Robert (Bob) Scott - A Friend to the North Island

Published in the North Island Gazette June 25, 2015.
Anyone who has lived in Port Hardy in the last 50 years will be familiar with the name Robert Scott. It has been prominently displayed on the former elementary school building anchoring one end of Market Street in downtown Port Hardy.
Most people who pass this building have no idea who Robert Scott was, or his significance to the North Island.
Robert Modal Scott was born in England around 1905. He dropped out of school at 15 years of age to start working.
In 1927 Scott emigrated to Canada, and for the first couple of years in his new country he worked in general stores on the Prairies.
In 1937 he moved to the coast, and worked in a store in Quathiaski Cove, on Quadra Island, for BC Packers.  There he met his wife Eileen. Eileen was born in New Westminister but grew up in Ocean Falls until her family moved to the Cove.
During this period Scott took it upon himself to learn Chinook, a trading language used by First Nations along the coast.
In 1938 he moved to Alert Bay, again to work for BC Packers.
He used his savings to buy "Smith's General Store" in Port Hardy in 1945 from Silas Pugh.  He changed the name to "Scott's General Store."  With the development of the Air Force Base (at the airport) during World War II, Bob Scott (as he was locally known) believed that it was only a matter of time until large scale development came to Port Hardy.

Robert "Bob" Scott

Scott built Port Hardy's first power plant with Buster Cadwallader, and was the first to bring electricity and refrigeration to a local store.
He eventually expanded to separate his grocery and hardware stores.  When Dong Chong built a larger grocery store in Port Hardy, Scott sold out his grocery and concentrated on his hardware interests.
Scott was the proud holder of account #1 from the first bank in Port Hardy, the Bank of Nova Scotia.
Although he was an entrepreneur, it was not Scott's business interests that endeared him to the communities on the North Island. He was a member of the local medical board, the Port Hardy Chamber of Commerce, the inaugural Port Hardy Parks Board, and the District Recreation Committee.  He was also a member of the Masons.
When Scott became a member of the School Board, there were two separate Boards for the Quatsino and Alert Bay school districts.  He played an important role in amalgamating the Boards and reducing duplication.
Scott took it upon himself to lobby the BC government for more funding for North Island schools. When Education Minister Bill Straith was travelling through Port Hardy on his way to Prince Rupert, Scott took him on a tour of Port Hardy's small two room schoolhouse to show him the need for better facilities.  The result was that the Board secured $500,000 for each of two new elementary schools in Port Hardy and Port Alice.
One of these schools, Robert Scott School, opened in the spring of 1954.  The original school fell victim to an arsonist in 1974 and was rebuilt on the same site.
The response wasn't all positive though, and Scott had to make some controversial decisions.  As a Port Hardy resident he heard a lot of complaining about the decision to build one high school, North Island Secondary School, in Port McNeill, but he believed it was the right location to support the tri-port area as well as Alert Bay, Sointula, and other outlying communities.
Scott is also remembered as being instrumental in securing the right for First Nations children to attend public school on the North Island.  He was honoured with the title "Giykumi" (Chief) by the Kwakiutl First Nation.
Scott was a school board trustee on the North Island for thirty years.
Interested in local history, Scott personally helped to finance a history book about Port Hardy called "A Whale of a Story." Sales of the book supported the local hospital fund.
In 1973 he retired, looking forward to a quiet life at Storey's Beach.
In October 1974 he travelled on holiday to Toronto to meet with his sister from Scotland.  He choked on his food while dining out at a restaurant.  He was rushed to the hospital but fell into a coma.  He was transferred to St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver but sadly passed away November 14, 1974.

"Scott, Robert and Eileen" in A Dream Come True: Port Hardy 1904-2004. p. 193
"Pioneer Merchant Passes Away" North Island Gazette. November 21, 1974. p.6.
"Trustee Resigns after 30 years" in North Island Gazette. October 4, 1973. p. 10.

The Wreck of the Great Northern No. 5

Published in the North Island Gazette  June 4, 2015.

The upcoming television show Alone, filmed in Quatsino Sound, is reminiscent of a real life survivor event that happened in 1939.

In December of that year a fish packer called the Great Northern No. 5 was travelling in the area off Estevan Point, just North of Clayquot Sound, when it was disabled in a storm.  The packer dropped its skiff, and then without a radio to make a mayday call, drifted north for two days.

