John Kalervo Gröhn

John Gröhn was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1914 and came to Canada with his parents when he was
11 years old. Both his parentswere tailors in Finland. In Vancouver thay started working for a tailoring
firm in downtown. When thay had saved enough money thay bought a property on Hastings Street and
built a shop. It was there they ran Hastings tailors for many years. The shop was at the front on
Hastings Street and the living quarters at the back.
John didn’t speak any English so had to start school in grade one. As he was the first in the family to
learn English , he was often called upon to interpret for his parents. He remembered negotiating a
contract with City Hall to make uniforms for the Fire Department.
At 17 years old John decided to go gill net fishing with some other Finns.He fished for several years
and eventually had his own gill netter called “ Rolling On”.It was a good life for a while but when he
got married he decided to get a job on shore. He started working for a firm called “Ellet Copper and
Brass”. He had an opportunity to start his own business and called it “Coast Coppersmiths”, a metal
fabricating business which he ran until he was 85 years old.
John bought a two acre property on Capitol Hill in Burnaby and this is where the family settled. Capitol
Hill in those days were a rural area with large properties and few houses.
There was always a wood burning sauna on the property separate from the house. The stove was
fabricated in his shop and the rocks came from a creek bed in North Vancouver. John often had big
parties. The sauna would be fired up and people would come and have a picnic on the property and a
Sauna before going home!
The family also raised chickens and pheasants on the property until one of the chickens attacked John
and that was the end of the chickens.
John loved boats and built a Seine boat in the backyard of his parents place on Hastings Street. He
decided he could save money by building the hull behind the tailor shop and have it trucked down to
Campbell Ave Docks to be finished there and to have the cabin put on later. John chartered the boat to
the fishing companies every summer and had a second Seine Boat built at Benson Brothers Shipyard
later. One ship building experience in the back yard was enough!
One summer John decided that he would take the family camping. The money was short at that time so
John made a pipe frame at his shop and got hold of some riveter’s canvas which he fit over the frame to
make a tent.
The family had indian sweaters and bedrolls, sleeping bags were unaffordable. John and family set off
in a 1949 Plymouth loaded up with all the gear. They headed for the Hope – Princeton Highway but the
engine overheated going up the hill from Hope where the Hope Slide is today. They had to stop and
wait for the engine to cool and add some water to the radiator. They managed to get to Stemwinder
campsite just before nightfall.
The first night it rained and it was wet and miserable. In the morning John’s wife wanted to go home ,
but the children and John wanted to carry on and they were the majority! So the family went on to
Osoyoos where John, to appease his wife, rented a motel room for two nights on the beach. The children thought they had gone to heaven! GP