Word-Weaving Wonders

Word-weaving is an art, and there are a number of talented word-weavers who make James Bay their home, or who have been inspired by the natural heritage of this neighborhood.

June Swadron, defines herself as a creative counsellor, who acts as a guide and mentor to those who wish to explore their inner gifts, write their sacred stories in poetry or prose, and celebrate their unique journey of life.

She has just self-published her first book entitled, Re-Write Your Life – A Transformational Guide to Writing and Healing the Stories of Our Lives.

A labour of love, and personal life stories, this book assists individuals to write their stories of gratitude or forgiveness, or acknowledge momentous milestones and significant relationships that have shaped their lives and brought meaning to them.

Join June for her Victoria book launch and enjoy selected readings with some savory snacks on Wednesday, December 9th from 7:00 to 9:00 pm at the Church of Truth, 111 Superior Street…you won’t be disappointed! Endorsed by the well-known author of "The Artist’s Way", Julia Cameron, this book represents a worthwhile investment for the Christmas gift -giver because it will reap untold rewards for that special someone beneath the tree!!

The second author, Jo Manning, who although not a resident of James Bay, is nevertheless at the tender age of 86 is publishing her first book, "A Print-Maker’s Memoir".

This book traces the life of an artist born in Sidney, B.C. during the early 20th century, her art training and influences in her life from German expressionism to her own work in etched prints, watercolours, oils and drawings inspired by the natural beauty she found in Beacon Hill Park and in James Bay.

Undeterred by the male-dominated art community, she found her not only her own style but also through her efforts advanced print-making around the world. Today her works can be found in collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, the National Library of Canada, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the University of Victoria.

Jo Manning’s book launch will start at 2 p.m. Sunday, December 6, 2009 at Winchester Galleries, 1010 Broad Street in downtown Victoria.

And, if you have a passion for books, and want to share them with others — why not leave it on a park bench, a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym — anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel. Track the book’s journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person through Bookcrossing (the world’s largest free book club – a catch and release program that knows no bounds!)

 

 

 

 

 

Food, Fun & Freudian Sips!

Image Credit: Chud Tsankov Illustrations on flickr.com

This month in the "Food for Thought" column, we’ve invited Larry Arnold, (Product Consultant at Spinnaker’s Wine & Beer Merchants and Sips Artisan Bistro  at 425 Simcoe Street in James Bay Square) to say a few words about what’s in their larder besides those lovely little libations that complement our loafing about lifestyle that characterizes the neighborhood.

Sips Artisan Bistro is featuring some fine food, fun and Freudian Sips courtesy of Therapy Vineyards from B.C.’s Naramata Bench. So if you’re pressed for time and can’t enjoy a "grape escape", then drop by for a tasting, or pick up a bottle of your favorite "Therapy" and a tapas to go!

Freudian Sip 2008/Salt Spring Island Chevre, Spinnakers Apple Smoked Trout & Strawberry Compote

This pairing is all about acidity! The goat cheese has it, so does the strawberry compote. With a crunch of mouthwatering acidity and heady citrust-mango flavours, the wine hangs in there perfectly, gaining weight and intensity with every sip. As the acid softens, the wine brings out the lovely smoky flavours of the trout and the sweetness of the srawberry. Delicious!

 

Therapy Vineyards Chardonnay 2008/Smokehouse Cheddar, Verjus Cured Salmon, Pear Butter

Yow, this dish is intense, but so is the wine! Smoke, acidity and sweet fruit, all in perfect balance requires more of the same and the crisp, juicy Okanagan chard more than meets the challenge. Peaches and cream with lovely toasty nuances, plenty of weight and a finish that wraps itself around your palate and just keeps going!

Therapy Vineyards Gewurztraminer 2008/Caraway Cheese, Smoked Sooke Oyster & Apple Chutney

This pairing is all or nothig! the ingredients in the dish are full flavoured, sweet and spicy. The perfect complement to a wine not known for its coquettish nature! Very floral with a slightly oily texture, a heady potpourri of tropical fruit and exotic spice flavours and a long, long soft finish!

