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We moved to Norgate Park in 1950, and that’s when I first visited the Tomahawk Barbecue. A little background: I was a skinny eleven-year old, frightened of the new neighbourhood, and not without reason. On the east of Norgate Park were about 750 ‘wartime houses’, which were specifically built for the shipbuilders that had moved to B.C. to work in their trades at the booming shipworks such as Burrard Drydock and the related suppliers. Kids from here were tough: the war had been over for some time, the work was drying up, many new families had fallen apart and there were lots if what we now call ‘social problems’. In those days, from a kids point of view, it meant drinking, gang wars, theft and bullying. Hot rods were status symbols, and the ‘in’ dress of the day for teenage males was pants which if memory serves were called ‘drapes’ or ‘chinos’, which had a narrow ankles, ballooning knees and double-buttoned flies with a great many buttons. If I saw someone wearing a pair of those and a wallet on a chain I got out of the way.
On the west of Norgate Park was (and is) the Indian Reserve. Only recently, when I read Chief Simon Baker’s autobiography ‘Khot-La-Cha’, did I realize that his children – I remember Kenny, Peter and Pauline – were the first Indian children to attend B.C. public schools, at Simon’s insistence (he paid their fees). Despite the familiarity that attending Capilano School created between us, there was a gulf between the Reserve and Norgate Park that was just as menacing as that between the housing development and the Wartime Houses. It was an equally scary place to me. Right in the middle was the Tomahawk Barbecue. On Marine Drive in those days, it nestled under tall broad-leaved trees where the Norgate Shopping Centre is now, only a few feet away from its present location on Phillip Avenue, just south of the Mercedes-Benz dealership. It was quite a place. I remember that it had a front and a back section, with those red round bar stools with a chrome band around the seats, and I remember that Chick Chamberlain, father of the present owner, presided over the restaurant with great patrician dignity. It had, as a modern concession, a drive-in section. The White Spot had recently opened at Park Royal, and cars were where it was at.
But what I remembered most of all was the stunningly enormous collection of Indian artifacts that Chick had collected over his years and years in the same location. It was truly the most impressive thing an eleven-year old could imagine. There were totems by the hundred, baskets by the dozen, spears, bows and arrows, stone implements, decorated paddles, and mask after mask after mask: hundreds and hundreds of items, hanging from the rafters and piled high on the shelves. There was the odd incongruous item: I remember an elephant gun, I think a muzzle loader, that seemed to be eight feet long.
It’s only in recent years that I came to realize how far-sighted Mr. Chamberlain was to have realized the unique cultural values of the things he collected, and the originality and pride, he put into displaying them. It was a very ‘odd’ and wonderful thing to do in those days, when the ‘culture’ of the 1950’s was about anything else than ‘old’ – it was about new cars, television, washing machines, and refrigerators. He had the courage to display his convictions, and his descendents continue that honorable and dignified tradition in the Tomahawk restaurant of today.
Mr. Chamberlain, I found out years later, earned over many years a reputation with the Band members as an honest, fair and kind buyer of Indian handicrafts and art. He could be relied upon in times of need, he advanced money on many occasions, and he always kept his word. I remember him as somewhat stern (hey, I was just a kid) but it just occurred to me that even when I was a child he knew my name, and used it. I thought nothing of it at the time, but I think a lot of it now.
Peter Speck is the former owner and publisher of the North Shore News.
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