Marpole History

Ghost drove pioneers from Marpole

Lisa Smedman
Vancouver Courier
Friday, February 20, 2009

Long before Vancouver had an airport, Sea Island [mostly in Richmond today] was a vast expanse of farms, dotted by the occasional house. Just across the bridge, Eburne (later to be renamed Marpole) looked much the same. Cows grazed in pastures, and the only link to Vancouver was the North Arm Road, a rough wagon road that would one day be known as Granville Street.

One of the pioneer families that settled in Marpole was that of Robert John Tait and his wife Jessie (née Garvey). They came west in the 1890s, and at first settled in Victoria, where Robert's brother and sister lived. The census of 1891 records them there. By 1893, they'd moved to the Red River Valley, inManitoba. They came to the Vancouver area in 1895, and settled near Eburne, a tiny community named after shopkeeper Harry Eburne. They lived in a house just east of modern Granville Street, where West 60th Avenue is today. But not for long.
Eileen Scott, their granddaughter, tells the story. According to family lore, the house was haunted.

Shortly after the birth of one of their seven children, Jessie Tait heard footsteps on the front verandah--loud enough to wake her sleeping baby. She assumed it was the neighbour's children, and asked the neighbours to tell their children not to clomp about on her verandah.
The neighbours said it wasn't their children, but the ghost of a man who'd been murdered at a road house that had stood next door to the Tait home and had long since burned down.
"When my grandfather came home, my grandmother said, 'I'm not staying in this house another minute. It's haunted!' So they moved out to Sea Island."

The house, Scott added, still stands, although it was moved from its original location.
The Taits appear in the Williams' Official B.C. Directory of 1897-'98 under the entry for Eburne--which included both Sea Island and the "north side of LuluIsland... in the municipality of Richmond." Robert Tait, farmer, is among the 95 names listed.

According to the Sea Island Heritage Society, the Tait farm was 80 acres, and had up to 75 dairy cows. Many of the other farms on Sea Island produced grain.

The Taits also owned property in Marpole, on modern Marine Drive near the foot of Main Street, in the Terra Nova area of Richmond, and elsewhere onRiver Road in Richmond. All were farms.
Florence Cullen, daughter of Robert Ernest Tait, Robert and Jessie's fourth eldest child, recalls visiting the farm on Sea Island when she was a "little tyke." Her grandfather kept pigs, and she stood on a railing for a closer look. "One of them grabbed my toe, and pulled the whole front of my shoe off. I screamed blue murder. I thought the pig had gotten my toes. Dad never let me forget that."

Scott recalled visits to her grandparents' farm on Sea Island when she was a kid, back in the 1920s and '30s. "It was nice. There was just these lovely farms, with a house every so often."
Neighbours helped each other at harvest time. "They would all get together, all the farmers, and go and do the threshing from one farm to the other," said Scott. "Whosever house they ended at, at lunch time, the lady of that house would make dinner for all the farmers. When it was my grandmother's turn, my sister and I used to go over to Grandma's and set the table for her, and put the food on the table for the men. There would be about 12 or 13 [at dinner].
"It was a very cooperative thing. Everybody's farm got done, and it didn't cost anything, except for the [meal]."

The Taits transported milk from their Sea Island dairy by horse-drawn wagon to Vancouver. They would often drop off their youngest of their seven children--James ("Jim") and Alex--at the firehall at West 25th Avenue and Granville Street. There, the boys would be entertained by the firefighters' mascot, a baby bear. One day, Jessie was horrified to find her boys scratched and bleeding, with torn clothing. The bear had grown larger, and wasn't a suitable playmate any more.

A portion of Tait's acreage on Sea Island was purchased by Jacob Grauer, a German immigrant. The rest of the farm wound up in the hands of son William ("Buck") Tait. The property was located toward the eastern end of Sea Island, between Miller Road and Grauer Road.
William Tait's farm eventually became part of Vancouver International Airport.

© Vancouver Courier 2009