THEFT IN THE CITY: In the first of a two-part series, we look at how property crime affects Vancouver

ETHAN BARON
Province

Glue down the welcome mat: Company’s coming, and it’s not invited.
   InVancouver, famed for exceptional quality of life and world-class scenery, pervasive property crime is stealing security from its citizens and trashing the city’s reputation.
   The three maps generated by the Sunday Province (left) offer a crime-byneighbourhood perspective never available before.
   They show, in living colour, the glowing red hotbed of theft that is downtown Vancouver. Some thieves travel; the maps show the spread of property crime outward from the Downtown Eastside and Granville mall, across the bridges and along main thoroughfares and SkyTrain routes. Some thieves work closer to home; the maps show neighbourhoods where even a single, embedded, drug-addicted person can wreak havoc.
   Drugs drive the city’s property crime. Heroin, crack, cocaine and crystalmeth addicts live in an endless quest for anything to sell to feed their need.
   Police estimate they spend 95 per cent of their time responding to property crime. The Vancouver Board of Trade says residents and vehicle owners in Vancouver lose some $108 million a year, or $460 per household, to these kinds of crime. Businesses lose another $20 million, the board says.
The kettle walked off
   For East Vancouver residents Trey Wells and Arwyn Gierak, the problems started with a toilet brush.
   The pair moved from the west side to East Vancouver last year. Soon after moving in, a used toilet bowl brush disappeared from its drying spot outside their Trout Lake townhouse. Then the front doormat vanished. One day, Wells put an overheated kettle on the front steps to cool.
   “This old guy was taking it away. I was like, ‘Excuse me.’ He actually started bitching at me because the kettle wasn’t in good condition. His justification was anything outside the house was public property. I was like, ‘Oh, great, where do you live?’”
   A thief dug up and absconded with a rhododendron from their front walkway, along with plants belonging to neighbours. Now Wells and Gierak don’t take any chances. Loose items are never left outside. Their welcome mat? They’ve glued it down.
KITSILANO: A break-and-enter bonanza
   Kitsilano, seaside land of trendy yuppies and not-so-starving students, is home to five-dollar lattes, $100 yoga tights and staggering property crime.
   For the drug addicts of downtown Vancouver and the Downtown Eastside, Kits is a mecca,a pot of gold at the end of the Burrard Street Bridge.
   Kits and neighbouring Fairview share with Renfrew-Collingwood the distinction of being the three worst non-inner-city neighbourhoods in Vancouver for break-and-enter crimes.
   “We get desperate people on the streets and that’s what drives it,” says Kitsilano Community Association president Robert Haines, who says the homes in Kits are vulnerable.
   “There are not that many buildings over three storeys,” Haines notes.
   Accessing upper floors doesn’t seem to pose much challenge for some of the city’s skilful thieves, says Vancouver police Const. Tim Fanning. “They can scale up. Some of them are amazing as far as what they’ll do.”
   Just ask Fairview resident Ian Tootill. He lost a $6,500 mountain bike in a “commando-style” theft from his second-floor False Creek deck.
   “They came up the side of the building . . . I’ve had a car stereo taken worth $3,500. I’ve had all my camping equipment stolen on two occasions out of the back of a car, once in a parking lot and once downstairs in the building.”

The much-voted-on project goes back for another show of hands because it

But taxpayers remain liable for ridership levels on the transit line, chief executive Larry Bell says

