Brooks Peninsula Provided Glacial Refuge

This article originally appeared in the North Island Gazette May 22, 2014.

Brooks Peninsula is located just South of Quatsino Sound, on the West Coast of Vancouver Island.

Isolated and remote, the area is home to the Mquq^win/Brooks Peninsula Provincial Park. The park was originally established as a Recreational Area in 1986 and expanded to a Class A Provincial Park in 1995. In 2009, following a partnership agreement signed between BC and the Che:k’tles7et’h’ First Nation, the park was given its present name, which means “the Queen” in the Nuu-Chah-Nulth language.

One of the distinguishing features of this park is the fact that parts of its upland area (between seven and nine square kilometres) are believed by scientists to have been a ‘glacial refugium’ during the last ice age.

From 35,000 to 18,000 years ago, all of the land in B.C. (with the exception of Haida Gwaii) was covered by the Cordilleran ice sheet that extended offshore and was up to 2 km thick. A number of factors led scientists to theorize that parts of Brooks Peninsula had protruded from the glacial mass (a group of mountains from 580m to 670m in height), and subsequent analysis of the geology and biology of the upland areas has supported this theory. This rocky outcropping would have been one of the only pieces of land exposed in the transition between the Pacific Ocean and a massive sheet of glacial ice.

As the ice receded about 16,000 years ago and plant life returned, First Nations moved into the area. The first documented evidence of First Nations occupation of the North Island area is about 12,000 years ago.

Since the time of contact with Europeans, Brooks Peninsula has been the dividing line between the Kwakwaka’wakw and Nuu-Chah-Nulth language groups, although in prehistory this area is believed to have had more fluid borders.

Archeological examination of the area revealed one village site and a number of general use and burial sites. Growth of trees over house depressions suggest that the village was used up until the 1700s. It is estimated to have been home to about 3,000 people, in seven family groupings (nuyums).

Explorer Captain James Cook called the area “Cape of Storms,” when he visited in 1778 in his ships the Resolution and Discovery. Cape Cook, on the north-west point of the peninsula, is named for this explorer.

Drawing of Brooks Peninsula (Split Rock off Woody Point) sketched by James Colnett,
Captain of the Princess of Wales, in 1787.

Solander Island, located off of the peninsula, is named for Daniel Solander. A contemporary of Cook, Solander was a noted biologist. The island is an Ecological Reserve, off limits to the public, home to a valued seabird nesting area.

In 1788 Captain Duncan anchored in Klaskish Inlet, and called this inlet Brooks in subsequent correspondence. In 1795 Spanish officers Galiano and Valdes, who were surveying the area, named the inlet “Puerto de Bruks,” a Spanish interpretation of Duncan’s name. Captain Richards, surveying in 1862 on the Hecate, again confirmed this name.

In the early 1900s the Ilstads built a cabin on the North side of the peninsula, from which they ran a trap line.

In the 1970s a couple from Quatsino lived in a driftwood shack for an undetermined period of time, possibly two years.

Getting to know the Nahwitti

This article appeared in the North Island Gazette on April 24, 2014.
Three First Nations tribes were collectively known as the Nahwitti: Tlatlasikwala, Nakomgilisala, and Yutlinuk.  There was also a Chief known as Nahwitti, and a place the First Nations referred to as Nahwitti (first a location at Cape Sutil, later a village on Hope Island). The river which we now know as the Nahwitti was originally known to the First Nations as “wuda staade” (having cold water).

In 1786 James Strange and Alexander Walker visited the area on the ship Captain Cook.  They saw signs of local villages but did not encounter any of the local First Nations. In 1792 Don Galiano traded with the Nahwitti and left a large number of trade beads with the local people as a gift and gesture of goodwill.  These brown beads are unique and can still be found in the possession of local families.  Also in 1792 John Boit, on-board the Columbia, visited the area and attempted to trade with the First Nations.  He found them aggressive though, and ended up shooting one with his musket.

By 1800 the Spanish had left Nootka, and the British had taken control of the area.  Trading posts on the West Coast of Vancouver Island were closed and the main trading area on the Island became ‘Newitty’ (which was actually at Shushartie Bay).  It continued to play a prominent role in trade on the island for thirty years.

