- The Vancouver Sun - Queue, June 26, 2003
- The Last Tiny Spike aired on Shaw, June 26, 2003
- Small wonder of a model railroad
- Delta Optimist - Travel, October 13, 2001
- The Langley Advance News - Travel, October 12, 2001
- Chilliwack Times - October 12 2001
- Granville Island's Three Marvelous Museums
- Seattle Times - Travel, January 25 2001
- Miniature museums offer tiny peek at boating, fishing
and trains
- The Province, December 15th, 2000
- Creator of a hidden world
- The Vancouver Sun, December 14th, 2000
- Train buff a 'genius' with his hands
- The National Post, July 15 2000
- Collector shares his life's passions
- The Antique Journal, March 2000, San Diego
- Granville Island Museum Appeals to All
- The Vancouver Sun, Thursday, December 23, 1999
- Father's death leads to a lasting passion
- The Courier News
- Museums exhibit owner's childhood
The Vancouver Sun - Queue,
June 26, 2003
The Last Tiny Spike aired on Shaw, June 26, 2003
- Small wonder of a model railroad
John Keith-King could as well be King Kong, at least at this moment,
as he looms over one of the most detailed -- and most accessible --
model-train layouts in the world. The miniature landscape is the centrepiece
of a new documentary, The Last Tiny Spike, which airs tonight on Shaw.
It's a startling contrast in scale: Keith-King standing head and
shoulders above the meticulously crafted stands of fir, hemlock and
old growth red cedar that form a jaw-dropping recreation of the Fraser
River and Kettle Valleys. But here, behind an unassuming door on Granville
Island's Duranleau Street, you get the feeling anything is possible.
This is a place where childhood fantasy fuses with adult obsession.
Where kids and grown-ups alike can quench their thirst for adventure
and collecting and, in some deeper psychological sense, satiate their
desire for control over the world around them.
" If I think back on it, and when it all began, I think it was
around the time I was nine, when my father died and my uncles took
me under their collective wing," says Keith-King. "I had
an uncle Lloyd who made fishing lures out of broomsticks, and I was
fascinated by the process. He had these special rubber masks to give
the lure the scales. They were quite elaborate," he says, reaching
across the table to grab a chunk of brownish wood with what looks like
two tin propellers.
A closer look reveals a fish head, tiny scales and three dangling
double-hooks. "This was the only one my family could find. It's
hard to keep track of what happened to everything." As anthropologists
have learned over the years, we all leave a trail of stuff in our wake.
Whether it be the historic detritus of a human settlement, or the sentimental
crap we just can't part with, stuff can be a boon or burden. It can
reveal who we were, where we came from and what we loved. For Keith-King,
his obsession for fishing reels, model boats and railcars goes back
to when his uncles -- who all worked for the railroad in Ontario --
would take him away for weekends in the bush. "I was always riding
trains and hopping off in the middle of what seemed like nowhere, heading
down to some special fishing spot they knew about," he says. "I
think there was something about fishing, about being in the natural
environment -- and the industrial design -- that really stuck with
me."
For years, fishing was at the back of Keith-King's mind, but after
starting and operating his own successful sign-painting business as
a teen, it was architecture that emerged to become his career. Little
did he know, his architectural pursuits would lead him to the initial
development of Granville Island and to the creation of the Maritime
Market and Marina and, finally the Granville Island trio of museums:
the Sport Fishing Museum, the Model Ships Museum and the Model Train
Museum -- all housed in a building near the Granville Island gates.
Keith-King developed this building, along with several others on the
island and throughout Vancouver, and by selling them off gained the
financial freedom to indulge in his many passions, and amass large
and unique collections of model trains, ships, and fishing gear." I
don't think I ever said to myself, 'one day, I'm going to run a sport
fishing and model museum...' -- it just happened," he says. "It
certainly doesn't make a lot of money -- we're looking to break even
-- but there's something special here, and I like to share that feeling
with anyone else who cares.... It feels good when you see a kid's eyes
light up when they come through the door, and know that all the work,
all the hours of labour that went into just one small tree, were worth
it."
Delta Optimist - Travel, October 13, 2001
The Langley Advance News - Travel, October 12, 2001
Chilliwack Times - October 12 2001
- Granville Island's Three Marvelous Museum
The kid has ginger hair and freckles, and looks about five years
old. Tense with anticipation, he is staring at the railway track.
A locomotive shrieks and emerges out of a tunnel and, drawing
several carriages behind it, disappears around a bend. He flashes
me a gap-toothed grin. "Wow!" he breathes. "Cool!"
