The view from atop Nelson’s YMCA

This postcard that sold on eBay recently intrigues me to no end. It was taken circa 1919-20 and looks northeast from the roof of the YMCA in Nelson, which is today home to the Royal Canadian Legion and Traction on Demand.

This card was made by an Ottawa company called Heliotype, which published a large number of cards, all around the same time. Their lithographs were uniformly poor, but often depicted unusual views like this one.

We see 1) the opera house (built in 1898), which fronted on Victoria Street; 2) the front of the City Cab Co. on Ward Street (built in 1910), and the side of the Kerr Apartments (built in 1911) peeking out behind; 3) the Methodist Church on Silica Street (built in 1908-09); and 4) a large building on Ward Street with a flat roof that I didn’t recognize.

Trying to figure out what the latter was took me down a rabbit hole concerning the entire east side of the 600 block of Ward Street. Few photos exist to help sort out what was what, so I relied on other sources.

The 1899 fire insurance plan shows the opera house, a couple of one-and-a-half storey buildings to the south, as well as a building that was two storeys at the front and three storeys at the back. Ward Creek is also shown flowing beneath the buildings.

At least one of these buildings had been replaced by the time the postcard was taken: the City Cab Co. was built immediately adjacent to the opera house in 1910 by contractors Waters and Pascoe. It had two storeys plus a stone basement.

Later civic directories show the following:

• In 1913, City Cab Co. and Nelson Auction & Sales Room were at 609 Ward and Sam Gridley of the Choquette Bakery lived at 613 Ward. Nothing else was listed on that side of the street.

• In 1914, City Cab Co., the Nelson Auction & Sales Room, and the Nelson Vacuum Cleaner Co. were all listed at 609 Ward while Abner and Bertha Taylor ran a boarding house at 613 Ward.

• The 1915 directory still listed City Cab and the Nelson Auction & Sales Room, but the vacuum company had disappeared, and Charles Avery now ran the boarding house at 613 Ward.

So it appears our mystery building was the rooming house. We’ll come back to it later.

City Cab Co. was operated by Big John Linebaugh, once described as “probably [the] most widely known man in Nelson,” in part because he drove famous people around town, including the governor-general during a visit in 1912.

Nelson Daily News, April 8, 1911

Linebaugh got out of the cab business around 1924 and operated a secondhand store from the same premises at 609 Ward until his death in 1928.

Around 1934, Linebaugh’s widow Anna leased the building’s ground floor to W.H. (Bill) Jones, who established the Columbia Bottling Works there. Anna, meanwhile, lived on the upper floor and never left home. By one account, she “had not set foot on the sidewalk for 18 years, being of an extremely retiring nature.” Another report suggested poor health, rather than reclusiveness, kept her indoors.

A W.H. Jones bottle that sold on eBay in 2021.

When fire broke out next door in the opera house in April 1935, the bottling works looked doomed. Bill Jones and another man rushed to rescue Anna, 80, from her apartment. 

Firefighters poured water onto the opera house from the bottling works’ roof, while Jones and others raced to remove machinery, bottles, and whatever else they could save. The opera house was destroyed but the bottling works miraculously survived.

Looking down Ward Street on April 17, 1935 as the opera house burns, with Bill Jones’ Columbia Bottling Works (formerly the City Cab Co.) seen at right. (Image B-05418 courtesy Royal BC Museum and Archives)

However, as the Nelson Daily News put it, the “paint was hardly dry” when disaster struck again three months later. Anna had recently moved back into her apartment after staying with Bill Jones and his wife Edith at their Front Street home while they waited for the wall that took the brunt of the fire to be fixed.

On July 22, 1935, another fire broke out, this time in the bottling works. Firefighters battled the flames for half an hour before they reached Anna’s room and discovered she had suffocated. She had narrowly survived one fire only to fall victim to another. The bottling plant was badly damaged but the equipment was merely scorched. The fire’s cause was never pinpointed.

Later that year, the upper storey of the bottling plant was removed and the lower section was repaired. In 1946, Bill Jones sold the business to E.W. (Lefty) White, who continued to run the Columbia Bottling Works (which made Orange Crush products) from the same location until 1965.

Thereafter the building became home to the Columbia Trading Co. building supply and Paul Schwab Construction. The building supply was there until 1969 and the construction company until 1971. I’m not sure what happened to the building after that. But by 1984, the site had been reduced to a parking lot. In 1989, a new building was constructed on lots where both the opera house and City Cab/Columbia Bottling Works previously stood. This building used to be BC Assessment and is now CIBC Wood Gundy.

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I was very surprised to learn the rooming house at 613 Ward was built by or for railway contractor David McBeath (who was also responsible for another noteworthy building that I have written about before: 120 Vernon St., which was at one time the Doukhobor headquarters in Nelson).

The Nelson Tribune of April 19, 1899 noted the Lawrence Hardware Co. had the contract to do the plumbing, tinning, and heating. However, the site was embroiled in a lawsuit. According to the Tribune of May 17, 1901, “an action to set aside a tax sale deed” involved “David McBeath’s property at the corner of Ward and Silica streets, valued at something like $4,500.” Someone named Emerson had acquired the land at a tax sale two years prior for $4.46. Not only did Emerson not fight the case, his lawyer heartily agreed McBeath was correct and that Emerson’s deed wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

The civic directory listed the new building’s occupant from 1901-04 as Duncan A. McBeath, who was briefly Nelson’s mining recorder and district registrar. I think he was David’s brother. In 1899, Duncan was accused of embezzlement and arrested. Although the case was soon dismissed, he didn’t get his job back.