These First Nations faced many threats, owing to their preferred trading relationship with the British. In order to keep this position they had to regularly face challenges from their Northern neighbours, including First Nations from Bella Bella (Heiltsuk) and Kitkatla (Tsimshian).  In the 1820s traders noted that the population of the area significantly declined.

In 1850 the “Nahwitti Incident” resulted in the Royal Navy destroying two of the First Nation’s villages, in retaliation for the suspected murder of three Hudsons’ Bay Company deserters (see more at: http://undiscoveredcoast.blogspot.ca/2013/10/the-tragedy-of-nahwitti-incident.html). 

Many of the Cape Scott First Nations had amalgamated with the Nawhitti by the mid-1850s.

Around this time, when Fort Rupert was established, a census of the area noted that the Nahwitti had six villages, over 3000 members, and over 700 men of fighting age.

In the early 1900s Roderick Haig-Brown fished the Nahwitti River for steelhead, and it became a part of his folklore tales of fishing on Vancouver Island.

Today we have local place references which keep this heritage alive in the names of the Nahwitti Lake, Nahwitti River, Nahwitti  Bar, and the Nahwitti Cone.

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Footnote:

I originally had in this article some references to the Tonquin, as per below. A reader raised a question about the location of these events and I have researched the item in a bit more detail.  A number of the historical references have this incident being triggered by a disagreement with the 'Newity' Indians and reference events that took place at the Newitty village.  There does seem to be general historical agreement though, that these events took place on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, potentially in the area of Nootka.  Maybe there is a Nuu-chah-nulth village of the same name as the North Island Nahwitti people? 

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In 1811 the Vancouver Island First Nations captured an American trading vessel, the Tonquin.  Some reports say that the skirmish started when the vessel was anchored off the village of  'Newitty' and some say that a number of 'Newitty' people were kept on board the ship against their will. The Tonquin appears to have been in Nuu-Chah-Nulth territory when the vessel was attached by the local Indigenous peoples. By evening only a couple American survivors remained.  Scared, they slipped away from the boat in a dingy under the cover of darkness.  The next day the First Nations returned.  In the course of raiding the vessel either the First Nations, or one of the Tonquin crew members (reports differ) detonated the ship’s magazine, killing possibly hundreds of Indigenous people and destroying the ship.  The First Nations hunted down the crew and killed all but one translator, who was kept as a slave for a number of years before he managed to escape.

The Tonquin circa 1811

Port Alice Landslides

This article was originally published in the North Island Gazette on March 27, 2014.
Port Alice sits on the banks of Neroutsos Inlet in Quatsino Sound.  The Inlet was given its current name by the Government of BC in 1927 after the Captain of the Canadian Pacific Railway Coastal Service, Cyril Demetrious Neroutsos.
Much earlier than that, pre-1750, the Hoyalas called the area home, and in the late 1800s the Koskimo also lived in this area. It falls within the claimed traditional territory of the Quatsino First Nation.
Due to its steep slopes and heavy rainfall, the area around Port Alice has been subjected to a number of mud and rock slides.
In 1927 the original Port Alice townsite was struck by a slide that resulted in one fatality. A man with the last name Clark, was killed when his bachelor shack was swept away in a slide. Muddy debris tore down the hill, narrowly missing the local hospital.  The town had experienced several days of heavy rainfall prior to the slide, and it was suspected that a dam in a creek upstream of the town had burst.
In 1935 two additional slides careened down the hill, one ripping through the golf course, another coming dangerously close to the community store.  Local residents pitched in to help sandbag and create berms to divert the flow of water and mud.

1935 Port Alice slide

The town was relocated in 1965, further away from the mill, mainly due to concerns about pollution and a need for additional space to expand the mill to add pollution control measures. While the old town of Port Alice was a company town, where the company owned all the homes, the new municipality of Port Alice at Rumble Beach was an 'instant municipality,' with the District of Port Alice being created at the same time that the residents all moved to the new location.
Two devestating slides, however, took place in the 1970s at the new townsite.
On December 15, 1973 the community suffered from a storm that lashed the coast with high winds and heavy rains.  A mudslide occurred at the new townsite, knocking out utility poles, washing away a bridge, and affecting 15 houses.  Ten families were unable to return to their homes.

