Killarney and Champlain Heights

The first modern settler was William Rowling in 1868. Rowling was given District Lot 268 along the Fraser River as a grant for his British military service. His work as a surveyor in the Royal Engineers included marking out the border between British Columbia and the Washington Territory in 1859. By the 1880s the Rowling family’s landholdings had expanded to include all of the 3.5 kilometres of Fraser River shoreline in the Killarney district. In 1878 George Wales became the first settler in the northern half of modern Killarney when he took up District Lot 50- -221 acres (89.4 hectares) for $1 an acre. In 1888 all of the land in the district between Wales’ and Rowlings’ property was auctioned off to eight buyers as eight 65-hectare lots. In the 1890s the first two roads were built along the northern boundaries of these properties, No.1 Road (now 45th Avenue) and No.2 Road (now 54th Avenue). This area was to remain very rural with scattered farms until after World War II. The 8-hectare F.R. Stewart fruit ranch established in the 1890s produced fruit for the Vancouver market before the Okanagan fruit industry was developed.

Other Killarney pioneers are remembered by the early street names and other landmarks. The Vivian family (Vivian Creek) lived in a landmark stone house at Vivian Road and No.2 Road. Jennie Vivian, born in 1892, was the first child born between Collingwood and the Rowlings’ holdings. Her brothers later became well known as the developers of the Vivian Diesel Engine. George Kerr (Kerr Road) and his partner A. Joyce (Joyce Road) had a market garden on No.1 Road. The Doman family farmed on Doman Road and George Wales lived on Wales Road. In 1906 Jeremiah Crowley started a dairy at the Avalon Ranch on Wales Road. His son carried on the business and served as a member of the parks board for years. Today he is remembered by Everett Crowley Park, Killarney district’s largest park. This park is the former site of a creek and waterfall leading into a deep ravine used for years as a city land fill site. The Crowley family still operates the Avalon Dairy out of the 1908 family home at 5805 Wales Road, now the oldest dairy in British Columbia.

In 1909 an interurban line was opened along the Fraser River from Marpole to New Westminster. Combined with the dredging of the mouth of the North Arm of the Fraser in 1915, this made Killarney’s riverfront lands suitable for the establishment of large industries. Over time many of the industries that originated in False Creek relocated to the banks of the Fraser River. In Killarney the huge Dominion Mills alone employed almost 1,000 workers near the foot of Boundary Road by the 1920s. One of the few large homes ever built in this area in the old days was the 1911 home built at 3358 South East Marine Drive for the president of the Dominion Creosoting Company, William Harvey. This company produced creosoted wood to make bridges, docks, railway ties and the wooden blocks used to pave city streets.

As a way to provide employment during the Depression of the 1930s, relief workers were used to clear the land for the Fraserview Golf Course, Vancouver’s first public golf course. Before it was opened in 1935, permits were given to cold and hungry local residents to cut firewood and to use the land for vegetable gardens. The swamps south of Killarney Park were a natural place to pick salmonberries, huckleberries, blueberries, blackberries and a few cranberries.

In the early decades the closest town centre to the sparsely populated Killarney district was Collingwood on its northern edge. For people in Collingwood the area was always just the outer region of Collingwood and only became known as Killarney in the 1950s. Near Killarney Street, Killarney High School opened in 1957 and the Killarney Community Centre in 1963. The southerly part became known as Champlain Heights after the old farms south of 54th Avenue gave way to houses, apartments and a shopping centre beginning in 1960. In the 1980s most of the remaining land to the southeast was developed with townhouses.