Gabriolan.ca » history

Gabriola Musuem and the brickyard story

Gabriolan — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:06:00 +0000

The Gabriola Museum opens for the season this weekend, on Saturday, May 19th. (10 am to 3pm.) Their events page introduces the new exhibit:

More Than Just Clay and Mortar: The story of the Gabriola Brickyard and the workers and their families

For more than five decades until the early 1950s, the Gabriola Brickyard was the biggest industry on the island. Millions of bricks were manufactured and exported annually to Vancouver, Victoria and New Westminster where they were mortared into roads and buildings, may of which still stand today.

But the Brickyard was more than just shale and clay. It was [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Early settlers on the Gulf Islands

Gabriolan — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:28:45 +0000

Jean Barman is coming to Gabriola, and you’ll want to be at her multimedia presentation this Wednesday evening. The topic is Early Settlers on the Gulf Islands.

Pause at the VIRL to see the list of Jean’s books in the library’s collection. Peek in at Amazon to see more of her books and perhaps get more details about one of them, like The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia. Well. Doesn’t she sound interesting!

Jean will be at The Haven‘s Phoenix Auditorium on Wednesday, April 25th at 7pm. Admission is by donation. This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Library and the Gabriola Historical and Museum Society.

Did ancient Chinese drifters ‘discover’ BC?

Gabriolan — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:42:09 +0000

From the Tyee: Did Ancient Drifters ‘Discover’ British Columbia?

…no one knows what to make of the evidence hauled up from the wreck that lies 16 kilometres off Pachena Bay in almost 150 metres of water, or the two wrecks that are purported to have yielded strange artefacts from beneath nearby Clayoquot Sound. For all three have produced barnacle-covered Asian pots — probably Chinese — whose age may predate the earliest European visitors to this coast. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Snuneymuxw Chief to discuss the Douglas Treaty of 1854

Gabriolan — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:27:08 +0000

Feel like going into Nanaimo on Tuesday April 3rd? Here’s what will be happening that evening:

6:30 p.m. Snuneymuxw Chief Doug White will be discussing the Douglas Treaty of 1854 at the Nanaimo Harbourfront Library, 90 Commercial St. Prior to his discussion the Snuneymuxw dancers will perform in Diana Krall Square and then dance up to the mezzanine level of the library to start off the discussion. For information, call Quinn Fletcher 250-753-1154.

Source: this list of upcoming events in the Nanaimo Daily News.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

The myth of the eight-hour sleep

Gabriolan — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:00:47 +0000

More on the history of sleep from the BBC: The myth of the eight-hour sleep.

We often worry about people who lie awake in the middle of the night – but it could be good for you. Scientists have been saying for 20 years that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural, and historians increasingly are backing them up. [continue]

History plus physiology — what could be more interesting? I’ve blogged about this before (see the history of sleep) and am still captivated by the idea.

I’m kind of tempted to do without artificial light and go to bed early each night. What would that do to my sleep patterns?

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

The Fallen

Gabriolan — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:18:00 +0000

Every once in a while, Iain Lawrence’s blog comes to life again. I always notice; Iain’s writing is worth noticing. Tonight you should go look at his most recent blog post, The Fallen.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

George Taylor’s tombstone

Gabriolan — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 13:46:14 +0000

We visited the Nanaimo Cemetery a while back, and came across George Taylor’s grave. Does his name ring a bell? George was a Gabriola pioneer, and Taylor Bay is may have been named for him. Here’s a photo of his tombstone:

In case you can’t make out the text, here it is:

Reverend George William Taylor C.R.S.C. F.Z.S.
1854 —1912

Born in Derby, England, came to Canada in 1882. Ordained Church of England in 1884. Served in parishes in Victoria, Ottawa, Cedar, Gabriola Island and Nanaimo.

An accomplished naturalist, charter member of the natural history society of British Columbia, named honourary provincial entomologist in 1884, elected fellow of the royal society of Canada in 1894.

An actie and articulate conservationist, appointed member of british Columbia fisheries commission 1905, lobbied for west coast fisheries research station, established in 1908 as Pacific Biological Station. Served as curator director and mentuor until his death in 1912.

He lies beside his wife, Elizabeth Ann Taylor, 1858 –1895.

‘We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.’

Erected by the Taylor family and the staff of the Pacific Biological Station, December 1992.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Culturally modified trees

Anon E. Mouse — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 07:20:30 +0000

Did you know that there’s an official manual published by the BC government, explaining how to identify and describe culturally modified trees? (If you’re not sure what those are, see Gabriolan’s past post on the subject, Gabriola’s culturally modified trees.)

You can download the guide (as a honking big pdf of more than 38 megs, or in eight slightly more manageable chunks) at http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/docs/mr/mr091.htm, or go to the same site to find out how to get a hard copy.

When I found this I thought, I bet there’s a database somewhere. And there is. The locations, descriptions, etc. of the trees are included in the Provincial Heritage Register (.pdf).

But sadly, we can’t just go and look at a map of Gabriola and see where modified trees have been reported. As they say on the site,

Archaeological site information is sensitive as releasing this information into the public domain may result in looting and destruction of a site.

Therefore, the Archaeology Branch releases information on a need to know basis…where it can be shown that distribution of the records will benefit the management or conservation of these sites.

Okay, I get that.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

From Gabriola’s ice-age past

Gabriolan — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:34:19 +0000

Here’s news for anybody interested in Gabriola’s history. Nick Doe writes:

I’ve been researching Gabriola’s ice-age history this last summer and have come up with a few surprises, but none greater than this. As yet it is not clear whether this leg bone is from a mastodon or woolly mammoth; and we don’t know yet how old it is; but it did come from glacial till on Gabriola. It’s now in Victoria being tested.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Dog hair used in Coast Salish weaving

Gabriolan — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 05:25:44 +0000

The University of York has published an article about the dog hair the Coast Salish used in weaving:

Researchers from the University of York have produced the first clear evidence that textiles made by the indigenous population of the Pacific coast of North America contained dog hair.

In recent years, scientists have hotly debated whether textiles such as blankets and robes made by the skilful Coast Salish weavers before contact with Europeans were made of dog hair as oral histories have claimed.

Coast Salish oral tradition refers to a special dog which was bred locally until the mid 19th century for its woolly hair or fleece for use in the textile industry.

Yes, the little wooly dog. I blogged about Snuneymuxw dogs a couple of years ago.

Using highly sensitive equipment at the University’s Centre for Excellence in Mass Spectrometry, York researchers from BioArCh (Departments of Biology, Archaeology and Chemistry) analysed the protein composition of 11 textiles in different locations, representing 25 samples in total.

The samples were taken from artefacts in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian collections and included blankets, a sash and a robe of fur. Some of the textiles were collected during the American expeditions to the West Coast, including the Lewis and Clark (1803-1806) and Wilkes (1838-1842) expeditions. The samples dated mainly from early to mid 19th century.

Researchers found evidence of dog hair in the robe of fur and six of the woven textiles, primarily in a blend with goat hair.

However, the results published in the journal Antiquity, show there is no real proof of a preference for dog hair in high status fabrics and the researchers did not find any textiles made entirely of dog hair. Instead, researchers conclude that dog hair appears to have been used to supplement mountain goat hair, possibly as a bulking material. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

The tall stumps

John Hudson — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:00:08 +0000

This old stump stands out back of our house. I photographed it late this summer, when the surrounding greenery was in full intensity; it’s duller now, although there are still tasty evergreen huckleberries on the bush at the right.

This tree was felled a long time ago, when fallers worked two men to a tree with long saws. Halfway up the stump, you can see the rectangular notch cut for the balance beam on which the lumberjack would stand while sawing the series of deep cuts that would bring down the tree.

