History built with Haddington Island stone

Haddington Island quarry late 1890s

This story originally appeared in the North Island Gazette May 23, 2013

Haddington Island lies just offshore of Port McNeill.  If you have ever taken the ferry to Malcolm Island or Cormorant Island you will have travelled past this historic location. 

Haddington Island is within the traditional territory of the ‘Namgis First Nation.  It is named after Thomas Hamilton (1780-1858), the ninth Earl of Haddington, who also served as the First Lord of the British Admiralty.

The island is most well known for its quarry of andesite, similar to limestone. When the BC legislature buildings were being designed in the early 1890s, renown architect Francis Rattenbury selected the unique originally selected stone from the Koksilah Quarry, near Cobble Hill. 

The initial budget for the legislative buildings was $500,000, although the final costs exceeded $950,000. First, Rattenbury rejected deliveries of the Koksilah stone as unsuitable, and it was subsequently used to build the Royal Jubilee Hospital. 

The Haddington stone was preferred, in part due to its colour, as well as its ability to hold intricate carving, while withstanding frost and harsh weather.  It is noted to have a unique yellowish-grey appearance.

Challenges began almost immediately with the supply of the stone.  During construction, the contractor responsible for procuring the stone, Fredrick Adams, struggled to keep up.  At one point he and Rattenbury got into a shoving match, which ended in Adams being charged with assault, and fined $25.  Pushed to meet production deadlines, Adams was drowned when shipwrecked in bad weather while maneuvering the barge used to tow the stone to Victoria.

The project was completed one year behind schedule, largely due to issues procuring materials.

From 1895 to 1966, Haddington Island stone was a popular building material, and can still be seen in many buildings in downtown Vancouver.  Tonnes of the material were also used in less glamorous projects such as the Ogden Point breakwater in Victoria. 

Haddington Island stone quarry - 1903/04
BC Archives I-56378

Men working in the Haddington Island quarry during the WWI era would have made between $3.00 and $4.25 for an eight hour shift. Granite was, and still is, extracted using a drilling and blasting method, which separates the stone in large blocks.

One of the last major construction projects which used the stone in the mid 1900s was Vancouver City Hall.  After that, architects moved to favour steel and glass as building materials. In 1966 the quarry was closed.

In 1967 the brand new ferry, the Queen of Prince Rupert, ran aground in dense fog on Haddington Reef, while negotiating the Kelsey Bay – Prince Rupert run.    The ferry was refit and returned to service.

The Haddington Island stone quarry was reopened in 2004, and once again produced andesite to be used in buildings and monuments around the Northwest. It was used in the construction of the Air India monument in Stanley Park, hotels, and more modern buildings at UBC and SFU.

Tale of Desperation at Vernon Lake

Published in the North Island Gazette April 25, 2013
Vernon Lake is located in the top end of the Nimpkish watershed. In the traditional territory of the ‘Namgis First Nation, it was given its current English name in March 1924, named after the Honourable Forbes George Vernon, who served as Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia.

Today Vernon Lake is known for its small campsite and its fishing. Some also know it as the terminus area for the Englewood Logging Railway.

There is another, much more sad and desperate story linked to the history of this remote lake.

In July 1939 two trappers, James H. Ryckman (56) and Lloyd Coombs (27), chartered a plane to fly up to the Lake. They had a cabin, and brought in 1500 pounds of supplies and some personal gear. They planned to work their trap line for the summer, and then to hike down either to Nimpkish or Tahsis.

Unfortunately heavy rain and flooding in the fall prevented them from hiking out. On December 1 Coombs tried to hike out, but had to return after repeated effort to cross waist-deep and ice cold rushing streams frustrated his efforts.

The life of trappers was rough, and many died while working their traplines, but what is unique about the Vernon Lake story is that the trappers left a diary that chronicled, in detail, their last horrific months.

The pair’s food was critically low by Christmas, and they grew more and more desperate as they struggled to find enough to eat.

While they started off venturing from the cabin to hunt and fish, as they grew more and more weak they found it harder to catch any food. They resorted to luring warblers into their cabin with salt, shutting the door, and catching them. Eventually they were too weak to leave the cabin or even to split firewood.

On March 18 Coombs noted in the diary that Ryckman had died: “Dear mother, Jim died today at 2 pm. This might be the last I’ll have nerve enough to write so if I do anything wrong, please forgive me. I can’t stick it any longer.”