WILLIAM BOEI
Sun

TransLink and the B.C. public will be insulated from more construction cost increases on the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver rapid transit line, RAVCO officials said Friday.
   “This is a fixed-price, date-certain contract,” said RAVCO chairman Larry Bell.
   Bell said the impact of the line will be equivalent to adding 10 lanes of traffic capacity to the busy Vancouver-Richmond corridor.
   It will be one of the few rapid transit systems in the world that will not need operating subsidies once it is built and operating, RAVCO said.
   “The operating revenues exceed the operating costs during the 30-year period,” said RAVCO chief executive Jane Bird.
   The low bid for the RAV Line came in at $1.899 billion, in part because of escalating steel and concrete prices, and the players in the public-private partnership project have been trying to find ways to reduce its cost and find new sources of money.
   The “preferred” bidder for the project, SNC-Lavalin, has agreed to shoulder most of the financial risks, Bird said.
   That means that once a contract is signed, SNC-Lavalin will be responsible for any construction cost overruns, all tunnelling risks, on-time delivery risk and operating performance risk, Bird said.
   If construction costs increase beyond SNC-Lavalin’s projections, “It’s their problem, not ours.”
   The one significant risk that taxpayers remain liable for is ridership. If the line doesn’t achieve the ridership projected by planners, TransLink, the regional transportation authority, is on the hook for 90 per cent of the resulting revenue shortfall.
   Bird said that’s necessary because TransLink does not want to give up control of the three major factors that affect ridership: The right to set fares, the marketing of transit and the level of bus service feeding passengers into the rapid transit line.
   SNC-Lavalin is responsible for 10 per cent of ridership risk because it is responsible for providing and maintaining stations, lighting and washrooms, which could also have an effect on ridership.
   Few financial details of the proposal were made public other than ballpark budget figures.
   Bird said it calls for SNC-Lavalin to receive “an annual operating payment in return for performance specifications” such as travel time and train frequency.
   “If they don’t perform, they don’t get paid.”
   RAVCO said SNC-Lavalin’s plan would provide a 24-minute one-way trip between Vancouver and the airport, and Vancouver and Richmond.
   Fares would be the same as on the rest of the regional transit system, with one major exception.
   One of the revenue-raising measures in the plan, agreed to by the airport authority, is to charge “a premium fare” of $5 to $6 for passengers and “meeters and greeters” who ride the RAV Line to and from airport terminals. The regular two-zone adult fare between Vancouver and Richmond is $3.
   Bird argued the premium fare is still a bargain compared to the cost of taking a taxi from downtown Vancouver to the airport or paying for parking at the airport. It is also considerably lower than public transportation charges at many other major cities.
   Airport employees and employees of other companies on Sea Island will pay regular fares, possibly using a swipe-card or fare-card system. Bird said the details remain to be worked out.
   Among other measures to increase revenue or reduce costs in the revised RAV Line plan:
   
• One of the five stations planned for Richmond will disappear. The proposed Westminster station will not be built, and the nearby Richmond Centre station will be moved a few hundred metres north of its planned location.
   
• A proposed walkway for cruiseship passengers between the RAV Line terminus at Waterfront Station in Vancouver and the cruise-ship terminal will not be built for the time being.
   
• TransLink, rather than the builder, will shoulder the cost of moving trolley wires along the RAV Line route.
   
• TransLink will incorporate the cost of operating insurance for the RAV Line into its own global insurance policy to get a better rate.
   The plan calls for a longer tunnel — to 63rd Avenue rather than 47th, as originally planned.
   Tunnelling under downtown Vancouver and False Creek will be done by underground boring equipment; along Cambie, it will be a “cut and cover” tunnel.
   Bird promised there will no net loss of green space along Cambie, and since most of the tunnel will run beneath traffic lanes rather than the boulevard down the centre, few trees will have to be uprooted.

THE CANADA LINE
The plan that regional officials will be asked on Dec. 1 to approve
Tentatively dubbed the Canada Line, the fully automated service will whisk commuters and travellers from one end to the other in just 24 minutes. With up to 17 stations (plus four future ones), the system will operate both underground and on an elevated track that does not interfere with ground traffic. Engineers calculate its carrying capacity equals 10 road lanes.

Vote was 8-3 by Vancouver body

Jack Keating and John Bermingham
Province

Vancouver‘s downtown bars will remain open until 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, city council decided last night.

Council voted 8-3 against turning the clock back to 2 a.m. for closing times at downtown bars and pubs.