Therapy Vineyards Pinot Noir 2007/Tipsy Jill, proscuitto Salami, Strawberry Compote

Good pinot is hard to find But after several thousand samples we think we have found one here! The dish is richly flavoured with a salty, slightly sweet and tart structure that begs another bite. The wine is all about perfectly rip fruit with cherry and spice flavours, a soft wilky texture and enough acidity to stand up to the compote and cut through the richness of the cheese. Superb!
 

Freud’s Ego 2007/Hot Jill Cheese, Hot Cacciatore Salami, Caramelized Onions

This dish is not for the timid or those with an aversion to heat and spice. It is a full-flavoured take no prisoners assault on your palate that is very, very hot, but absolutely delicious! On the other hand, this richly textured Boreau blend is lush and powerful with layers of sweet fruit and spice flavours, plenty of body and a soft blush of fine grained tannins.

Danda’s Delightful New Book!

 

Danda Humphreys, one of our talented writers in the neighborhood and a well-known local historian, offers a wonderful new book, Tour Guide Tales, a perfect gift for the globetrotter who’s long on digital photos and short on stories, a happy-faced hospitality industry employee with sore feet, or an armchair traveller living life in the slow lane.

If you have travelled, on your own or with a group, you’ll enjoy this book! “Tour Guide Tales” is a collection of real tales told by real people – tour guides, directors and managers from right across Canada. The stories, edited by Danda Humphreys and illustrated by Elke Hierl-Steinbauer, will make you chuckle, nod in agreement, shake your head in disbelief, maybe even a shed a tear a two.

Read about the "two bad apples" in a busload of tourists who threatened to ruin the group’s trip to Tofino… the European tourist looking for the location of the camp where he once was a prisoner-of-war… and what happened the day a royal duke decided to steer a SeaBus.  Along the way, you’ll share some of the questions people ask, such as (at Lake Louise), "How do they drain the lake so they can paint the bottom blue?", and (pointing to the Undersea Gardens in Victoria’s Inner Harbour), "How often does that ferry sail to Vancouver?"

It’s a fun read and a great gift! Enjoy this unique collection of Canadian tour guide tales!

“Tour Guide Tales” (6” x 9”, 150 pages) is available for $19.95 per copy (including tax) from Danda Humphreys: dandah@shaw.ca or www.dandahumphreys.com.
 

 

Ghosts, Goblins and Grannies

James Bay, (Victoria’s oldest neighborhood), is home to many ghosts, goblins, and grannies, some of whom live here all year round while others just drop by on special occasions like Halloween to raise a harmless bit of havoc, a minute morsel of mayhem, or perhaps a whole passel of pandemonium.

GHOSTS

By all accounts, there are plenty of ghosts to go around in James Bay. These amusing apparitions often make their appearance known to custodial staff hoping to catch a bit of shut-eye on the graveyard shift, individuals suffering from insomnia out for a midnight stroll, or imbibing imps inhabiting certain neighborhood parks where they expect to enjoy a few short snorts and snooze until the following morning.

However, due to severe budget cuts in the area of government transparency and Vital Statistics, the provincial authorities are no longer prepared to invest in services for seniors or the measurement of invisible incorporeal beings. Regretably, the federal government does not keep track of phantom figures whether in the budget or in  the population Census, so it is difficult to determine exactly how many ghosts make James Bay their home.

Judging from the number of ghost tours organized in the neighborhood of late, one might surmise that these spunky spirits tend to frequent happily haunted places such as the Gatsby Mansion Restaurant, the James Bay Inn, and Helmecken House (all of which are popular tourist traps).

GOBLINS

Goblins are mythical, mischievous munchins. Research reveals that the source of their dreadful dispositions may be attributed to the fact that Noah declined to offer them a spot on his ark to escape a frigging flood because they didn’t have cachet or strong collateral let alone impressive ivy-league credentials and an impeccable credit-rating.