In March 1940 worried family members chartered a plane to look for the men. After struggling with low cloud cover, a plane finally did touch down on April 1, and found an SOS marker on the shore, and the bodies of the two men in their cabin.

When the Coroner arrived, he noted that the two men weighed only about fifty pounds each. One had ended his life with a gunshot.

In April 1940 newspapers across North America ran a syndicated story that quoted large portions of the diary.

The cabin at Vernon Lake where the trappers' bodies and the diary were found.  

It was later bulldozed by a roadbuilding crew.

https://archive.org/stream/dailycolonist0440uvic_3#page/n1/mode/1up/search/ryckman+coombs 

The Amazing Photographic Legacy of Ben Leeson

The North Island is very fortunate to be able to count Ben Leeson among its pioneers.  Many of the early photographs of this area, and most early photographs which are readily accessible today from the Quatsino Sound area were taken by Leeson in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Leeson was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, England in 1866.  His family emigrated to North America in 1875, and moved to Vancouver in 1886 (briefly moving to Williams Lake). Leeson was given a camera for his twenty-first birthday, and he became an avid photographer.  He took many photographs of the BC gold rush.  

Unfortunately the family business, a side-wheeler paddleboat grist mill, Transient Mills, was destroyed in a fire in 1891.  Many of Leeson’s photos and almost all of his glass negatives were lost.

The family moved to Winter Harbour in Quatsino Sound in the 1890s, where Leeson’s father operated a store and later a cannery.  

In 1894 Ben Leeson purchased a new camera.  While working with his father at their store, and later operating their clam cannery, he took hundreds of photographs in the Quatsino Sound area.  He sold many of his photos and had numerous photographs registered under federal copyright protection.  

When steamships came into the Sound, Leeson and his family would offer his local photographs for sale to the passengers.  Leeson photographed industrial activities, First Nations, and the natural surroundings.  He experimented with artwork in which he merged or combined images in order to get certain special effects.  He also hand-coloured many of his prints.

Many of his photos provide evidence of the tradition of head-binding among women in theQuatsino First Nations.

Much of Leeson’s collection has ended up at the Vancouver Public Library.  Leeson also published an article entitled “A Quatsino Legend” in the Canadian Geographical Journal.

The Quatsino and Port Hardy Museums are interested in raising funds to bring a collection ofLeeson’s photographs home to the North Island.  If you are interested in helping the North Island obtain high quality scans of approximately 50 of these very special photographs please contact me at storeysbeach@gmail.com.  

Smallpox and the Kwakwaka’wakw

Published in the North Island Gazette January 31, 2013

The arrival of European traders brought many new diseases to the North Island, including measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza, and sexually transmitted diseases.

 

The most ravaging of these was smallpox, spread through droplet infection, usually through personal contact but also through contact with items like blankets.  Taking a month to run its course, symptoms included the presence of small sores all over the body and a high fever.

 

Smallpox may have first reached the Pacific Northwest in either the 1520s as a part of the Northern Hemisphere smallpox pandemic, or during the first recorded coastal pandemic of the 1770s.  There was some oral history reported to anthropologists that blamed the disappearance of the Hoyalas peoples of Quatsino on an epidemic illness around this time.

 

Indigenous peoples in North America were very susceptible to smallpox, as it had never been endemic to the area, and people had no natural immunity. 

Ethnographer Franz Boaz noted that there is a Kwakwaka’wakw word which means a man whose body “was covered all over with mouths which laughed and shouted all the time.”  This is believed to refer to the presence of smallpox sores.

 

In 1847 Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, George Simpson, reported after a trip to Northern Vancouver Island that “curiously enough, they (Kwakiutl) have been exempted from the small-pox.”  

 

Simpson noted that the HBC was in possession of a vaccine, which they offered, but local Chiefs refused.  Simpson noted that they did not push the issue, feeling “that our medicine would get the credit of any epidemic that might follow, or perhaps the failure of the hunt or the fishery.” First Nations did not possess quinine, which Europeans successfully used to treat the active disease.

Drawing of a person with smallpox by an unidentified aboriginal artist.

