Locations > Vancouver > Dollarton
 
Lowry's shack was located in Dollarton, an outer suburb of Vancouver on the north shore of Burrard Inlet. Most of the writing of Under the Volcano was done here. Canada represented for Lowry a Northern Paradise, but the destruction of his shack by fire in 1944 was a further emblem of a Paradise that must be lost.
 
Instantly Hugh's shack began to take form in her mind. But it was not a shack - it was a home! It stood, on wide-girthed strong legs of pine, between the forest of pine and high, high waving alders and tall slim birches, and the sea – UTV, 269.

Lowry's second shack at Dollarton, in which he lived for three and a half years until (as in Yvonne's dying dream, 336) it was destroyed by fire.
Lowry's pier
 

The oil refinery

The fire at the oil refinery

The Caileag Gheal
 
I seem to see us living in some northern country, of mountains and hills and blue water – UTV, 36.

...once in a long while would come a day of blinding sunlight and clarity, so cold the inlet fumed and the mist rose from the water like steam ... The wintry landscape could be beautiful on these rare short days of sunlight and frostflowers – The Forest Path to the Spring, 253.

A view of Burrard Inlet, from approximately the place where Lowry's shack once stood.
 
Indian Arm, from the beach at Dollarton.
 

On the path before him a little snake he had thought a twig was rustling off into the bushes... – UTV, 127.

A snake (twig?) in the garden at Dollarton. Image courtesy UBC Special Collections.
 
 
The Lowrys' Dollarton shack. Image courtesy UBC Special Collections.
 
 
A modern painting of the Lowrys' Dollarton shack, held at UBC Special Collections.