COLVILLE, David (1886-1974) claims to have been 'responsible for the design and execution' of major bank buildings for the Bank of Montreal while he was associated with Kenneth G. Rae, the talented Montreal architect usually credited with commissions for the bank from 1909 to 1930. Colville was born in Borthwick, Scotland and educated and trained in Aberdeen. He moved to London in 1906 and was assistant to W.H. Woodroffe, FRIBA in 1906-10, then emigrated to Canada where he settled in Vancouver and was associated with J.S.D. Taylor from 1910 to 1913. After serving with the Canadian Army during WWI he moved to Montreal and worked with Kenneth Rea from 1919 to 1933. He supervised (and may have designed) additions to the Bank of Montreal branches in Victoria (1922-24), Vancouver (1924-25), and the complete structure for that bank in Calgary (1930-32).
He also worked for some of the leading architects in New York City in 1926-28, including James Gamble Rogers and the firm of Hemle, Corbett & Harrison. After Rea's retirement in 1933 Colville remained in Vancouver from 1934 to 1946 and designed the Dunbar Theatre, Dunbar Street near West 30th Avenue, VANCOUVER, B.C., 1935 (dwgs. Vancouver City Archives). He also served as site supervising architect on the completion of the Hotel Vancouver in 1936-39. During WWII he designed an enormous clear span aircraft hangar for Defense Industries Ltd. (R.A.I.C. Journal, xviii, Oct. 1941, 8, illus. in advert.). After 1950, he worked in the Engineering Dept. of Canadian Industries Ltd. and at Dupont Industries in Montreal. He died there on 28 December 1974 (death notice Gazette [Montreal], 30 Dec. 1974, 31; biog. and port. Vancouver Sun, 27 May 1939, Section Two, p. 3; inf. Architectural Inst. of British Columbia; inf. Prof. John Bland, Montreal; biog. R.I.B.A., Directory of British Architects 1834-1914, 2001, i, 420). The Canadian Architectural Archives at McGill University holds a collection of student drawings by Colville prepared between 1902 and 1911 while he was in Scotland and London.