Description of Historic Place

The historic place is the one-and-one-half-storey, log-construction Cameron House, located at 2337-2345 Richter Street, built in 1928 on the former Guisachan property in Kelowna's South Pandosy neighbourhood.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the Cameron House is found in part in its association with a prominent family with interests in ranching, civil engineering, and youth activities in the early years of the community. It is also valued for its architecture, as an unusual log building in an attractive, landscaped park setting on the former Guisachan estate, and for its current role in community life.

This house was the home of William Alister Cameron and Sophie Cameron between 1928 and 1982. Alister Cameron (1890-1970) arrived in Kelowna with his parents from Qu'appelle, Saskatchewan, in 1903. His father, William C. Cameron, had purchased the Guisachan Ranch (see 1056-1060 Cameron Avenue), an important historic place. W.C. Cameron died in 1910, leaving his wife and three sons (of whom Alister was the eldest) to run the ranch. Alister started work with the B.C. Water Rights Branch in 1914 as a civil engineer and land surveyor. After service during the First World War, he returned to this employment. He continued his interest in the Guisachan Ranch as well, raising cattle and sheep for more than forty years. His drives of cattle and sheep through downtown Kelowna and onto the ferry across Okanagan Lake to the West side were legendary.

Alister Cameron had this log house built on the west corner of the Guisachan property in 1928, the year he married his wife, Sophie. Alister was deeply involved in the Scouting movement, and every spring would take the Boy Scouts on a two-day trek with packhorses into the high country. He was also important in the development of the Anglican Church Camp at Wilson's Landing.

Sophie and Alister Cameron donated the house and the grounds around it to the City as a park in perpetuity. The house has value for its place in current community life, as it has been the Waldorf Preschool since 1982, and the grounds, Cameron Park, are much enjoyed as the neighbourhood park.

The house further has value for its log construction, rare in Kelowna. The motivation may have been the association of log-building with romantic ideas of rustic life, which is seen best in national park buildings of the era. The form of the house is the familiar pioneer cottage, a square, hipped-roof building with dormer windows and a projecting porch.

Source: City of Kelowna Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Cameron House include its:
- location within the former Guisachan estate on Richter Street in Kelowna's South Pandosy neighbourhood
- residential form, scale and massing, as expressed by its one-and-one-half-storey height and squarish plan
- medium-pitched hipped roof penetrated by a gabled dormer on each slope, one-over-one double-hung, wood-sash windows and plain, narrow, wood trim
- enclosed, projecting entrance porch with a medium-pitched gabled roof
- eaves supported by exposed wood rafters
- brick chimney
- round, horizontal log construction, with saddle-notched corners and chinking in the joints
- dormer walls of wide, unfinished, horizontal, wood siding
- fixed-pane and one-over-one, double-hung, wood-sash windows on the ground floor, with wood trim consisting of wide, tapered jambs and wide, gently-curved heads
- generous set-back on large, open, corner lot, with mature plantings around the house