2201 Vancouver Street

ARCHITECTURE:

This two-storey, gabled British Arts & Crafts house is T-shaped. The right side has a full height chimney, to the rear of which are two shed-roofed, through-the-cornice wall dormers. The rear has a bracketed back porch. To the left of the front gable are two dormers: a small gabled dormer to the far left, (not on the original plans) and a larger shed-roofed dormer behind a balcony with spindled balusters. The front gable has heavy knee brackets and sits above a cantilevered box bay on the main floor. The gable is separated from the bay by a continuation of the main roof which creates a shed-roofed effect. To the left is a deeply-recessed front porch with paired square posts and a spindled balustrade. The wide front steps have shingled balustrades. The upper walls are stuccoed and half-timbered, as is the small dormer; the lower floors and large dormer are shingled. It has brick corbelled chimneys above the roofline. The house was valued at $3,850.

D.C. Frame (b. Larkhall, SCT, 1882-1960) came to Victoria in 1905. He apprenticed under architect F.M. Rattenbury until 1908, then opened his own practise. Notable buildings he designed include the 1909 Chinese Public School, 636 Fisgard St, and 1911 Alexandra Club, 716 Courtney St, both Downtown; the 1910-11 Bank Street School, 1625 Bank St, Gonzales; the 1911 stone house Kingsmont, 305 Denison Rd, on Gonzales Hill in Oak Bay; and the 1912 Arts & Crafts-style Wesley Methodist Church, 943-49 Fullerton Av, Vic West. He designed several apartment blocks in 1944-53, including the 1945 Art Deco Park Towers Apartments at 905-09 Vancouver St. D.C. Frame’s own residences, the 1908-09 Larkhall at 337 Foul Bay Rd, Gonzales, and the 1926 Solway at 1143 Munro St, Esquimalt, still stand.*

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

Capt William Cooke (1886-1959) and Maria “Marie” (Emberley, 1876-1962) Thompson lived here for over 50 years. Bill was born in Ireland, Marie in Newfoundland. They met in San Francisco and were engaged at the time of the 1906 earthquake; like many others, they had difficulty finding each other after the disaster. Bill’s workplace was destroyed, so he came up to Victoria to find work. He signed on with Weiler Bros, then went back and married Marie on New Year’s Eve 1906, and they moved to Victoria. They rented a house on Government St near Bay St, then had this house built. Bill was a captain in the Canadian army during WWI, stationed at Work Point but allowed to live at home. He took the streetcar to Esquimalt every day, and his dog would frequently follow him there. He returned to Weiler Bros as manager of the drapery department after the war, until the business closed in the early 1930s when one of the Weiler sons was killed in a shooting accident. Bill then sold insurance in the BC interior, but Marie wouldn’t leave Victoria, so he came back and drove taxi; by 1950 he was a dispatcher. Bill sang in the Arion Male Voice Choir and was a Mason; Marie was a charter member of Queen City Chapter, Eastern Star.

At the beginning of WWII, their young son John William (1921-1972), a cadet in the militia, was shipped immediately off to Europe. Marie believed that someone would look after her son if she looked after other people’s sons. She took in a number of boarders from the air force, ending with Corp John Nairn Bond (1912-2005) from Edmonton, who had lived in barracks at Pat Bay from 1942. A bank accountant before the war, he worked in the air force pay office in the Belmont Building at Government and Humboldt Sts, and necessarily was one of the last to be demobilized. John and the Thompson’s daughter Mary Elizabeth “Elsie” (1907-1976) were married in 1944 and lived in the house with Elsie’s parents until 1953, when they moved to 331 Windermere Pl. John obtained a Veterans Allowance after the war to enable him to article with Ismay Boiston Dunn & Co (now KPMG), Chartered Accountants, and he eventually became a partner. Elsie trained at the Normal School and became a primary school teacher. Elsie left teaching in 1948 when pregnant with her daughter Penny Marie.

From 1952-54 Jack and his wife Jean Mary (Furtney) lived upstairs from Jack’s parents. Jean was born in Togo, SK, to a Scottish mother and French Huguenot father. She served as a decoder with the navy during WWII, in Canada and London, England. She met Jack while studying at Camosun College in 1948 (they both used Veterans Allowance funds for their studies); they married in 1949. They moved to Vancouver where Jack earned a degree in social work from UBC. In Victoria Jack worked at the Royal Jubilee Hospital, then in 1954 he joined the RCAF to serve as a social worker. After postings in Canada and Europe, he retired with the rank of major in 1968, and they returned to Victoria. They bought a house in Gordon Head with Jean’s Veterans’ Land Act (VLA) funding assistance, and Jack worked at the Fernwood office of the provincial Family & Children’s Service until his sudden death in 1972.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

After Jack and Jean left 2201 Vancouver, the house was officially duplexed in 1957 and the upper floor rented out. Both units were rented after Bill and Marie’s deaths. Elsie inherited the house with her brother, and Jean sold Jack’s share to Elsie after his death. Penny Bond inherited the house in 1976, and moved into it in 1983 when she came back here from Vancouver. A physiotherapist, she graduated from UBC in 1972.