As a consequence, it’s not surprising that these dreadfully-dressed diminutive damsels and dudes with extraordinarily large ears or long tails have resorted to wandering about puffing on pipes or cigarettes and finding temporary accommodation in mossy cracks in rocks and tree roots, while local politicians decide how to build a spanking new state-of-the-art multimillion suspension bridge for them live under, together with other dispossessed demons including ogres, trolls, and kelpies. 

Goblins come in any colour, but most prefer hideous hues such as green or brown. This is a handy thing to know, especially for the tree-huggers who are really keen on saving these environmentally-friendly endangered species, as opposed to the Sasquatch and Cadborsaurus (who although rarely seen aren’t worth saving because the latter critters can’t abide tipplers, tourists or tree-huggers).

Image Credit: Tony DiTerlizzi.com

It is difficult to estimate the number of goblins who frequent the neighborhood. Some are said to find the wet west coast winter climate to their liking, while others choose to drop by on an itinerant basis, particularly on Halloween.

Judging from the number of ghastly and sometimes giggling goblins appearing at the front door of the neighborhood’s 7,338 private dwellings on October 31 each year, it would appear that these entertaining elf-like creatures are more than welcome in James Bay, (in contrast to bogeymen who inhabit the lawns of legislature during political protests and bugbears who hang out in the loos where they enjoy frightening the knickers, briefs, or pants off humorless homo sapiens).

GRANNIES

Image Credit: J.W. Wagner, Hallmark Cards (Maxine.com)

According to official population statistics from the 2006 Census, the James Bay neighborhood is home to the highest proportion of grannies (grumpy or otherwise) in all of Victoria.

According to the James Bay Community Project, the medical clinic currently provides care to more than 2,650 patients, of whom 700 are over the age of 75. Due to patient confidentiality, they are not permitted to release the total number of grumpy grannies under the care of their physicians.

Image Credit: J.W. Wagner, Hallmark Cards (Maxine.com)

As entertaining elders of the tribe, grannies are given a wide berth…even wider on Halloween. Grumpy grannies, which comprise the largest suck-it-up segment of the experentially-enhanced population, are easy to spot. They’re the ones who think "trick-or-treaters are so cute…imagine them coming to my door expecting to get something for free."  

Image Credit: J.W. Wagner, Hallmark Cards (Maxine.com)

These boisterous biddies are more often than not given to hooting and howling on Halloween. After all, it’s the only legal time of the year they’re are entitled to do so, without someone suggesting that they be confined to a "supported living" residence with padlocked doors and windows!

 

 

 

Tannin Tasters Wanted!

Image Credit: Illustration by Vimrod – vimrod.com

Instead of twiddling your thumbs, try tingling your tastebuds over at Sips Artisan Bistro in James Bay Square (425 Simcoe Street) this week!

Larry Arnold, Product Consultant for Spinnakers Wine, Beer & Spirits Merchants, will be hosting a special wine tasting on Thursday, October 22 from 4:00 to 5:30 pm featuring the reds and whites of the award-winning Hillside Estate Winery, (celebrating 25 years of passion for plump grapes in Penticton, British Columbia).

For the wine connoisseur on your birthday, Christmas, or wedding list who would be pleased with a few extra bottles to cellar, consider a consultation with discriminating wine buyer Larry Arnold. Whether he recommends small-lot BC rarities, classic vintages, organics and biodynamics or, for the trophy hunter, Chateau Cheval Blanc 2005 Bordeaux (at $1,400 a bottle, purportedly the greatest vintage produced in the last 50 years), he caters to big and small collectors.

To contact Larry: Tel: 250-590-3515, or Email – larry@spiritmerchants.ca

 

Great Ghostly Walks Begin

It is reputed that Victoria, British Columbia is one of the most haunted cities in north America. So, it’s not surprising to find John Adams, a James Bay resident and local historian leading ardent apparitionists not to mention perhaps a few fearful folks through the night, pointing out where the ghost are most likely to be found.