I am at the Granville Island Model Trains Museum and, like the
youngster, now excitedly peering at another section of the model
railway. I am "wowed" too. Laid out before me - floor
to ceiling - is an 80-foot long diorama, with five tracks covering
four levels.
The teeny trains, including the Royal Hudson, CN and CP railcars,
traverse a landscape resembling BC's Kettle Valley. They trundle,
chug and hoot past lakes, along mountain ledges, through tunnels,
over amazingly life like trestle bridges and weave through forests
of cedar, hemlock and fir trees - 6,000 of them to be exact. Each
branch of every tree has been individually glued into place. Mounted
on wooden struts overlaid by Styrofoam and bound together by fast-drying
orthopedic bandages, the entire display took Warren Jones -- a
gifted diorama artist - and a team of dedicated architects and
craftsmen over a year to complete.
And that's not all. Beechwood cabinets line the walls and on
their glass shelves stand thousands of miniature trains. It is,
in fact, the largest collection of toy trains on earth. They range
from gleaming brass miniature locomotives and wind-up trains from
the turn of the century to a pink train set, circa 1958, designed
for girls by Joshua Lionel Cowen --- a rare and valuable addition
to the Museum collection.
When he came up with the idea of the Granville Island Museums,
owner-curator John Keith-King had a couple of objectives in mind.
The first was to showcase the extraordinary skill of craftsmen
who lived and worked in this province. The second was to celebrate
in a unique way the joys of sports fishing, our West Coast marine
heritage and the history of naval vessels over the centuries.
The Sports Fishing Museum and the Model Ships Museum opened two
years ago. Then, recalling the magic of his boyhood fascination
with trains, Keith-King unveiled his latest addition to the museums
- a showstopper if ever there was one - the Model Trains Museum.
Despite the fact that I don't know one end of a rod from another,
the Sport Fishing Museum engrosses me for the better part of an
hour. Keen sports fishermen, on the other hand, will find enough
to mesmerize them for the entire day. Apart form the world's largest
collection of Hardy reels (including a rare Zane Grey valued around
$10,000), many of them crafted with a jeweler's precision, there
are fly-boxes, creels, glass minnow transporters, lures, nets,
gaffs, rods (over 500 of them), photographs, paintings and --
for me the most riveting of all - an enormous collection of mounted
fly-plates, each one an exquisite work of art.
The Model Ships Museum has its own wonders. The display of war
ships spans several centuries, from Admiral Nelson's HMS Victory
to a modern Russian titanium nuclear submarine. Keith-King points
out an example of engineering ingenuity: a US submarine which
can submerge and re-surface. It also fires underwater torpedoes,
has a periscope which moves up and down, rear guns that swivel
and shoot blanks, and a variety of sound effects: a sonar ping,
the rumble of diesel engines and a dive klaxon. The model has
been featured in two episodes of X-Files, where it appears on
film as a full-size sub.
At center stage in the Ships Museum is a 13-foot long, 700-pound,
meticulously detailed model of the HMS Hood, which took Rodney
Henriksen 20 years to complete.
The unpretentious entrance to all three museums is at 1502 Duranleau
St., Granville Island, Vancouver. It is open daily from 10 am
to 5:30 pm. Phone 604-683-1939; fax 604-683-7533. Visit the comprehensive
web site at www.granvilleislandmuseums.com
for further information.
Seattle Times - Travel Northwest Section
- Miniature museums offer tiny peek at boating, fishing and
trains
- By Sandy Dunham
Special to The Seattle Times
VANCOUVER, B.C. - It's hard not to feel enormous in these Granville
Island museums.
Step into the model-boat collection, and you dwarf a wee whale,
shrunken sailors and Lilliputian logs.
Walk through the sport-fishing displays, and you loom over little
bitty lures.
Follow the wail of the whistles to the model trains, and suddenly
you're taller than 6,000 teeny trees.
Once you get past the Amazon attitude, though, it's hard not to
develop a colossal admiration for these miniature marvels - and
for the full-size folks who build them.
It was that admiration - coupled with a sizable personal collection
and a desire to preserve Canadian heritage - that led owner/curator/director
John Keith-King to create this three-in-one showcase.
Keith-King's tribute is displayed in three museums, on two floors,
under one roof (and one admission price), in the Maritime Market
building on Granville Island, an artsy, urban island plop in the
middle of Vancouver, B.C.
