YOUR HISTORY by Bryan Ness

Port Coquitlam lost its small–town status years ago.

Unofficially, the current population is around 60,000, give or take. When the new city hall opened in 1914, its citizens numbered around 1,300. Twenty–five years later, at the beginning of the Second World War, it had soared to 1,500 — hardly the boom that was expected upon incorporation in 1913.

Global warming has been a hot topic lately, with our winters much milder than in the past, last year notwithstanding. I grew up in Vancouver during another boom, the Baby Boom of the 1950s and ’60’s so, for my research, I put forth the question to several of the more senior members of the Port Coquitlam Heritage Society: “What are your memories of winter in small–town Port Coquitlam?”

My mind conjured up a pastoral scene from a Currier and Ives Christmas card, complete with horse and sleigh by a cabin bedecked with snow, smoke curling from the chimney, Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”

Society member Walter Carlson tells of the snow being so deep once in the 1920s that his father, Gabriel, couldn’t get through to deliver his milk by truck to customers in Fraser Mills in Coquitlam. There was no plowing or grading in those early days, even on the old Dewdney Trunk Road. Fellow dairyman Ed Hayes, whose dairy was next to Essondale (later the Colvin Farm), hitched his horse to a sleigh and was able to complete his runs.

Years later, about 1950, Walter himself was attempting to deliver milk for Medo–Land Dairy up Oxford Hill but the truck, even with chains, kept slipping. He finally had to get out and trudge up the hill to try to deliver on foot. These were the only two times in 40 years that winter weather kept the Carlsons from delivering the goods.

Morley Deans recalls ice skating with friends on the frozen slough near Shaughnessy Street and going over to the nearby CP Rail roundhouse to gather oily rags to start a bonfire to keep everyone warm. A photo from the Routley family in 1927 has Christina and Florence Routley standing with Dorothy Urquhart on the frozen Pitt River. Nel Forrest (PoCo Coun. Mike Forrest’s mum ) also remembers being able to skate out to nearby Douglas Island and back.

Wow, imagine the outdoor shinny games on that sheet of ice.

In 1952, Nel’s husband Harvie brought a different kind of skating to Port Coquitlam when he built the Port Palladium Roller Rink on Chester Street, just about the only place in town where PoCo youth could gather and socialize. As there was no public transit, Harvie would drive around town in his little truck and bring kids to the rink. Sadly, in January 1954, the rink burned to the ground, and for many children in a small town, winters became a bit longer and colder than they were before.

Your History is a column in which, once a month, representatives of the Tri-Cities’ three heritage groups writes about local history. Bryan Ness is with the Port Coquitlam Heritage Society.