The ship's engineer, Ted Barnard, was swept overboard and perished, and the boat was smashed to pieces.

The remaining two sailors, Captain George W. Skinner and his son Hugh Skinner, managed to stay afloat clinging to pieces of the cabin of the ship.

This photo is reportedly the original Great Northern No. 5.  In the 1950s a new Great Northern No. 5 was built and fished until about the year 2000.  Photo Bob Koskela.

Father and son finally washed onto the rocky beach in the area around Lawn Point.  Unfortunately a search which had been launched focused on the area south of Brooks Peninsula. 

George Skinner was weak and injured, and Hugh stayed with him for two days trying to find food and to make a simple shelter.  Eventually Hugh decided to try to get back to civilization, and set out hiking the beach in a northerly direction, leaving his father lying in the brush near the beach.

Hugh hiked for five days before he was finally spotted by a Ginger Coote Airways plane which was a part of the search for the missing Great Northern No. 5 that had been expanded to include Quatsino Sound.

The float plane was unable to pick up Hugh, but did land in Winter Harbour, where a fisherman agreed to take his boat out to pick up the lost sailor.  After he was rescued he was flown to the hospital and eventually transported to Vancouver, where he had to have two toes amputated.

When Hugh was located he told the searchers where he had left his father, and searchers enlisted the help of a number of trapper/guides to scour the shoreline.  Unfortunately the weather at the mouth of Quatsino Sound was too rough for the searchers to be taken to the location by boat, and they had to hike into the area.  It took them three days just to get the spot where Hugh had been found.

On January 4, 1940, twenty one days after Hugh had left him lying in the bush, George Skinner was found by the searchers.  He was barely alive, and had lost a significant amount of weight.  He had survived by sucking water from moss within reach of the spot where he lay.  It had rained every day of his ordeal.

The searchers sent up a signal and a plane dropped supplies for the victim and his rescuers.  It was three more days before the weather calmed down enough for a boat to get in to rescue them from the secluded beach.  George was immediately taken to the hospital in Port Alice via a sister ship to his own, the Great Northern No. 1, owned by the Francis Millerd and Company, and then transferred to Vancouver suffering from "exposure, starvation, and contusions generally."

 Photo from West Coast Fisherman.
Captain Skinner was reportedly transferred from Winter Harbour to Port Alice on the Great Northern No. 1.

Corporal Howe of Alert Bay, Constable Winegarden of Zeballos, and Constable Lockwood of Port Alice all received commendations for their role in rescuing the lost men. In part, the commendation read: "Hampered by winter gales, and working on an extremely dangerous coast, the efforts of Corporal Howe and Constables Winegarden and Lockwood were worthy of the best traditions of the Force."

Both George and Hugh Skinner returned to the fishing industry, and fished along the coast for many years.

Sources:
BC Police files - 1940: http://nbca.library.unbc.ca/files/2013/10/General-Orders-Nos.-247-283-Severed-1940-1942.pdf
Nicolson, George.  Vancouver Island's West Coast: 1762-1962. Morriss Printing Co. Ltd. p. 261-263.
"Marooned Captain Taken to Hospital: George Skinner rescued after three weeks exposure on Vancouver Island." Montreal Gazette, January 8, 1940. p. 3. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19400108&id=KH8uAAAAIBAJ&sjid=75gFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2438,1062502&hl=en 

Writing about local history in a place where it is still very much alive...

I'm going to deviate from my normal history columns to say a quick word about my home on Northern Vancouver Island for those of you who may stumble upon this blog because you were searching out some information on a place to go camping or fishing.

When I first moved to the North Island in 2001 I was interested in local history and, apart from a couple of books which referenced Cape Scott (but were out of print), Sointula, or family history stories from Port Hardy, I found there was very little accessible information.

The more I looked into the history, the more fascinated I became.  

The first European settlement was on the North Island's West Coast, at Friendly Cove, and that small settlement almost caused a war between Spain and England.

When trading started in earnest the power and ceremony of North Island First Nations was legendary, and led to federal policies in Canada which banned one of the most prolific cultural practices by local First Nations, the potlatch.