1973 Port Alice slide

Miraculously, no one was injured, but the community was cut off from the rest of the North Island in its moment of need. There was so much debris in the water that float planes could not land, and the Marble River bridge was washed out. Although it was dangerous for boats to travel, water taxis from Coal Harbour did manage to safely get to the community and were able to ferry out a number of families who were billeted in Port Hardy.
On November 12, 1975 again the town was hit with a mudslide that forced the evacuation of many residents.
After these events a number of studies were undertaken to look at slope stability above the town, and a diking system was impemented to divert future slides.
Tragedy struck again, however, November 10, 1987. A slide occurred on the road between the town and the mill.  A number of local residents were on-site assisting with the clean-up, including Port Alice Alderman Ian Ford, when a second slide hit.  Ford was standing in the path of the second slide and did not survive.
September 25, 2010 the highway to Port Alice was again washed out as a part of a weather event that saw much flooding and many slides occur around the North Island.

Chinese Canadian businessmen were pioneers on the North Island

This article was published in the North Island Gazette February 27, 2014.

The North Island’s history contains a number of stories of First Nations and pioneers who lived very interesting lives.

In the 1800s a number of First Nations people from the North Island, perhaps most notably the Quatsino, established a connection with Asian countries like China and Japan through their involvement in the sealing and whaling industries.  Prized for their skills, ships would come to the North Island to recruit First Nations sailors, who might be away for more than a year at a time. 

A number of Chinese Canadians left their legacy closer to home, here on the North Island.

Jim King emigrated as a young boy from China to Vancouver in 1882.  After working at low paying, unskilled jobs for a number of years he decided to set off up the coast to try his luck in the logging industry.  King worked as a boom man, camp cook, and a sawmill labourer before ending up in Alert Bay in 1910.

The local Indian Agent, William Halliday, befriended King and helped him to start a small store in Alert Bay.  King originally sold tobacco and then branched out into a dry goods store.

Dong Chong left Hong Kong in 1922 aboard the “Empress of Asia” and landed in Vancouver at the age of 16.  Chong started off selling fresh vegetables at a grocery stand, and then expanded these sales into a successful wholesale business based in Vancouver’s bustling Chinatown.

In 1928 Chong got married, sold his business, and travelled up the coast in search of a job.  Unfortunately he found that many businesses on the coast would not hire Chinese.  At this time the Head Tax had been implemented, and many Caucasian British Columbians were vocal in their discrimination against Asians, who had come in large numbers to the province to work on the Canadian National Railway and in many of the area’s coal mines.  Stopping in at Alert Bay, Chong met King, and decided to buy his store.

UBC Collections - Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection - CC_PH_00315

Chong would deliver goods to his customers by row boat and wheelbarrow.  When the Canadian government outlawed the potlatch Chong would always be one of the first to know if there was an illegal potlatch going on because the hosts would order huge quantities of goods from his store.  He never reported these goings-on to the police, and noted that in Alert Bay everyone got along at that time: white, Asian, and First Nations.

Chong was known to help out locals by extending credit to those could not pay their bill.  Some First Nations fishermen also used his store as a bank, asking Chong to hold onto their money at the end of the season so that they wouldn't spend it all at once.
At one point Chong ended up taking over part ownership of a logging company from a customer who couldn’t repay the loan.  Ironically, it was illegal for Chong’s logging company to employ Chinese workers.

In the 1960s Chong purchased land in Port Hardy, and built a number of successful commercial units.  His business eventually included grocery stores and commercial holdings all over British Columbia. 

A video with photos from this area is available here.
In more recent history, Dick Wong was well known for his café in Echo Bay, and later his restaurant, the Pagoda Gardens, which was established in 1961 in Port Hardy.  The building on Granville Street was a landmark in the community until it was destroyed in a fire in 1991 (by the site of the town clock). The curator at the local museum published a multi-installment biography on Wong in 1998 in the Gazette.