The Sport Fishing and Model Ships museums opened in 1997; the Model
Train Museum opened just eight months ago.
In the past year, Keith-King said, 35,000 to 40,000 people have
visited the museums.
Model ships
Visitors are directed first to the Model Ships Museum, where more
than 50 scaled-down naval, commercial and pleasure vessels are displayed
in lighted glass cases beneath colorful maritime flags dangling
from the ceiling. Most of the intricately detailed models include
typed fact sheets on the ships and their role in history; many also
feature historic photographs or newspaper clippings about the full-size
ships.
"Old Ironsides" is there, along with the story behind
the famous nickname - during the War of 1812, cannonballs bounced
right off her 21-inch-thick oak sides.
There's a working radio-controlled replica of Captain Nemo's "Nautilus"
submarine from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and a model
of the FF Balaena, a whale-factory ship complete with a tiny whale
carcass and specks of ruby whale blood on the deck. Upstairs are
little trollers, tugs, gillnetters and a barge toting kindling-size
logs.
But these mini ships pale in the wake of the 13-foot-long model
of the HMS Hood, with launches and lifeboats cast in bronze. It
took British Columbian Rodney Henriksen 20 years to construct the
700-pound behemoth from scratch.
Sport fishing
The Sport Fishing Museum has more than 500 classic and antique
reels, including what's billed as the world's largest publicly displayed
collection of Hardy Brothers reels.
Everywhere - on the walls, in drawers, on pullout-poster boards
- are framed photos of fish, fishermen and their lures. One display
houses 19th-century brass and alloy crank reels. Tall, thin cases
are filled with old, meticulously detailed fly rods. An ancient
tackle box overflows with faded bobbers. Mounted fish - some real,
some not - arc along the walls along with fish-themed artwork. There
are old nets, brass scales, line-dryers, ice-fishing decoys - and
quite a collection of old-fashioned fish-killers called "bonkers."
One, a 5-1/4-inch-long stainless steel gadget with a solid metal
ball at one end, advertises: "Ball Makes Fish Quiet."
Beyond the bonkers, en route to the upstairs Model Train Museum,
visitors can try out the Man-U-Troll, a 1930s-era outboard that
requires the boater to pump a handle to turn the propeller.
Model trains
In the Model Train Museum, huge beechwood cabinets display the
trains, arranged on glass shelves by make and gauge. Aster Live
Steam-Gauge 1 fills one cabinet; Lionel-Standard Gauge, another.
Some cars pull matchstick-size logs; circus cars contain an elephant
and rhino, each no bigger than a mouse.
Toy trains of all makes and models - American Flyer, Lionel, Hornby
- line more cases. Framed displays of train stamps line the walls.
A model train sits in a layout of Longhope, England. Most people
linger at the "O Gauge" layout, an 80-foot-long, floor-to-ceiling
model train diorama that took Keith-King's team more than a year
to build.
Five lines travel four levels through 6,000 handmade trees past
ponds and boats, over bridges, through tunnels and along trestles.
Piped-in train sounds add to the railway realism.
The layout itself, which evolved from one built in the 1930s by
Geoff Meugens, is built on 2-by-4 wooden frames. The mountains and
terrain are sheets of Styrofoam covered with orthopedic bandages.
Each branch of every tree was glued on by hand.
For Keith-King, 60, who grew up among "train people"
in Hamilton, Ontario, the layout is yet another tribute - to his
family, to his layout team and to Meugens
Sites along the tracks are named after Keith-King's family; the
lines themselves after those who helped construct the sculpture.
A developer and architect for 30 years, Keith-King said his favorite
job has always been building the models.
It still is. Next stop: a tiny mining town and miniature mountain
goats.
The Province, December 15th, 2000
- Creator of a hidden world
Physical and cultural opposites, James Ramsey and John Keith-King
share a hidden world. Keith-King is tall and white; a former architect
and developer. Ramsey is small and black; a former carpenter with
little formal education for whom the three 'R's remain a chore.
The architects calls Ramsey a "genius." Ramsey calls Keith-King
"a real nice man." Their common bond is their passion
for building things.
Ramsey, 80, makes functioning models of steam railway engines in
his cramped garage in the East Vancouver home he built himself.
They are works of art, says his admirer. And Keith-King, 61, should
know. Over the past three years he has opened three museums on Granville
Island - the Sports Fishing Museum, the Model Ships Museum, and
the newest, the Model Trains Museum. Each one showcases hand crafted
models of exquisite quality as well as exhaustive collections of
mass produced items from "the largest collections of model
and toy trains on public display in the world" to "the
biggest collection of Hardy reels in the world." And it has
just become home to four of Ramsey's trains.
