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.