Yvonne Schmidt
Biography
Yvonne’s roots in North Vancouver go deep. Her grandfather came to the North Shore from England before the turn of the 20th century. Yvonne was born in the mid-1920s and was raised on Hendry and 9th Street, in a home surrounded by beautiful gardens. Yvonne was always active as a leader in the community—she was a member of the North Vancouver Arts Council, and also spearheaded the entire restoration project of St. Paul’s Church alongside the Squamish Nation. Yvonne’s family albums chronicle a life of activity and leisure during the 1950s and ’60s.
Active Outlooks
“Oh yes, in North Vancouver a number of people had tennis courts. There was quite an English component to the early settlement here, and tennis is an English family game, in a way. There was the North Vancouver Tennis Club that was along where the Upper Levels Highway is, with several courts, that you could belong to. We didn’t belong to it, actually, but it was there. There were about four of us who had tennis courts. We played back and forth, and often on the weekend we’d have a little tennis party. I was not very good but one of my brothers was a Junior Champion!
My parents loved their garden. We had the land from 9th down to 8th so our garden went down for a block and it was beautifully cultivated—lawns, rockeries, ponds and everything. There was a very flat area where we played croquet… and we had a bar between two huge dogwood trees where you could swing around and around.”