Standing by Ramsey's models the other day, Keith-King was visibly
excited, like a young boy speaking of his new bicycle. "James
Ramsey is a marvelous man" said Keith-King. "He's a mechanical
genius. These models are like pieces of art. He's really kind of
magic."
Ramsey, who sports a battered cowboy hat over his shoulder-length
white curls, is a soft spoken, shy man who nevertheless holds a
fierce belief in building things the way they should be built -
well.
"When I make something, I want to make the best" he said
simply. "I'm not afraid to tackle anything." He once built
a 10-meter cabin cruiser in his backyard. "She was a good boat
too," he said with a grin.
Ramsey, born in Courtney and raised mostly in Vancouver, hand builds
his trains models from blue prints or from pictures, unhindered
by his lack of formal education. Everything he's learned, he's learned
himself. "You just pick things up as you get older," he
said.
Some of his models, including the one he's finishing in his garage,
can weigh a ton and a half. Keith-King said his friend has a natural
understanding of what makes things work, and Ramsey agreed there's
some truth to that. "I guess I have the gift for making things,"
he said.
"In an age when people push buttons, these people are in their
basement s building things of extraordinary quality an beauty.
"I guess I like to be part of these hidden worlds."
Stand a minute in the museum and consider the countless hours spent
getting each detail just right. For instance, there's a four metre-long
model of the British Second World War battleship HMS Hood which
took the builder 20 years of finish. A 24-metre-long train track
display - "a piece of environmental sculpture" - features
more than 6.000 handmade trees. "Geniuses have to do what they
have to do," said Keith-King of the driving force which spurs
people like Ramsey, the other contributors, and perhaps, himself.
"They are driven by their passion."
As for Ramsey, he builds his trains for his own amusement. "I
just build them for myself and play with them," he said. "It's
nice to have toys."
The Vancouver Sun, December 14th, 2000
- Train buff a 'genius' with his hands
Of that day John Keith-King met James Ramsay, he remembers feeling
compelled to phone his wife at home to tell her that of the half-dozen
people who had made a lasting impression on him in his life, Ramsay
was one of them.
The word Keith-King used to describe Ramsay was "genius".
"He's absolutely marvelous." Keith-King said. "Self
taught. No education. And totally dedicated and caring about what
he does."
Ramsay builds model trains, thus Keith-King interest in him. Keith-King
is owner of the Model Trains Museum on Granville Island. Four of
Ramsay's models are now on display there.
But Ramsay's trains aren't of the Lionel, under-the-Christimas-tree
variety. They are enormous, working, steam-powered trains of such
exquisite detail, they should be viewed as works of jewelry.
This, despite the fact that Ramsay cannot read or write well. And
this, despite the fact that he has never had a drafting, fabrication
or mechanics class in his life.
Yet he draws all his own blueprints, hand-fashions the forms for
all the trains' cast-iron pieces and builds the trains on the most
basic of tools in his own dank, low-ceilinged basement.
"How'd I learn to make all the stuff?" He shrugged. "I
just picked it up, just like the next guy." The model steam
engine and tender he's building now - a Union Pacific Challenger
that first saw service in 1942 - weighs 1 1/2 tons. It is 24 feet
long, or five feet longer than the biggest SUV on the road. Ramsay
has been building it for a year and a half. It should be able to
pull, Ramsay figures, two tons with out any trouble.
He is 80. He is a small man, and wears a battered brown Stetson
over white shoulder-length hair. His mother was black, from Kansas
, and he was born in a logging camp near Courtenay. He did not know
his father. When his mother moved to Vancouver, he went to Lord
Strathcona elementary, but not for long. He lacked the academic
bent.
"I quit school when I was 12. My teacher caught me looking
out the window one day and gave me the advice that I should go out
and get a job because I didn't have the mind for school, but she
thought there was something about me that told her I would do good
out of school, that I would end up okay."
He did, he figures. After scrabbling through the Depression, he
started working on boats in the Vancouver shipyards. He moved on
to construction. He graduated to carpentry, all of it self-taught.
In the last years of his working life, he was a handyman at Simon
Fraser University.
"I always had a passion for making trains," he said.
"But in the old days you were too poor to buy anything. You
always had to scuffle. But when you don't have any money, and you
have to make your own things, it strengthens you. You got to go
out there and get it."
