HELYER, Maurice (1887-1973) active in Vancouver, B.C. as an architect and engineer in partnership with his father John S. Helyer from 1908 to 1915, and after WWI as an architect and engineer under his own name. Born in Bournemouth, England on 14 November 1887, he arrived in the United States with his parents and settled in San Francisco, Calif. where he spent two years as a pupil of Meyer & O’Brien, Architects of San Francisco, from 1904 to 1906.
Helyer arrived in Vancouver in the summer of 1908 and was invited by his father to form a partnership, but his role in the office of J.S. Helyer & Son appears to have been primarily as a structural engineer, rather than as an architect. After serving in WWI and receiving the award of the Military Cross for Valour in March 1918, he returned to Vancouver. The following year, he joined the Engineering Institute of Canada in October 1919 (NAC, MG28, I 277, Vol. 6, Application Form by Maurice Helyer, 31 Oct. 1919). Only a few architectural projects have been linked to his name from 1920 onward. After 1940 he was a staff architect with McCarter & Nairne & Partners. Helyer died in Vancouver on 16 October 1973 (death notice Vancouver Sun, 19 Oct. 1973, 46; biog. inf. from the Architectural Inst. of British Columbia, Vancouver).
VANCOUVER, B.C., stores and office block for John J. Couglan, Granville Street near Robson Street, "....opposite the Capitol Theatre", 1922 (Vancouver Daily World, 28 July 1922, 1, descrip.; C.R., xxxvi, 12 Sept. 1922, 51)
VANCOUVER, B.C., Medical Arts Building, Granville Street near Robson Street, 1923 (dwgs. Vancouver City Archives)
VANCOUVER, B.C., Bowman Storage Co., Hastings Street East, between Campbell Avenue and Hawks Avenue, large warehouse for Oscar Bowman, 1923-24 (Vancouver Daily World, 12 Oct. 1923, 11, descrip.)
RICHMOND, B.C., a large grandstand and Clubhouse at Brighouse Park Race Course, No. 3 Road, on Lulu Island, 1923; grandstand burned late 1923 and rebuilt in 1924 by Townley & Matheson (Vancouver Sun, 24 March 1923, 13; Vancouver Daily World, 6 Feb. 1924, 13, t.c.)
VANCOUVER, B.C., Vivian Engineering Works, West 6th Avenue, 1941 (dwgs. Vancouver City Archives)