PAGE 9
52 Sundays to seaworthy
Deep Cove grandfather and grandson build a boat and a bond together
PAGE 10
Chatter around the Cove
Our ‘mayor’ returns home from the hospital and Craft Beer Week comes to the Cove
October 2017
9900 Circulation East of the Seymour River
Window to past found in Blue Cabin subfloor by MARIA SPITALE-LEISK A couple restoring a beloved piece of North Vancouver history uncovered a surprise when they reached the bowels of the Blue Cabin. Since June, Mayne Island artists Jeremy and Sus Borsos have been carefully taking apart pieces of the fragile 90-year-old cabin, which once sat on the Dollarton foreshore. The humble abode offered comfort to its inhabitants, who savoured a life of solitude by the sea. For 50 years artist-couple Al Neil, now in his 90s, and Carole Itter, surviving stalwarts of the Dollarton squatter era, continued to live in their cosy cabin. Inside it was furnished with a Farrand upright piano for Neil, a freestyle jazz musician. Outside the cabin was a collection of found objects Itter would turn into art. Neil and Itter had to say goodbye to the Blue Cabin in 2015 when the old McKenzie Barge site adjacent to Cates Park was cleared for a new condo development. Over the next two years the cabin sat six feet in the air, on skids, inside the Canexus chemical plant in the Dollarton industrial area. The Borsos, who have a penchant for heritage preservation, first set eyes on the Blue Cabin at Canexus earlier this year. Rotted remnants of an old timber dock remain were still attached to the cabin after it was uprooted from the banks of the Burrard Inlet. “It was tired,” says Jeremy, of his initial impression of the Blue Cabin. “But it was absolutely beautiful.” The couple was commissioned by a group fighting to save the last remaining vestige from the squatter era, the Blue Cabin Committee, to work their magic on the relic. Now plunked down in a sheep pasture at Maplewood Farm, the colourful, diminutive cabin with its distinctive curved roof and red shutters is getting a gentle makeover. Flake off what’s loose on the cabin and leave what stays – that is Jeremy and Sus’ game plan for preserving the
heritage. Working alongside each other, the couple pulls out each piece of the puzzle individually, while making mental and physical notes of the cabin’s original blueprint. Along the way they have found tiny hidden treasures of yesteryear fallen between the cracks of the cabin – marbles and buttons mostly. But when Jeremy and Sus took up the weathered floorboards, they got quite a shock. Everything looked “great” below the cabin floor and that made Jeremy nervous. Paint thickness can hide pests like carpenter ants, something Jeremy found out the hard way earlier in this project. Digging farther down, the couple discovered layers of printed paper acting as insulation – at one end of the cabin. Pulling up the boards one by one, excitedly making their way to the other side, Jeremy and Sus found frayed pieces of Vancouver history entombed in the subfloor. Invaluable paper souvenirs from a bygone era overlapping each other across the cabin. Thirty of them. At Maplewood Farm, artist-couple Jeremy and Sus Borsos, currently restoring a stalwart from the Dollarton squatter era, discovered event posters from the 1920s when they reached the Blue Cabin’s subfloor. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD
Along the way, they have found tiny hidden treasures of yesteryear fallen between the cracks of the cabin – marbles and buttons mostly.
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The first poster that caught Jeremy’s eye was the only one turned face up: a magic act at the Orpheum Theatre, billed as the Wonder Show of the Century. “So this is for a film called The Unwanted, and it’s like a newsreel,” explains Jeremy, carefully flipping over the fragile posters. One of the posters promotes an event see Couple page 8
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$
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$
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$
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2 piece
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SALMON $
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32
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