Francis Mawson Rattenbury

MASONIC BIOGRAPHIES

FAMOUS FREEMASONS

Municipality of Oak Bay Photo

October 11, 1867 - March 28, 1935

Architect for, among many projects, the British Columbia legislative buildings, the Empress Hotel in Victoria, and the Vancouver courthouse (now Art Gallery), Rattenbury has been described as "short-tempered, blunt and almost unscrupulously ambitious".

A member of the Oak Bay council from 1906 to 1908, Rattenbury promoted the establishment of a Beauty Committee to protect the area’s trees. Running on a platform of preserving the urban environment, setting aside recreational space and regulating urban growth, Rattenbury served as Reeve in 1913.

Having arrived in Vancouver in May of 1892, Rattenbury received the commission to design the provincial legislative buildings on March 15, 1893 and immediately moved to Victoria. It appears that he returned to Vancouver long enough to close his office and to be initiated into Freemasonry, but he was never passed or raised. The record of his life would suggest that the teachings of Fremasonry left little impression on him.

Initiated: April 14, 1893
Suspended: 1898
Mount Hermon Lodge No. 7, Vancouver

Source: Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon records. Photo c. 1913, Reeve of Oak Bay. Also see Rattenbury, Terry Reksten. Victoria : Sono Nis Press, 1879.

© 1871-2023 Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon A.F. & A. M. Updated: 2004/10/06
freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/rattenbury_f/rattenbury_f.html