The History of Egmont
By Judy Griffith Gill
This 10 part series, "The History of Egmont", was written by my cousin Judy Griffith Gill and published in 1980 in the Coast News. Judy has given me permission to publish this on my blog. Please respect her rights and do not re-produce this without her permission. I'm very pleased to share Judy's historical account of Egmont and the families who settled and stayed in "our" hometown.
A State of Mind
Drizzle falling - seagulls calling,
Trollers wheeling in The Deep.
Tugboats straining,
barely gaining
In their struggle
with the sweep
Of tide; inward pouring,
outward roaring
Demanding, inexorable pace
Of Nature's giving.
We, the living,
Caught in tides of time and place
See, in dreaming,
sunlight gleaming
On hills reflected deep below.
Is it real, this place we feel?
We search, recall,
but can we know
If memories lie? When you and I
Turned and left it all behind
With living tasked,
we never asked,
Is Egmont just a state of mind?
What, exactly is Egmont? Easier, perhaps to say what it is not. It is not a town, not even a village, just barely a cohesive community except in times of tragedy or joy. In such times a miracle occurs and what was an amorphous collection of individuals and families becomes an amalgam of mutual supportiveness. That may be what Egmont is. This gives rise to another question:
Why is Egmont?
A combination of geography and history can help to explain why Egmont exists now and has for the better part of 80 years. The geography, of course, goes back to the very beginnings of time and the history must stretch even farther into the past than we can imagine.
How many dugouts have plied the waters of Sechelt and Jervis Inlet? How many summer camps were in the bays and on the points along these convoluted shores? How many babies were born in sight of these waters, lived and died and were sent to their gods with rites and ceremonies now lost to us in the dusk of ages past? Were potlatches held here, totems raised there?
We cannot know - will never know - and history, then, for us, must begin with the coming of those who spoke our language and, in some cases, wrote down their impressions and memories. Our memories must come from theirs for that, unfortunately, is all we have to go by. As to the time before, we can only speculate...and dream on a summer's day....
They sprawl, like the arms of a starfish, Jervis Inlet, Hotham Sound, Agamemnon Channel and Sechelt Inlet and there, right at the junction of this stream of waterways, lies Egmont, also sprawled, sparsely populated, thinly spread along two shorelines with enclaves distributed on other shores, but part of the whole in that they are dependent upon Egmont for what amenities of civilization it affords. That, at least, is the way it was in the beginning.
In the beginning, there were no roads, no power lines, no telephones and few radios. Into this wilderness came a slow trickle of humanity, some to stay only short times, others to make it their home and the home of their children and their children's children. Among the first of the families to arrive were Mr. and Mrs. John Wray, from England, and their children.
John Wray, a schoolteacher by profession, had come to Canada to work on the construction of the CPR. When that task was completed, he like most others of his day, wanted land. He tried in Gibson's Landing, in Pender Harbour and finally took up a very brief residence in Hidden Bay on Nelson Island. It was too lonely, too isolated, and he took his family to Quarry Bay for a time before he pre-empted land at a place opposite where Sakinaw Creek runs into Agamemnon Channel. In 1903, after hearing that a fish cold storage plant was to be built at the Skookumchuck, he took his family to Egmont.
Having already pre-empted land on Nelson Island, he couldn't take more in Egmont. His eldest son, Jack, could however, and at the age of 18, took over 160 acres on the south shore of Sechelt Inlet. Jack, his father and brothers fished and handlogged all around the area and sold the timber of the Egmont pre-emption to Phil Hiltz, a logger from St. Vincent Bay. Hiltz with his "incredibly modern machine" a steam donkey, and the help of Bob Heard, another pre-emptor from St. Vincent Bay, cleared Wray's land of first growth timber in very short order.
When, in 1906, the Wray family could see that the fish plant was unlikely to materialize, they went back to their homestead on Nelson Island, leaving Egmont to the Indians on the reserve, the man who ran the store and post office, and a couple of brothers named George and Percy Garret, who were caretakers of a large land parcel belonging to Captain Archibald, who sailed one of the Empress liners across the Pacific. There were few others beyond itinerants who fished and logged and then moved on, but the potential was there, and while the Wrays may have been the first family to bring their children to this quiet corner of the coast, they were not the last.
In the same year as the Wrays left, two men arrived, two men whose names were to live on as they, and their yet-to-be-born descendants peopled the bays and bights of Egmont's shores.
These men were Joe Silvey and George Vaughan.
More Arrivals
In 1906, when the John Wray family left Egmont, two more men arrived, one with a family and the other a bachelor.
