her to develop a recreational interest in hiking and climbing.
She was thirteen years old when they arrived in Vancouver, and it didn’t take long for Phyllis to miss the freedom she and Betty had in the Kootenays.
“Don’t you wish,” she sighed wistfully to her sister, “that we could just go out the back door and hitch a ride to the end of the road. We would be nearer the mountains then, and we could just find an old trail and follow it wherever it would go. If we got tired, that would be it for the day and we could come home.”
“It is too far to the mountains from here.” Betty replied. “And besides, Mum and Dad would never let us go off by ourselves like we did before. Maybe we could go to Stanley Park one day soon though.”
Stanley Park officially opened in 1888 as a city park intended to be both a natural preserve and a recreational space. It lies to the west of the downtown core of the city of Vancouver and stretches over four square kilometres to include old growth cedar and fir forest. It is bounded on three sides by ocean and beaches and is wild and largely undeveloped. In the early 1900s Stanley Park was a wonderful retreat for Vancouverites. Driveways ran through the middle of it and circled around “The Hollow Tree,” an enormous western red cedar measuring almost thirty metres in diameter and estimated to be over 1000 years old. Automobiles, pedestrians, horseback riders but mainly cyclists crowded the park on weekends, touring to Brockton Point and Prospect Point, where teahouses catered to thirsty and hungry visitors. Stanley Park allowed the city dwellers to experience wildness, albeit close to home, and was one means for Phyllis to keep in touch with the outdoors.
“Phyllis, let’s go to the tennis club on Saturday,” her father reminded her mid-week. Frank Munday was glad that their move to Vancouver made it possible for him to take up tennis again. In Ceylon, he had been the colonial men’s champion for the island but hadn’t had much opportunity to play since then. Living on Kootenay Lake in the bush precluded the possibility of tennis courts or many organized recreational activities. Once in Vancouver, though, Frank James applied for membership at the Brockton Point Tennis Club and soon became renowned as a veteran player. In 1907 he was fifty-eight years old and one of the more senior players at the club. He loved the sport and really wanted to make a champion out of his eldest daughter, who showed promise.
Phyl’s natural agility, nimbleness, and strength quickly put her at an advantage playing amongst girls of her own age who were less active generally and had little awareness of the outdoors activities that contributed to Phyllis’s athleticism. While Phyl had roamed the hillsides and scrambled up the slopes above Kootenay Lake, girls her age in Vancouver had participated in few athletic pursuits. Girls invariably wore skirts or dresses and shoes designed for indoor rather than outdoor hardiness. Swimming outdoors in the ocean was an acceptable seasonal pursuit, although modesty forbade bathing suits, and girls went in fully clothed. Not an easy way to learn to swim.
Horseback riding – sidesaddle of course – was also acceptable, as was rowing or sailing in English Bay. Exertion was discouraged, in part because of the difficulties perspiration presented for laundering clothes that required hand washing and careful ironing. Bicycles were just beginning to gain acceptance, but for women and girls, sitting astride the wheels and pedalling vigorously was difficult to do while wearing long skirts and petticoats.
“Sure, I’ll come, Dad,” said Phyllis. “But I really want to spend some of the weekend in the wilds. Will you take me?”
“We just went to Grouse Mountain a few weeks ago. Why do you want to go up there again? You’ve been already.” Phyllis sighed. She had a feeling her dad wanted to make her a tennis champion too. But there was something about getting away often, “in the wilds” as the family called it, that appealed to her more than anything else. Even though she and her family had just recently spent the day and had a wonderful picnic on the sunny lower slopes of Grouse Mountain, she wanted to go again. Although she couldn’t really articulate why, it was important to her that she get away from the city and go to the local hills, to the forests.
“It’s a whole day’s planning to go, Phyl,” her dad explained, listing off their route, even though Phyllis knew exactly what it was. First they packed a picnic lunch. They filled glass jars with water and screwed the lids on snugly to prevent leaks, then carefully wrapped the jars in linen napkins to protect them from breakage. They prepared sandwiches of fresh bread spread with pickles and meats, added a few hard sweets to complete their feast, and packed everything into wicker picnic baskets or into a carefully rolled-up wool blanket.
Leaving the house, the family walked to the nearest streetcar stop to catch a trolley heading towards Columbia Avenue and the small ferry terminal on the shore of Burrard Inlet. The ferry carried foot passengers across Burrard Inlet to a small wharf on the North Shore. Disembarking from the ferry, the picnickers hiked to Lonsdale Avenue, one of only three arterial roads leading from the wharf. A streetcar that ran along Lonsdale helped a little bit with the journey. From the end of the streetcar line, the picnickers climbed the rest of the way by foot on woodland trails over hill and valley and along creek-beds up the mountain. It took over three hours’ travel time each way, which meant that if they wanted to spend most of the day “in the wilds” they had to make an early start, and return home late in the evening.
In 1912, Phyllis James and her Girl Guide company climbed to the top of Grouse Mountain in their full
dress uniform and raised the Union Jack flag. Phyl is on the right with her sister Esmée (Betty) beside her.
2
Learning by the Book
At church one spring Sunday in 1910 Phyllis discovered that the local boys had been offered an opportunity she thought should be available to girls as well. A troop of Boy Scouts was to be formed at St. James Church.
Boy Scouts, a brand-new movement for boys aged eleven to seventeen, was founded in England by Robert Baden-Powell. Scouting was intended to build character and self-reliance that would stay with boys throughout their adult life. Patriotic in nature and very British in outlook, Scouting quickly became a popular means to develop friendships and to be athletically active.
Meetings of the local Boy Scout troops were held weekly, often after school or in the evening. Boys learned and tested themselves in many practical aspects as they worked towards proficiency in a number of areas, each formally tested to earn a badge. Badges once earned were sewn on to the sleeves of the Scout uniform. The main thrusts of scouting – the camping and outdoor activities and the earning of badges – proved attractive challenges not only to boys, but also to many girls at the time. At the first national rally in England in 1909, it came as a great shock to Baden-Powell that a number of girls (registered using their first initials not first names) had actually crashed the organization. In response, Baden-Powell quickly appealed to his older sister Agnes and asked her to help form an equivalent movement for girls that they then called Girl Guides.
By 1910 Girl Guides had begun in England. Canada and the other Commonwealth countries would not be far behind. But since neither Phyllis nor her friends nor her mother knew about this development, Phyl begged the boys’ Scoutmaster, James McDougall, to allow a Girl Scout troop to form. When he agreed, she convinced her mother to sign on as Scout Mistress. Now all she needed was a minimum of eight girls to form a patrol. This was a very easy requirement, as Phyl quickly recruited her sister and six others. Phyllis appointed herself Acting Patrol Leader. According to the Boy Scout regulations, at fifteen she was not yet old enough to be a full Patrol Leader.
At first the troop had only these eight girls. Quickly, through word of mouth and notices at Sunday school, more girls signed up. The average age was between ten and twelve years. Phyl admonished each new recruit: “It is important that we work hard and learn. In time there will be lots of us, but for now we have