Throughout the month of October, there are at least eight different nightly ghost tours (usually 90 minutes in length) organized every week to keep both spooks and spectators busy.

Saturday night tours focus on three spooky spots in the Inner Harbour, the famed Fairmount Empress Hotel, Helmecken House (British Columbia’s oldest house), and nearby St. Ann’s Academy (a civic landmark and national historic site).

Monday evenings highlight some superb spirits who inhabit the Provincial Legislature, the native burial ground at Laurel Point, and the Gatsby Mansion (where they are known to have scared more than a few caretakers from the premises).

Wednesday nights, it’s back to the James Bay neighborhood again to seek out more spunky spirits, surprising sights and sensational stories to keep everyone entertained.

All Ghost Walks begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Visitor Information Centre at the corner of Government and Wharf streets. Cost is $12.

For more information, check out Discover the Past: Tours in Downtown Victoria & Environs.

Victoria’s Lost Industries – Part 3

Image Credit: Courtesy of Elite Home Vacations (view today from historic downtown Victoria out to the James Bay neighborhood (including the Inn at Laurel Point, the Shoal Point condos and the Ogden Point Cruiseship Terminal), and beyond to the Sooke Peninusula foothills in the distance). 

Reprinted with the kind permission of John Adams, a local author, historian, and James Bay resident; this article originally appeared in its entirety in the July/August issue of Douglas Magazine).

Inner Harbour Mudflats

The Pendray family is synonymous with the rise of Victoria’s industries. William Pendray opened his soap factory in 1875 along the northern shoreline of the James Bay mudflats (where Humbolt Street is today). His White Swan brand and "electric" soap were big sellers and no one paid much attences to the soap lees that sometimes spread out into the harbour. Plans to fill in the mudflats prompted Pendray to relocate the works to Laurel Point where he also began manufacturing paint, shellac, and varnish. A sign on the roof of the factory proclaimed to all arriving by steamer that this was the home of the British American Paint Company (BAPCO). Oil drums lined the shoreline and pipes spewed coloured liquids of dubious content into the water until the plant was teaken over by Canadian Industries Limited and moved to Surrey, B.C. in 1974. The Inn at Laurel Point graces the site today.
 

Breweries and More

Victoria’s hardworking factory workers were able to slake their thirst on beer brewed in the city’s numerous breweries. The first one started up in 1858 and, in 1870, was bought out by Joseph Loewen and Emil Erb, two enterprising Germans who named the business the Victoria Phoenix Brewing Company. By 1891, they boasted an annual production of 120,000 gallons that supplied customers throughout British Columbia and along the coast. The impressive brewery building stood on the 1900-block of Government Street, until the 1980s when it was demolished by Labatt’s. Other breweries came and went — the Lion, Bavarian, Silver Spring — but eventually all closed and Victorians could only drink beer brought in from elsewhere.

Many other factories and workshops opened and closed in Victoria during the 1800s and early 1900s. Residents could purchase vinegar, boots, shoes, clothing, candles, roofing felt, peanut butter, rice, flour, industrial chemicals, dynamite, dairy products of all descriptions, and even cigars and opium made or processed right in their own city.

Vancouver: The Young Upstart

Victoria was the undisputed industrial powerhouse of the province until Vancouver sprang up as the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886. Some in the capital city were smug about the poential for the mainland city but soon realized Vancouver’s superb harbour and new rail connections to the rest of North America gave it a distinct advantage.

Still, Victoria remained bigger until about 1898. Unwilling to admit defeat, the city’s plutocrats devised many schemes to bring prosperity back to Victoria. One such plan in 1897 was prepared by architect Thomas Sorby and called for filling in the shoreline to provide land for new factories, warehouses, railyards, and deepsea docks. Hopes were high in the early 1900s when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was seriously proposing to bridge Seymour Narrows and bring a transcontinental railway line to Vancouver Island with Victoria as its terminus.