To Keith-King, this kind of self-taught self-reliance is worthy
itself of museum status, testimony to a vanishing ethos.
"We used to be a country that built things," he said,
"and now we build nothing. Every guy used to have a workshop
in his basement, and now few do. But here is a guy committed to
building extremely complicated, beautiful things, and I love him
for that
"In order to do this," Keith-King said, "it's not
just a matter of following a drawings; it's a matter of knowing
what will work - not just of making an exact replica of something,
because often exact replicas don't work. You have to have a felling
for the machinery, and James is a mechanical genius."
Ramsay doesn't describe himself in such vaulted terms. He said,
merely: "Some people just have the gift of making things."
He now lives with his wife, Mattie, in east Vancouver, in a small
bungalow.
They raised three sons, one daughter and a foster child. The Ramsays'
daughter lives a couple doors away in a house her father renovated
for her. One of the sons died in a motorcycle accident.
This son's first and middle names - Alan Wylie Goodman - can be
found in Keith-Kings museum, inscribed in large letters in gold
leaf pain on the side of a Union Pacific coach car James Ramsay
built by hand.
The National Post, July 15, 2000
- Collector shares his life's passions
Fishing gear, trains and ships showcased in unique museum
John Keith-King has passion. About 12,000 square feet of passion,
to be precise.
His passion wasn't always that big. It first took root in the 1940s
in Hamilton, Ont., when John's father, a brakeman and conductor
with CN Rail, died tragically young of cancer. John was only nine.
His uncles (four of the five were railway men) stepped in, taking
John out of school to go fishing or to come with them on the trains.
John was "imprinted." He says: "I was raised building
stuff."
He grew up to be a successful architect and developer. For nearly
20 years he operated the Maritime Market, marina and boat yard on
Granville Island, a trendy area of Vancouver. Then he decided to
give in to his passion. He sold eight of his nine Granville Island
buildings.
John completely renovated his last building, a two-storey art deco
spread right on the water, and opened up a museum. Then he opened
up another museum. And then he opened up a third.
Some $4-million and plenty of passion later, John is the owner
and operator of the Granville Island Sports Fishing Museum, the
Model Ships Museum and the Model Trains Museum. Three world class
collections "hidden away" in a single building in one
of the most obvious places in Vancouver.
John himself is not quite sure how it all happened. It started
with the Model Ships Museum. "It wasn't a conscious decision.
One ship led to two. Two led to four. I just love models. The best
part of architecture, I thought, was the model-making. Finally,
you gulp and say, 'OK, I'd better make a museum.' And your wife
looks askance and asks, 'How many museums are you going to make?'
The rationale comes later. It almost become a religion."
The Model Ship Museum features more than 50 superbly crafted boats
and submarines, ranging from an off-shore racer that can go 90 kilometres
per hour while spouting a rooster tail six metres high, to a four
metre, 315-kilogram replica of the H.M.S Hood that took local Rodney
Henriksen 20 years to build. ("The British admiralty model
probably wouldn't be any better," says John, proudly.)
Almost all the collection is built by locals and many of the boats
are of the type that at one time would have plied the B.C. coast,
such as tugs and fishing boats.
John made a concerted effort to glorify BC coastal culture and
craftsmen: "No one was showcasing these talented people who
are making things in quiet rooms."
And each ship has a story. One submarine has periscopes that go
up and down, torpedoes that launch, working ballast tanks, radio
control, a dive claxon, sonar pings and the sound of a diesel electric
motor. It was used on two X-Files episodes. Says John, "These
guys really get into it."
It's a passion that he understands. When he talks about model making,
he almost gets misty. "You get into a timeless world. It's
quite a different feel. It's a truly wonderful place to be, bordering
on Deepak Chopra. It's a great escape, like meditation. The wife
will come down at 3 a.m. saying, 'Bedtime,' and you say, 'I just
have to finish this little bit'. Five hours later you realize the
time and think, 'Oh, I thought it was only 40 minutes.' "
From ships, the museum segues into the Sports Fishing collection.
John has the largest collection of Hardy reels in the world (including
a rare "Zane Grey" worth around $10,000). And the largest
collection of fly plates (more than 700 of them). There is also
one of every Lucky Louie model ever made, plus more fly boxes, gaffs,
creels, lures, plugs, nets, flies, rods, lines and decoys than you
can imagine. He even has a minnow transporter with hoses that hook
up to your car's windshield wipers in order to aerate the little
wrigglers on the long drive to the lake.
"All these things are just to catch a fish," John grins.
"It's just indicative of people's creative abilities."
