A look back at one of Coquitlam’s oldest buildings as demolition looms

A nearly 90-year-old Maillardville building is about to get a date with the wrecking ball, following Coquitlam’s recently-issued request for proposals.

The city is searching for a contractor to demolish and remove the 1121 Brunette Avenue building while also conducting hazardous material abatement.

Coquitlam, 1935

Anne Bohonos Protheroe recalled getting a job at the then-brand new hairdresser in 1935, according to an interview published in Coquitlam 100 Years Reflections of the Past.

Protheroe, who would quickly buy the business and rename it Anne’s Beauty Shoppe, remembered the days of 25-cent haircuts, $1.95 perms, and Coquitlam’s gravel roads.

“Coquitlam was mostly a farming district,” she said, describing the abundance of chickens and horses, as well as the cows that would mosey through her yard.

Despite the city’s pastoral charm, Protheroe was working constantly.

“Although it was not all that busy, the shop was open all the time, and I worked seven days a week,” she said, adding there were no tips in those days. “All my life I knew nothing but work.”

Her husband, she added, was a different story.

James Trevor Protheroe, Trev, was an entertainer and an inventor, stitching together an artificial Christmas tree years before they were popular, Protheroe noted.

Trev made up for his lack of industriousness with gregariousness, and maybe a little luck.

After surviving a typhoon while aboard a freighter, Trev ended up in a Hong Kong hospital for three months in the late 1930s. The ship that was supposed to take him back to North America was sunk, according to Protheroe.

They married in 1939 and immediately set about expanding the business, although Protheroe did the work while Trev told tales.

“Even when we were building this place, Trev was not a worker,” she said. “I can always see him sitting on the plank, and the kids would be wheeling and digging all the dirt out, and Trev would sit there smoking, and telling them stories. He would have everyone in stitches.”

Trev’s Fountain Lunch soon opened on Brunette Avenue, offering one sandwiches for 15 cents or two doughnuts for a nickel.

“It took a few years before we got it going, little by little, and there was not much money around then, just what the beauty shop made,” she said. “We were extending, doing nothing but extending, extending and extending.”

At one point, they added a men’s club, which didn’t pan out, as well as a kindergarten, which did.

Their closest neighbout was city hall which, in those days, had a jail in the basement. However, the only constable was usually too busy to come in for coffee, Protheroe explained.

The beauty shop became a mainstay for Maillardville residents on their way to be married. The lunch counter also did well, serving porridge to firefighters stating their shift and offering a game of chance to workers taking the scenic route home after a shift.

Trev ran a punchboard, offering customers a chance to win a $5 box of chocolates if they hit the winning slot. (“It is illegal now, I guess,” Protheroe noted.)

Some nights, they would show up after midnight and stay until 3 a.m. listening to Trev’s stories, Protheroe recalled.

The beauty shop closed in the late 1960s but the diner kept serving up food for decades afterwards.

“I minded my own business, loved the people and never interfered in their lives,” Protheroe said.

Preserving Trev’s

The city is planning to preserve the building’s architectural dimensions through Lidar, or light detection and ranging.

The contractor is tasked with breaking up and removing the foundation as well as the concrete basement floor. Once all traces of the old building are removed, the site is et to be graded and capped with pit run gravel.