The breakwater and industrial development at Ogden Point were tied to that vision, also spurred by the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914. However, the railway dream faded and the Panama Canal never quite brought the shippiing to Victoria that the businessmen had hoped for. A grain elevator was built in the 1920s but was never a success. A rail barge slip, a textile factory, fish packing plant, and a few other factories hardly achieved the site’s full potential. Lumber was shipped from Ogden Point for many years, but eventually the freighters no longer stopped there. By the end of the 20th century, Ogden Point was a barren parking lot until cruise ship companies discovered it.

Victoria’s industrial past may surprise young people or those who are new to the city. Though a few former industrial sites lie vacant, many have already been redeveloped or are in the planning stages, typically for townhouses, office and commercial space, parks and walkways. However, one exciting phenomenon is seeing some industries being revived in Victoria. Craft breweries, organic bakeries, custom furniture makers, and specialty woodworks and ironworks are among the businesses that now attract considerable attention. They are on a much smaller scale than their predecessors but, nevertheless are continuing a proud tradition of manufacturing in the capital city that extends back to its earliest days.

Victoria’s Lost Industries – Part 2

Image Credit: Times Colonist – Victoria Machinery Depot #2 – Ogden Point, James Bay – Victoria, BC

Reprinted with the kind permission of John Adams, a local author, historian, and James Bay resident; this article originally appeared in its entirety in the July/August issue of Douglas Magazine).

Cast Iron and Shipbuilding

Cast iron was another commodity once imported to Victoria. The elaborate iron columns that adorn the facade of the Rithet Building at 1117 Wharf Street bear the foundry mark of P. Donahue’s Union Iron Works, San Francisco, 1961. However, the Albion Iron Works began in Victoria that same year and soon was producing a wide array of cast iron items as diverse as stoves, fence panels,  and machinery for canneries, mining, and logging, in addition to fabricating other metal products such as boilers. In 1888, when the Rithet Building was expanded, the Albion Iron Works was called upon to replicate the original columns from California. Their foundry was located north of Chinatown on 3.5 acres of land, mainly on the block bounded by Store, Discovery, Government, and Herald Streets. The name "Albion" literally became a household word along the Pacific Coast as many homes and fishing boats had Albion stoves in their kitchens and galleys. In 1891, the firm employed over 250 people but suffered a major setback when a fire in the early 1990s wiped out most of the facility. It continued to operate for many more years in new buildings built on the ashes, until the company dissolved in 1928.

The Victoria Machinery Depot was founded by Charles Spratt in the 1860s along the water’s edge near the Point Ellice Bridge. Soon it was producing boilers and ships, including prefabricated steamers for the Klondike Gold Rush. Early in the Second World War, it received a contract for ine freighters of 10,000 tons apiece and opened a second facility. Thus, in 1941, it purchased Rithet’s Outer Wharf (soon to be known as VMD No. 2) and 27 adjacent acres of land where shipbuilding expanded during and after the war.

In 1958, the first vessels for the B.C. Ferries fleet were started at VMD No. 2 and launched in 1960. Its most famous contract was in 1966 and l967 when it built SEDCO 135-F, the world’s largest offshore oil drilling platform at that time, but it also marked the end of an era. The James Bay site closed in 1967, while VMN No. 1 on Bay Street operated through financial difficulties until 1994. At the time, it was the city’s oldest industry still actually in production.

Victoria’s Oldest Company

One business even older than VMD still legally exists, but has not manufactured anything for a long time. The oldest active incorporated company in British Columbia is the Victoria Gas Company, founded in 1860 by an act of the Colonial Assembly of Vancouver Island. It granted a five-year monopoly to a group of local investors who established a gasification plant at Rock Bay and imported the equipment from Scotland. They used coal from Nanaimo which was unloaded at a whart in front of the facility and then heated in a retort to drive off the coal gas. Distinctive gasometers held the gas under press that was piped throughout the downtown area, mostly for lighting in shops, residences, and street lights. Producing coal gas gives off a foul, suphurous aroma that must have made living in the vicinity of the works rather unpleasant, but many prominent families, such as the Finlaysons, continued to do so for many decades.