The stump stands about six feet tall, and for a long time I’ve wondered why this and other stumps dotted around the island were left so tall. Surely that’s a lot of lumber going to waste isn’t it? Recently, I found the answer to this question while reading R.S. Mackie’s excellent book Island Timber.

Fallers always ‘high stumped’ their trees in the skid road era. There were two good reasons for leaving high stumps, as Eustace Smith recalled: ‘One was to get above the deposits of pitch often found in big trees, and another was to avoid having a log with a flaring butt that would make it difficult to run over the skids.’

Of course, that leads to another question: if lumberjacks in the early days of coastal logging always left such tall stumps, why are there not many more of them left about Gabriola, not to mention the heavily logged Comox Valley? Mackie’s book has the answer for that too: they were wangled.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Tiny house in huge log

Gabriolan — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:38:48 +0000

You’ve seen some of the huge trees in the Elder Cedar (S’ul-hween X’pey) Nature Reserve, and perhaps elsewhere on the island, too. Maybe you’ve crowded inside one of Gabriola’s hollow old trees or stumps with your friends while someone snapped a photo. Did it ever occur to you that the base of some old-growth trees were bigger than some tiny abodes?

Well. Here’s something to gawk at: Tiny Houses of the Historic Northwest. There you’ll see a hollowed-out log that’s been turned into a cozy living space, and another that’s a mobile office. Wow!

Update:

This photo, Cedar stump house, Edgecomb, Washington, 1901, is way cooler. Double wow! Also see the Edgecomb Stump House article and slide show at historylink.org. Want still more? On to Pete Beletsky, the Stumphouse Man.

I’ve seen old stumps on Gabriola that are as large as that one shown in the photos of the Edgecomb house. What I’m curious about now is this: suppose I had such a stump on my property, and suppose it were new. (Yeah, I know, I know. Previous generations already cut down the old growth forest here. But humour me.) If I were to hollow it out and put a roof on it, would local building inspectors approve it for habitation? Or would I be told that people can’t live in such a house because it lacks concrete foundations or violates some other part of the building code?

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

The history of sleep

Gabriolan — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:11:45 +0000

What do you do when the power goes out (as ours did yesterday — yours too?), and you’re left with no electricity for the evening?

We’ve got a propane stove, so cooking dinner is easy enough. We eat by candlelight, enjoy the fire for a while… and then go to bed, way earlier than we normally would. Then, of course, we sometimes wake at odd hours of the night.

Before the invention of artificial light, did folks go to bed much earlier than we do now? And did they wake in the night, then, too? They did indeed, according to historian A. Roger Ekirch, who wrote this utterly fascinating article: Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the British Isles. (Ekirch has since written a book on the topic: At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past.)

So there’s something to read while you sip your coffee, and there’s something to ponder next time you find yourself awake in the middle of the night.

Jessa Gamble: Our natural sleep cycle (6 minute TED video.)
An insomniac learns to make the most of getting the least sleep – Washington Post
Life before artificial light – Guardian
Head Trip: Insomnia Is A State Of Mind – Huffington Post

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Chinook Jargon

Gabriolan — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:40:36 +0000

If we’d lived on Gabriola 100+ years ago, I bet we would have learned a few words of Chinook Jargon. The Yinka Déné Language Institute explains what Chinook Jargon is:

Chinook Jargon is a trade language that was used extensively in the nineteenth century and first part of the twentieth century for communication between Europeans and First Nations people in much of the Pacific Northwest, including British Columbia. (…)

Chinook Jargon is a language with a simplified grammar that draws its vocabulary from several languages. The largest parts of its vocabulary come from Chinook and Nuuchanuulth, followed by French. It also contains words from other native languages and from English. Some Chinook Jargon words have made their way into British Columbia English. An example is saltchuck ocean. [continue]

Cayoosh.net has lots more information in their Lexicon of the Chinook Jargon.

Do you remember the Saved by Oregon grape blog post? The quoted text there (from a Gabriola newspaper in 1888) includes the Chinook word kloochman, a term that has even made it into the Urban Dictionary.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Intertidal archaeology

Gabriolan — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 02:23:24 +0000

You’re free on Tuesday night? If you’re interested in local archaeology, you might want to drive down to Victoria for Intertidal Archaeology in the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve. QMackie has details. He writes:

Next up for the local (Victoria) branch of the Archaeological Society of B.C. is a Tuesday, October 18th talk by Daryl Fedje of Parks Canada Archaeology. Details below; it is free and open to the public. I know of some of this research to be presented and if I can add an editorial comment:it is now clearly demonstrated that the intertidal zone has very high potential for un-disturbed archaeological deposits, some of which show exceptional preservation. These include not only classic waterlogged sites with woody preservation, but also numerous water-saturated shell middens, and even the remains of intact house features. I think it’s probable that in the Salish Sea at least, the intertidal zone is [continue]

I’m sad that I won’t be able to attend. If you go, could you please tell us all about it?

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

The Atrevida, after Gabriola

Gabriolan — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:16:43 +0000

You’ve read other blog posts about the Atrevida, Gabriola’s first ferry. Here’s an account of the Atrevida’s more recent adventures. Sheila Gibbs wrote to say:

My parents used to own the Atrevida. My mother and father purchased this boat in the early 1980s when the ferry was a total disaster. There was moss growing on it, and it was basically an empty shell.

When my father came home to tell us that he had purchased the Atrevida, my mother and I were dumbfounded to say the least.

Both my father, Art Gibbs (otherwise known as Sarge) and my mother, Lena Gibbs, had always had a love for the ocean. Growing up in Mill Bay (living on waterfront property) we always had a boat and would take many trips around the islands including Saltspring, Pender, Gabriola, Galiano, Moresby, Vancouver, and some of the American islands — Lopez, Orcas, etc.

Each new boat that my father purchased was a little bigger than the last. There was a 26 foot Chris craft called the Coral Mist, a 38 foot wooden boat called the Playboy, a 42 foot wooden ex-RCMP boat called the The Jolly B, and then the whopping 65 foot Atrevida. My parents renovated the Atrevida to live aboard. It was done in cedar tongue and groove with a pine cabinets in the kitchen, a gas range, full size fridge, 500 gallon water tank, 500 gallon fuel tank, full size washer and dryer, and a sunken bath tub. A large light plant gave them the power to run all the appliances.

I had the honour of being married aboard the Atrevida out in the middle of the harbour near Saltspring Island in the summer of 1986, with 50 close friends and family members in attendance.

My parents both lived on the boat until my mother passed away on August 7,1995.

A few years later, someone approached my dad wanting to open a bakery business aboard the Atrevida. The bakery opened for business in Montague Harbour. The locals dubbed the boat the bun boat and it became quite the hit. The cinnamon buns were to die for!

Shortly after that, my father came to the realization that he could no longer bear to live aboard the Atrevida without my mother. The ship was too much for my aging father to take care of on his own, so he sold the ship for cash and a 42 foot sailboat called the Janaron where he lived until he was 83.

My father passed away on December 8, 2009 at the age of 86 at the George Derby Centre for Veterans. He joined the army when he was barley 17 (he served in WW 2 ) he was a Motorcycle Dispatch Rider in Belgium, France.

(Published with Sheila’s permission. Thanks, Sheila!)

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Weldwood on Gabriola

Gabriolan — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:33:14 +0000

Were you on Gabriola in 1992, when there was much concern about the Weldwood property and what should become of it? I wasn’t, so all I have to go on is the accounts of others. Here’s what Paul Grignon has on his website: Not What We Thought It Was? – Weldwood, 13 Years After.