But John's real reason for the Sports Fishing Museum is a bit more
serious. "Recreation fishing needs reinforcement against the
greed and politics of the fishing industry. The fish as a resource
has been more or less used by the government as a political and
bureaucratic patronage tool with devastating results for both fish
and fishermen. Recreational fishing is languishing. If something
can be used as government patronage, it doesn't do well."
John wants to bring the, yes, passion back to fishing.
The last section of the museum is Model Trains. According to John,
it's the world's largest collection of model and toy trains on public
display. There are trains of every description. NASA flatbeds, beer
tankers, one made from scratch out of a scrapped Second World War
plane, and a pink one that, according to the publicity poster, is
"just like mom's."
The walls are filled with nothing but Lionel, Marx, American Flyer,
Trix and Hornby, names to "rekindle childhood memories."
Visitors wander among the birch and maple glass-topped cabinets,
looking at live steam engines and talking longingly of long lost
erector sets. And to help create new memories, there is a 24-metre-long
diorama of a B.C. scene, with 300 metres of track on four levels
wending its way through forests of painstakingly handmade trees,
over delicately constructed bridges and through cleverly designed
tunnels. Details include a beaver dam (for the Beaver Girl Scouts
who visit) and a bear lurking on an island (look closely...). All
made by locals, of course.
"What these museums are really about," says John, "is
craftsmanship and caring. I've always loved people who really commit
to something."
The three collections share a Boys Own wonder. A sense of play
and skill. Each object in the museums, be it a toy train or a salmon
fly, is designed to be loved. To evoke passion.
The eight-year-old boy who stared at the massive train set in delight
and astonishment summed it up best. "Cool," he exclaimed.
"This is a real museum."
John's uncles, and father, would be proud.
Next week: In Vancouver's canine, doggie room service, catered
canine weddings and robot rovers are just the beginning.
IF YOU GO:
Granville Island Museums are at 1502 Duranleau St., Granville Island,
Vancouver, V6H 3S4. Telephone (604) 683-1939.
Admission to all three museums is $6 for adults, $4.50 for students
and seniors, $3 for children four to 12 and free for under four.
Open 10a.m. to 5:30p.m. daily.
Web sites:
- www.modelshipsmuseum.
bc.ca
- www.modeltrainsmuseum.ca
Back to top
The Antique Journal, March, 2000
- Granville Island Msuseum Appeals to All
If you'd rather be fishing, sailing or train spotting than museum
hopping, have I got the place for you. Take the trip to Vancouver's
Granville Island and check out three-museums-in-one that will please
the adventurer as much as the historian. Devoted to the sport fishing,
shipping, and railroad industries the built the Pacific Northwest,
the Granville Island Museums can only be described as the personal
vision of architect and marine business developer John Keith-King.
A person who's seen and participated in a lot of changes on Granville
Island, Keith-King operated the Maritime market, marina and Boat
Yard from 1978-1998. At one time he owned nine buildings there.
Today he holds only one property, an art deco building that once
housed the Sidney Roofing and Paper Co. Twelve thousand square feet
of it is display items that reflect an adventurous past he wants
to perpetuate. Not only did he collect every item, He designed the
space, cabinets and lighting into a total environment. Now he is
taking a gamble the public will appreciate the results.
Keith-King grew up in Ontario where he spent many pleasant days
fishing and riding trains with his father and uncles. An outspoken
detractor of the Canadian government's lack of support to the recreational
fishing, shipping and railroad industries, Keith-King created the
Granville Island Museums to preserve and celebrate the craftsmanship
and determination that made them great. Not just a collection of
things, it is a tribute to the ingenuity, skill, and spirit that
built the Pacific Northwest.
The Sport Fishing Museum started it all. This extensive international
collection is dedicated to preserving the history and ideal of fresh
and saltwater sport fishing throughout the world. More the 500 classic
and antique reels including many rare Hardy Brothers and Silex models
are here. Complementing the reels are hand crafted and manufactured
split-cane rods and more than 300 fly plates. A time capsule of
23 display boxes holds 1930s and 40s lures, rods, and reels that
once belonged to a rural Ontario tackle shop. Paintings, photos,
books, diaries and antique fly fishing gear from renowned fishermen
round out the collection.
