OWEN, Frank Ifor Moran (1878-1955) was born at Beaumaris, Co. Anglesey, North Wales on 15 May 1878 and attended the Grammar School there. He served an architectural apprenticeship with Joseph Owen of Menai Bridge, North Wales between 1894 and 1897 and then moved to Liverpool in 1898 where he was employed as draftsman with the prominent firm of Pugin & Pugin (consisting of Edward W, Pugin 1834-1875, and Peter P. Pugin 1851-1904, both sons of the famous ecclesiastical architect Augustus Welby N. Pugin). Owen continued to work in this office until 1904. He then joined Rathbone & Beckett in Liverpool and remained with them until 1908 when he emigrated to Canada and opened his own office in Victoria, B.C..
In 1919 he moved to Toronto and joined the staff of the Toronto office of Thomas Lamb, the prolific theatre architect of New York City who had been commissioned to design the Lowe's Uptown Theatre and the Pantages Theatre there. After 1921. Owen became a staff member of the Architect's Department of the Ontario Dept. of Public Works and remained in Toronto until late 1944 before returning to Victoria, B.C. He resigned from the Architectural Inst. of British Columbia in 1951 and died in Sidney, B.C. on 16 July 1955 (death notice Daily Times (Victoria), 18 July 1955, 14; D. Luxton, Building the West: The Early Architects of British Columbia, 2003, 479, 513; inf. from Ontario Assoc. of Architects).
KAMLOOPS, B.C., major reconstruction and addition of East Wing to the Provincial Home for the Aged, 1911-12 (Colonist [Victoria], 28 June 1911, 7, descrip.; Vernon News, 26 Oct. 1911, 2; Vancouver Sun, 14 May 1913, 7, detailed descrip.; dwgs. at BCPA, Photo Coll. 63276)
VICTORIA, B.C., British Columbia Provincial Government Office Block, for the Public Works Department, Government Street at Superior Street, 1912 (Colonist [Victoria], 8 June 1912, 2)
VICTORIA, B.C., Free Methodist Church, Cook Street at Balmoral Road, 1946; still standing in 2023 (Victoria Daily Times, 3 May 1946, 13)
OAK BAY, B.C., St. Mary's Anglican Church, Elgin Road, addition of a memorial chancel, designed 1947; built 1950 (Victoria Daily Times, 10 May 1950, 15, descrip.; dwgs. at BCPA, Victoria, BDP 67)
SAANICH, B.C., St. David-By-The-Sea Anglican Church, Cordova Bay Road at Sutcliffe Road, 1947-49; still standing in 2023 (Donald Luxton & Jennifer Barr, Saanich Heritage Structures, 2008, 63, illus. & descrip.)
VICTORIA, B.C., Masonic Temple, Fisgard Street at Douglas Street, 1950-51 (Vancouver News-Herald, 1 Sept. 1950, 18; Victoria Daily Times, 30 Oct. 1950, 2, descrip.)