As someone deeply involved with the Weldwood Deal from very many angles, 13 years later I present this version of events as the most consistent with the facts as I know them.

In 1992, we learned that Weldwood had decided to dispose of their operations on the coast. Some Gabriolans suggested that Weldwood simply give their 2800 acres of Gabriola tree farm land the to the community as they had already made lots of money from it.

(This blog entry used to link to that article on Paul’s website. But the article is no longer available, so I’ve removed the link.)

Paul ~~has~~ had another article on Weldwood, too: The Past is not Past if We Keep Making the Same Mistakes – One Islander’s Recap of the Weldwood Fiasco.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Lines of work in BC, 1860 and beyond

Gabriolan — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:09:04 +0000

What would your occupation have been if you’d lived on Gabriola — or in Nanaimo — 100 years ago? For help imagining occupations of the past, see Lines of work in BC, 1860 and beyond at The Hook blog.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

My Big Fat Diet

Gabriolan — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:17:40 +0000

A while ago I came across the term diseases of civilization: those diseases that were not present in aboriginal populations before the arrival of European settlers and the introduction of European foods like flour and sugar. That got me thinking about the traditional diet of BC’s coastal First Nations — a diet that included fish and seafood, lots of fat (like oolichan grease), and berries. A few other things, too, of course, but it was a protein-and-fat type of diet.

Most First Nations people don’t follow that traditional diet anymore. And now, among First Nations communities, there are problems with obesity, diabetes, and related diseases.

Reading up on these matters led me to a fascinating story.

Dr Jay Wortman is a Métis physician who made some surprising discoveries when he changed his own diet. He set up My Big, Fat Diet: a one year study in Alert Bay with the Namgis First Nation. Study participants switched to a diet that resembles their traditional diet for a year. The video about the community’s experience is described as:

Supersize Me meets Northern Exposure in My Big, Fat Diet when the Namgis First Nation of Alert Bay gives up sugar and junk food, returning to a traditional style of eating for a year to fight obesity and diabetes. (…)

Directed by Mary Bissell, My Big, Fat Diet chronicles how the Namgis First Nation goes cold turkey and gives up sugar and junk food for a year in a diet study sponsored by Health Canada and the University of British Columbia. Through the stories of six people, it documents a medical and cultural experiment that may be the first of its kind in North America.

My Big Fat Diet, like Super Size Me, looks at the problem of obesity, through the eyes of a man who straddles two cultures, Western and First Nations. It also looks at the history and present-day status of traditional food gathering, and the link between individual health and that of the immediate environment. [continue]

There’s more at CBC’s My Big, Fat Diet page, and in the My Big Fat Diet FAQ at Jay Wortman’s blog. Youtube has the introduction to the My Big Fat Diet video, and My Big Fat Diet: Challenge from the Chief.

Want to watch the whole one-hour show? The Gabriola Library has a copy of the My Big, Fat Diet video.

What if it’s all been a big fat lie? (Award-winning science journalist Gary Taubes says that the diet advice most of us have grown up hearing is just plain wrong.)
Uprooting diabetes: Riceroot grows again (Could rice-root, part of the traditional native diet, be a healthy alternative to the starches introduced by Europeans?)

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Evening at Brickyard Beach

Gabriolan — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 20:05:53 +0000

Gabriola’s brickyard was quite the industry in its day. Here’s a fragment of what’s left: a piece of Gabriola brick, soon to be swamped by the rising tide.

In the distance you see the smoke (or whatever that stuff is) from Harmac, the near-Gabriola industry we’ve got these days.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Himalayan blackberries

Gabriolan — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:49:47 +0000

The Himilayan Blackberry features huge, vigorous vines (and yummy berries). It grows in profusion on many parts of Gabriola and throughout southwestern BC. It’s not a native plant, so how’d it get here? An article by Arthur Lee Jacobson explains:

Luther Burbank, greatest ever of plant-breeders, introduced the Himalaya Blackberry in 1885. During his long career he originated such new creations as Shasta Daisies, Elephant Garlic, Burbank Potato, Thundercloud Plum, Spineless Cactus, Pineapple Quince, Santa Rosa Plum and hundreds more. Reading about this one person’s achievements amazes and inspires us. Obtaining the Himalaya berry was one of his comparatively easy endeavors. Burbank simply exchanged seeds with a source in India. He named the best of his seedlings so raised ‘Himalaya Giant’ to commemorate its origin. We don’t know how many seedlings he had. But the one he named and released has made itself thoroughly wild on the West Coast in northern California well into British Columbia. Birds spread the berries. The root-systems are tough and extensive. Native vegetation is choked-out by the invasive bramble.

The plant can be found in any soil, as well as in most degrees of shade or light. Cattail marshes, old-growth forests, clearcuts, alley edges, neglected back yards, freeway margins, etc., all host thriving patches. It is semievergreen, with canes that can shoot out over 30 feet in one growing season. Some reports say 40 feet and I will not deny the possibility. They can take root at the ends if touching soil. In spring the canes are ever so juicy (edible peeled, but bland flavored) and snap easily. They branch and elongate all summer, gradually hardening. The following year they flower in late May and June.

The blossoms are something like those of apple trees: palest pink in the bud stage, opening white, attractive to behold and beloved by bees. The first berries ripen enough for eating in July. They go from hard green knobs to red, then purplish-black, finally pure black, soft and delectable. The main crop is in August. [continue]

I’ve never heard of anybody eating the canes of this plant. Have you?

Both Himalayan Blackberry and evergreen blackberry are considered noxious weeds.

New memorial for Nanaimo miners

John Hudson — Fri, 06 May 2011 04:02:47 +0000

By way of follow-up to my article regarding the 1887 Nanaimo mine explosion:

The Nanaimo Daily News today reports that the memorial at the foot of Milton Street has been refurbished. I visited it only last Thursday, and saw no sign of recent work on it compared to earlier photographs, so am intrigued to see what might have been changed. I hope the information panels have been replaced: they were rather shoddily produced and made poor use of the space.

There will be a commemorative gathering at the memorial this Saturday afternoon (7 May), and I plan to head over there after the morning Gabriola geology and disaster preparedness meeting at the Agi Hall (thankfully, mine explosions are one disaster we don’t have to worry about any more). Perhaps I’ll see some other Gabriolans at the memorial?

Details from the Nanaimo Daily News:

Storytellers Roger Stonebanks and Muriel MacKay-Ross will provide tales of the mine disaster, and attendees are encouraged to bring a flower to lay at the memorial.

The event takes place on Saturday between 1-3 p.m. at the historical kiosk at the corner of Esplanade and Milton Street.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Nanaimo disaster, Gabriola tragedy

John Hudson — Wed, 04 May 2011 00:55:31 +0000

Most days, the world of the northern English mining village where my father was raised seems ungraspably distant from Gabriola Island. I sit at my desk, looking out at the cedars towering over the first flowers of late-arriving Spring, and struggle to imagine the hard rows of company houses on the numbered streets of Horden Colliery, or the lives of the people who lived in them in the days when my father was a boy. Walking along the sand flats below Whalebone, I am not reminded of the pebble beach at Horden stained by the coal tailings dumped in the sea, nor the damp caves of nearby Marsden Bay, where the homeless unemployed sought refuge in 1930s. I gather sand dollars and surprise indignant clams, and don’t think of the bleak polluted landscape where, as recently as the 1980s, the wives and children of striking miners combed the beach below Horden for scraps of coal to heat their homes. It is all a world away, most days. There is one place on Gabriola, though, where that world and others like it come readily to mind in the mirror of a local tragedy.

Among the pioneer gravestones in Gabriola cemetery is this one, marking the resting place of Thomas Martin, who was killed 124 years ago today in the worst mining accident in British Columbia history.