When Europeans arrived on Vancouver Island, they first traded by ship in areas like Shushartie Bay.  Fort Rupert, in the greater Port Hardy area, is the second longest settlement of Europeans on Vancouver Island, behind only Fort Victoria.

Many of the families who live on the North Island today can count local First Nations and early settlers to the area as their relatives.  It has been overwhelming to see how many North Island families alone have descended from the Hunt family, who purchased Fort Rupert when it was divested by the Hudson's Bay Company.

As an amateur historian, cobbling together information from a variety of sources (government records, articles, books, personal interviews, archives, etc,) to tell the history of this area is a humbling experience, when to many of my neighbours the history of the North Island is their story.

Publishing an article in the North Island Gazette, preparing a presentation for the local museum, or chatting with an old timer have always worried me.  I don't want to get something wrong and misrepresent this area and its people. 

I am gratified to say, that after more then ten years of information collecting, muddling through, and voracious reading, I am still gratified every time a local old-timer approaches me in the Post Office and thanks me for a recent article.

I am so pleased to live on the North Island and to have the honour of the trust of local people to help collect information about the truly incredible history of this amazing place.

Western Whaling Company in Coal Harbour

Published (in part) in the North Island Gazette May 7, 2015.
In the mid-1800s the whaling industry was in its heyday on the Pacific Coast, until the lucrative right whales were hunted almost to extinction. It is estimated that the Northern Pacific right whale catches between 1840 and 1849 could have been as high as 30,000 individuals. As the availability of these cetaceans declined the fleet turned to the more lucrative fur seal harvest for a number of years.
Many BC First Nations people were recruited to work on whaling vessels, which would travel all over the Pacific Ocean. Some early settlers were surprised to enter a First Nations' big house in Quatsino in the mid-1800s to find First Nations women wearing traditional kimonos. These had been obtained through men working on whaling ships which visited Japan.
In the early part of the 20th century there was a revival of interest in whaling. Whaling stations were built along the BC coast at Sechart (Port Alberni), Cachalot (Kyoquot), Naden Harbour (Haida Gwaii), and Rose Harbour (Haida Gwaii). The whaling industry existed largely to provide oil and fertilizer, and was heavily reliant on Norwegian expertise. A recession, coupled with a glut of whale oil on the international market, resulted in the closure of most BC whaling stations in the early 1920s.
With the advent of World War II, and the internment of Japanese Canadians, the BC whaling industry lost much of its shore-based labour force. Production came to a halt for a few years and faced significant restructuring. The prohibition on civilians using marine radios during the war years also made it difficult, if not impossible, to carry out whaling on the Pacific Coast.
In 1948 a new "Canadian-owned" whaling corporation was formed: the Western Whaling Company.
Initially the consortium intended to retrofit the old Rose Harbour Whaling Station on Haida Gwaii, but about this time the Canadian government divested a seaplane base it had constructed for WWII in Coal Harbour, Quatsino Sound.
The site had two large hangars with big bay doors, docks, accommodation, and a sloped ramp for loading sea planes in and out of the water. The Western Whaling Company snapped up the site and fitted it with digesters, cookers, a meat press, separators, an evaporator and freezer plant.
The largest disadvantage of the site was its distance from the whaling grounds, but an arrangement was made to have harvest vessels tow their whales into Winter Harbour, where transport vessels could pick them up and tow them in to the Coal Harbour processing facility.
Compared to earlier whaling efforts, this era saw larger boats, improved technology (including the use of airplanes to find whales), and a longer hunting season.
In its first season, 1948, the station processed 182 whales. The main products were oil and tinned meat, which was in high demand during the war. The next year production increased to 250 whales.


Coal Harbour Whaling Station in the 1950s.

In 1951 the whaling station processed the last right whale which was seen in BC waters for many decades. Only within the last two years have right whales again been spotted in BC. The Northern Pacific right whale is now considered the rarest large cetacean, and it is possible that the population declined to less than 100 individuals. It is now listed as endangered under Canada's Species at Risk Act.
By the late 1950s the market for whale meat had dropped off, and while some whale meat was sold to Asia for human consumption, much of the product was sold to mink ranchers or for fertilizer. The catches were also increasing, putting higher amounts of product onto the market. 
The single year with the highest production of whales at Coal Harbour Station was 1964, with 880 animals killed.
Some archival video of work at the station is available on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ick1H-KTfk (caution - the images may be disturbing to some people).
The whaling station was permanantly closed in 1967 and since 1972 most commercial whaling (with a couple of exceptions) has been banned in Canadian waters.

