Beautiful Millar Addition
A 1914 Neighbourhood Plan
reprinted with permission by Valerie Giles, PhD
The boundaries encompassing Prince George were expanded many times over the years. One of the most dramatic extensions occurred in 1914, the year before incorporation, when the beautiful Millar Addition was created. The two hundred acre property taken in was bounded by the Fraser River to the east, Connaught Hill park to the west, and stretched south from Patricia Avenue. At the time, this expansion represented a quarter of the total townsite area.
The subdivision took the name “Millar Addition” from the beginning in recognition of the developer, Toronto-based lawyer Charles Vance Millar. Known in this province for his involvement in the transportation business, Millar was President of the British Columbia Express Company (The B.X.) which operated a passenger and freighting service between Prince George and Ashcroft and the B.X. steamboat on the Fraser.
On land purchased from the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, Millar saw the opportunity to design an attractive neighbourhood.
From lots located near the perimeter, the seventy-five foot elevation over the level of George Street afforded commanding views of the river to the east and the growing townsite to the north. His idea was to create something akin to the fashionable Shaughnessy Heights neighbourhood in Vancouver.
Millar engaged the services of landscape architects Brett and Hall to lay out the site design. The development was instantly popular, and city council noted in 1916 that more taxes had been received from Millar Addition residents than the all other sections of the city combined.
Millar died working at his desk in his Toronto law office in 1926. He was 72. Through his law practice and many business enterprises, including ownership of large amounts of brewery and distillery stocks and interests in racing stables and a racetrack, he was a wealthy man. Perhaps as a warning to other men of means, he declared that one of the great mistakes of his life had been “the acquiring and retaining of more money than I could reasonably use.”
The will became a means not just to disburse his personal holdings but to extend the force of his personality and influence beyond his passing. Originally written for the amusement of friends at his Toronto club, the joke took force of law when no other subsequent will could be discovered.
The document he crafted was eccentric, as wills go. Carrying out its provisions became problematic for the Ontario courts. At one point, the Attorney-General tried to get the will set aside by an act of the legislature. The members disagreed, so the bill was withdrawn and the provincial government was left to enforce the peculiar provisions.
Millar had been a fierce defender of individual rights and freedoms. In life, he had little patience for those who would attempt to restrict anyone’s liberty or choice of entertainment. Particularly annoying to him were the prohibitionists and those Ontario clergymen trying to suppress horse racing. In death, Millar retaliated by naming them beneficiaries of specific bequests. The most outspoken prohibitionists were left brewery shares. To the righteous clergymen who railed against him, he left stock in the racetrack. The provision to receive the shares was that the dividends from the stock be received and used, thereby compromising prohibitionists’ public stands and making the churches stockholders in the very enterprise their clergymen disparaged.
The other odd provision was declaration of a contest to promote population growth. The prize offered was a half million dollars to any Toronto woman who could produce the most children in the decade following Millar’s death. By October 31, 1936, six women were in the running, each having given birth to nine children since 1926. Three of them profited from the publicity by signing contracts for stage appearances in the United States.
The outcome was that the clergymen received Ontario Jockey Club stock, the prohibitionists got brewery shares and four of the six mothers shared the money prize equally receiving $125,000 for bearing nine children each. The other two were disqualified because not all their children were legitimate, one having admitted that the last five of her nine children had not been fathered by her husband.
In Prince George, Millar’s legacy is the beautifully situated residential area which bears his name. His influence lingers in the desire to keep and maintain that neighbourhood as an attractive and appealing place to live.