In memory of
THOMAS MARTIN
beloved Son of
JONATHAN & HELLIN MARTIN
Killed in the Explosion
at Nanaimo May 3, 1887
Aged 23 years

Not there his nobler part shell dwell
A prisoner in this narrow cell:
But he whom we now hide from men
With youth renewed shall live again.[1]

Jonathan Martin emigrated to Canada as a Hudson’s Bay Company employee, from Orpington in the southern English county of Kent, in 1850, just one year before Ki-et-sa-kun, ‘Coal Tyee’, reported the presence of black rock in Winthuysen Inlet to the colonial authorities in Victoria. Jonathan’s first son, William, was born to an unknown native woman, his eleven other children to the woman from Cowichan whom he married, whose name is variously recorded as Ellen, Helen, Hellin and most confusingly, on the baptismal record of four of their sons, as Jane. Jonathan and William pre-empted land on Gabriola in April 1874 (160 acres in Section 2, to the northwest of today’s United Church). Thomas, the second son, had been born on 24 May 1865, and was baptised with three of his brothers at St Paul’s (Anglican) church in Nanaimo in 1876. Martin family tradition recalls that he was the best athlete among the brothers, taking part in baseball and competitive sculling on Gabriola. In the 1884/85 assessment rolls, Thomas is recorded as owning 112 acres in the southwest quarter of Section 4, between Degnen Bay and Drumbeg. He was in his early twenties, and working in the Number One (Esplanade) Mine in Nanaimo.[2]

* * *

Number One Mine was owned by the Nanaimo Coal Company, a subsidiary of the Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company. Despite its name, the company was based in London, and most of its directors never saw Vancouver, let alone Nanaimo. The mine was managed by a superintendent sent out from England. The main shaft was sunk in 1881, and the mine went into operation two years later. Over the next fifty-five years its seven miles of tunnels would snake out under Nanaimo Harbour, Protection and Newcastle Islands, and down to the Nanaimo River, following the seams of coal.

The coal mines of Vancouver Island employed first experienced miners direct from the British Isles or via mining areas in Nova Scotia or other parts of North America, and then less experienced Swedes, Finns, Italians, Croats and Japanese who would work for lower pay, and large numbers of Chinese, some of whom had previously built railways in the province. Many of the non-British miners, unable to speak much English and keeping to their own communities above ground, were used by the coal companies to keep wages low and as unwitting strike breakers. The companies encouraged miners to bring their wives to Nanaimo, both because families were seen as a stabilising influence in a frontier town and because the cost would keep a man tied to the mine for many years as he paid off his debt to the Canadian Pacific Railway. Thomas Martin and his brother William, who worked in the Wellington mines, were unusual among that first generation of Nanaimo miners in having been born in the area.

Miners of Number One Mine, Nanaimo, at the pithead. The date of this photograph is unknown, but the open flame lamps on the miners’ soft caps indicate that it was taken in the 19th Century. [Image B-03624, reproduced by permission of the Royal BC Museum, BC Archives. The photograph has been cosmetically edited for this publication.]

The men who came to dig coal on Vancouver Island found themselves in some of the most dangerous, gassiest mines in the world, where unions were prohibited, safety regulations were often ignored by miners and managers alike in favour of productivity, and from which they were unlikely ever to make enough money to leave. Again the Martin brothers were unusual in owning property, but clearly the income to be earned by a fit man able to work hard in the mines was attractive enough to lure them away from their land on Gabriola. Miners at the coal face were on contract, and paid by the number of carts of coal they produced. Other labourers in the mine’s many operations, above ground as well as below, were paid a daily wage, whose amount was determined in part by the colour of their skin.

There are many ways in which a mine will kill men, either individually or en masse. At times in the early decades of Vancouver Island mining, some mines averaged one fatality every month during normal mine operations. The body of a miner crushed by a rock fall or a runaway coal car would be laid on top of the coal car going to the surface, and work would continue. If one of the costly mules or ponies, imported from the United States, were killed underground, most likely a driver would lose his job over it; men could be had for free, though, and they lived and worked knowing how lowly their lives were valued by the coal companies. After each accident, even those gas explosions, fires, cave-ins or floods that killed a dozen or more men at once, the survivors would return docilely to their labour in the days that followed. The wives and children of the dead men would receive a small family support payment for a limited time, and some support from the fraternal lodges, but would have to find a way to support themselves, most often by the eldest sons applying for work at the mine, some of them as young as twelve. And so it went, for the first years of the Number One Mine, the other Nanaimo Coal Company pits, and in the Dunsmuir mines at Cumberland and Extension, notorious for their poor safety and harsh labour policies.

* * *

Shortly before six o’clock in the evening on 3 May 1887, while the miners’ wives were preparing supper for their families, the ground shook violently beneath them, displacing bricks from chimneys and leading many people to wonder if it were an earthquake. A thunderous noise arose from the pit head on Esplanade. Within minutes the shrill pithead whistle began to sound a continuous note, indicating a disaster. Number One Mine had exploded.

Of the more than 150 men on shift in the mine that afternoon, only seven survived. Some were killed immediately by the explosion; five of the bodies were never found. Others were trapped and suffocated or were killed by the dreaded ‘afterdamp’, the invisible and odourless poison gas that rushes through a mine after an explosion. Some ran in the darkness and were overtaken by the gas. Some huddled together. Some lived long enough to scratch farewell notes to their families in the coal dust on their shovels. The mine burned uncontrollably for a whole day, and although search teams worked quickly near to the surface some bodies were not retrieved until the end of the year. It would be reckoned the largest man-made explosion in history, and would remain so until the great Halifax munitions explosion of 1917.

As the whistle continued and smoke rose from the hoisting and ventilation shafts of Number One Mine, women and children rushed to the pithead, many of the wives still wearing their aprons. Forty-six of them were widowed that day, and 150 children left without fathers.

For a long time the total of killed miners was reckoned at 148, but recent research has raised the number to 150. Of these, 53 were Chinese workers whose names were not recorded by the mine company. They were listed in the payroll only by number, and that is how they are also recorded on the memorial of the disaster. Prior to enactment of the British Columbia ‘Birth, Marriages and Deaths Act’ of 1897, employers were not even required to report the deaths of Chinese workers. The Dunsmuirs ensured the loyalty of their Chinese workers by keeping back a portion of their wages towards the head tax that the Canadian government introduced on Chinese immigrants in 1885, in effect keeping the Chinese miners in indentured servitude.

In addition to Thomas Martin, two other sons of Gabriola families were among the victims of the disaster: James Hoggan (21) and John McGuffie (22). In the months that followed, Gabriolan James McLay, who owned land near Horseshoe and built a number of the roads at the north end, helped organise the relief committee that raised money for widows and orphans. David Roberts of Mudge Island collected relief funds there and on Gabriola’s south end.[3]

The cause of the explosion was eventually determined to be improperly laid charges, which would have blown outwards into the mine tunnel instead of into the coal and surrounding rock. Such a blast, although immediately localised, throws large amounts of coal dust into the air, which then burns explosively. As the oxygen is rapidly consumed, the concentration of explosive firedamp gases such as methane in the mine increases, causing a chain reaction through the tunnels. The explosions cause rock falls, trapping men underground and crippling the ventilation systems that miners rely on to remove poisonous gases from the tunnels. Afterdamp, the mix of gases left in the mine following the explosions, includes high percentages of carbon monoxide and this is usually responsible for many of the deaths in a mine explosion. Close to the original explosion, bodies may be unrecognisable or even completely destroyed by the force of the explosion; further away, they might by lying without a mark on them except the discolouration of their faces indicative of the gas.