 

In March 12, 1862, the Brother Jonathan arrived in Victoria en route to the Columbia River. After the ship left on March 13 it was discovered that with the ship smallpox had arrived in Victoria. Shortly after, another steamer, the Oregon, also arrived in Victoria with smallpox on board.

 

At the time there was debate in the local Victoria papers about whether a quarantine should be enacted, but only a voluntary hospital was set up for those suffering from the virus. Legislators were concerned that a quarantine would unnecessarily restrict the liberty of individuals.

 

After it was clear that there was a full blown outbreak in Fort Victoria,  HBC officials banished the large population of Indigenous who had come to trade from the Fort, and told them to go home.  Some scholars estimate this population numbered between 2500 and 5000 Indigenous peoples. 

 

Although a vaccination was available at the time, and many missions along the coast had inoculated Indigenous communities successfully, many Indigenous people in the early stages of active infection were physically removed from the area of Fort Victoria and told to return to the North Coast, Haida Gwaii, and the North Island. They spread smallpox along their travel routes. 

Fort Victoria around the period of the outbreak of the coastal smallpox epidemic.

 

Unfortunately the official journal from Fort Rupert for the year 1862 has been lost, but the reports of many ships’ captains in the area at the time report the ravages of the disease.  They note that “hundreds were swept away within a few days” and “the tribe native to that section was nearly exterminated.” 

 

There were some reports that unscrupulous traders would unwrap dead bodies and re-sell blankets to other Indigenous communities, thus further transferring the disease. There is not a lot of evidence to indicate that this was a widespread practice, and the number of non-Indigenous people in many communities along the coast at this time would have been quite low, so it is not clear what, if any, measurable impact this practice would have had.

 

Young and healthy people were largely effected, which had an impact on reproduction rates for communities.  Survivors were identifiable because of their extensive scarring. The first case was reported in March and by December the epidemic of 1862 was over.

 

An 1850 census of First Nations in the area placed the Kwakwaka’wakw population at about 8 850, and in 1866 the estimate was 3 750, which would be an overall loss of 53%. Some reports put the impact as high as 90% of Indigenous populations. The impact was so great that some settlers at the time said that for many years afterward human bones littered the coast.

 

Some anthropologists have commented that it is remarkable that First Nations cultures were able to retain so much of their knowledge and cultural traditions with the loss of so many community members.  The Kwakwaka’wakw are truly a resilient people.

Historic Quakes and Waves on the North Island

Vancouver Island was created as a result of the earth rising due to the pressure of the Juan de Fuca plate and the Explorer Plate slowly travelling under the North American plate in the Cascadia Subduction Zone.  For the same reason, this is one of the most earthquake prone areas in Canada.

Large ‘megathrust’ earthquakes have historically taken place in the vicinity of Vancouver Island approximately every 500 years.  Scientists believe that quakes of this type took place around 600 BC, 170 BC, 400 AD, 810 AD, 1310 AD, and in 1700 AD.

The most recent megathrust quake took place on January 26, 1700 at 9:00pm.  This time has been pinpointed due to the very accurate timekeeping of the Japanese, who reported an ‘orphan’ tsunami (a tsunami without a quake) that took place the following day. 

The 1700 earthquake was estimated to have measured about 9.0 on the Richter scale, and struck near the Canada border with Washington State. 

Many First Nations’ oral histories tell of this quake.  The Nuu-chah-nulth on the West Coast of Vancouver Island have stories that tell of a great quake that happened before the first white men came.  Some Coast Salish tribes have stories that tell of a violent shaking of the earth that went on for 20 hours (this likely includes aftershocks), made houses fall down, and people on land get seasick.

A Makah storey tells of great flooding which covered the land up to the trees for four days.  Other communities tell of sand that shook until it swallowed things up.

Local First Nations have earthquake dances, which tell of the earth shaking.

The effects of more recent earthquakes have been felt on Northern Vancouver Island.    

A 7.0 quake centered in the area near the Estevan Point Light Station woke up people around the island at 12:41 am on December 16, 1918, but did not cause much damage.

Damage to the highway near Sayward following the 1946 earthquake.

A 7.3 quake in the mid-island area at 10:13am on June 23, 1946 knocked down 75% of the chimneys in the Campbell River/ Comox area, and caused a soil failure that ripped apart the highway near Sayward.  It has the distinction of causing the most recorded damage of any quake on the island in historic times. 

