Last time I took the trip from Downtown Vancouver to Langley City, I took the slow bus winding my way through the suburbs of Surrey and Cloverdale to the bus stop near the Cascades Casino in Langley centre. This time I had got wise and chose the express route, via the Canada Line metro, then by express bus- but it still took an hour and a half. At the bus stop, this time one in a big Park and Ride, there were two familiar faces to greet me, Lorna and her husband Peter, in whose B and B I had stayed in 2017 and where I had booked to stay again this time.
It felt like a reunion of old friends. The first topic of conversation, unsurprisingly, was Covid – which like me they had escaped until relatively recently. The second topic – the death of the Queen and the accession of King Charles. The third – my plans for the coming days, which would include the return visit to Fort Langley Cemetery in a few days’ time, my main mission. Before I left Vancouver, I had finalised the arrangements for that – I will be going early afternoon Monday, once again in the company of the heritage curator, Kobi Christian, who had taken me on a guided tour of Jessie and William’s Langley five years ago, which I describe in Chapter 10 of my book ‘Secrets Never To Be Told’.
Until then, I have a weekend to look forward to with my hosts, Lorna and Peter, keen to give me another guided tour. Their place lies just outside the boundary of Langley Township, in the neighbouring area called Surrey, but they know the whole area well. So this Saturday morning, with another hot day forecast ( yes there have been record-breaking temperatures here this summer too) we set off straight after breakfast to revisit the area, which Jessie and William called home from 1922 until she died in 1970 and where William continued to live until shortly before he died in 1994. This property was the cabin set in two acres and the scene of the haunting photograph, which had so fascinated me from the moment I first saw it when I opened the package of memorabilia on my old kitchen table more than ten years ago.
A century on from this late summer day when an unknown cameraman took this photograph ( apparently the only one of Jessie in her new country), two Canadians and one British woman, having parked on Production Way ( a street name very much in keeping with the surrounding industrial estate) are walking towards No 19799 56th Avenue, a road once simply described by Jessie as the road to Cloverdayl.
I remembered my keen disappointment back in 2017 when I saw how much the site had changed, with no sign of the field of corn( or was it long grass) where Cousin Jessie and her boy had stood to pose shyly for the camera. Here it was – this morning the same commercial premises, which had replaced the Underwood home, but since my last visit given a bit of a facelift, and once again, we see the property is on the market.
Peter and Lorna knew that it wasn’t just this office block getting a face lift. They wanted me to cross the highway to see the revival and hopefully restoration of some of that older, more community-focussed township where families could safely raise children, and Jessie as well as bringing up her boy alone, could raise chickens and grow vegetables. Peter points out the natural water-source they had to draw from. He points me to this sign, only visible to passing pedestrians.
Yes, metres from a busy road opposite the industrial estate lies a stream in which salmon can run. After the hot and dry summer, only a trickle was apparent, but hopefully it will soon fill again with the autumn rains.
We walked around the corner and down a street with much new building, but also with some of the traditional properties still standing, including a couple of small cabins, which my companions thought would have been similar to the little house on 56th Avenue, which sometime between the 1920s and 60s had replaced Jessie’s wooden shack with a brick-built cabin.
We walked further down this pleasant suburban street till we reached the Brydon nature reserve, with the pool, now unpolluted and saved for wildlife.
Who knows they might one day get around to restoring the old railway line, the one Jessie and William would have used to get about, the one which brought them first from Vancouver to the village called Milner a few miles from here, and then here to Langley Township. Peter tells me it was harder to do the journey I had done in 2022 by public transport than it had been a century early. I suppose that’s what they call progress. Now the century when the car was king may be coming to an end. Jessie who lived till the age of ninety-three, and saw so much change in her life, might have nodded at that prospect.
To continue my journey click here