News of the explosion and the recovery efforts were published widely. This account is from the Evening Tribune of Lawrence, Kansas, published four days after the disaster (the number of men in the mine cited in early accounts were later shown to be inaccurate):

NANAIMO, B.C., May 7.—The exploring party that went down yesterday morning broke through into the mine and discovered the dead lying in all directions. All hope is now given up of saving any of them. Thirty-five bodies were recovered from the mine. The fire is still burning, but is under control. The mine is owned by the Vancouver Coal Company, of London, England. The latest investigation shows that 101 whites and eighty-five Chinese were in the mine at the time of the explosion. At two o’clock the body of Michael Lyons was found on level No. 1, 700 yards from the hoisting shaft. He was a mule driver about eighteen years old, and was found at his station, near a dead mule. The corpse was taken to a school house where he lies, terribly burned about the face and breast. His face is black from the effects of the gas. His father is still in the mine. A cave-in evidently occurred just beyond where he was lying. After the strictest inquiry it is learned that there are forty-seven widows, most of whom have large families. The Chinamen met last night and made arrangements for burying their countrymen. Some of them refused to place the dead in coffins and had to be compelled to do so. The stores will continue to be closed and little business is being done. Most of the men are from Cornwall, Yorkshire and Wales, and a few are from Nova Scotia. The fearful character of the explosion can not be exaggerated. Over 130 children orphans have already been counted. The progress of subduing the flames is proceeding rapidly and it is thought that all danger of a second explosion is over.

* * *

The Number One Mine explosion was a tragedy that directly affected almost everyone who lived in the Nanaimo area, including many on Gabriola. It also marked the first significant step in the long and bloody struggle of Vancouver Island miners to organise into effective labour unions. Sadly, the first to suffer in that struggle were the unfortunate Chinese, whom many white miners and families chose to blame for the explosion, claiming that the Chinese were unable to read and follow the posted safety regulations. The docility of the miners was broken on 3 May 1887: there were too many dead for anyone to go quietly back to work. A second fatal explosion that killed sixty men at the Dunsmuirs’ Number Five mine at Wellington, just eight months later, raised the level of anger still further, and the mine companies finally had to agree to listen to the miners’ demands. The first of these was that the Chinese be prohibited from working underground, and only given topside jobs such as firing the boilers and manning the coke ovens.

It is difficult to extricate the economic and racialist motivations of that time. The mine companies hired the Chinese labourers because they could be paid considerably less than the white miners, and deliberately pursued policies to keep the mining communities fractured along racial and linguistic lines to inhibit organisation. In Victoria, racist politicians and newspaper owners profited from ‘yellow peril’ scaremongering, and in an early and uncharacteristic alliance supported the demands of white miners to restrict the work opportunities of Chinese miners. But there is little in the oral histories recorded by the Coal Tyee Society to suggest that racism, rather than economic considerations, made white miners resentful of the Chinese. White miners spoke with admiration of just how little money the Chinese survived on and still sent some home to China, and Chinatown in Cumberland was a popular destination on Saturday nights, while many white families came out to watch the colourful festivities of Chinese New Year. In the wake of the Nanaimo explosion, white miners saw an opportunity to make the coal company employ more of their own community at higher wages underground. Despite the fact that few of the Italian or Swedish immigrants spoke English any better than the Chinese, or that a significant number of native English speakers in the mine were likely illiterate, the circumstances of the explosion—and the cooperative labour policies of superintendent Sam Robins[4]—enabled the white miners to win this concession from the mine company.

There is, of course, no way to determine whether Chinese miners were in any way responsible for the Nanaimo explosion. Some Chinese were clearly close to the site of the incorrectly laid explosives that triggered the disaster, but so were white miners. It was general policy in Vancouver Island mines to permit miners to lay their own charges in most situations, in the interests of efficiency and productivity: the mine managers didn’t want to pay the fees for a specialist charge layer, and the miners didn’t want to have to wait for one to arrive at their section of the coal face. Miners were paid by the coal load, and time spent making their environment safe was time they were not earning money. At Nanaimo in 1887, the inquest found the mine owners and management at no fault; this pattern was repeated many times, after every mine disaster on the Island, even when mine inspectors had previously noted breaches of safety regulations that the managers had done nothing to correct.

A final fact deserves to be stated with regard to this topic and in defence of the Chinese miners. During the period a few years later when they exclusively worked the Dunsmuirs’ Number Two slope at Cumberland it had the lowest accident rate of any mine in British Columbia.

* * *

If the Nanaimo explosion was a turning point in Vancouver Island labour history, we can only see it as such in light of the long and bitter struggle that followed from that tragic day. The mine companies, especially that of Robert and James Dunsmuir whose labour policies and cost cutting measures consistently put productivity before the welfare and safety of their employees, sowed as they reaped. Efforts to stifle union organising in the mining camps led to greater militancy and radicalism, exploding in the Big Strike of 1912–1914 when rioters trashed the houses of strike breakers in Extension and burned the pithead. Provincial police, special constables and militia were brought in to suppress the strikers and to arrest organisers. During the years of the First World War, union organisers were targeted for conscription to get them out of the coal fields, and resisters went into hiding in the mountains above Cumberland; miners and their wives walked the snow covered trails to bring food to the fugitive men during the winter. The shooting of the labour organiser Albert ‘Ginger’ Goodwin by a special constable in 1918 sparked a general strike in Vancouver, the first in Canadian history, while thousands followed his coffin through the streets of Cumberland. In 1920, alarmed by the increasingly successful efforts in BC and Alberta to establish One Big Union along the syndicalist lines advocated by the Industrial Workers of the World, the government of Canada passed an order-in-council requiring all miners in Canada to become members of the more moderate United Mine Workers of America.

Number One Mine in Nanaimo had re-opened in 1889, two years after the explosion. It became the largest and most productive mine in the province, and when it closed on 5 October 1938 it was the oldest operating mine in BC. By then almost all the miners on Vancouver Island were unionised. In 1937, the Western Fuel Corporation that had taken over the Nanaimo mines, and the Canadian Collieries Ltd., which had bought the Dunsmuir mines in 1910, accepted UMWA representation of workers in negotiations and disputes and to set up safety committees. For the first time in the history of mining on Vancouver Island, full-time miners were entitled to two weeks paid holiday each year. They were given twenty minutes in which to sit down and eat their lunch, instead of having to grab mouthfuls while working. The union pension plan offered security in their old age. Most importantly, and most likely to contribute to their reaching that old age, the individual miner no longer had to choose between his income and his safety. After fifty-four years of struggle commencing in the aftermath of the Number One Mine explosion, and the deaths of more than 700 more men in the mines of the Nanaimo area,[5] these are the simple but real benefits won by the miners and those who had faced arrest, imprisonment, deportation and even death to organise them.

By the late 1930s, oil was already displacing coal as a source of energy in many places. The Second World War increased demand for coal again, but the discovery of oil in Alberta in 1947 put an end to the last mines of the Nanaimo area: their tunnels were collapsed, their pitheads dismantled, and only a few physical reminders remain today to indicate that they were ever there. One of these is the sad and isolated little memorial that commemorates Thomas Martin and the other miners killed in the 1887 explosion. It is on a little-visited corner in Nanaimo, above the train tracks and beside the Van-Kam freight yard at the foot of Milton Street, near the site of the Number One Mine pithead.