Furniture and Bread

Fine furniture was once manufactured in Victoria. Sir John A. Macdonald’s National Policy called for protective tariffs to encourage Canadian industries and, in keeping with this, in 1879, the tariff on furniture rose to 35 per cent. It had the desired effect in Victoria by spawning two major furniture factories. The name Weiler was best known and one of the oldest in the field, having started in Victoria in 1961 as upholsterers and later furniture dealers. In 1879, German-born Weiler constructed a furniture factory at what is now known as the Counting House at the corner of Broad and Broughton streets. Later, he built an even bigger one on Humboldt Street and his four sons, who took over the business under the name Weiler Brothers in 1891, erected an impressive store and factory (still standing) at the corner of Government and Broughton streets.

Jacob Sehl, another German, also started selling furniture in Victoria in 1861 and, like John Weiler, built a furniture factory in 1879. In 1891, Sehl joined forces with another local company to form Sehl-Hastie-Erskine Furniture Company.

The largest commercial bakery in Victoria, and probably in all of British Columbia, during the late 1800s, was M.R. Smith and Company, located at the foot of Niagara Street in James Bay. Moses Smith, a member of the black community, began baking bread in the city in 1858, and the firm grew steadily until he opened a state-of-the-art three-story steam factory bakery in 1889. At the time, he employed 26 hands and produced breads, pastries, and other confestions that he distributed as far away as Alaska.

Other commercial bakers also operated in Victoria. However, after 1960, when B.C. Ferries began to operate, it became difficult to compete with fresh bread trucked daily to the Island from larger bakeries in the Lower Mainland. One by one, the big commercial bakers in Victoria closed.

 

Victoria’s Lost Industries – Part 1

Image Credit: Nick Messenger, U.K. 

Reprinted with the kind permission of John Adams, a local author, historian, and James Bay resident; this article originally appeared in its entirety in the July/August issue of Douglas Magazine).

As recently as 30 years ago, large tracts around the harbour were occupied by railway yards, factories, and oil tanks. Access to the water’s edge often was a risky business back then. On many days, visibility was obscured by the clouds of smoke and fly ash that hung perpetually over parts of the city.

Victoria used to be a dirty, noisy, and smoky industrial seaport — almost a foreign city compared to the place we know today. Long before Vancovuer had been founded, Victoria was the principal shipping port, the manufacturing centre, and the supply depot for all of B.C.

Visions of Money and Progress

When Bastion Square’s Board of Trade building was built in 1892, the plans called for a lookout tower on the roof, but a severe economic slump coincided with the project and the tower was never started. These days it’s difficult to imagine that Victoria used to be the industrial and financial powerhouse of British Columbia. In fact, the Board of Trade was not just for the capital city but also for the entire province. Members — almost all from Victoria — formed a plutocracy of businessmen who controlled much of the province’s manufacturing, shipping, mining, and logging. These were the men who had dreamed about climbing into the tower to gaze out over the harbour to survey their corporate domains.

David Ker of Brackman-Ker Milling Company might have looked towards Shoal Point where his vast new flour mill dominated the shoreline. Robert Paterson Rithet, former mayor of the city and owner of Hawaiian sugar plantations, might have gazed beyond the mill to the Outer Wharf, which he had established in the 1880s as the first deepsea dock in the region. William Pendray could have looked toward the modern-day site of the Fairmount Empress Hotel, where his soap works was perched over the edge of the mudflats. Others could look northward to the gas works, tanneries, sawmills, and shipyards. When they saw the smokestacks sending up plumes of smoke and soot and a creating pungent aroma, they saw and smelled money and progress.