On August 21 at 8:01PM in 1949 a strong 8.1 quake struck in Haida Gwaii which reportedly knocked over cows near its epicentre, but this quake was not felt strongly on the North Island.

A 9.2 quake in Alaska on March 27, 1964 caused a tsunami that hit many West Coast communities.  Most people are aware of the damage that happened in Port Alberni, but a number of more northern communities also felt its effects. 

Damage in Zeballos after 1964 tsunami

Hot Springs Cove and Zeballos both reported a rising tide that would not stop rising.  The water kept coming until almost every building was knocked off its foundations, and some floated some distance. 

The Zeballos Iron Mine, which was on higher ground, served as a makeshift shelter.  Crew busses transported women and children from the village to the mine camp, and cooks provided hot food for the refugees.

Local accounts told of massive churning of waters around Tahsis narrows killing thousands of bottom fish, rapidly forced to the surface when their swim bladders exploded. 

In Port Alice an airplane dock, mail wharf, and oil float were all damaged.

The coastal float camps were largely able to ride out the tsunami.  The tsunami occurred at a low tide, and damage would have been much greater if the tide was higher at the time.

 Another more local tsunami took place in Knight Inlet around 1600 AD.  First Nations oral history tells of a massive landslide on the South side of the channel, on the side of a mountain the First Nations knew as “Tohu.”

A landslide caused 3 – 4 million cubic metres of rock to fall into the inlet to a depth of 500 metres.  This caused a tsunami wave somewhere between 3 and 10 metres in height that travelled across the narrow inlet in less than a minute, sweeping away the unsuspecting village of Kwalate.

The village was believed to have been home to more than 100 people, with four chiefs, who were all lost in this tragic event.  A number of the victims were recovered and were laid to rest near the entrance to Simoom Sound, and pictographs of four coppers painted on the nearby rock were believed to commemorate the event.

Archeological excavations found evidence of the old village site, including middens and firepits under 1 metre of overburden.  Covering the village site were tsunami deposits 1 – 5 cm deep, mostly of sand.  The village was abandoned after this event, and never recolonized.  Today the event is much studied by geologists, looking at the potential of tsunamis from above and underground landslides.

Steady growth of the town of Port McNeill

This article was originally published in the North Island Gazette August 30, 2006.
The bay that is home to Port McNeill has always been a busy place.
Port McNeill lies within the traditional territory of the Kwakiutl First Nation.  The Kwakiutl traditionally used the area at the head of the bay called Pulkhukglalis (meaning thin beach at hind end) as a village site and fishing station.
In the late 1830s this location was an important strategic trading place between the Hudson's Bay Company and local First Nations. In 1837 and 1838 the Steamship Beaver obtained over 500 beaver pelts from First Nations in McNeill Harbour. It is also believed that while anchored in the harbour the crew went ashore to cut firewood.
McNeill Harbour and Port McNeill are named for Captain William Henry McNeill, who was the captain of the Beaver, and who served for a time as Chief Factor at Fort Rupert.
The harbour was surveyed by the Royal Navy's ship Plumper in 1860.
During the latter part of the 1800s and early 1900s McNeill Harbour was used by local people as a prime location to hunt deer and fowl.  By the 1920s a number of small loggers were operating in the area.
In the 1930s McNeill Harbour began to attract the attention of larger forestry interests.  By 1936 a camp had been set up on the beach by three partners: Storey, Hoy, and Chisnall.
In 1937 Pioneer Timber Company established a logging camp near the present site of the Port McNeill waterfront.  Pioneer Timber had started on Malcolm Island in 1933 and logged at Rough Bay.  The camp was floated to McNeill from Malcolm Island and included bunk houses for 250 single men and a few families, a washhouse and a cookhouse.  About the time Pioneer Timber was moving to Port McNeill, the N.S. McNeil Trading Company, a subsidiary of a Japanese firm, bought up private land to the West of Port McNeill and began to log.
By 1939 this company had contracted its logging operations to C&A Logging (owned by Phelan Cyr and Bob Allan).  Situated on the southwest side of the bay, C&A Logging established a camp for about 60 loggers and other associated staff.  In 1941 the Canadian Government's Custodian of Alien Property seized the assets of the N.S. McNeil Trading Company, and the rights to the local timber changed hands.
As the camp grew, so did its services: a poker shack, pool hall and barber shop, community hall (which also served as a library and for a time a coffee shop), and Guide/Scout Hall were all constructed. By the 1950s the community was transformed from a camp housing mostly transient single men to one which was more family oriented.
An initial one-room school served the community until 1954 when a larger facility was constructed in which grades 1 to 8 were taught in two rooms.  There as also a gravel baseball and playing field, and in 1957 a swimming pool was constructed behind the community hall.
In the early days travel in the local area was by boat or float plane.  Residents would shop at the Co-op in Sointula or in Alert Bay.  A water taxi service started in 1951 which ran between Beaver Cove, Sointula, Alert Bay, and Port McNeill.  Port McNeill and Port Hardy were connected by a gravel road in 1959.
In the 1950s the Empire Development Mining Company started an open pit iron mine at Merry widow Mountain.  In 1961 the Cominco Mining and Smelting Company Ltd. developed a copper mine at Benson Lake.  The development of these mines helped to diversify the economy of Port McNeill.
Over the years the interests controlling the forestry industry in the local community have changed many times, but Port McNeill has always retained a strong attachment to the forestry industry.
In 1961 local businesses that served the 400 residents began to work together on issues of common community interest.  They formed the Port McNeill Chamber of Commerce in 1963 which eventually led to the incorporation of the Town of Port McNeill on February 18, 1966.  In is early days, the town fathers had the foresight to set aside 25 acres of land in the centre of town for the development of municipal facilities.  As the town expanded up the hill this municipal land was developed, and now houses a park, high school, track, curling rink, and swimming pool.  A local hospital was constructed even further up the hill in 1979.
Port McNeill has continued to grow and diversify.  In addition to logging and mining, the community today houses a number of government offices and plays an important role in the tourism and aquaculture industries.
It is also an important transportation hub for the North Island.