Beginning in 1901, Mrs. R.J. McBeath (Duncan’s wife?) operated 613 Ward as a rooming house. Furnished rooms were $8 per month.

The home was also the site of a wedding on July 1, 1901 between Ymir druggist Thomas Henry Atkinson and Theresa Fahey, who had until recently been matron at the Ymir hospital. This marriage would end disastrously within a few years. You can read Ted Affleck’s account of what happened here (part 1) and here (part 2).

In 1905, Mrs. McBeath advertised all of the home’s furniture would be auctioned off.

Nelson Daily News, Feb. 21, 1905

The building continued to be a rooming house thereafter, but I don’t know who ran it. In 1913, it was also home to a private business school: J.F. Roache taught shorthand and bookkeeping, probably out of his apartment.

The Nelson Museum has a photo, estimated to have been taken between 1906 and 1908, showing the top of the building.

(Nelson Museum E387)

We can also glimpse the building in this detail from a 1909 postcard by J. Howard Chapman, which also shows the opera house and a little bit of whatever building existed before City Cab.

(Greg Nesteroff collection)

Nelson Daily News, April 24, 1916

In 1928, the building was described as a “12-room boarding house” in an ad that revealed its contents were about to be auctioned off again on instructions from a Miss P.M. Thompson. A license to operate the rooming house was granted later that year to a Mrs. J.W. Smiley. At the same time, she indicated the building would soon be replaced by a new concrete apartment block, but that didn’t happen.

Nelson Daily News, June 26, 1928

In 1936, a rooming house license was granted to Dora Magnuson for what were now described as the Williams apartments.

The Williams in question was Fred Williams of Williams’ Transfer. In 1930, he bought and demolished a barn that belonged to Big John Linebaugh, next to the former City Cab Co. In its place he put up a concrete warehouse that was two storeys from the Ward Street side and three storeys from the back. This new building was initially numbered 609 Ward, which is odd, since that was the same address of City Cab, which was still standing, although no longer operating.

When Fred Williams died in 1936, his son Gordon took over the business. The civic directory of 1937 said Williams’ Transfer offered “General Transfer, Merchandise Distributors, Freight, Trucking, Coal, Wood and Ice Dealers, Fireproof Furniture Storage and Cold Storage Plant. Gasoline Service Station.”

Fred Williams must have also acquired the rooming house, perhaps at the same time that he bought Linebaugh’s barn. Hence the reference to the “Williams apartments,” which is also how they were listed under Dora Magnuson’s entry in the 1937 and 1938 civic directories. Dora’s husband, Gunnard, was a driver for Williams Transfer and they lived in unit 11.

(Greg Nesteroff collection)

Intriguingly, the Nelson Museum has another photo taken from the YMCA’s roof, showing Walter Wait around 1930, dressed in hockey gear. What prompted him to climb up there for this shot is anyone’s guess. All the more puzzling, it doesn’t even look like winter. We can see the opera house and rooming house behind him, as well as Williams Transfer, which at the time was using the old City Cab barn.

Walter Wait was the namesake of Wait’s News, established in 1937. Wait had previously been a sportswriter at the Daily News.

(Nelson Museum 2024-002-023)

In 1937, Williams’ Transfer was renumbered 613 Ward. The rooming house was renumbered 617 Ward at the same time. Its units continued to be advertised until 1941, but I don’t know what became of it after that. The building appears to have been gone by 1950-51, as it wasn’t listed in the civic directory that year.

Here’s how things looked on a later fire insurance map, although the precise date it depicts is unknown. It’s after 1935 because the opera house is gone. The bottling works are shown at 609 Ward, there’s an electrical supply in the same building numbered 611 Ward, and Williams’ Transfer is at 613 Ward. The rooming house is no longer there and in its place is a pencil notation that we’ll discuss in a moment.

In 1948, Williams’ Transfer was renamed Williams Mayflower, then Williams Van Lines. In the same year, Arrow Van Lines was listed as operating from 613 Ward, alongside Williams Van Lines. In early 1951, Gordon Williams listed 613 Ward for sale and Arrow Van Lines apparently bought it, for they soon advertised themselves as “Successors to Williams Van Lines.” But they weren’t at that location much longer.

Nelson Daily News, Feb. 3, 1951

In 1952, the school district acquired the property, on which they built a bus garage and used the former Williams’ Transfer building as a maintenance shop. For some reason, however, they almost immediately sought offers for the property (which consisted of Block 15, Lots 23 and 24, and Parcel A of Lot 22).

There were no takers until 1957, when Nelson Funeral Home bought the property and hired Williams and Fairbank Architects to design a new building. This is the building noted in pencil on the later fire insurance plan. The old Williams Transfer building from 1930 was demolished in February-March 1957 and the new funeral home opened that fall, still numbered 613 Ward. The parking lot is where the rooming house used to be.

The funeral home appears to have closed in 1962. In 1966, the building was remodeled into a warehouse for an automotive electric business, Autolec (thanks to Mark Apostoliuk for providing the name in the comments). The building was used as the studio of Cable West and Shaw Cable in the 1980s and ‘90s before being turned back into a funeral home, now known as Thompson’s.

That’s a very long-winded history of the 600 block of Ward Street, all prompted by an unusual postcard.