* * *

Some years ago, my brother wrote a fine book about Horden Colliery and called it Coming Back Brockens, a northern English mining term for the practice of pulling out props and allowing the roof to collapse when a coal face is exhausted and the tunnel to be closed. It is a metaphor that suggests one of the book’s themes, the fragility of collective memory in the disruption of a community whose original reason for existing has been exhausted. Another coal metaphor comes to mind when I think about the history of mining on Vancouver Island. A longwall cut is a method used to extract coal from a narrow horizontal seam sandwiched between two masses of rock, above and below. Because the coal company obtained no profit from and paid no wage for cutting rock, miners working a longwall cut would do so lying on their sides, frequently in pools of water, or bent double on their knees beneath the low roof, to maximise the amount of coal extracted against the amount of rock cleared. The history of mining in the Nanaimo area is something like that narrow seam of coal: the 117 years between the discovery of coal in Winthuysen Inlet and the closure of the last Wellington mine in 1968 are a narrow interlude, sandwiched between the immensely longer history of the aboriginal peoples of this coast and the future that is rushing away from the tragedies and struggles of the past. Facing those tragedies and struggles is difficult. But it is a rich seam, and worth the effort.

[Read comments on this article; add your comment if you wish.]

Victims of the Number One Mine explosion.

The list that follows cross-references information from two sources: 1) a list of victims originally published in Volume 13, Issue 4 (Winter 1996) of AncesTree by the Nanaimo Family Historical Society and cross indexed with the mine level information published in Volume 11, Issue 3 (Fall 1994); 2) the Nanaimo Community Archives Mine Death & Accident database entries for 1887. These two sources are not consistent. Names marked * occur only in the Nanaimo Family Historical Society list, while those marks ** occur only in the Nanaimo Community Archives database. Variant names in the latter are recorded in parentheses. The total count of the combined lists is 150, but it is possible that there are transcription errors in one or both sources and misidentification of at least one victim under multiple names.

The memorial in Nanaimo records that most of the anonymous ‘Chinamen’, listed by their payroll number, were members of the Mah clan from the villages of Nam Long, Sheng Long and Sun Gup, near Canton (Guangzhou) in Guangdong province. In mine records, the Chinese were not accorded the title ‘miner’, but were listed simply as ‘underground’.

Thomas Allen (or F. Allen?) Miner, No. 5 Level.
Bristol, England. Aged 24. Body retrieved May 9th.
Single.

Edward Benton Miner, No. 1 Level.
Rothwell, Yorkshire, England. Aged 34. Body retrieved May 8th.
Left a wife and six children.

George S. Bertram Miner, No. 3 Level.
Yorkshire, England. Aged 37. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and three children.

Herbert Bevilockway Miner, No. 3 Level.
Nanaimo. Aged 24. Body retrieved May 6th.
Single.

George Biggs Miner, New Slope.
Nanaimo. Aged 27. Body never found.
Single.

Arvid Bjurling* No. 5 Level.
Sweden. Aged 30.
Presumed single.

Jonathan Blundell Miner, New Slope.
Maryport, Cumberland, England. Aged 33. Body never found.
Left a wife and five children.

Robert Buffington Miner, No. 1 Level.
Age unknown. Body retrieved May 8th.

William Bone Miner, No. 1 Level.
Penzance, Cornwall, England. Aged 42. Body retrieved May 8th.
Left a wife and three children.

George Bowden Miner, No. 1 Level.
Cornwall, England. Aged 71. Body retrieved May 8th.
Widower.

Jonathon Bramley Jr. Miner, No. 1 Level.
Rothwell, Yorkshire, England. Aged 36. Body retrieved May 8th.
Left a wife and three children.

H. Brun (or Burn) Miner, No. 5 Level.
Age unknown. Body retrieved May 9th.

William Burns Miner, New Slope.
Scotland. Aged 35. Body retrieved May 13th.
Single.

James Byers (or Byres) Miner, No. 3 Level.
Wrickbridge, Cumberland, England. Aged 22. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and child.

William R. Campbell Miner, No. 1 Level.
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Aged 28. Body retrieved May 9th.
Single.

James Campbell Miner, No. 1 Level.
Rye, Sussex, England. Aged 39. Body retrieved May 8th.
Left a wife.

Chinaman No. 3 Underground.
Body retrieved May 3rd.

Chinaman No. 71 Underground.
Body retrieved May 3rd.

Chinaman No. 72 Underground.
Body retrieved May 3rd.

Chinaman No. 73 Underground.
Body retrieved May 3rd.

Chinaman No. 77 Underground.
Body retrieved May 3rd.

Chinaman No. 83 Underground.
Body retrieved May 3rd.

Chinaman No. 84 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 86 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 87 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 88 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 89 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 90 Underground.
Body retrieved May 8th.

Chinaman No. 92 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 93 Underground.
Body retrieved May 8th.

Chinaman No. 95 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 96 Underground.
Body retrieved May 8th.

Chinaman No. 97 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 98 Underground.
Body retrieved May 9th.

Chinaman No. 100 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 101 Underground.
Body retrieved May 8th.

Chinaman No. 102 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 104 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 105 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 106 Underground.
Body retrieved May 8th.

Chinaman No. 107 Underground.
Body retrieved May 8th.

Chinaman No. 108 Underground.
Body retrieved May 8th.

Chinaman No. 112 Underground.
Body retrieved May 8th.

Chinaman No. 113 Underground.
Body retrieved May 9th.

Chinaman No. 114 Underground.
Body retrieved May 9th.

Chinaman No. 116 Underground.
Body retrieved May 9th.

Chinaman No. 117 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 118 Underground.
Body retrieved May 9th.

Chinaman No. 119 Underground.
Body retrieved May 9th.

Chinaman No. 120 Underground.
Body retrieved May 9th.

Chinaman No. 122 Underground.
Body retrieved May 11th.

Chinaman No. 123 Underground.
Body retrieved May 6th.

Chinaman No. 124 Underground.
Body retrieved May 14th.

Chinaman No. 125 Underground.
Body retrieved May 11th.

Chinaman No. 127 Underground.
Body retrieved May 14th.

Chinaman No. 128 Underground.
Body retrieved May 8th.

Chinaman No. 129 Underground.
Body retrieved May 14th.

Chinaman No. 131 Underground.
Body retrieved May 11th.

Chinaman No. 133 Underground.
Body retrieved May 14th.

Chinaman No. 135 Underground.
Body retrieved May 14th.

Chinaman No. 136 Underground.
Body retrieved May 8th.

Chinaman No. 137 Underground.
Body retrieved June 20th.

Chinaman No. 137 (138?) Underground.
Body retrieved October 15th.

Chinaman No. 139 Underground.
Body retrieved December 10th.

Chinaman No. 140 Underground.
Body retrieved December 10th.

Chinaman No. 142 Underground.
Body retrieved October 15th.

Chinaman No. 143 Underground.
Body never found.

Chinaman No. 145 Underground.
Body never found.

William L. Cochrane (or Cochran) Miner, Sinking Shaft.
Age unknown. Body retrieved May 3rd.
Single.

Michael Corcoran Miner, No. 5 Level.
County Kerry, Ireland. Aged 46. Body retrieved May 9th.
Left a wife and six children.

William Davey (or Davy) Miner, No. 3 Level.
Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. Aged 33. Body retrieved May 6th.
Single.

James Davey (or Davy) Miner, No. 3 Level.
Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. Aged 33. Body retrieved May 6th.
Single.

William (L.) Davis Miner, Sinking Shaft.
Ruthin, Denbighshire, Wales. Aged 36. Body retrieved May 3rd.
Left a wife and two children.

Daniel Dawson Miner, New Slope.
Cletermore, Cumberland, England. Aged 28. Body retrieved May 13th.
Single.

Thomas Dawson Miner, New Slope.
Cletermore, Cumberland, England. Aged 32. Body never found.
Single.