Council also retained bar openings until 4 a.m. on most long weekends and certain “special occasions” and has asked city staff to report back on extending the entertainment district to the north end of the Granville Street Bridge and into the so-called Davie Village between Burrard and Bute streets.

Council was following the recommendations of a city staff report on drinking laws and closing times that included liquor policies from cities around the world.

“This puts Vancouver more in step with the rest of the world,” said Coun. Jim Green, who moved a motion on expanding the entertainment zone to the north end of the Granville bridge. “When you’re supporting live entertainment and local bands you’re really helping the economy.”

About 30 downtown bars have been staying open until 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights — city council in May rolled their weekend hours back from 4 a.m. closings, which began on July 4, 2003, because of policing costs. “It retains the status quo and we’re moving closer to making it permanent,” said John Teti, chairman of Bar Watch.

The B.C. government lets bars stay open from 9 a.m. to 4 a.m, but municipal governments can impose earlier closing times.

“We clearly understand that it’s very, very difficult for the bars in Vancouver to be open until 4 a.m. if all the surrounding communities are only open until 2 a.m.,” said Teti. “We don’t want that migration.”

Staff will also consult with Victoria and report back on the Entertainment District — the 700, 800 and 900 blocks Granville Street — having the right to stay open until 3 a.m. seven nights a week.

“It’s possible that some bars might be open seven days a week until 3 a.m.,” said Teti. “The market place will determine that.”

Barwatch members have put in video cameras, do hand-wanding for weapons at entries, run ID checks and pay policing costs.

Owners have also enforced city guidelines on sidewalk lineups, telling patrons to stand on one side of a white line.

For 100 extra hours of bar-time, Barwatch is paying for 13,000 police hours, at double-time.

© The Vancouver Province 2004

Vancouver police say nine out of 10 calls are false

Glenn Bohn
Sun

VANCOUVER – Vancouver police hope a new bylaw will cut in half the number of false security alarms they respond to — sometimes with guns drawn.

Nine times out of 10, the alarms reported to police turn out to be false.

“If a legitimate owner or staff member is on site, they’re potentially at risk,” Glen Richmond, manager of the police department’s false-alarm reduction program, said Wednesday in an interview.

“I don’t want Granny Goodcookies to be at home making muffins and be confronted by the police or a police dog.”

Since 1993, when the city enacted its first Security Alarm System Bylaw, the number of alarm systems in residential and commercial buildings in Vancouver has doubled, to 56,000.

During the same decade, the number of false alarms reported to police has gone down, to about 13,900 last year from more than 37,000 in 1993.

But police say there are still too many false alarms– most of them caused by user errors, such as a homeowner punching in the wrong code.

Last year, police cancelled 841 security alarm permits because the permit holder had more than four false alarms.

Still, not every alarm is a false alarm.

Last year, 1,200 of the alarms reported to Vancouver police turned out to be valid.

Richmond said the old bylaw — which makes city permits mandatory in any premises with an alarm system, whether monitored or not — worked reasonably well in reducing the number of false alarms. But he’s predicting that the tougher rules and penalties that came into effect last month will reduce the number of false alarms by as much as 25 to 50 per cent over the next two years.

Under the old bylaw, a permit holder was allowed four false alarms within a 12-month period. On the fourth false alarm, the city cancelled the permit. If someone wanted a new permit, they had to launch a successful appeal or pay a hefty fee, in addition to annual fees they pay for the permit.

Under the amended bylaw, someone with an alarm system can now only have three false alarms before they face a financial penalty. The “reinstatement fee” is as much as $90 for residential alarms and $300 for a large business. And if the city pulls the permit a second time, the fees are higher.

The bylaw also has new rules that alarm-monitoring companies have to follow. Under the old bylaw, there was a requirement that the company must “attempt to make contact” with the homeowner or business before calling police. The amended bylaw states the companies “must contact” either the permit holder or another designated person before contacting police. The bylaw calls those contacts a “key-holder reference.”

