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Neighbour says house is history

A local resident is on a mission to save a tiny cottage style house from being torn down.

A local resident is on a mission to save a tiny cottage style house from being torn down. A 75-year old house on Zenith Road faces demolition because the property owners wish to build a bigger, sounder structure and neighbour Meg Fellowes is on a campaign to save it.

"The heritage of Squamish is vanishing rapidly," said Fellowes. "Squamish needs a plan to save historical buildings and furnishings. We owe it to future generations."

The little old house has been an important shelter for generations of pioneers and has made it into at least one historical document. In an interview for The Story Our Mountains Tell published in 1975, writer Jessie Rae quotes Mrs. Burt Rae (née Judd), born in Squamish in 1907, talking about the house she had called home.

"It was just a shack when we lived there," she said. "But it was ours."

She remembered that a professor of music and "a fellow by the name of Tasell" built the structure in the early 1930s. Another pioneering family, the Tuttins, bought the house and Ester Tuttin lived in it for decades.

The house's owners have agreed to donate the structure and Fellowes has appealed for help to the Squamish Historical Society, the Rotary Club, the West Coast Railway Heritage Park and District of Squamish council to relocate the house before the property owners receive a building permit and are forced to move forward with demolition.

Fellowes said she's received positive reactions to her suggestion to place the house on the Heritage Park property complementing the Brightbill House, which already sits on the site.

"It is wonderful to visit the Brightbill House in the Heritage Park and see the furnishings and imagine what it was like to live in such a house," she said. "It is astonishing to experience how small the houses once were. In Europe, many small cottages are great tourist draws. Lots of people want to visit them - it should be part of our tourism strategy."

Fellowes is also appealing to Squamish residents to help save historical artifacts by joining the Historical Society, talking to district councillors, writing letters to the editor and volunteering time or items of interest.

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