The land that grew into Elim Village: How greenhouse rows became a thriving community

Kees Van der Ende once suggested, almost in passing, that someone should build a seniors community on his land. Today, he lives there.

Long before Elim Village existed, the property was home to Burnaby Lake Greenhouses, a family business Kees helped build and operate over decades. In 1998, that same land became the foundation for something new when the Van der Ende family sold it to make way for what would become Elim Village.

At the time, it wasn’t a strategic decision. Instead, it started with a simple conversation.

“One day we were talking to one of our potting soil suppliers, John Vanderwal who now lives at Elim,” Kees remembers. “He said, ‘A bunch of us old guys in Langley are trying to put up an old folks home, and we don’t know where we can find land.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you buy this place then?’ Lo and behold, he came back on it.”

Kees’ connection to the land began decades earlier. His father started Burnaby Lake Greenhouses in 1954, just three years after the family emigrated from Holland. As the business grew, the family moved operations to Surrey and built a new facility on the property on 160th Street—now home to Elim Village Fleetwood.

“When we first got the property, there was nothing but bush, just total bush,” Kees says. “All the boulders that were here and the big, big trees… the old stumps that were fallen 50, 60 years ago. They were just laying there. It was quite an experience.”

Over time, the property became more than just a workplace. Kees lived there for 35 years and raised his family in a home where The Kootenay building now stands.

Kees worked on the growing side of the business, and the pace was relentless.

“My life was spent in there from 6 o’clock in the morning to 8 o’clock at night. That’s all I’ve ever done. I worked like a dog, eighty hours a week.”

By the late 1990s, the greenhouses were at capacity, and the family had already purchased new land to relocate operations—opening the door to sell the property to the Elim Housing Society.

On March 27, 1998 an official sales agreement was signed, making the deal official and bringing the vision for Elim Village one step closer to reality.

“We were extremely blessed, because I think God had his hand in this,” original committee member Hank Hamstra recalls. “It was still ALR land and we needed to get it rezoned, but we made an agreement with the Van der Endes that they would sell us a small piece of the land as we could afford it. So that’s how we ended up with that acreage there.”

At the time, Kees says he didn’t think much about what Elim would become. But his father did, and he wanted to support the project.

“My father, who was in his late eighties at the time, thought it was a good idea. He lived next door on the property as well. He was getting old and he thought it would be good, although he didn’t quite make it himself.”

Today, Kees once again lives on the land—something he said he would never do.

“I never dreamt of it,” he says. “When you’re young, you don’t even think of getting old. I said, no way am I going to live in an apartment. I’ve always lived in the open.”

That changed with one visit to a friend who lived in The Bowron.

“When I walked in, I said, ‘Shoot, I could live in a place like this.’ It turned out okay.”

Elim Village is now home not only to Kees and his wife, but two of his siblings as well, along with their spouses. Looking back, Kees credits Elim’s success to not one decision or person, but divine guidance.

“I’m not a very outgoing religious man, but I think there must have been some guidance. I really do.”