Richmond said he’s confident the number of false alarms will drop because a study in the Chicago area showed requiring alarm-monitoring companies to make a second phone call led to major reductions of false alarms, ranging from 25 and 56 per cent.

However, Peter Hodson, the owner of Orion Security, one of many companies that installs security alarms, fears police response time — currently averaging 13 minutes — will be longer if the permit holder or the alternative contact can’t be reached immediately.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Council ponders rolling back closing times from 3 a.m. to 2 a.m.

Frances Bula
Sun

Vancouver bar owners are launching a strong offensive in preparation for a council decision next week on whether to roll back bar closing times to 2 a.m., saying police just want a return to a Sleepy Hollow city.

In a confidential letter to Mayor Larry Campbell, the owners also say police should focus more on “life safety rather than lifestyle concerns.”

The charges are in response to an extremely negative evaluation by police of the late-night bar closing times the COPE council initiated 18 months ago.

“While the police department have long been asking for a return to Sleepy Hollow, we suggest that you maintain your vision of a progressive city with a vibrant and responsible nightlife,” the owners’ letter says.

In a report going to council Nov. 18, Deputy Chief Bob Rich, who supports returning to a 2 a.m. closing, states bluntly:

“It is my opinion that there are now too many liquor seats in too small an area and we have reached a tipping point where public safety is going to remain an issue. This has become the place to be in the Lower Mainland for a certain type of patron that welcomes disorder and also for members of crime groups who are willing to engage in open street violence.”

A memo from the police department’s liquor co-ordinator is equally scathing.

“The experiment has not been a success from a public safety point of view, with increased violent crime in the test area,” wrote Pam Ruschke, who said the benefits promised by the later closing hours — a decrease in illegal drinking places, a trickle-out at closing time, and a reduction in noise and disorder — have not been realized.

City staff, however, are not taking a position on the issue — leaving it up to council to decide. But if the decision is to continue with 3 a.m. closings after the trial period ends Dec. 31, they say the city should obtain the legal right to roll back the hours of establishments that cause problems.

In its letter to Campbell, the owners’ group — Barwatch — says Ruschke’s memo “contains wholesale inaccuracies and, frankly, does not represent in the least the reality of the situation downtown on Friday and Saturday nights.”

The letter, signed by John Teti, the chair of the 25-member group of bars that have been allowed to stay open past the standard closing hours, rebuts Ruschke’s assessments point by point, saying:

– The number of illegal drinking places — “firetraps run with complete immunity to the law” — has been reduced from 27 to almost nothing.

– Gun use is not increasing downtown because of bar closing hours, but because of the increase in the drug trade.

– The nightly reports provided by the private security company the bars have hired indicate no increase in disorderly behaviour outside the norm for a weekend downtown.

Besides deciding on whether to roll back to a 2 a.m. closing, councillors will also have to make a decision at some point about who should pay the $900,000-a-year bill that police say is a direct cost of the late-night closings.

For the past year, bar owners have been paying a kind of surtax, based on the number of seats in their establishments, to cover the extra cost of policing. That has generated $700,000.

Teti said owners have been pressing to have this fee eliminated. “It isn’t really right we should be paying a user fee to the police,” he said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

David Hogben
Sun

Four weeks after police stormed a Burnaby condominium unit, blasting its door off and rendering nearby suites uninhabitable, residents of the 26-floor tower are still being put up in a nearby hotel.

The damaged occurred Oct. 9 after a metalworker with suspected psychiatric problems, and a firearm, held police at bay for over four days. RCMP demolition experts eventually had to use a large amount of explosives to blow in the heavily reinforced door to his 20th-floor suite.

“It was definitely loud, kind of like a gunshot,” said resident Dave Magnusson, who lives two floors above.

The force of the blast damaged light fixtures, pried doors off hinges and cracked wallboard in up to 10 suites, whose residents will spend yet more weeks in a nearby hotel.

Even residents on other floors were affected.

