ARCHITECTURE:
This 1½-storey, bellcast hip-roofed Colonial Bungalow has hip-roofed dormers on the front and both sides. There is a piano window on the right side and a cantilevered box bay towards the rear. The left side also has a piano window. A cantilevered, angled bay sits to the right of the recessed front porch. The porch, which has been glassed in, has two turned columns, and a solid balustrade. The original wood siding has been covered with asbestos shingles. The foundation is concrete and there is a very low stone garden wall at the front. There are two corbelled brick chimneys.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1911-35: Thomas Gough (b. Manchester, ENG 1859-1929) married Mabel Kate Fieldsend (née Harmston, b. Comox, BC 1885-1965) here in 1911. He came here with his widowed mother Susannah in 1888 and was a boiler-maker at Albion Iron Works (6 Chatham St). By 1911 he was a tobacconist, eventually owning Empire Cigars at 1413 and 1427 Douglas St. A member of LOL 1610, he often led their Flute band.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1936-39: BCER car repairman Earlston Alexander “Alex” Gordon Reid (b. Golden River, Jamaica,WI 1879-1975) and Mary (née Sangster, b.Aberdeen, SCT1877-1959) duplexed the house for daughter Minnie Helen (b.Victoria 1911-1998), who married mechanic James Melville Laird, RCN (b. Cumberland, BC 1914-1986) in 1935. He was a Stoker in the RCN prior to WWII, then moved to Nanaimo. [His great-grandparents John and Margaret Work arrived on the Barque Tory from SCT with HBC in 1851. John died in 1857 from injuries sustained in a Nanaimo coal mine cave-in.]
1939: Benjamin Wilcox McIntosh, Warrant Eng, RCN (b.Vancouver 1908-?) married Zona Matilda (née Harrie, b. Halifax, NS 1913-1956) in 1934; he joined RCN as a cook.
1940: Jitney/taxi driver James Walter Dobbie (b.Victoria 1916-2001) and Peggy (née Heath, b. South Shields, ENG 1919-1986).
1941-49: Mary Alice Haslam (née McMillan, b. Cardiff, WAL1875-1949), a widow, married divorced mechanic Victor George Haslam (b. ON 1876-1929) in Bellingham, WA, USA in 1914. He immigrated to USA in 1895. His WWI draft card, signed 1918 gave his permanent address as Devil’s Lake, ND, USA and living in Harrison Lake, BC.
1951-94: Adolf James Burkhard (b. Switzerland 1901-1993) and Mary (née Braun, b. Ukraine 1913-1996). He was a meat cutter at Spencer’s, a caretaker after it became Eaton’s in 1948.