The Model Ships Museum is the place for naval history buffs. Amazingly
detailed, large scale model warships and B.C working vessels comprise
the majority of the collection. You'll find everything from Admiral
Nelson's "H.M.S. Victory" to a Russian titanium nuclear
submarine. There are also Canadian work horses turn of the century
steamers, tugs, and fishing vessels. Many are sailable. The focal
point is a 13-foot, 700 pound model of the H.M.S. Hood, which took
model builder (and museums visitor) Rodney Henriksen 20 years to
complete. (The H.M.S. Hood was sunk by the German battleship Bismark
on may 24, 1941. Only three men survived out of 1,424 member crew.
Enraged, the British Navy chased the Bismark and destroyed it two
days later.)
The absolute show stopper of the collections is in the Model Train
Museum. It's a floor to ceiling, five line, four level, O-scale
model train layout. One thousand feet of track run through a miniaturized
depiction of BC's Fraser and Kettle Valleys. Other display cases
hold G, HO, S, and N gauge trains from the best manufacturers: Marx,
Lionel, American Flyer, Hornby, Trix, Dorfan. Some are tin toys
dating to the 1920's. There are also working model steam and coal
fired locomotives. Keith-King says its the largest public display
of toy trains in the world. And who would doubt him? Also of interest
to collectors are collateral items including table settings, train
lanterns, and trainmen's hats. A display of railroad watches is
planned in the near future.
The Granville Island Museums are located at 1502 Duranleau St.,
in the heart of the downtown island's renowned shopping and dining
district. Open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission to all
three museums is a reasonable $6 (Canadian) for adults, Discounted
rates are available for seniors, students, children and families.
Call (604) 683-1939 or visit their website at
www.granvilleislanmuseums.com form more information.
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The Vancouver Sun, Thursday, December 23, 1999
- Father's death leads to a lasting passion
"After John Keith-King's dad died. His uncles gave him a train
set for Christmas. Now he owns a model train museum."
See photo associated with this article
When John Keith-King was nine and living in Hamilton, his father
died of cancer. His father was 32.
He was, Keith-King said, "a three-pack-a-day" smoker,
who, in his short life, had been a brakeman and conductor with the
Canadian National.
"I remember him coming home in his conductor's uniform and
hat," Keith-King said.
His was a rail family: Four of his five uncles were train men
who, between them, worked for the Canadian Pacific, the Canadian
National and the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Railway. It was
his uncles who stepped into the gap in Keith-King's life.
With their rail passes and their access to the northern Ontario
wilderness, they would constantly take him on fishing trips - a
pastime that would install in the boy a lifelong love of fishing.
And on that very first Christmas after his father's death -- in
1947 or 1948, Keith-King can't quite recall -- his uncles got together
and gave the young boy a Lionel train set for Christmas. "It
was O' gauge," he said, "a typical set of the time with
an engine and a few cars, and just enough track to go around in
a circle." Keith-King went on to become a success. A natural
talent for drawing propelled him toward architecture; his architectural
business led him to development. Keith-King ended up owning, and
developing, much of Granville Island.
A few years ago, he sold eight of his nine Granville Island buildings
and, with his eye toward a career change, kept one of them. In that
building, he installed the Granville Island Museums at 1502 Duranleau
(It's at the entrance to Granville Island in the same building that
houses the Sirloiner steakhouse).
It is a museum that recalls the Wunderkammern so popular in 16th-
and 17th-century Europe - small, intensely personal private collection's
of natural wonders that reflected the enthusiasm of the owner-curator.
These collections were always varied, and were meant to delight
the museum-goer with their sense of serendipity. This, Kith-King's
museum does.
It is three collections in one, all unrelated to one another, all
fabulously presented: A Sport Fishing Museum, with antique reels,
rods, creels, and a huge assemblage of beautifully framed fishing
flies; a Model Ships Museum, a collection of large, museum-quality
models, including one of the English battleship HMS Hood that took
20 years to build; and, finally, Keith-King's latest addition, opening
a couple of months ago, the Model Trains Museum.
He bills it as the largest toy and model train collection on public
display in the world. There is an 80-foot-long diorama of Kettle-Valley-like
terrain with almost 1,000 feet of train track, all put at waist
level so kids can get a close-up look.
There are beechwood cabinets lining the walls, filled with sets
that run the gamut from turn-of-the-century tin wind-up trains to
contemporary collector' scale models. There are snowblower cars
and dining cars and handmade engines that run on small pieces of
coal. There's a rare pink Lionel train set, circa 1958, designed
for girls. (A Lionel poster shows a girl finding the train set underneath
a Christmas tree, exclaiming "Just like Mom's!" There
are beer cars (Budweiser, Schtitz) and refrigerator cars (Kansas
City Dressed Beef, Swift Premium Hams) and candy cars (Baby Ruth).