The Construction of Fort Rupert at Port Hardy

This article was originally published in the North Island Gazette January 5, 2012.

Fort Rupert was established in Beaver Harbour on Northern Vancouver Island in 1847, the second permanent trading post established on Vancouver Island after Fort Victoria (1843) by the Hudsons Bay Company (HBC).

During the advent of coal-powered steamships, Fort Rupert was established support the mining of coal from reported surface deposits in the area.  This is very unique and unusual in the history of the HBC.

Due to the perceived hostility of local First Nations, Fort Rupert was one of the most highly fortified Forts constructed by the HBC. It had an 18ft palisade wall, was fortified with inner and outer gates, and was protected by a number of cannons (one of which is on display outside the current Kwakiutl Band Administration office).  Over 2500 First Nations lived in the area immediately adjacent to the Fort.  There are numerous historical references to cannons being used on local First Nations villages during this early historical period.

James Douglas, the Chief Factor for the HBC in Victoria, signed two Douglas Treaties with the Queackar and the Quakeolth First Nations in the North Island in 1851, order to settle concerns about establishment of the Fort.  They were paid in blankets the equivalent of £64.00 and £86.00 respectively.  These are some of the only treaties ever concluded historically with B.C. First Nations.

Over 220 large stumps were removed to prepare the site, which is just to the South-East of the main Kwakiutl reserve today.  The Fort was constructed with green wood, which reportedly twisted and cracked as it dried, meaning the buildings required significant repair as they aged. There are some reports that some of the buildings and materials for Fort Rupert were moved from Fort Stikine. 

The chimney for the central oven was constructed three times before it met the specifications of standards required.  It was one of the last remaining vestiges of the Fort, still visible as recently as 2003.

French Canadians, Russians, and Hawaiians were employed to construct the Fort.   The settlement included wharves, houses, a blacksmith’s shop, gardens, a common kitchen, livestock areas, water closets, a provisions house, a trading shop, and areas for coal and firewood supplies.  Before long it also included a graveyard behind the main Fort.

The Fort was designed to be manned by a small number of employees who would be isolated for long periods of time. 

Fort Rupert never lived up to the expectations of the HBC, and was sold to an HBC employee, Robert Hunt, at some point between 1873 and 1882.  Hunt and his wife Mary Ebbets (from a high ranking Tongass-Tlingit First Nations family in Alaska), had 10 children, and many of their descendants still reside on the North Island today in such families as the Hunts, Lyons, Cadwalladers, and many others.