Author explores subdivision's history

Trelle Morrow, local retired architect and author, has written his 16th book of his Fort George Heritage Preservation series.

This one is about the history of the Nechako subdivision called A Milestone on the Nechako.

Morrow said the development of the Nechako subdivision was a turning point in how neighbourhoods were planned in Prince George.

Morrow is a member of the local Heritage Commission and he said his book was inspired by the work being done about residential heritage properties.

"Fostering heritage awareness in the city is very important," Morrow said. "I have isolated four or five heritage recognition areas which I am attempting to write about."

The Nechako subdivision is the first.

"I got interested in it because I lived there for 10 years when it was first developed," Morrow said. "It is a significant development for the city of Prince George from a planning point of view because after the 1913 plan was put out that Fred Burden surveyed for the city on behalf of the Grand Trunk Pacific there was no changes made to the city for 40 years," Morrow said. "In 1953 the city decided to expand and it expanded westward from Carney Street."

Carney Street was the original cutoff for the city on the 1913 plan, he added.

The city had initially expanded out to Quinn Street and the Nechako subdivision is part of the 1953 expansion but they didn't do anything with it right away, Morrow added.

"By 1958 the city was really strapped for housing," he said. "There had been some settlement after the Second World War but with the announcement of pulp mills and expansion of the railway northward the city began to expand but there were no houses. We had all kinds of forestry people coming into Prince George at that time because the forest industry was starting to boom and the city was in dire straits."

In the book, Morrow talks about how alderman Charles Cranston approached CMHC to plan and develop the Nechako subdivision, how the design of it went a whole other way from its local predecessors and much of the architectural work featured the Modern Movement.

The book is sold at Books & Co., the UNBC book store, and can be found at the Prince George Public Library.