The owner of the property from 1915 to 1916 was shown as A. Pharn of Vancouver.
In 1917 the owner was listed as J.B. Parham of the Canadian Fairbanks Morse Company.
Elizabeth McNeely purchased the property in 1922. Her husband was Charles McNeely of Kraft Foods and their children were Betty and Charles Jr., known both as Chas and Chuck, depending on the generation. The house was built in 1926 of interlocking beaded cedar, milled on the island. There was a gambrel-roofed building behind — the right side was the wood/tool shed, with access to a storage loft by a wall ladder, and the left side was a bedroom for the Finnish cook and her Finnish husband who took care of the wood supply and was the handyman for the property. Mrs. McNeely suffered from ill health and was carried through the woods in a homemade sedan chair. She died at Savary when Charles Jr. was very young. Eric Roberson thought that the first plane to come to Savary probably came for her.
On his wife’s death in 1930, the property passed to Charles McNeely. In the 1950s he sold to his lifelong friend Dr. Elmer Jones and wife Norma, on the condition that if his stepdaughter, Fran (m. Malkin), wished to buy it during the first five years of their purchase, the Joneses must sell it to her. Elmer and Norma Jones’ daughter is Margaretann.
During Dr. Jones’ month long summer vacation at Savary, his medical services were often required. At any time of the day or night there could be a knock on the door from a person needing help, and no one was ever turned away. As well, Dr. Jones made house calls on his bicycle. Russ Patrick, Dr. Jones’ nephew and a frequent visitor to the cottage, recalls that the dining room table occasionally became the operating table. He was the designated “keep-stove-stoked-with-wood hot water guy”, so there would always be hot water for wound cleansing. Dr. Jones and Norma, a trained nurse, dealt with many Savary emergencies — from simple, such as embedded slivers and fevers, to serious, as when Dr. Frank Turnbull suffered a lacerated back after being run over by a speedboat.
Many relatives and friends were summertime guests of the Joneses and both Margaretann and Russ recall that often the entire front porch became a sleeping porch enclosed by bamboo screens, full of children lined up in cots.
Margaretann spent summers at Savary until her late teens, and also brought her own family to the cottage, including daughters Anna and Ingrid Sander.
In 1991 the property was sold to Margaret Kalaski and her husband David. Margaret and her sisters Janie and Jeanne’s parents were close family friends of Elmer and Norma, and the girls called them auntie and uncle. The three girls had been frequent guests in the summer as children.
Margaret’s sister Janie Brown and her husband Larry purchased the property in 1998.
Published 2024