Exploring the "Uncharted" areas of Vancouver Island

Published in the North Island Gazette April 16, 2015.

In the mid 1800s, most of the Europeans who had settled on Vancouver Island lived at Fort Rupert (by modern day Port Hardy) or Fort Victoria. Most of Vancouver Island was still viewed as a vast, uncharted wilderness.

Smallpox and other European epidemics had taken a heavy toll on the First Nation population of the Island (the major outbreak affecting the island in 1862), and many communities had amalgamated. In some cases seasonal camps and villages were empty for significant parts of the year, creating the impression to the European traders that many areas had been deserted.

In 1864 the governing body of the Colony established the "Vancouver Island Exploration Committee," noting that much progress had been made in surveying the waters around Vancouver Island by ship, but comparatively little was known about its interior topography or possible mineral riches.

The initial expedition leader was Dr. Robert Brown, and one of the nine members (a number which did not include hunters/ miners/ or First Nation guides/interpreters) was artist and naturalist John Buttle.

A journal which includes illustrated images of the trip, as well as report to the government of the colony in November of 1864, provide vivid detail of the expedition’s adventures around the Cowichan Valley, the mid-West Coast, the Nanaimo area, the Comox Valley, and the area which would eventually become Strathcona provincial park. This expedition increased settlers’ awareness of the Island.

In the 1890s "The Province," a weekly digest, came up with an idea to sponsor another expedition. This exploration would travel the length of Vancouver Island, and updates would be reported through a serial in the newspaper.

The Reverend William Washington Bolton, Cambridge educated, who had previously spent three years in Esquimalt, was hired to lead the crew.

In July 1894 the group left Victoria by ship and they were dropped off at Shushartie Bay. The group intended to start their expedition at Cape Sutil, known at the time as Cape Commerell.

This group travelled overland to the area near Holberg, then acquired canoes and paddled through Quatsino Narrows and down Neurosis Inlet. From here they set off on foot.

Rev. Bolton and his expedition camped at Woss Lake in the summer of 1894.

The maps which were available to the expedition were not very accurate, and Bolton later stated that "We could not tell that the chart was wrong, and came near to paying very dearly for our ignorance."

Although they had planned to traverse the entire length of the island within the next two months, they soon realized that this goal was not achievable. They made their way from Woss Lake over the eulachon trail to Tahsis, and then boarded a canoe and a ship to get to Port Alberni. From here they walked the remainder of the island on well-used trails to Victoria.

The dream of completing the expedition was revived in 1896 when phase was launched. John William Laing joined Bolton, and this time the group started their exploration at Nimpkish Lake. Forty-six days later the group reached Port Alberni, essentially completing all phases of the exploration and filling in many portions of the maps which previously showed large parts of the Northern Vancouver Island as "uncharted."

Sointula - utopian Finnish "place of harmony"

This article was published in the North Island Gazette March 5, 2015.

Malcolm Island has been utilized as a seasonal harvesting location by the Kwakwaka'wakw for thousands of years, but in more recent history it was settled by non-indigenous colonists in the late 1800s. 

In 1895 the Christian Temperance Society, under the leadership of Joseph Spencer, made an attempt to settle at Rough Bay, however within a year they had given up and the Island reverted to a timber lease for forestry.

Around the same time 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 political philosopher, playwright, writer, and organizer, asking him to come to Vancouver Island.  Kurikka had been in Australia trying to establish a utopian community, but agreed to come.

Kurikka arrived and the Finns established the Kalevan Kansan Colonization Company. Kaleva is a reference to the Finnish mythological hero which plays a significant role in the early Finnish literature epic the "Kalevala."

The Company started a newspaper highlighting their efforts to start a communal colony founded on the virtues of respect and equality.  They sold shares, while recruiting other Finns from all over the world to join their movement, and negotiating with the government for a land grant.

Matti Kurikka

On November 1, 1901 the Company signed an agreement. They would be granted the rights to Malcolm Island in seven years if they could settle 350 people, make improvements including developing farms, roads, and wharves, and educate their children in English.

