1960) and Margaret Jane (McKnight, 1863-1938) Proctor lived here until 1928. Proctor, a civil engineer, was appointed chief engineer of the Department of Railways for the BC Government and the government-owned Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGER) in 1917. He had left this position by 1924, amid some controversy regarding cost estimates for the construction of a section of the PGER.

The Cameron family bought this house in 1929. John Murray Cameron (1867-1936) was manager of the E&N Railway. Born in Lochaber, NS, John joined the CPR in 1883 as an engine wiper. He worked his way up through the company and in 1907 was appointed trainmaster in Nelson, BC. He became superintendent at Moose Jaw, SK, in 1910, then Medicine Hat, AB, in 1912-13. After working in Vancouver for a year, he returned to Alberta, where he was general superintendent from 1916-28. He came to Victoria that year and retired in 1932. His wife, Cecile May (Lowe, 1884-1966) was born in Carleton Place, ON.

They had a son Dalton, and daughter Dorothy Evelyn (1908-1974), who married Carl Victor Gilbert. Dorothy inherited this house after her mother died, and resided here until her own death, at which point Carl left Victoria.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Gonzales History

• Gonzales Heritage Register


• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Four: Fairfield, Gonzales & Jubilee