During the era of the Hudson’s Bay Company from 1843 to 1858, there was little industry around the wooden stockade known as Fort Victoria. Chief Factor James Douglas had selected the site, in the vicinity of Bastion Square, because it was close to the harbour, surrounded by arable land, and near large tracts of timber.

The first attempt at manufacturing was to harness the water of Rowe Stream (now called Mill Stream) in 1849 in present-day View Royal. A flume was constructed and a waterwheel built to turn the machinery for grinding grain and sawing lumber. However, the enterprise was doomed to failure when mechanical problems beset the machinery and the source of water dried up during the summer. Eventually a steam engine replaced the stream, but the mill was never a success. Several other short-lived, small-scale manufacturing activities, such as lime burning, brick making, baking and saw milling, grew up at Craigflower Farm and other farms associated with the Hudson’s Bay Company during the mid-1850s.

The Fraser River Cold Rush of 1858 and subsequent rushes to Cariboo and other places created a boom-and-bust cycle of growth and development in Victoria through the late 1800s.

Early Industry

Some of the industries were related to the growth of the city. Brickyards operated in the early 1850s and expanded after 1858. The Porter Brothers opened a facility near Rock Bay. Soon other brickyards — Baker Brothers, Elford and Smith, Victoria Brick and Tile — were extracting glacial clay from a vast deposit north of Hillside Avene. Their kilns sent a blanket of smudge over the north end of the city until the last plant closed in 1961. Mayfair Shopping Centre occupies the site today.

The fact that Victoria once imported sawn lumber from California may seem like sending coal to Newcastle, but the sawsmills in the Golden State were in production much earlier. Many heritage houses such as Emily Carr’s birthplace on Government Street, contain California redwood mouldings because they weren’t being made here.

Before sawmills became a major part of Victoria’s industrial base, mills in outlying places, such as Sooke and Port Alberni, were producing dimensional lumber for export to England and elsewhere. However, by the 1880s, logs were being towed in booms into Victoria Harbour to feed an ever-growing number of mills that multiplied during the first half of the 20th century. The telltale log booms chained to the rocky shoreline, the log hauls snaking up out of the water, the smokestacks, and the beehive burners became landmarks around the harbour.

Among the more famous mills were the Sayward sawmill near the north end of Store Street, McCarter’s single mill at Rock Bay, Cameron Sawmill at Point Ellice, Smith Brothers near the west end of the Point Ellice Bridge, and Plumper Bay Sawmill at Equimalt Harbour. In addition, smaller firms such as Muirhead and Mann and Lemon, Gonasson, and Company operated sawmills, sash and door factories, and planing mills.

Gradually each one closed or was absorbed by larger companies. Fires also destroyed many of them. The last major plant on Victoria Harbour was a rambling operation run by B.C. Forest Products, which had taken over several small mills. In the 1980s, it was bought out by now-defunct Fletcher Challenge, a New Zealand-based giant, and continued to produce plywood, presto logs, and other commodities until the parent company decided to shit it permanently.

Then the saws stood still and the smoke that constantly filled the air was gone. Deconstruction of the site began in 1989, but a few reminders of the old plant have been incorporated into the walkways and landscaping around Selkirk Waterway, the residential and office complext developed by Jawl Holdings.

 

 

 

Two Colorful Characters in James Bay

 

Image Credit: Illustration by Dean Lewis, (from the front cover of Focus magazine, Volume 21, No. 3, December 2008, and insert for the article, "The Inconvenient Truth About Her Axe and His Tax" by Katherine Gordon) 

What would a "Snippets and Snapshots" gallery be without a few colorful characters?

The Legislative Precinct of James Bay has two prominent politicians, Gordon Campbell (Premier of the Province of British Columbia and Leader of the Liberal Party), and  Carol James (Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the New Democratic Party) who are known to frequent the neighborhood every now and then when the affairs of state demand their presence.

Thanks to the artistic hand of Dean Lewis, (a resident of James Bay who delights visitors to the Inner Harbour every summer with their very own caricatures), we now have some rather pithy portraits of these powerful political potentates.

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