The word was sent out to prospective colonists and the first advance group left to begin the task of constructing a settlement.  From the beginning the effort seemed cursed.  A gun accidentally discharged in the boat while the group was transiting Seymour Narrows, striking a man in the arm.

By December 1901 the group had arrived at Rough Bay, and by March 1902 there were fourteen settlers.  

In June the steamer Capilano brought in a load of settlers and materials. The group voted to name their village Sointula, or "place of harmony."

Although the colonists built a number of communal dwellings, they were not able to construct adequate housing for all of the new arrivals, and many had to stay in tents as the winter storms set in.  

Some colonists arrived with farm implements and cattle, which they had to sell when they realized that there would be no pasture or crops for some time.

On January 23, 1903 at 8:00pm, as many women and children were sleeping in one of the wooden buildings, and a meeting was taking place on the third floor, a fire broke out when one of the flues overheated.  Eleven people perished in the fire, eight children and two adults. Some people, devastated and heartbroken, blamed the Company and Kurikka. 

By the spring of 1903 the population of the colony was 238.

A performance of the community band. Photo from the Sointula Museum.

The men of the colony tried their hand at logging and fishing, but they had a difficult time bringing in money sufficient to pay back their loans.  After a series of bad business decisions, including a low bid by the colony to build a bridge over the Capilano River in Vancouver, the banks seized some of the colony's assets. The company, now bankrupt, was dissolved.  In May 1905 the colony was forced to give up their land grant to pay their debts.

Many of the original settlers decided to stay and retained their values of communal work.  Sointula fishermen were instrumental in forming many of the powerful fishing unions on the coast, and many business initiatives on the island have been operated as cooperatives. 

Benson Lake's historic Old Sport Mine

This article appeared in the North Island Gazette January 29, 2015.

When many of the first non-First Nations people came to the North Island in the late 1800s, they were attracted by the offer of preemptions of land. If a man or a family (rarely a woman) would come and clear the land, build a house and live on it, they would get title to the property. This was the government’s way of encouraging people loyal to the British Empire to populate the hinterland of coastal BC.

Homesteaders found that it was difficult to make a living farming in the North Island’s coastal rainforest, and in order to make money many people turned to prospecting.

In the late 1800s, the government would test mineral samples (assays) for free, and so boat-loads of local men would venture off into the great unknown for days or weeks at a time, looking for evidence of precious metals.

Residents of Quatsino seemed to be particularly adept at finding these deposits. One of these successes was the discovery of copper in an area by Elk Lake (now known as Benson Lake) in about 1897 by George Nordstrom. A claim was laid called the “Old Sport Mine” in an area about 500m south of the river on the lake.

In the early 1900s some surface work was likely done on the claim. The mine used diamond drills to a depth of about 400 feet. They ran a water-driven generator plant, and had a camp for about 30 employees.

Coast Copper Mine - Photo by Ben Leeson 191-
Vancouver Public Library

Coast Copper Mine - Photo by Ben Leeson 1915
Vancouver Public Library

In 1916 mining giant Cominco purchased Old Sport and a number of other claims in the area. They started the work of constructing underground shafts to mine below the surface. They changed the name of the original Old Sport Claim to Coast Copper.




To get supplies to the mine materials would be offloaded from the Coastal Steamships in Port Alice at Jeune Landing, driven to Alice Lake, boated across the lake, taken by pack horse to Kathleen Lake, boated across the lake, and then again taken by pack horse to Elk (Benson) Lake.

Many local men worked at the mine up until the 1930s, when the Great Depression halted production.





In the 1960s mining in the area was reactivated. The main minerals produced were magnetite, chalcopyrite and local bornite. The mine produced iron, copper, gold and silver. During a ten year production run more than 2.5 million tonnes were mined from the site. Many of the tailings were dumped into Benson Lake.

About every ten years a new company expresses interest in the site. In the late 1960s it was Quatsino Copper Gold, in the 1970s Alice Lake Minerals, in the 1980s Taywin Resources, in the 1990s Noranda Inc. The claim has been for sale again in recent years as a part of the Merry Widow Group.


**


Article in the North Island Gazette:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1185&dat=19720706&id=INBaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=w4ADAAAAIBAJ&pg=6960,1671799&hl=en
Photos show one of the old mine shafts from the Coast Copper claim in the area by Chris Halliday www.250explorer.com .