By Jim Wolf, Heritage Planner, City of Burnaby
Blythe and Violet Eagles purchased the Deer Lake property in 1929 and began construction of their home shortly before their marriage on June 25, 1930. Among their personal papers was a real estate brochure advertising lots at the prestigious “University Hill” subdivision in Point Grey. According to friends, Blythe and Violet did feel the pressure to locate closer to the social scene of the U.B.C. faculty of Point Grey and Violet’s family. However, Blythe was determined to lead a life away from the University.
As a New Westminster native, Blythe was familiar with Deer Lake and the group of New Westminster families which made their homes there. Blythe also once had a job while a student in 1919-1920 delivering groceries for the C.A. Welsh Company in New Westminster. One of his routes was through Burnaby to Deer Lake where he came to love the rural landscape found there.
Blythe and Violet would no doubt have been impressed by the number of extensive gardens and homes which lined the shores of Deer Lake by 1929. Although most were built just prior to World War I the district was well known throughout the 1920s as a place where “home builders with discriminating taste and ample means have built for themselves commodious homes, surrounded with park-like grounds, bordering upon the lakes.” Although not Point Grey, Deer Lake provided a suitable location for a home of distinction.
The Eagles purchased a seven-acre parcel of land at the southwest end of Deer Lake adjacent to Sperling Avenue for $1,200 in 1929. According to Violet the property had a small hut on it previously that was occupied by an “old Swede.” The property was being sold by the municipality in a tax sale. The Eagles were able to finance the purchase the land and construction of the house with a $3,000 mortgage amortized over three years. However, the onset of the Great Depression resulted in Blythe’s University salary being cut in half, and later being laid off from the teaching staff. The mortgage had to be extended an additional three years.
With the mortgage secured, the Eagles began to develop their home and garden immediately. Blythe was busy working on various research projects and the development of the house and garden became Violet’s immediate responsibility. Parties of friends and family converged on the site to undertake clearing of the heavily bushed property adjacent to the lake. Although the land had been logged years before the second growth bush land required a tremendous amount of labour to clear. Blythe came up with the idea of purchasing two pigs to roam the site to assist with brush clearing. However, the pigs had to be sent for slaughter shortly after as they had a habit of roaming to neighbours vegetable gardens to feast.
Blythe hired a building contractor in New Westminster at $1.00 an hour while the services of a laborer to assist him cost 75 cents per hour. The house was designed by the Eagles themselves in the Romantic English Cottage style. This style was very popular at the time conveying a proper sense of upper class living. The low overhanging eaves, expansive roof and dormers with stucco exterior convey this style directly. Other details such as the rustic door with “forged” hinges and knocker and Arts and Crafts styled exterior light sconces and rain troughs also provide a hand-crafted feel to the home. It incorporated imported English steel and lead casement windows which Blythe had admired while studying at University there. Inside elegant interior features include coved ceilings and oak floors inlaid with mahogany. The house was decorated with a mixture of antiques and modern traditional furnishings.
Violet was especially proud of the combined dining and living room that she had insisted on, a very unusual modern design for Vancouver at that time. The cozy L-shaped room was designed around an unusual angled fireplace hearth. This central fireplace and chimney were custom built with a spiraled flue in order that the chimney for the angled fireplace could meet the roof square. It was built by Burnaby resident and skilled bricklayer Ernie Winch, a well-known socialist, who was involved with Burnaby municipal politics since 1911. In 1933, three years after building the Eagles fireplace, he ran successfully to represent Burnaby in the Provincial Legislature, and remained there until his death in 1957. The construction of the fireplace by Winch was a source of great interest and conversation for all who came to the Eagles home.
When the contractors packed up their tools and left the work site in 1930, the newlywed Eagles were left with a partly finished one bedroom home. A photo took in 1930 shows Violet and Blythe posing in front of the completed home sited on a bare landscape. The front door portico hangs precariously in the air without the completed front terraces and stairs. The completion of the terraces and gardens would become a life long project for the Eagles, and they took great pains to design a garden in harmony with its site.
Initially, the landscape plan for the upper terraces was prepared on an unsigned Frank Buck blueprint drawing, dated February 1937. The main feature of this section was designed incorporating a front driveway which would bring visitors to the house through gates on Sperling Avenue to the bottom of the elaborate concrete and brick stairs located below the front entrance. Automobiles could then continue to drive along and exit above the house on Deer Lake Drive, the private road for south shore residents. Once the drive was completed the gates were rarely kept open. Visitors, more often then not, drove down Deer Lake Drive to park and arrived at the back door to greet Violet at work in her kitchen. Violet preferred to greet guests in this informal way if it meant the front driveway could remain a serene grass path and terrace and the garden kept “uncluttered” by automobiles.
Special site conditions also dictated the design of the gardens. The lower portion of the site which bordered on Raven Street and Deer Lake was nothing more than a swamp. Gardening here required creating “moats” around the shrub and perennial beds to capture excess water. Native “Skunk Cabbage” in the lower garden was cultivated by Violet. She even took the row boat over to the swamps at Oakalla Prison to collect more of the exotic plants.
A special feature of the garden was the use of innumerable boulders to create rockeries. Most of this work was done by Blythe, who directed family, friends and U.B.C. students. The large wooded section of land above the house was dotted with numerous springs and remained wet most of the year. The water collected in ditches along Deer Lake Drive and was channeled into the garden. Violet and Blythe used this water to create a stream that feed a picturesque series of ponds set into the rockery.
Delphiniums were Violet’s pride and joy, and their beds were intensively planted along the north fence line. The delphiniums reached heights in excess of six feet and could be best viewed from the upper terrace. Violet was a member of the English Delphinium Society and received a monthly newsletter which promoted new varieties and planting techniques.
Vegetable gardens at the Eagles Estate were not a significant part of the landscape design. Friends and family enjoyed the joke of Violet and Blythe praising the glory of a pathetic stand of a corn or tomato crop with blight. The Eagles were however, very proud of their raspberries which were used to make desserts served at community functions. The garden was used occasionally by U.B.C. students and staff experimenting with different plant or in one instance the rate of rot in the Eagles compost pile.
The gardens were first and foremost a place for Violet and Blythe to enjoy. Family and friends remember the ritual of morning coffee Blythe would serve to Violet, who would interrupt her morning digging and weeding. It would be served to her on the lower terrace on a concrete bench amid the Skunk Cabbage blooms. Here they would plan the gardening activities for the day or what to serve at the next party.
In their retirement years the Eagles became overwhelmed with the work needed to contain the garden they had created. Blythe enjoyed the overgrown vines and shrubs and imagined that one day the “jungle” would overtake the property once they had passed on. Violet did not share her husband’s romantic notion of an overgrown garden and would prune in the garden while his back was turned. Even after Blythe passed away in 1990, Violet gardened until she could not manage the activity any more. After Violet’s death in 1993, the estate was sold to the City of Burnaby. The funds were used to establish a Chair in Agriculture at the University of British Columbia in their memory.
