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A finish carpenter, for the uninitiated, worked on the interior of a building, making cabinets, drawers, and mouldings, and installing windows, doors, stairs, bannisters, and railings. In our modern world of mass production, few of us are willing to pay for such craftsmanship.
A native of Scotland, Brunton worked on many homes and other buildings in the community. Among those that still stand are the Black house on 41B Street, the Dennison house at 5139 Dennison Place in Tsawwassen, and, of course, the family home at 5043 47th Avenue.
This house has not been chamged structurally at least on the exterior. Whether those two small windows on the second floor still open into bedroom closets, as they did for the Brunton family, is not known. Not a dramatic house, it nevertheless presents the most obvious opportunity for heritage restoration on this street.
In 1920, the Bruntons sold this house to Antone Martinolich and literally moved across the lane to the Nicolich house on River Road West. The Martinolich family owned this property into the 1950s. It appears that the lot next door to the east, which was owned by Brunton also and sold to Martinolich, has never had a building on it.
Antone Martinolich, son of Venanzio Martinolich, was a fisherman and boatbuilder like his father. He built and owned several tugboats, the most memorable of which may have been the Eva.
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