They caught up with old friends and traded memories that ended when their homes were taken away.

A recent reunion of former Cora Brown subdivision residents attracted 140 people who remembered learning to swim in the North Arm of the Fraser River and how a nickel would buy a popsicle at Butlers corner store.

They also learned of a plan to build a trail named in their honour.

“I guess it’s nice to have something of our heritage remembered, but in a sense it’s too little too late,” said Eunice Robinson, 62, who spent the first 24 years of her life in the post-war subdivision. “We’ve all kind of been fed up with the way things were treated. That land lay fallow for years and years.”

In 1974, the federal government expropriated the subdivision for airport expansion.

“It was a bitter time for the residents and really a tough time for the kids,” said Robinson. “It was like the splitting up of a family.”

The 1.5-kilometre Cora Brown Recreational Trail is expected to open sometime this summer. It’s being built by the Vancouver Airport Authority and Environment Canada alongside Ferguson Road in the Sea Island Conservation Area. The project also includes a drainage ditch to serve protected wildlife habitat lands and the airport.

According to airport authority spokesperson Alana Lawrence, significant landscaping is also being done in the area, which will become home to more than 10,000 native plant species.

The federal government created the Cora Brown subdivision in 1946, a small community of modest homes and a few farms dedicated for veterans returning from the Second World War.

Robinson’s father served overseas during the war and she grew up on Myron Drive—a street named after a soldier who died in the war.

For many former residents, memories of living in the isolated community are bittersweet. Expropriation paved the way for construction of the airport’s third runway, but it didn’t open until 22 years later.

“We still could have lived there. We could have brought our kids up there,” said Robinson.

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Life in Cora Brown

•Post-war community lasted from 1946 to 1974

•Original 50 houses were 800 square feet, situated on one acre plots

•Many residents would take the bus to Woodward’s on Hastings Street in Vancouver or Grauer’s Store for groceries

•Most families grew vegetables and fruit trees

•The shores of the North Arm of the Fraser River served as a beach

•Original residents stayed for many years in the close-knit community

•Named after Cora Browne, who was born on the island; its unknown why the letter “E” was dropped from the subdivision’s name