Description of Historic Place

Westacre Farms is an agricultural landscape located in the East Haney neighbourhood of Maple Ridge, B.C. The entry is a curving, tree-lined drive that leads to a house and farm compound. To the north of the house, a widening of Coho Creek has resulted in the establishment of a wetland area surrounded by mature native Maple trees.

Heritage Value

Westacre Farms has historic, cultural and educational value for its associations with the early agricultural development of Maple Ridge, the history of Japanese-Canadian settlement in the area, and for its protected wetland and wildlife habitat.

Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows were once home to a large, vibrant Japanese-Canadian population. Immigration from Japan to Canada increased greatly in the first decades of the 1900s, and Japanese settlement in Maple Ridge began with the arrival of Jiro Inouye in 1907. These new settlers were mainly farmers, and although they established farms throughout the District, most chose to farm near Haney, in the area north of Dewdney Trunk Road. Anti-Japanese feeling was evident at the time; in 1919 the Agricultural Association barred Japanese from their Directorate, and three years later decided not to solicit any further subscriptions from them. The population of Maple Ridge was almost a third Japanese-Canadian in the 1930s who formed an important part of the community. The site of Westacre Farms was subdivided in 1908 from a larger property owned by Archibald Baillie; the access road to the south, now 124 Avenue, was called Baillie Road at the time. Yazayemon Tamura owned this property and the adjacent site to the west from 1912 to 1921; in 1921 this twenty-acre parcel was transferred to his brother Jube Tamura; they were both poultry farmers. In 1940, there were 29 Japanese-Canadian families engaged in the poultry business in Haney, with a total of 18,800 birds, all of the 'White Leghorn' variety. In 1942, the Japanese-Canadian population was forcibly evacuated from the Coast, and their properties were confiscated.

The Secretary of State of Canada owned this confiscated property until 1944, when it was transferred to the Director of The Veterans' Land Act. It was then rented out, and in the 1950s was the site of a business that provided therapeutic services for racehorses; a large deep concrete pool still exists where a trainer could exercise the horses while they swam, saving wear and tear on their legs. The curving drive that runs through the site appears to be part of a racetrack. Gordon L. and Anne Margaret Clark acquired this farm property in 1963, and built a new house in 1968. Josine and Adriaan Eikelenboom acquired the property in 1979, and were soon hosting musical events in the great room, just as they had done in their native Holland before they came to Maple Ridge; this series of modest house concerts led to the formation of the Maple Ridge Music Society in 1983. There is a part of the property where Coho Creek has been enlarged into a pond, now a wetland that is a home to herons, ducks and geese. After the death of her husband in 2001, Josine Eikelenboom committed to protecting the land from future development, and has dedicated ten acres of the site through a legal covenant.

SOURCE: Maple Ridge Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of Westacre Farms include its:
- location in East Haney, in an agricultural area
- continuous residential and agricultural use
- rolling agricultural landscape, with cleared open fields, curved entry drive lined with mature fruit trees, 1968 house with later additions, barns and outbuildings, equestrian therapeutic concrete swimming pool, numerous trees and shrubs, and natural springs and creeks
- remnants of original plantings from previous house and garden, including cultivated bushes, two Prune Plums, two King apple trees, and heirloom daffodils
- protected wetland pond and natural habitat created by the widening of Coho Creek, surrounded by mature native Maple trees