Person

Merchant, Vera (nee Barnfield)

• Barnfield, Vera

• Married name: Merchant

1916 - February 28, 2014

Born in Brackendale to her parents Alfred and Daisy Barnfield (some of the earliest European settlers in the Whistler area), she first started coming to Alta Lake with her family at the age of four to deliver dairy. Her family owned land on the north side of Alta Lake and used to bring the cattle up for the summer. The family moved to Squamish in 1926 to establish a large dairy, but continued to manage the Alta Lake dairy in the summer. Vera worked as staff at Rainbow Lodge as a teenager in the 1930s.

Vera married Arthur Swann in 1937 and had four children: Doreen, William, Valerie, and Beverley. In the late 1940s she remarried Wayne Merchant and had another daughter, Lori. Vera lived in Surrey for a time after her second marriage, but moved back up to Squamish in 1977 and remained there until 2009.

Brackendale, BC
Whistler, BC
Squamish, BC

Dairy farmer
Hospitality worker

1. Oral history interview, August 27, 1993, Kept in research files under "Pioneers - people and places"
2. Email from Vera's daughter, March 5, 2014
3. https://blog.whistlermuseum.org/2012/01/21/the-milkmans-vehicle-of-choice-a-dugout-canoe/
4. http://www.whistlerquestion.com/opinion/columnists/museum-musings-remembering-vera-merchant-1.963127
5. https://www.squamishchief.com/community/vera-merchant-remembered-fondly-1.945976

Barnfield, Daisy (nee Hotchkiss) (b. c. 1891 fl 1926)

Brown, Beverley ([b. c. 1940s] fl. 2010-2011)

Barnfield, Alfred Anniger (b. c. 1868 fl 1926)

Barnfield, Bill (fl. 1910s-[?])

CA-BC-BV001

Revised January 2018.