The Pear Street area used to be agricultural land that provided a growing Victoria produce, milk, meat, flowers and other agricultural products. Remnants of that past still remain with the Malliard Farm barn, Milk shed and house still being present on the corner of Rowan and Thistle. When we first moved in in 1970 the occasional patch of daffodils would randomly pop up as this was the previous crop before houses replaced the fields in the late 50's. Pear Street even pre-dates Shelbourne Street! Formerly Pear Street was known as Green Lane.
We are fortunate to have had a photographer live in the area one of the McMorran family (yes the same family that had the restaurant and dance place in Cordova Bay)- the Saanich Archives are a great place to go to see how things were back in the day - https://saanich.accesstomemory.org/saanich-archives
Do a search for Mount Tolmie, Cedar Hill, Pear, Thistle, Rowan and Shelbourne Street for some very interesting photos of the area.
Also of interest is this account of the area around 1925 by Jack Merrett as found on the Mount Tolmie Community Association website - http://mtca.ca/Graphics/historyreview.pdf
In more recent history - here is what I remember (and could be off on some of the details) of the area from about 1970. The biggest changes were to the area from Cedar Hill X Road down to Rowan. This area was quite the hub for stores and such well before Hillside (formerly a swamp), Mayfair (used to just be the Woodward's Store) or University Height (was greenhouses and houses) came into being.
Starting at Cedar Hill X Road - where the credit union is now used to be a store, latter Saanich rentals I believe, McDonald's was built about 1973 (much discussion about that before it was approved), Cedar Hill Nursery was in behind where the shopping complex was.
On the other side there was a Texaco station - gas was about $0.27 / Gallon, the Shelbourne plaza had a Dr's office (Dr. Piper?), optometrist and then Shop Easy, next to that the Hardware store, the bakery (owned by the people that used to own the big house on Cedar Hill and the end of Elm), another store I don't recall (might have been fabric - not something that would catch my attention as a kid), Mac's Cycle, Sea To You Fish and Chips, the Scotia Bank, Cablevision (latter moved after a fire there to the building that houses the Jewish Community Centre). Out in front of the Shop Easy was the Tastee Freeze.
Opposite the Plaza were houses, Mac's Milk (now Fujiyi Foods) was built about 1972, and in the mid 70's the Bank of Montreal.
The building that houses the Pho-Ever restaurant used to be Pacific Swim School - there was a big bubble over the pool and until they built Gordon Head pool was about the only place to learn to swim other than the old Crystal Gardens downtown.
Northwest Labs was next to where the Chevron station is - much smaller building - they supplied schools in the province with most of the science supplies.
Pear Street used to be straight through to Richmond with Poplar being a side street. The realigned the streets in the 80's as there was a 4 way stop put in at Poplar and Richmond.
When we moved in ditches were still a thing at the east end of Pear before Shelbourne and on the other side of Shelbourne. As well the road was a single lane with gravel on the edges - no shoulder or curbs. The curbs and pavement came when they ran a new storm drain down the street in about 1971 or so. The paving job basically was just some more asphalt added to the edges of the single lane - and in places some curb added (which in most cases disintegrated in about a year after).
About the same time as Mac's was built they put up a barricade on Elm to control traffic cutting through the area. With the advent of the Bank of Montreal there was an issue with people parking on both sides of the street which caused a very narrow path between cars (Bank Employee's were not permitted to park in the Bank lot). This resulted in a pretty bad head on collision and solidified efforts to get the one side of the street posted no parking 9-4. So traffic issues in the area are nothing new and it seems to take resident's action to get things fixed.
I will try to add some more to this as I have time - if you have any comments, corrections or figure I might be able to answer some question burning in your mind (like where did the house on the corner of Pear and Thistle go when they built the duplex on the west side... Hint not very far).
Cheers,
Cameron Speedie