“It’s definitely a nuisance,” said Martin Kendell, who lives on the 10th floor. Kendell said he must leave his suite 10 minutes earlier than usual if he wants to keep an appointment, because only one of three elevators is functioning.

RCMP Sgt. John Ward said it will still be a while before the residents can return. “I can tell you that they are not going back within the next week or so, that is for sure.”

A visit to the 20th floor revealed a scene that looked like a construction site.

Walls separating the condominium suites from the common hallway were merely metal studs, hanging sheets of plastic and plywood sheets.

Ward said the scene probably looks worse now than it did immediately after the blast. He said the walls had to be removed so inspectors could ensure no damage was done to concrete foundations.

One 20th-floor resident, Myles Robson, said he is upset with the quality of the hotel he was placed in, but said he would not identify it at the request of the RCMP.

“It’s embarrassing to have people over,” said Robson, who said he and his roommate are accustomed to better surroundings. He said, however, he did not fault the RCMP for the way they handled the incident.

It is still too soon to estimate the cost of the damage, but Ward said it will be substantial.

He said he would not be surprised if the cost of the repairs and hotel bills comes in at more than $100,000. He said it will probably be less than $500,000.

Whatever the bill comes to, Ward said, it will not drain the Burnaby RCMP budget. He said the force has a contingency fund to cover such incidents.

Events began on the evening of Oct. 6 when the rope of a window-washer’s suspended platform outside the tower was cut.

Fortunately, the window-washer was not on the platform at the time.

Police were called to the building at 3970 Carrigan Court in Burnaby. They surrounded the tower and attempted unsuccessfully to coax the man out.

All attempts to negotiate failed, said Ward.

“We exhausted every possible means of trying to get the gentleman to leave his suite. We were concerned for his safety,” Ward said of the decision to blast out the door of the man’s suite around dinner time on Saturday, Oct. 9.

“The intelligence we had indicated that he had at least one [firearm] in the suite.”

Once the door was blown off, police sent a robot in to check out the residence.

The uninjured man was taken into custody and sent for an assessment of his mental health.

Ward said one review of the use of the explosive has already concluded that an appropriate amount of force was used. Another routine investigation is being conducted, but, Ward said, the fact that no one was injured in a long, potentially dangerous standoff indicates the operation was well conducted.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Kim Pemberton
Sun

Have you ever walked into a building and it just felt right?

You may not have been able to explain why, but there are invisible reasons that some places are more spiritually uplifting and healthy than others, says Vancouver architect Rodney Cottrell.

The 46-year-old is one of the few architects in North America consciously working at creating “holistic” spaces in the built environment. He is also the founder of the only registered “holistic architectural” firm in Canada. (There are about two dozen in the U.S., he says.)

“It’s combining energetic and physical aspects of form to create space,” explains Cottrell.

“It’s beyond energy efficiency to include human energy and earth energy. It comes across as a bit esoteric to the bricks-and-mortar people I work with in the building industry, but if you take a look at the last 10,000 years of human experience and knowledge, why wouldn’t you want to learn from that instead of ignoring it?”

That means Cottrell’s work not only deals with traditional architecture but incorporates such concepts as feng shui, sacred geometry, Platonic solids (spheres, pyramids, cubes), and golden proportions (a geometric equation where everything “fits perfectly”).

“It’s a case of bringing in all that knowledge and looking at a given site, a given client, to create the best space,” he says.

Knowing a client’s date, time and place of birth, Cottrell says, helps when applying feng shui principals to their living space. Feng shui is the Chinese practice of positioning objects based on a belief that qi, the vital force that sustains all living things, must flow freely in a healthy environment.

Placing a building’s main entrance on the east side, where “fresh, new untainted energies would enter each day” would be an example of applying feng shui to architecture, Cottrell says.

While he realizes all this may sound like “hocus-pocus” to some, Cottrell believes it will become more commonplace in the future — particularly in a place such as Vancouver, where so many people embrace an “organic, holistic lifestyle,” he says.

“There’s something about the energy of this particular part of the world that when you follow your heart, things spark. . . . I strongly believe that when you close your mind to something you close the door.