Articles
"Don Chong delivered groceries by wheelbarrow" in the North Island Gazette November 13, 1980.

North Island connection to the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893

This article was originally published in the North Island Gazette on January 30, 2014.
Many people from Northern Vancouver Island have likely heard of the World’s Fair, or perhaps attended Expo ’86 in Vancouver.

The North Island and many of its community members have an interesting link to one specific historical World’s Fair, of which many people may not be aware.  This connection happened during Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and resulted in the attraction of many of the first non-First Nations settlers to this area. 

In the mid 1800s the Hudson’s Bay Company built Fort Rupert at Beaver Harbour on the North Island.   Due to the isolation and late settlement of the northwest coast, the First Nations of the area were considered to be relatively ‘untouched’ by European culture.

In order to show off this unique and interesting culture to the rest of the world, an entire Kwakiutl village site was re-constructed in Chicago for the World’s Fair.  Big houses were relocated to Chicago from Northern Vancouver Island, along with a large number of totem poles, local ceremonial items, and artifacts.  Seventeen Kwakuitl band members (fifteen adults and two children) wearing traditional cedar robes, and other historic paraphernalia, were also a part of the display. 

Kwakiutl village display in Chicago 

The Kwakiutl display attracted a lot of interest and attention.  The souvenir book said that the Indians in their reconstructed village would : " live under normal conditions in their natural habitations during the six months of the Exposition."

The First Nations put on displays of singing and dancing for visitors, some of which were recorded.  When the Fair ended the First Nations returned home, but many of the artifacts which had been shipped to Chicago were sold to a local museum.

The Chicago World's Fair was a huge success, with over 27 million visits recorded, at a time when the entire population of the USA was only about 65 million people.  On one day over 750,000 people attended.

Many of the North Island’s first white settlers were lured to the area after hearing the stunning reports of its beauty and richness at the World’s Fair.

Stereoscope postcard of the Kwakiutl village at the fair.

Alexander Lyon was intrigued by the Kwakiutl exhibit, and moved to Fort Rupert.  He married Sarah Hunt, one of Robert Hunt’s daughters (Hunt worked for the HBC and bought out the fort when the HBC decided to close it).  They started a trading post in Hardy Bay.

Harry Cadwallader was a guard at the fair, and also was interested enough by what he saw there to travel back to the North Island.  He met and married Jane Charity Hunt, another of Robert’s daughters. 

A number of Quatsino settlers were also lured by the Chicago display.  Christain Nordstrom, Edyius Evansen, Halver Bergh, Ole Skarberb (Sherberg) and about five others decided to relocate to the area.

  

Pioneers settle at Storey’s Beach

This article originally appeared in the North Island Gazette December 23, 2013.

In previous columns I have written about the history of early Fort Rupert, the Port Hardy Air Force base, and the Kwakiutl First Nation. Today I thought I would pass on a bit of information about Storey’s Beach's first residents, George and Frances Storey. The information for this article is taken from the North Island Gazette and the book “A Dream Come True: Port Hardy 1904 – 2004,” published by the Port Hardy Museum.

George (Paddy) Storey was a logger who had worked around the Coast, and while a patient in the Vancouver General Hospital had met his future wife Frances (Sannie) Lyon. Paddy loved the Beaver Harbour area, and was excited when his application to log in the area was approved in 1941.

At the time there were no roads into the area, and so the Storey's logging camp was pulled up onto the North end of the beach, close to the creek outlet. If you take a walk down to the beach today, the area of the camp was the location around Chatham Ave. The Storey’s float home was pulled up on skids and is still there today, a simple white and brown house right on the beach.

The Storey's original house on Storey's Beach. 

The Storey’s children were initially home-schooled. Sannie would walk the beach or row to visit with her nearest neighbours at Fort Rupert. When the children started attending school they had to walk the beach from the logging camp to the current boat launch area by the pavilion to catch the bus. Not a difficult feat in the summer but much more challenging in the dark or the snow!