Joe Silvey, whose Portugese father had once lived in one of Egmont's bays and fished
thereabouts, must have infected his son with the desire to make Egmont his home. When Joe, with his wife, Marie, and their children, left Read Island, it was to this quiet place they came. The forests were thick, filled with huge timber. The hillsides were steep and the waters deep, well protected from the storms which whipped the Gulf. It was, for Joe Silvey and others, a handlogger's paradise.
George Vaughan, an American with a nomadic history, came about the same time. Born in Walla Walla, Washington, George was taken as an infant to Nebraska by his parents. In 1893, when he was 12, he and his family moved west again, this time to homestead near Scio, Oregon. The trip was made by covered wagon.
George was a restless soul. He worked for a time on a sheep ranch, but gradually moved north, going from camp to camp until he finally came to rest in Egmont in 1906. He and Joe Silvey handlogged together.
As the handloggers, beachcombers and fishermen worked the shores of the Inlet, the
industrial revolution was gaining force and logging camps came into being. Into one of those, located in Sechelt Inlet, came a comely English lass, herself a bit of a nomad.
Mary Elizabeth Gaynor, born in Liverpool and trained as a cook, left home at the age of 21 to discover the New World. She travelled as a servant with a family en route to New York, and later accompanied them to Montreal. There, homesickness struck and Elizabeth went home for a visit. The changes she found were paramount, but the change her family saw in her was even more startling.
There was no scientific reason for it; some say it might have been the drastic change in climate, others lean to the theory that a different diet may have been the cause. But, for whatever reason, Mary Elizabeth, who had left England a glowing redhead, returned to her home as a brunette, her hair was to remain almost black until the day she died at the age of 85.
She returned to Canada, still urged by the call to wander and became a cook in the then brand new Banff Springs Hotel. From there she travelled on to Vancouver then as she later jokingly told her children, went cooking in a logging camp in the hope of finding herself a working husband.
She did just that and in 1912 met and married a handlogger named George Vaughan, much to the dismay of Smith and Martin, her employers.
1912 was a busy year in the now rapidly growing community. Walter Wray, brother of John, arrived and took up a pre-emption on what was later to be known as the Codville place. He and his family were the only white folk near the rapids at the time but they were soon joined by George and his wife.
The Vaughans had first lived in a small cabin next to Joe Silvey's house, on land owned by a Mrs. Points, who had bought the property from Captain Archibald, the original owner. One day, both the Vaughan cabin and the Silvey place were burnt to the ground so, rather than rebuild on someone else's land, both men opted to take land on the North Shore.
Joe moved to the site where his son Ernie was also later to raise his family, and where Ernie's widow, Vi, still lives. George went to build near the Chuck where the present-day gravel pit is located.
In that year as well two other men came to the area to live in a bay which would later become very important to the development of Egmont. They were Tug Wilson and a Mr. Yungbludt, locally known as Youngblood. They were subsequently joined by the latter's brother and niece, Nelly, and proceeded to horse log the thick stands of timber around Killarney Lake.
There was also a 'pirate' logger working just to the west of Jack Wray's pre-emption on the South Side. He built a chute and sent thousands of board feet flying down it to the water below, without permission, and without having bought the timber rights for the section. In order to hide his operation from view, he reportedly felled a large bushy cedar across the bottom of the chute so it couldn't be seen from the Inlet.
Around the same time, P.B. Anderson was logging the area south of Waugh Lake, where he had built a railroad from the lake to the bay. Traces of it may still remain.
The late Gladys McNutt mentions a letter she received from Mrs. Points, owner of the land logged by Anderson. Mrs. Points had once been Mrs. waugh, but before that she had been Miss Fuller. The lake was originally known as 'Fuller' Lake. Mrs. McNutt quotes Mrs. Points:
"Mr. Waugh had nothing to do with the property. They called it Fuller Lake because of me!"
However, on maps, and on the sign at its side, it remains 'Waugh' Lake, conclusive proof that Women's Lib didn't stand a chance in those days.
At this same period in history another name came into the rolls, another that was like Vaughan and Silvey, to become synonymous with Egmont: Alfred Jefferies pre-empted a parcel of land that was surrounded on three sides by the small reserve and, it is said, many battles ensued over boundaries which he finally settled by stringing up barbed wire.
In 1914, the first white child to be born in Egmont arrived. Johnny Vaughan, the
community's first 'home-grown' baby was a great disappointment to Joe Silvey's children who, in their play, pretended to be a logging crew. They had hoped the Vaughans would present them with a 'cook', but all they got was another 'boomman'.
However, greater disappointments were in store, for Egmont's rapid growth and progress were soon interrupted by a nasty incident.
That nasty incident was to last for nearly half a decade; it was known as "The War to End All Wars".
After the War
When War came to the world in 1914 and, in its relatively minor way, to Egmont, lives were changed. Prior to that day, logging camps had been erupting in nearly every bay along the Inlets, but a war requires men for fighting, and the army's gain was the camps' loss. With the going of the loggers also went much of the livelihood of those who had set themselves up in supportive businesses.