“We are already world leaders as a building and design community, but people still seem to be largely blind to the making of space — pulling in the ancient with the best of the modern.”

Cottrell says he himself came to practise holistic architecture by fate.

After getting his urban geography degree in 1981 from the University of B.C., his goal was to work in town planning and become “Mr. Brady with the big house and beautiful wife,” he says.

But there were no jobs available for town planners in this economically depressed time. Fate stepped in, and Cottrell learned by chance that King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, known as the “builder king,” was on a global search to find astronomers to build the world’s largest optical observatory. Cottrell took a crash course in astronomy and applied for the job.

He was one of 600 Canadian applicants, and ultimately among the 12 selected who were then flown to Saudi Arabia. On top of a mountain in the desert one night, Cottrell says, a profound experience determined his course.

“I had an epiphany — no voice of god or flash of light — but it was a total instant imparting of knowledge that everything is connected and everything is conscious. That moment changed my life. I began to search for human knowledge to incorporate into my life.”

After two years of working for the king of Saudi Arabia, he returned to Canada and pursued a degree in architecture at Carleton University, where he graduated in 1990. In 1997 he registered his holistic architectural firm and began applying ancient knowledge in his architectural work. Born and raised in Victoria, Cottrell came back to B.C. because he appreciates the earth’s energy here — particularly in Victoria, Vancouver and Nelson.

These places, he believes, are well suited for residential developments because they are “much more centered” than other parts of the Lower Mainland.

“The earth has its own energy,” he says. “There are huge amounts of energy that flow from the mountain to the valley towards the sea. We need to be in places of repose and calm, especially residential areas.”

Cottrell says Richmond, much of the Fraser Valley and New Westminster from an “energetic level happen to be parts where the [earth’s] energy is sweeping across the landscape.

“In Vancouver the energy is starting to get calm, but further upstream and into the narrow part of the funnel around New Westminster, it’s a more vibrant, active, restless energy,” he says.

Nelson, he adds, has a nice energy because “it’s held within the palm of the mountains in such a way [that] the energy neither stagnates nor rushes across the town of Nelson.”

Cottrell says every place, every room, imparts a feeling for the people who live there.

“When you walk in you [know] whether it feels good or not. Holistic architecture is about love and celebration. Those are the key words,” he says, then quickly adds: “My field is challenging. I wouldn’t want to be seen as the consummate New Age person.

“I still love the study of quantum physics, and I have a demanding scientific and logical side to my mind which is constantly in dialogue with this other side,” he says.

But, he says with a smile, it’s his intuitive side that always wins out.

HOMEWORKS

Besides his work in holistic architecture, Rodney Cottrell is the coordinator of a unique outreach program run by the Architectural Institute of B.C. (AIBC) called Architects in Schools.

The program promotes public awareness, education and advocacy regarding architecture and is aimed at students from kindergarten to Grade 12.

The program, founded in 1994 by AIBC, focuses on promoting the study of the built environment as art, science and as a manifestation of social values and ideals.

B.C. architects, intern architects and architectural students work in partnership with interested school districts, schools and teachers to develop meaningful classroom activities related to the built environment. Volunteers are also available to speak on architecture as a career choice.

For more information on Architects in Schools contact AIBC’s communications department at (604) 683-8588, ext. 308 or
e-mail [email protected].

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

An energetic group of volunteers restores a Marpole home to its simple working-class glory

Shelley Fralic
Sun

It’s a sturdy little house, small by modern-day standards, but solidly rooted in history on a Marpole side street just north of the Fraser River.

Its gambrel roof, wood siding and compact living space — built by a local carpenter in 1912 and typical of a Vancouver working-class house of the period — tell the story of a community.

Which is exactly why the Marpole Museum and Historical Society thinks the house at 8743 Southwest. Marine Drive should be preserved.

Evelyn Bulteel has a more personal reason. She’s 65 now, but in 1939, the year she was born, her family lived in the cottage that today bears her family name.