There are extremely cool (and this is the kid in me coming out)
military cars -- searchlight cars, and radar cars, and a NASA Mercury
Project car carrying two Mercury space capsules, and a U.S. Marines
Mobile Rocket Launcher car -- with six plastic missiles you can
really shoot! - and a car that opens up and launches a helicopter
that actually flies. Keith-King's favourite set in the display is
a modest one -- a set, circa 1340s, with a flatbed car carrying
what looks like an old Ford truck. ''You can take the old truck
off and the truck's bed actually moves up and down. There isn't
a lot of detail on this stuff and that's its charm -- it lets your
imagination do all the work, which is what children do best."
Of his own childhood, he said: "I think early on I was imprinted
with trains, with my uncles. And one of the things that happened
to me when my father died was, I was assigned a Rotary Club father,
and one of the first things he did was get me a membership to the
YMCA. And I remember going to the YMCA one day and turning the corner
and seeing this big room full of model trains with all these men
wearing their engineer's caps and suspenders, and I asked them if
I could play with the trains, and they said "No!""
Keith-King is now 60.
He grew up, a boy who wouldn't take "No" for an answer.
Pete McMartin can be reached at pmcm@pacpress.southam.ca
or at 605-2905.
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The Courier News
- Museums exhibit owner's childhood
John Keith-King missed a lot of school as a kid because he went
fishing with his uncles.
Years later, he asked his mother why she allowed him to jeopardize
his education to spend leisurely hours on the lakes of Ontario.
"I figured, John, that you were getting a better education
with your uncles than you would in the school system," she
said.
Truancy didn't hurt Keith-King. He went on to become an architect
and developer who recently sold eight of the nine buildings he owned
on Granivlle Island. The last building he kept to create a museum
space that draws very heavily on his own childhood experiences,
including fishing.
At 1502 Duranleau St., tucked away near the Sirloiner with a storefront
that could be easily overlooked, is Keith-King's trio of museums
that reflect three aspects of Canadian and personal history.
Kith-King started the Granville Island Sport Fishing Museum with
his personal collections of flies and reels. In the same complex
is a model ship and model train museum, which in some ways is a
tribute to his father and uncles, who worked on the railways, and
to his father-in-law, Dal Grauer, who was president of BC Electric.
"The museums are really a result of early imprinting,"
he said.
The unassuming entrance belies the size of the museums and their
collections, all three of which are included in the same admission.
Keith-King estimate the floor space at 12,000 square feet.
He says the fishing museum holds the largest collection of Hardy
Bros. fishing reels and the biggest fly gallery in the world. It
also exhibits artifacts representing the evolution of the sport,
including a mahogany and ivory fly cabinet and ice-fishing decoys
from the 1920's and 30's. Tackle boxes and Native artifacts are
displayed with explanations of their unique features and varied
histories.
All models in the ship museum are constructed by BC craftspeople,
including the imposing replica of the HMS Hood, painstakingly constructed
by local artisan Rodney Henriksen. All variety of ships are represented,
including whalers, mercantile ships and navy vessels. The model
of the USS Queen-fish has appeared in two episodes of the X-Files,
Keith-King said , playing the role of a full-size submarine.
A few steps further through the labyrinthine museum are the model
trains, including an elaborate 80-foot-long layout based on typical
scenery of the BC Interior. Keith-King estimates there are 1,000
feet of track on the platform, which is formed out of wood and cut
styrofoam then laden with orthopaedic bandages and painted.
The trains strive for realism, and along the wall are examples
of toy trains which, though remarkably detailed, were created for
younger hands, made of tin and dating to the 1920's the collection
is the largest public display of toy trains in the world, said Keith-King.
In his efforts to gather artifacts, Keith-King has been converted
to the power of the Internet. Some of the esoteric items on display,
such as the minnow traps, glass jars with conical holes at the bottom
into which small fish swim and are unable to escape, could not have
been assembled without online experts. E-commerce also makes it
easier to contact people who share similar interests, he said. At
the same time, Keith-king warns that the Internet may spell the
end of antique stores, as proprietors decide to direct their wares
directly at the people who are likely to pay the most anywhere in
the world.
Keith-King laughs when asked if he is reliving his childhood, The
cost of putting the place together is certainly beyond a youngster's
allowance. He estimates the value of the collections at $1.5 -2
million.
"The real payoff for me is seeing people appreciate it,"
he said.
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