Memory Monday...my parent's first home

In June 2006 we took my Dad out, and on the way downtown, we stopped at this old house, #133 on W 12th Ave in Vancouver.This is the place where my Dad brought my Mom in September 1955, after marrying her in the USA. My Mom was in a state of shock, as W 12th Ave has always been a busy street, and it was a few blocks from City Hall. She had a difficult time adjusting to the bustle of Vancouver in 1955, as she was born and raised on a very quiet farm in Amity, Oregon.

My parents lived on the second floor at the front, just above the porch.

They had to share a bathroom with the other tenants!

I'm so glad we stopped and got this picture. The house is still there.

Afterwards we went to the Vancouver Museum to see the neon sign display.

It's fun to do things with my Dad!

2021: I posted the following photos this year, as I think they should be included in Dad's history.

On our way downtown, going down Kingsway, we turned right on Clark Drive, then left on E 20th Avenue, and stopped at 1267 E 20th. Dad wanted a picture outside this house, which is where Paul and Elizabeth Plesko once lived in the 1950's. It was still standing in 2006 but it was torn down in 2018 so I'm glad I got a photo. This house is where my Mom, Susie, stayed with her friend Rita in the spring of 1955 when she came to visit Vancouver on the Greyhound bus. Paul Plesko set a tape recorder under the couch to tape their conversation when Dad came over to visit. But they whispered sweet nothings which the tape recorder couldn't pick up!

Here are a few photos in the Vancouver Museum. Robert and Dad standing beside the boy mummy from Egypt, I believe. He lay there for years but I think he's properly put away now, although I think he should be buried!

Here is Dad standing beside the neon "Jesus, light of the world" sign, which the museum kindly kept after the Apostolic Faith church, which my Dad attended all his life and helped build and was also an usher and in the choir for years, closed and sold and relocated to Langley BC in 2001.

By Loretta Houben