Charles Drake Miner, New Slope.
Sweden. Aged 27. Body retrieved May 14th.
Left a wife and three children.

Peter Ducca Miner, No. 5 Level.
Formaco, Italy. Aged 25. Body retrieved May 9th.
Single.

Arthur Ellis Miner, No. 1 Level.
Aged 21. Body retrieved May 8th.

David Ellis Miner, No. 1 Level.
Rothwell, Yorkshire, England. Aged 48. Body retrieved May 8th.
Left a wife and four children.

Thomas Evans Miner, No. 3 Level.
Llwynpia, Glamorgan, Wales.Age unknown. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and four children.

John C. Fallen Miner, No. 1 Level.
Michigan, U.S.A., via California. Aged 30. Body retrieved May 8th.
Single.

Anderoti Fillipea (or Fillippia) Miner, No. 5 Level.
Genoa, Italy. Aged 28. Body retrieved May 9th.
Single.

Joseph Forrest (or Forest) Miner, No. 1 Level.
Longhurst, Northumberland, England. Aged 28. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife.

William Gilbert Miner, No. 1 Level.
Goldsithney, Cornwall, England. Aged 43. Body retrieved May 8th.
Left a wife and four children.

Thomas Gorman Miner, New Slope.
Middleton, County Cork, Ireland. Aged 24. Body retrieved May 13th.
Single.

William Hague (or Hagne) Miner, New Slope.
Oldham, Lancashire, England. Aged 23. Body retrieved May 14th.
Left a wife and child.

James Hoggan Miner, No. 3 Level.
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Aged 21. Body retrieved May 6th.
Single.

William Hoy Miner, New Slope.
Sydney Mines, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Aged 21. Body retrieved May 14th.
Left a wife and child.

Samuel Hudson** Explorer.
Age unknown. Body retrieved May 3rd.

Thomas Hughes Miner, New Slope.
Buckley, Flintshire, Wales. Aged c.32. Body never found.
Left a wife and children.

Andrew Hunter Miner, No. 1 Level.
Nanaimo. Aged 15. Body retrieved May 6th.

James Isbister Miner, No. 3 Level.
Nanaimo. Aged 17. Body retrieved May 6th.
Single.

Nicholas Johns Miner, No. 5 Level.
Cornwall, England. Aged 25. Body retrieved May 9th.
Left a wife.

Edward John (or Johns) Miner, No. 1 Level.
Wales, via Minnesota U.S.A. Aged 40. Body retrieved May 8th.
Left a wife and children.

John Johnson Miner, New Slope.
Sweden, abt 31 yrs, left a wife & 4 or 5 childrenAged c.31. Body retrieved May 14th.
Left a wife and four or five children.

Evan Jones Miner, No. 3 Level.
Llanarmon Yu Tale, Denbigh, Wales. Aged 40. Body retrieved May 6th.

Hudson Lee Miner, No. 3 Level.
Rothwell, Yorkshire, England. Aged 22. Body retrieved May 6th.
Single.

Henry Lee Miner, No. 3 Level.
Rothwell, Yorkshire, England. Aged 48. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and ten children.

Abraham T. Lewis Miner, No. 3 Level.
Brymbo, near Wrexham, Wales. Aged 47. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and child.

John Linn Miner, Sinking Shaft.
Ayreshire, Scotland. Aged 34. Body retrieved May 3rd.
Left a wife and five children.

William Lukey Jr. Miner, No. 3 Level.
Wisconsin, U.S.A. Aged 27. Body retrieved May 6th.

William Lukey Sr. Miner, No. 3 Level.
Cornwall, England. Aged 50. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and five children.

James Lyons Miner, New Slope.
Ireland. Aged 44. Body retrieved May 14th.
Left a wife and child.

Michael Lyons Miner, No. 1 Level.
Aged 15. Body retrieved May 5th.
(Son of James Lyons.)

Alexander McDonald Miner, New Slope.
Pictou County, Nova Scotia. Aged 23. Body retrieved May 14th.
Single.

Roderick McDonald Miner, No. 5 Level.
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Aged 37. Body retrieved May 9th.
Left a wife and child.

John McGuffie Miner, No. 1 Level.
Nanaimo. Aged 23. Body retrieved May 8th.
Single.

Malcolm McLean Miner, No. 5 Level.
Sydney Mines, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Aged 31. Body retrieved May 9th.
Single.

John Malcolm** Miner.
Age unknown. Body retrieved May 8th.

Thomas Martin Miner, No. 1 Level.
Nanaimo. Aged 23. Body retrieved May 8th.
Single.

Frederick Mattison Miner, Sinking Shaft.
Sweden. Aged c.30. Body retrieved May 3rd.
Single.

John Meakin Sr. Miner, No. 1 Level.
London, England. Aged 57. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and nine children.

Arthur Meakin Miner, New Slope.
Nanaimo. Aged 19. Body retrieved May 9th.
(Youngest son of John Meakin, Sr.)

James Milton Miner, No. 1 Level.
Indiana, U.S.A., via California. Aged c.30. Body retrieved May 8th.
Single.

John W. Morgan Miner, No. 5 Level.
County Down, Ireland. Aged c.28. Body retrieved May 9th.
Single.

David Morgan Miner, No. 1 Level.
Cowbridge, Glamorganshire, Wales. Aged 27. Body retrieved May 8th.
Single.

William Morris Miner, New Slope.
Missouri, U.S.A. Aged c.30. Body retrieved May 14th.
Left a wife and three children.

John Morton Miner, No. 3 Level.
Lanarkshire, Scotland. Aged 30. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and two children.

Andrew Morton Miner, No. 3 Level.
Lanarkshire, Scotland. Aged 28. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and child.

Andrew Muir Miner, No. 1 Level.
Ayreshire, Scotland. Aged 45. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and six children.

Archibald Muir Miner, No. 3 Level.
Ayreshire, Scotland. Aged 57. Body retrieved May 9th.
Left a wife and three children.

John Myles Miner, New Slope.
Redding, Sterlingshire, Scotland. Aged 39. Body retrieved May 14th.
Single.

Samuel H. Myers Miner, No. 5 Level.
Ireland. Aged 49. Body retrieved May 9th.
Single.

Robert Nicholson Miner, New Slope.
Northumberland, England. Aged 34. Body never found.
Left a wife and two children.

George Old Miner, No. 3 Level.
Penzance, Cornwall, England. Aged 46. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and child.

Thomas Perry Miner, New Slope.
Backworth, Northumberland, England. Aged 32. Body retrieved July 28th.
Left a wife and two children.

Benjamin Popplewell Miner, No. 1 Level.
Methley, Yorkshire, England. Aged 28. Body retrieved May 8th.
Single.

John Richards Miner, No. 1 Level.
Birmingham, England. Aged 45. Body retrieved May 8th.
Left a wife, and a son in England.

William Ridley Miner, No. 3 Level.
Clifton, Cumberland, England. Aged 28. Body retrieved May 6th.
Single.

William Scales Miner, New Slope.
New Westminster, BC. Aged 27. Body retrieved May 14th.
Single.

George Simmons Miner, No. 1 Level.
London, England. Aged 35. Body retrieved May 8th.
Left a wife and child.

Allan Smiley (or Smilley) Miner, New Slope.
Glasgow, Scotland. Aged 34. Body retrieved May 14th.
Left a wife and child.

John J. Smith Miner, No. 1 Level.
Liverpool, England, via Australia. Aged 25. Body retrieved May 8th.

John Smith Miner, Sinking Shaft.
Scotland. Aged 21. Body retrieved May 3rd.
Single.

William Henry Stephenson Miner, New Slope.
Macon County, Missouri. Aged 18. Body retrieved May 14th.
Left a wife.

