BEATSON, John Drummond (1882-1953), active in Vancouver, B.C. from 1911 to c. 1914 in partnership with Claude P. Jones as Jones & Beatson, Architects (see list of works under Jones, Claude P.). Beatson was born in Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland on 13 October 1882 and was educated and trained there. The 1901 Census of Scotland recorded him as an “architect’s apprentice” and he later emigrated to Canada in 1911 and settled in Vancouver, B.C. where he was invited to form a partnership with Claude P. Jones. After serving with the 1st Depot Battalion, Hastings Park, Vancouver during WWI, he remained in the city until 1919, but later returned to his hometown of Leith, Scotland and opened his own office as a professional architect in 1924. His major project during this period was the extensive reconstruction and rebuilding of the country mansion at Lamancha, Co. Peeblesshire, in the Scottish Borders region. This estate was originally built in the early 19th C. for Thomas Cochrane, the 8th Earl of Dundonald. A detailed description of his work on the estate appears in K. Cruft, J. Dunbar and R. Fawcett, The Buildings of Scotland: The Borders, 2006, 480, but the project is credited there to the architect J. Drummond Beaton [sic]. Beatson later died at Glasgow, Scotland on 13 January 1953 (Scotland, Statutory Deaths Register 644/09 0045; inf. Dictionary of Scottish Architects, online, entry for John Drummond Beatson; inf. Andy Coupland, Vancouver).
(works by J.D. Beatson)
POINT GREY, a design for the Roll of Honour for WWI soldiers from Point Grey, and mounted in the Municipal Hall, 1916 (The Province [Vancouver], 17 June 1916, 26)