Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Manton Mansion

The house at 720 Edgewood Road was built in 1956 for $12,000 by T. Wesik. After that it was J. Donald and Vivienne M. Manton all the way. They had bought the house by 1960 when J. Donald was the branch manger at Manton Brothers. Manton Brothers Ltd. had their head office in Toronto, Ontario. They were a printing equipment and suppliers company. Their motto was "we can supply all classes of new and rebuilt printing equipment." In 1971 J. D. and was branch manager of a different company, this time Canadian Linotype. And in 1980 both he and Vivienne are listed as doing that job. In 1991 not only were J. D. and Vivienne retired but they had a new resident in their house, Kathryn Manton. Kathryn was a ward clerk and Lion's Gate Hospital. All three of them were still living in the house in the year 2000 and 2008/10 as indicated by the phone books of those years. That comes to probably 20 years for Kathryn and at least 54 years for the Manton's.

As can be seen in the photo above that the house at 720 Edgewood Road would be  easily converted to a convenient home for two families. This style of house in North Vancouver often has a basement, actually, downstairs suite. The configuration of the rooms both up and downstairs are about the same. You can see the large picture window that would be the living room in both of the suites.

The house at 720 is on the corner of a 1 block section of Edgewood Road between Skyline Drive and Ranger Avenue.This area of North Vancouver is known as Canyon Heights. Edgewood Road itself goes passed the south side of Handsworth Secondary School and dead ends at MacKay Creek Park.

Demolition: Permit applied for February 2010.
Photo: Taken in February 2010 by SW.
Thank you: To neighbors for the clarification of the location of the house.