Sointula - Circa 1910

In the late 1800s a group of Finnish miners at Nanaimo were growing frustrated with their working conditions, and formed a temperance society, which was a socio-political group that allowed them the freedom to discuss their frustrations and aspirations in Canada.
The miners decided that they aspired to a better life, with more freedom and equality, and toward that end they wrote to Matti Kurikka, a Finnish political philosopher, playwright, writer, and organizer, asking him to come to Vancouver Island. Kurikka arrived and the Finns established the Kalevan Kansan Colonization Company, and pre-empted land for the colony on Malcolm Island, naming their town Sointula, meaning "place of harmony." By the spring of 1903 the population of the colony was 238.

Sointula circa 1910