Photo: Carole Itter, Dollarton Cabin, 2015

The Blue Cabin has a new home at the Vancouver Maritime Museum’s Heritage Harbour.

Not bad for a modest squatter’s shack built in the 1920s. But it’s an appropriate location, given its new life as a floating residence for artists.

The cabin spent several decades on the North Vancouver waterfront beside the McKenzie Barge and Derrick shipyard near Cates Park. The story goes that a Norwegian craftsman built it in Coal Harbour, got a job at McKenzie in 1932, and floated it over to the North Shore to live in.

In 1966, the legendary local artist and musician Al Neil moved in. With the blessing of McKenzie Barge, Neil and his partner Carole Itter lived there for almost five decades, for many years getting free rent in exchange for Neil being an “unofficial beach watchman.”

In 2015, McKenzie Barge sold the land near where the cabin was located, and the structure had to be moved or torn down. A group of artists saved it and moved it to the Maplewood Flats in North Van, where it was restored by Jeremy and Sus Borsos.

Read the full story here.