The Colbourne House, bought by her parents Henry and May in 1936, would be home to their family of five until 1982, when Evelyn’s widowed mother moved out and into an apartment.

The house was then bought by a young couple, who Bulteel says weren’t thrilled with cooking on the wood stove, and then by the city, which rented it out for a number of years before it was abandoned and overrun — and almost destroyed — by squatters.

Today, Colbourne House is being meticulously restored by an energetic group of volunteers, including Bulteel.

In 1994, the city of Vancouver granted the society a 60-year lease on the house, and the fundraising since has attracted private donations and a recent cash injection from the B.C. Gaming Commission.

The cost of the renovation, so far, is about $250,000 and the volunteers hope to have the job done by next summer.

“It’s neat to save a working man’s house, rather than a Shaughnessy mansion,” says Bulteel, who still lives in the community and joined the project 10 years ago after the society tracked her down.

“It’s nice to see it come back to life.”

Jan Wilson is also among the area residents leading the restoration charge, and says the shared vision for Colbourne House is that it be returned to the community, in all its simplistic glory.

Schools will be invited to tour it, and social events will be held in the back garden, which is part of the adjacent city-owned William S. Mackie park.

It is hoped that seniors in the area will use the restored house for a meeting place.

“It’s meant to be a little museum, a living museum,” says Wilson, “but this is an everyman’s house and it’s important that it not be fussy.”

Which means there’s a great deal of function, but little grandeur in the place. The furniture and fittings now being gathered and installed might once have come from Woodward’s, or ordered from the Sears catalogue.

Today, the main floor — kitchen with nook, dining room, living room and bathroom with a clawfoot tub — is showing signs of its once busy past. The fir floors have been refinished, there are donated schoolhouse lights to install and the original kitchen cupboards are awaiting new hardware.

The top floor, accessed by a narrow stairway with a hinged riser on the bottom step for storage, has a cramped landing and three tiny closetless bedrooms, one with a whimsical doorway that requires one to stoop to enter.

The basement, raised and refitted with an outside elevator to allow handicapped access to the upper public floors, will serve as the society’s office, and has a new kitchen, rental meeting room and additional bathrooms.

Outside, heritage paint colours and fresh landscaping have given the old place a new polish.

The Colbourne family has donated the original dining table and chairs, as well as the gramophone and wringer washer, along with some books and accessories.

But the house still needs a wood stove, not necessarily in working order, as well as iron beds, area rugs, linens, pictures and all manner of household goods, circa 1912 through the 1930s.

They’re hoping to have it prettied up in time for a Nov. 20 open house, sort of a sneak peek Christmas present.

Meanwhile, the society’s website has historical photographs, and is maintaining a log of the restoration process.

Says Bulteel, whose memories of the house include playing on the sand dunes down at the river, listening to the late-night rattle of the interurban, and having chickens and a big vegetable garden:

“My father loved living in Marpole and I think he’s looking down and saying, ‘Great.'”

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Sun

All the time she was growing up Peggy McConnell’s dad warned her away from a career in a corporate cubicle.

A business owner and entrepreneur himself, he encouraged his daughter to be her own boss.

It took McConnell more than 20 years in the working world to heed his advice but now at 41, she has embraced the frenetic lifestyle of the fledgling entrepreneur with an enthusiasm that would have made her dad proud.

A blond dynamo who doesn’t like to sit still, McConnell has channelled her energy into a service that has her running around for others: The Errand Girls Services Inc. (www.errandgirls.ca). A personal concierge service for time-strapped singles and families, The Errand Girls does everything from stocking fridge shelves to sourcing the best birthday gift.

Along the way they have previewed multi-million homes for particular renters, filled in as black-garbed witnesses for a somewhat unconventional wedding (“that was an easy job. Nothing to do but just stand there,” says McConnell) and rushed forgotten airline tickets out to harried travellers who found themselves ticket-less at the terminal.