Water would be collected from Storey’s Creek, which ran behind the camp.

One popular story about Sannie was that she once tried to shoot a cougar she discovered in her chicken coop. She apparently shot a branch off of a nearby fruit tree, and blasted a hole in a dinghy, but didn't kill the cougar!

It wasn’t until 1957 that the Storey’s first neighbours moved onto the beach, Ned and Pru France. A rough trail was cleared along the beach around this time which was navigable by jeep, but had to continually be cleared of debris after big storms.

Paddy died in 1968 of lingering illness related to a car accident some 20 years earlier.

Sannie started Port Hardy’s first trailer park when, during a housing shortage, she allowed people to put trailers on her property.

Sannie died in 2006 in the Port Hardy Hospital at the age of 97, only having been out of her home for 10 days.

You may notice that there are different spellings of Storey’s Beach. Initially the town’s maps erroneously spelled the street fronting the beach “Stories Beach Road.” In 2000 the town corrected it’s spelling of the street to “Storey’s Beach,” however provincial maps and google maps still show the spelling as “Stories Beach.” Descendants of the Storey family still live on the beach.

Yreka mine yields riches at Comstock Mountain on Quatsino Sound

This article originally appeared in the North Island Gazette November 28, 2013.

Yreka is located on Quatsino Sound, across Neurotsis Inlet from Port Alice. It is in the traditional territory of the Quatsino First Nation, and in the 1800s was home to the Koskimo tribe.

In the late 1800s, local prospectors combed the area around Quatsino Sound looking for precious metals. During this era it was not uncommon for a group of men to venture out and forge through the bush for days, collecting ore samples. At the time the BC Government would provide free assay services (analysis) and tell the prospectors what their samples contained.

Local prospectors first discovered copper and gold in the area in 1898. 

The Yreka Copper Company was established in 1902, and registered 16 mining claims. It is not clear why the company chose the name Yreka, but perhaps it was to capitalize on some of the good luck associated with the gold rush in Yreka, California, where miners had struck it rich in 1851.



The initial Yreka mine on the North Island saw a camp built at 1050 ft. elevation. Approximately $300,000 was initially invested in the operation. In addition to bunkhouses and a cookhouse/dining hall, the company built a store, blacksmith shop, sawmill, post office, and mining office for the 60 or so men who worked at the mine. The mining operation included ore bunkers and a wharf. The mine itself had both a surface quarry and three shafts, the deepest of which approached 800 ft. Arial trams ran up and down the steep mountainside from the mine to the beach. A winding road with numerous switchbacks also allowed vehicles to access the site.

Electricity for the drills was generated by a water wheel, and operations would shut down when the creek went dry in the summer.

The initial mine operated until 1904, and then closed.



In 1916/17, following a rise in copper prices, entrepreneurs Clark and Silverman optioned the claim, and a new tram system was installed. From 1902 to 1917 the mine produced 3,752 tons of ore, containing 59 oz of gold, 4245 oz of silver, and 174,642 pounds of copper. During the war, the ore was not considered to be of high value, and the company defaulted. It tried to resume activities in 1919, however the option was surrendered in 1929.

In 1951 a new owner, the Noranda Mining Co. began construction of a new mine site. They completed over 30,000 ft of drilling, but in 1956 a landslide destroyed much of their work and efforts ceased temporarily.

Comstock Mountain was only officially given its name in 1959, although the mountain had been known by this name to locals for many years, as this was the name of one of the Yreka Copper Company’s mining claims.

Mining briefly resumed from 1964 to 1967 by a partnership of Noranda and the Mitsubishi Co. Production during this period was 156,586 tons, which included 1,545 oz gold, 141,629 oz silver, and 8,502,517 pounds of copper.

In the 1970s a string of successive owners continued to map, drill, and survey the claim.

In 1980 there were rumours in the North Island Gazette that the mining would reopen on the mountain, and an adjacent claim was listed for sale recently on BC mining websites. Despite (or perhaps due to) extensive analysis of the area, some geologists believe the claims explored to date are only offshoots of a more valuable seam in the area which has not yet been discovered.