Dawson, John Wilding | Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada

DAWSON, John Wilding (1866-1914), born in England on 4 January 1866, arrived in Vancouver in late 1888 and was invited to form a partnership with Charles W.H. Sansom in May of 1889 (see lisf of works under Sansom & Dawson). Together, they won the First Premium in the competition for the Vancouver Public Market, begun 1889 and completed 1890. Their partnership was dissolved in November 1890 and Dawson continued to work under his own name as an architect, and as a construction supervisor on the B.C. Electric Railway Co. line from Vancouver to New Westminster. He left Canada in 1892 and moved to the British colony of Mauritius in the south Indian Ocean and worked there as a civil engineer. In 1905 he submitted an application to join the Institute of Civil Engineers in London, England in which he outlined his previous career as an architect in Vancouver, B.C. during the period from 1888 to 1892. Dawson later died on Mauritius on 18 January 1914 (England & Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index to Wills, 1914, p. 40).