It’s a concept that is catching on but still McConnell finds herself explaining her work.

“When people hear concierge they ask what hotel I am with,” she said.

The company evolved from one that McConnell first envisioned would have an event-management focus. When she and her younger sister Joanie McConnell first launched the idea they found themselves helping to run people’s lives.

“When we first started we thought we would be an event-management company but that evolved into errand girls becoming like a personal assistant,” said McConnell. “We realized we were doing more than planning people’s parties — we were managing their lives.”

The pair linked up with Lori Petrie Mock, an event organizer with her own company, Laughing Peach Productions, and McConnell took on business partner Robyn Simons to help provide a full-service organization that would provide everything from party planning to prescription pickup. In its latest coup, The Errand Girls has been named the concierge network affiliate for Vancouver for XPACS (Xtreme Professional Athletic Concierge Services) and it has opened offices in Toronto and Whistler.

“We want to be known as — ‘if we can’t do it, we will find someone reputable to help you,’ ” said McConnell.

McConnell who still has a part-time corporate gig, working three shifts a week in computers at the Workers Compensation Board as a systems operator, said while the company has been running for the past two years, it has really taken off in the past 12 months.

“This last year has been a whirlwind,” she said. “If we can repeat the same success in 2005 that we had in 2004, we’ll be good.”

Like many in today’s corporate world, McConnell was prompted to create her own career by the uncertainty surrounding her job future.

Before she went to Workers’ Comp, she had worked in the information technology department of the Royal Bank, in a job here that disappeared when her department was shifted back east.

Now she worries the work she is doing will join the trend to outsourcing.

“Because of this constant threat in general, of outsourcing, a lot of us are thinking what will we do,” she said.

“We used to joke we’d get a job in the mailroom and now the mailroom is outsourced.”

McConnell, now the mother of two youngsters, aged 10 and 12, didn’t follow her father’s advice at first.

“My father was an entrepreneur who always worked for himself,” said McConnell of her dad, now deceased, who ran a successful cartage firm during his working career.

“He told me to stay away from the corporate world, but of course I fell into it.”

McConnell first ventured into the entrepreneurial world running a bed-and-breakfast from her Ladner home. But when her marriage broke up and the family home was sold, she had to find a new outlet for her business creativity and energy.

“I know my job as it is can’t go on forever,” said McConnell. “I have to be prepared.”

McConnell favours weekend work and nightshifts and a part-time job to free up weekdays to devote to the business.

“I tell people you can call me any time of the day or night, you’ll never know if I’ll be up,” she said.

“The phone starts ringing from Toronto any time after five o’clock in the morning.”

The pace is hectic but with many clients requiring tasks to be fulfilled — everything from watering plants and faxing bills and other important mail to clients in the film industry who are on the road for weeks at a time, to stocking a fridge for someone’s return home, to delivering Krispy Kreme doughnuts — she can plan her own schedule.

She charges $40 an hour on average, with different packages available and gift certificates like the one a Calgary man bought for friends as a present on the birth of their new baby.

McConnell’s office is run from her home on a huge working table, along with computers, faxes, printers and other office paraphernalia, while her two children do homework at one end of the table and the business buzzes around them.

“I guess the whole point of all this is if I wasn’t running this business, I would be running a marathon,” said McConnell. “I have too much energy, it’s not for everybody.

“I could never sit somewhere eight to four.”

As the business grows, McConnell hopes her role will shift to focus on administration for the most part with added staff to take on the job of running hither and thither answering errand requests.

“I don’t want to be running around, I want to spend more time with my children, my goal is to be in the office,” she said.

While McConnell is finding success — “nobody’s starving,” she says of the financial rewards, “just a little hungry once in a while, but it’s good to be hungry because you work all that much harder,” she said, adding an entrepreneur’s existence isn’t for everyone.

“It is all good and well for somebody to say, ‘start your own business,’ but it takes dedication and determination, and I have both.

“I’m definitely not a corporate, sitting in a cubicle, eight-to-four person.”