John Stevens Miner, No. 1 Level.
Iowa, U.S.A. Aged 23. Body retrieved May 8th.
Single.

John Stove Miner, No. 3 Level.
Nanaimo. Aged 23. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and child.

Robert Stove Miner, No. 3 Level.
Nanaimo. Aged 21. Body retrieved May 6th.
Single.

Jubert Tellaro (possibly G. Bartolero) Miner, No. 5 Level.
Turino, Italy. Aged 29. Body retrieved May 9th.
Single.

James Thomas Miner, No. 1 Level.
Wales. Aged 35. Body retrieved May 8th.
Single.

Joseph Thompson Miner, No. 1 Level.
Peltonfell, Durham, England. Aged 37. Body retrieved May 8th.
Left a wife and three children.

John Thompson Miner, New Slope.
Maryport, Cumberland, England. Aged 32. Body retrieved May 14th.
Single.

Frank Tulley (or Tully) Miner, New Slope.
California. Aged 28. Body retrieved May 14th.
Left a wife and child.

Joseph Watson Miner, No. 1 Level.
Weardale, Durham, England. Aged 30. Body retrieved May 8th.
Single.

John Henry Westfeldt (possibly Harry Westfieldt) Miner, No. 3 Level.
The Netherlands. Aged 43. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and five children.

Edward Wilkins Miner, No. 1 Level.
Cowbridge, Glamorganshire, Wales. Aged 26. Body retrieved May 8th.
Single.

Caton Willis Miner, New Slope.
St. Charles, Ontario. Aged 40. Body retrieved May 14th.
Left a wife and three children.

John Woobank Miner, No. 3 Level.
Leeds, Yorkshire, England. Aged 41. Body retrieved May 6th.
Left a wife and two children.

Copley Woobank Miner, No. 3 Level.
Rothwell, Yorkshire, England. Aged 18. Body retrieved May 6th.
(Son of John Woobank.)

John Zermani Miner, No. 5 Level.
Matte, Parma, Italy. Aged 38. Body retrieved May 9th.
Left a wife and three children.

_____

Notes

1. The epitaph is adapted from the penultimate verse of William Cullen Bryant’s elegy ‘The Burial of Love’. The clasped hands were a popular image on Victorian gravestones, symbolising the farewell to earthly life. [Return to text]

2. The Martin Family of Gabriola Island, a website created by Donald Martin. [Return to text]

3. Gabriola Museum Archives web pages for the McLay and Roberts families. [Return to text]

4. Samuel Robins was the London-appointed superintendent of the Nanaimo Coal Company mines from 1883 to 1903. In sharp contrast to the Dunsmuir mine managers and those who would succeed him when Western Fuel Corporation took over the Nanaimo mines, Robins was generally in favour of cooperation between management and workers, and in the 1890s was open to the organising activities of the Miners’ and Mine Labourers’ Protective Association. Although initially opposing the move to prohibit Chinese from working underground, he accepted the white miners’ demands in the wake of the explosion. He also introduced measures to enable miners to lease and cultivate smallholdings on company land in the area that became known as Five Acres (the average size of the plots). [Return to text]

5. A list of Vancouver Island coal mining fatalities has been compiled by the Friends of the Morden Mine. [Return to text]

Unless otherwise noted, information about the history and conditions of mining on Vancouver Island comes from Lynne Bowen’s book Boss Whistle (Nanaimo, 2002). This is an excellent read: well written, solidly researched and frequently moving. I could not have written this article without the work of Lynne Bowen and the Coal Tyee Society, who collected the oral histories of Vancouver Island miners that provided an invaluable record of a vanished way of life.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Gabriola’s agricultural history

Gabriolan — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 03:58:16 +0000

Here’s an image from Gabriola’s agricultural history:

It’s a (mumble mumble) machine, coming to eat you up. Or chop you down, I guess.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

The tsunami of 1964

Anon E. Mouse — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 23:52:19 +0000

While parts of BC remain under a tsunami watch, here’s hoping everyone stays safe. From the archives of CBC, this 4-minute clip is about the tsunami that struck Port Alberni in 1964.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Tait Road

Gabriolan — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 02:22:05 +0000

Yesterday morning on our way home we drove along North Road and turned up Tait. This was the view – shafts of sunshine melting the snow away.

Here’s a bit of Gabriola history for you: according to Gabriolore.ca, Tait used to be known as Turkey Shoot Road.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Did we have pterosaurs here, too?

Gabriolan — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 02:57:03 +0000

Big news not so far from Gabriola: B.C.’s 1st pterosaur fossil identified.

A new species of prehistoric flying reptile has been identified from a fossil found on B.C.’s Hornby Island.

The pterosaur Gwawinapterus beardi likely soared through tropical forests inhabited by dinosaurs — its evolutionary cousins — during the late Cretaceous period about 70 million years ago, reported University of Alberta paleontologist Victoria Arbour.

Her findings appear in the January issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

During the late Cretaceous period, Hornby Island was located in the area where California is today and was lusher and steamier. [continue]

All fascinating. Did Gabriola Island spend the late Cretaceous period hanging out down south with Hornby Island? Do we, too, have a lusher and steamier past? More importantly, did we have pterosaurs on Gabriola, and do we now have Gwawinapterus beardi fossils on our beaches?

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Fish traps almost 1400 years old

Gabriolan — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:04:30 +0000

Here’s archeological news from a site not too far from Gabriola. From the Comox Valley Echo: Fish traps ‘almost 1400 years old’.

Some of the ancient fish traps in the Courtenay Estuary are way older than first imagined.

Radiocarbon dating of the remains of wooden stakes pounded in to the mud has revealed some date back almost 1400 years. (…)

Archaeologist Nancy Greene and her husband, geologist David McGee, have been investigating the mystery of the fish traps for years.

They estimate there are the remains of perhaps 150,000 stakes in the estuary, although many are not immediately obvious as the remnants are below the mud.

But at low tide, the remains of huge numbers are visible, and careful mapping of 14,000 of them using GPS equipment has exposed intricate patterns. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Gabriola girl scares off slayer

Gabriolan — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:20:03 +0000

This alarming news was published on November 15th, 1948.

NANAIMO, BC, Nov 15 (CP). –The story of an 11-year-old girl’s audacious strategy in frightening off a shotgun-wielding assailant who slew her brother was told Sunday night by British Columbia Police here.

The girl, Anita Piper, said she hid under her brother’s automobile when the slayer chased her Friday night, after fatally blasting the face of her 20-year-old brother, Irvine Waldemar Piper, on a road leading to their Gabriola Island home near here.

As the man strove to reach her, she said she picked up rocks from the gravel road under the car and threw them into th bush nearby. The assailant, hearing crashing in the bushes, thought someone was coming and fled. [continue]

This is from Google’s news archive.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Saved by Oregon Grape

Gabriolan — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 18:10:52 +0000

Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning is in the news again. That reminded me of this story from October 1888. It’s from the Gabriola Edition of the Nanaimo Free Press:

Charlie Peters, a Penelecut Indian, sworn, deposed:

"Last Friday, I and my klootchman, Tsameston, and another Indian eat a kettleful of mussels. When we had done so our fingers got numbed and the numbness spread up our arms. Our lips swelled, and our eyes became dizzy. We could hardly see. My klootchman and the other Indian was very ill.

I got some of this (producing a sprig of Oregon grape vine) and got them to chew some of the leaves and drink warm water. I did the same. We vomited the mussels and got all right again.

(If you’d like to read the whole story, see the Coroner’s Inquest article from October 17th, 1888. It’s on this Gabriola Museum page.)

(From Gabriolan.ca.)