One of those who had to sit back and watch his business all but die for want of sustenance was John West Sr. who, with his mother and brother, had lived on Nelson Island for some time. He had built a store-cum-hotel and post office, calling it Westmere Lodge. It was to serve the hordes of loggers who were pouring into the area but, as those same hordes now poured out toward the maelstrom in far-off Europe, he could only wait and watch his venture crumble.
Tug Wilson and the Youngblood brothers left their Killarney Lake operation and went off to enlist along with many others, others whose names are lost, somewhere in the past, and Egmont reverted to the quiet pace of previous times.
Axes still rang, great trees still fell and fish were still pulled over wet gunwales, but the atmosphere of burgeoning growth and power had gone.
Gladys McNutt, in her articles of 25 years ago tells a story about Tug Wilson to illustrate the quietude of the day.
Tug, who must have been unable to enlist, was taking care of John West's store on Nelson Island while the latter was in town for a few days. He was so lonely, and it was so quiet, that he put a record on the wind-up gramophone and, when the needle stuck in a groove and the word 'Halleluja' was repeated over and over, he let it go on, just to hear the sound of a voice, until the machine finally ran down.
Even though progress had slowed, it had not yet died. Alfred Jefferies, who had come a few years earlier, was joined by his brother Bob in 1915. Bob set up his home on the south shore near where Joe Silvey and George Vaughan had been burnt out.
In 1917, in response to a request from Walter Wray, a school was built. He had wanted to have it near his and George Vaughan's place, by the Chuck, but he was overruled, it being felt that the rapids were too dangerous for the children who would have to row to and from school. The site finally agreed upon was down the shore by Joe Silvey's place.
The first teacher was Miss King, loved by parents and children alike, according to the late Mrs. Vaughan. She earned the grand total of $65 a month for the priviledge of teaching a handful of children and of rowing every day from Walter Wray's, where she boarded, to school, a route deemed too dangerous for those same children whom she taught. It was likely for this reason that she, and the many who were to follow her, stayed only a short time.
Also in that same year, Walter Wray and Alfred Jefferies built a store near the new school for a man named Leonard Bailey. Wray, who manged the store, was granted the right to open a post office there and it was at this point in time that the name Egmont was given official recognition by the government.
Every Saturday night, from each inhabited bay, small boats emerged, rowboats, gasboats, canoes, and all converged on that one place, Bailey's store, where people met, gathered, chatted, drank, laughed, squabbled and waited...waited for the arrival of the Union Steamship with mail, supplies and maybe the odd new face or two.
After the war, Nellie Youngblood's father returned to Agamemnon Channel to resume logging with Tug Wilson. Nellie, who had often visited wounded soldiers in hospital in Vancouver, where she had lived during the war years, had married one of them. She and her husband went first to the Fraser Valley, but presently joined her father. It was for Nellie and her husband that a very important bay was named in later years when Powell River was to be connected by road and ferry to the rest of the province. Nellie's husband was Tom Earl, and the ferry terminal was built in front of their home and named Earl's Cove.
In 1919 Leonard Bailey sold out to a veteran by the name of Major Southerland and moved to Roberts Creek where he opened and ran a store for many years. Major Southerland didn't stay long in Egmont either, but went on to Sechelt where he built a place called...Wakefield.
Another war veteran came to Egmont in 1920, a veteran weary of war, weary of searching for a home for his growing family and to the first three major names of Egmont's history was added the fourth. Jefferies, Silvey and Vaughan were joined by the family Griffith.
After the War
William Griffith came from Ontario to B.C. in 1903. He worked at first in sawmills around Vancouver and, while living there, met and married Maude Lyon, daughter of Nova Scotian Empire Loyalists. Maude had been born in Winnipeg where her parents spent some time while working their way from one coast to the other.
After their marriage Will and Maude moved to Mosquito Harbour in Clayoquot Sound where he worked as a saw filer for some time before going back to the city. Then, while his wife and children lived in town, he trolled in a rowboat around Lasquiti Island and into Sechelt and Jervis Inlet until War called him away.
Bill Griffith, eldest of the 12 children Will and Maude were to have, remembers the family's arrival in Egmont.
"We came in mid-August of 1920", he says. "My father had taken us to Blind Creek on Cortez Island in early June. There, he applied for a pre-emption but by August he was nearly broke, having only a $25 a month Army pension, and six children to feed, so we started back to Vancouver. I guess he intended to take the land office apart because they were so slow in making out the papers on his pre-emtion."
