A turning point

The post-war period brought many changes to the university. Many people who had been at UBC since its creation had now reached retirement age. Davidson worked until past the normal retirement age because there had been a shortage of instructors during the war. Tommy Taylor, his replacement, was a war veteran who had served in the navy. John W. Neill (1916–1999) replaced Davidson’s colleague, Frank Buck (1875–1970), after Buck retired from the department of horticulture in 1949. Like Taylor, Neill had also fought in the war, but as a tank commander.

At the time of these staff changes, 15 abandoned army and air force camps were dismantled and shipped to UBC, where the huts served as classrooms. To make room for many of these huts, the university administration destroyed the gardens along the eastern boundary of Davidson’s Botanical Garden. John Davidson was no longer on campus every day to protect the garden from such intrusions.

The year 1950 represented an important turning point for the garden. On March 13, Davidson, the former dominion botanist H.T. Güssow and dozens of other people attended a meeting for the potential development of a larger botanical garden at the University of British Columbia. Davidson, now retired, provided a brief history of the neglected botanical garden, noting that wars, depressions and financial hardship “had prevented any extensive development of the Garden up to the present time.”

Most agreed that the new garden would require about 300 acres (122 hectares), roughly 140 acres (57 ha) for the botanical garden itself and 160 acres (65 ha) for use by other departments such as forestry, zoology and horticulture.

The meeting closed with the group nominating botanist Tommy Taylor as acting director of the as yet non-existent garden and horticulturalist J.W. Neill as acting secretary “for the time being.”