Media Interviews and Reviews A review by Lisa Smedman – The Vancouver Courier – Wednesday, March 31, 2004 DEPRESSION-ERA FRASERVIEW MOSTLY BUSH Back in the 1930s, when Wallace Gilby Craig was a young boy, Fraserview – the area between 54th Avenue and Marine Drive, and between Kerr Road and Victoria Drive – was a wilderness of forest, creeks and settlers’ shacks. The home on Clarendon Street where he was born in 1931 was typical of those of the 50 or so families who lived in Fraserview. No more than 500square feet in size, it was built at the back of the property, leaving room for a permanent house to one day be constructed. Erected without foundation or basement, it rested on wood -- cedar logs culled from the bush. The Craigs – Robert and Eleanor, and their sons Bill, Jeff and Wallace – had no telephone or bathroom, just an outdoor privy. A wood-burning stove heated the building’s two rooms, while a galvanized tub served for baths.  . . . The hub of Fraserview in the 1930s was Victoria Drive and 54th Avenue, where the No.10 streetcar ended its run. Near the loop where the streetcar turned around were Streeting’s Confectionary, Spargo’s Grocery, Spillet’s Garage, Hardy’s, and Connery’s Grocery.  . . . “These were the days of the 4X Bakery and its closed-in Ford delivery trucks,” Craig wrote. “I still remember the driver using a long stick with a spike on the end to reach back into the truck to pull out the loaves. The Dairyland wagon had two horses so well trained that, while the milkman was making a delivery, they would take the wagon to the next house on his route.” Yan, the vegetable merchant sold dried ginger coated with powdered white sugar at Christmas time, something Craig remembers as an “exquisite and exotic” treat. “A Yorkshire pastry man called on us, walking bent over from the weight of two heavily loaded wicker baskets, held in the crooks of his arms, selling fine English cold-meat pastries.” recalled Craig. “Then there was Hong, a small Chinese fish seller, impervious to the elements, walking like an acrobat balancing a flat hardwood pole over his shoulders, each end of the pole weighted down by a galvanized rectangular container fitted with legs. When filled with iced-down fish, each container would weigh at least one hundred pounds.”  Fraserview changed forever in 1949, when the federal government expropriated land between the Fraserview Golf Course and Argyle Street. Over the next three years hundreds of homes were built in the new subdivision for 1,200 veterans and their families. The little village that Craig remembered became, by the 1950s, a suburb. Lisa Smedman is an editor and staff writer with The Vancouver Courier.