ARCHITECTURE:
This Vernacular 2½-storey house has a front facing gable-on-hip roof which creates the half-storey. There are leaded piano windows on both sides and a small enclosed entry porch on the right rear. On the left is a two-storey box bay. The deep, full-width, hipped roof of the front verandah shelters a wide angled bay. The offset front steps on the right lead to the front door. There are three turned square posts, and square balusters in the balustrade. The gables are clad in fishscale shingles and the body in beaded, double-bevelled siding. The house had many alterations over the decades, including the addition of a garage under the front bay, removal of the verandah, replacement windows with shutters, and stucco and brick cladding. The current owners have returned the exterior close to its original design. It is located in a cluster of historic homes on Grant St.
Carpenter John Emslie Beveridge (b. Coull, Aberdeen, SCT, 1865-1937) designed and built the house. He came with his family in 1872 on the maiden voyage of the Vicksburg from Glasgow to Montreal. John caused a minor stir in 1901 by advertising in Scotland for a wife: “Wanted, A Guid Bride.” He received more than 100 replies, reflecting the gender imbalance in booming Victoria, and the social unrest in his birth country. He married Maggie Dougal Morris (b. Ayr, SCT, 1875-1959) in Vancouver in 1902. They had three children in Victoria, then moved to Clayton in Surrey, BC, where they homesteaded 20 acres and had two more children. Their middle child died aged two after falling down the farm well. A table top crafted by John from over 100 pieces of BC wood is in the collection of the RBCM.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1907: This residence was built for $2,400 at the start of the pre-WWI building boom. The first owner, according to the plumbing permit, was Glasgow-born master mariner Jeremiah Chirels Shaw, First Officer of the Steamer Princess Beatrice. He lived at 69 Menzies and had this house built as an investment.
1909: Elk Lake School teacher Charles Evelyn Faulkner is listed in this house under streets in the city directory, but on Garbally Rd under names. He became a barrister, retired in 1924, and resided with his daughter in Duncan where he died in 1949.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1910-11: Thomas Harbidge and Sarah Annie Parr came to Canada in the 1870s. Thomas became City Engineer in Winnipeg. In Victoria he worked for the City Engineering Department from 1890, in the development of city sewers and cleaning up the streets. About 1896 he went into private practice as a surveyor and civil engineer, retiring c.1910. Their son Edgar Saxelby Parr followed his father’s profession and lived with his parents in this house.
1912-21: Carpenter Albert E. Myers (1856-1927) and Catherine Anne (née MacDonald, 1854-1935) were born in Nova Scotia and came to Victoria in 1909. Their offspring, who left town by 1920: carpenter Herbert E; bookkeeper Edward R, like Albert, worked for builder W.F. Drysdale; bookkeeper James Edmund; and stenographer Maud A. James and Maud both worked for H.O. Kirkham & Co, grocers.
1923-26: Federal customs and excise officer George Edward Norris and stenographer Christina Hamilton married in 1923 at her parents’ home on Pender Island.
1927-31: Adelaide Beatrice Marshall, widow of Edward Galeb Marshall, came to Canada in 1905 and later lived in Nanaimo.
1933-46: Robert Wyper Todd (b. SCT, 1889-1961) and Jane Anne (née Mauchland, b. SCT, 1894-1988). Prior to their marriage in Victoria in 1927, Robert was living on James Island working as an engineer in the dynamite plant and Jane was employed as a domestic, living at Carlton Apartments. During the Depression, Robert was a City of Victoria janitor. He became a stationary engineer for the Woolworth Building on Douglas St and retired in 1960.
1947-53: CPO Albert George Bowbyes, RCN, (b. St. Walburg, SK, 1920-1997) and his wife Lois Marion (née Knox, b. Regina, SK, 1918-2009) married in Halifax, NS, in 1942. Al joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1940. Based in Halifax, he was an engine-room stoker on Corvettes guarding convoys across the North Atlantic. He transferred to Victoria c.1947 and served on at least eight ships. During the Korean War, he was away for a year. Al rose to the rank of Chief Petty Officer and retired in 1965. The Bowbyes relocated in 1953 to the naval housing development at Belmont Park near Hatley Park in Colwood. From 1965 Al worked for Canadian Liquid Air on Dallas Rd as a shipper/driver and retired again in 1980. While living in this house, the Bowbyes took in boarders, teachers in training from the Provincial Normal School, now Camosun College. Lois was a volunteer at Sunset Lodge for 50 years.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:
• This Old House, Victoria’s Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume One: Fernwood & Victoria West