ARCHITECTURE:
This is an unusual house for Victoria – fewer than 12 are known – built of moulded concrete block, or hydrostone as it is called in eastern Canada. [It was the material used to rebuild the huge section of Halifax destroyed by the 6th December 1917 munitions ship explosion]. This 1½-storey, front-gabled house has a projecting gabled porch on the L front and a wide, gabled, full-height bay on its right side. The bargeboards have multiple angled dentils at the roofline and are supported by A&C knee-brackets with appliqued pyramidal blocks on the surface of the bargeboards. The gables are stuccoed and half-timbered above a denticulated wooden string course. The balustraded steps leading to the front porch are of concrete block. The porch’s balustrades and fluted Ionic columns are also concrete block, making this one of our more elaborate concrete block houses. The foundation, main floor walls and three chimneys are composed of at least eight different patterns of block, including the water table, belt course, and a decorative string course around the house and between the windows.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1913-14: Arthur Wesley Beal (b. Sackville, NB 1873-1948) took out a building permit in July 1913, plumbing in September; he was a carpenter and lived at 2610 Cook St with wife Annie Gertrude (née Elford, b. Normans Cove, NL 1882-1956). He also built 2619 Blackwood St in 1910.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1915-16: John Henry Moore, VP of Canadian Puget Sound Lumber Co (489 Discovery St).
1917-present: Cuthbertson family and descendants heard that Beal had lost his money and couldn’t finish the house; this is possible, as 1913-14 were bust years after the boom of 1907-12.
Lewis Cuthbertson (b. Bristol, QC 1874-1945) completed construction after they moved in. Lewis had married Margaret Theresa “Maggie” (née Jones, b. Winnipeg, MB 1884-1950) at her family home at 1116 Fort St, Victoria, in 1911. Maggie was the daughter of James McNab Jones (b. IRL 1849-1918) and Fanny Ada Moore (b. Windsor, ENG 1855-1934) who married in Ottawa, ON in 1875 and came here in 1889. [James had fought against the Fenians during the Raids in ON, and with the Canadian boatmen in the Nile Expedition of 1884-85 for the relief of General Gordon. He worked as a building painter and real estate salesman during the pre-WWI boom, and as a fruit grower in Gordon Head.] By 1912, the Jones family had moved to 2616 Blackwood, a block below this house, where daughters Mary Isabella “Belle” (b. Muskoka, ON 1877-1958) and Nellie Moore “Nell” (b. Victoria 1893-1984) lived until the late 1960s.
When Maggie married Lewis, she was a dressmaker and he a logger/faller and resident of Blaine, WA, USA. He hurt his back logging, and became a lumber inspector. They had four children; the youngest daughter Kathleen Mary “Kaye” (1924-1988) stayed at home and inherited the house with her brother Herbert, who lived in Vancouver. Kaye trained at Sprott Shaw College after high school, courtesy of her aunt Belle Jones, and worked as a telephone operator with BC Electric then BC Tel until her marriage in 1956 to Peter Kalojanoff (b. Bulgaria 1919-2004), who changed his family’s name to Kalonoff the next year. After their marriage, they bought out Herbert’s share of the house.
Peter trained as a tailor and was then a border guard in the Bulgarian army. He went to a training school in Weimar, Germany and got his certificate as a master tailor. At some point he was in the German army, fought against the Russians, and got shrapnel in his leg, ending up in a Russian concentration camp. He escaped and later spent time in a Displaced Persons (DP) Camp. In 1950 he was sent to Canada under a resettlement scheme, spent time in Montréal and Edmonton, and eventually came to Victoria. He bought 1012 Government St and founded Esquire Tailors in the 1950s and K-Fashions in the 1970s, retiring in 1983.
Peter and Kaye had two daughters: Liea Joan (b.Victoria 1959-1991) was a nurse before her early death.
Her sister Ann married Steve Thomson in 1982, and they moved back into the house in 1988, after Kaye’s death. Thomsons still own the house.