Aspell, George Joseph Ketterer | Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada

ASPELL, George Joseph Ketterer (1884-1974) of Vancouver, B.C. was born in Bournemouth, West Sussex, England on 9 April 1884 and received his education at Ratcliffe College and at the School of Art & Sanitary Institute in London. He came to Canada after 1905 and worked for two years in the Engineer's Office of the Grand Trunk Railway in Montreal before moving to Vancouver in 1909 where he established a partnership with Morley O. Jones (see works under Jones & Aspell). In 1914 he appears to have left British Columbia and moved to Los Angeles, California where he continued to practice for nine years. By 1933 he had returned to Vancouver; the Vancouver City Archives holds signed drawings by Aspell for the SACRED HEART ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND RECTORY, Campbell Street (1937), and for ST. FRANCIS XAVIER ROMAN CATHOLIC CHINESE SCHOOL, East Georgia Street (1939). He also designed ST. FRANCIS ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, Semlin Drive at Napier Street in 1938 (H. Kalman, Exploring Vancouver, 1993, 211, illus.). After 1940 he was employed in the District Engineering Department at the North Vancouver City Hall. Aspell died at White Rock, B.C. on 22 April 1974 (death notice Vancouver Sun, 23 April 1974, 48; inf. Vancouver City Archives; D. Luxton, Building The West: The Early Architects of British Columbia, 2003, 491).