"It was blowing a south easter when we got to Scotch Fir Point, so we came into Jervis Inlet and anchored in a bay east of Egmont Point. A log cabin that had been built there by my uncle, Ralph Lyon, and old Ben Coates, was vacant, so we moved into it. It had been built of unpeeled fir logs in 1914 and by 1920 the bark was starting to peel and ants had raised large families in it."
What was good enough for the ants was good enough for Will and Maude. They, too decided to stay and raise their family.
"My father got Paddy Hat, one of the bachelors in Egmont, and several of the rowboat
trollers to build a trail from the cabin to the school and the store," says Bill. "That year, five of us Griffith children joined the others who were enrolled. There were Chuck and Florence Beale, Art Wilson, Henry Silvey's daughter Vi, and three of Joe Silvey's children; Leonard, Irene and Tommy. The teacher was Miss Kask. She boarded with Walter Wray, but rowing didn't seem like much fun so she soon moved in with Alfred Jefferies' family and was able to walk to school."
"It was possible in those days for a man to make a living trolling in a rowboat. Dad had a 25-foot sailboat with a 4 hp Easthope. During the following spring he fixed it up for cod fishing and for trolling with two lines and short poles. Around the bay we used a four inch gillnet about 50 fathoms long for perch and rock cod, so things weren't so bad in spite of the large family. However I've never liked cod since. I guess we ate about a ton the first couple of years."
Ben Coates, the man who had helped build the cabin the Griffith family were squatting in in 1920 was a character who epitomized the pioneer of the day. He was born around 1842, as near as he could ascertain, somewhere in the States and was, among other things in his long and varied career, a Texas Ranger. He was a large and powerful man who, it is said, 'got his man' at the wrong time or, perhaps 'got' the wrong man. For whatever reason, he came to Canada to live out the rest of his life and died in 1942. He was buried, in accordance with his wishes, on a hill overlooking the junction of the Inlets, above George Vaughan's 'new' place on the south shore.
In 1921, on January 29, a storm of unimaginable magnitude struck the entire coast. In Egmont, where clearings were few and far between and those which did exist tended to be small, it was particularly devastating.
Maude Griffith, about to put her children to bed, was stopped by her husand who looked nervously at the steadily rising wind and the wildly whipping trees around the cabin.
"Wait a while," he suggested. "Let's see if this wind goes down."
It did not. It grew steadily worse. Limbs began to break from trees and fly through the air. Suddenly, the little cabin did not seem such a secure haven after all and William and Maude took their youngsters out to the bare rocks in the bay where they huddled them in a depression and covered them with a big sheet of canvas to protect them from flying debris.
Eileen Vaughan, later Griffith, recalls the night of the Big Storm:
"We were all sitting around listening to the wind roaring outside. My dad was away
somewhere and one of the bachelors who lived down the beach a ways decided to come and see if we were alright. He tried to walk to our house but the wind was so strong it blew him off his feet and wouldn't let him up again. He crawled on his belly all the way along the beach and finally got to us. I remember him sitting there holding the oil lamp between his knees so that if the cabin did blow down he'd be able to put the lamp out so we wouldn't have fire to add to the problems." "His skiff, " she goes on, "was rolled straight up the beach and into the woods, but we didn't know that until the next morning."
That next morning, several of the bachelors rowed over to see how the Griffith family had made out. They were relieved to see smoke coming from the stove pipe, but horrified to see a huge maple limb right through the cabin roof above the spot where Will usually sat.
After that, every one of the maples and alders left standing by the storm was quickly cut down by the men. There were few left, however. Most of the standing timber in the draw had blown down. Some of the old-timers have mentioned that in the wake of the storm one could walk across great piles of downed timber and still be 40 feet above the ground.
While that storm had uprooted trees, another type of storm was brewing, one generated by a government with thousands of veterans to relocate. Families were soon to be uprooting themselves as government surveyors came to Egmont and places like it to decide who could have what land, and where.
The School, the Post Office, and the 'Kangaroo'
In the summer of 1921, government surveyors arrived in Egmont to divide up and parcel out crown land in the hopes that some of the returned soldiers might settle and homestead.
That same summer, Henry Silvey, brother of Joe, left to return to Read island, and Lena Beale went to Vancouver. With their going, the number of children required to keep the school open could not be attained, so it was closed for a time.
When the newly surveyed lands were thrown open for settlement, George Vaughan's children were beginning to reach school age. He feared for their safety if the school should re-open while he was living so near the chuck, so he moved across to the south side, taking up land west of the old Jack Wray pre-emtion of 1903 - 1906. William Griffith took a piece east of, but not adjoining Vaughan's. (Pete Sausen occupied the former Wray place.) East of the Griffith land lived Roy Hudson who was married to Agnes Silvey, parents of Dolly Wallace, a well-known Egmont resident.
This left Joe Silvey and Alfred Jefferies on the north side, with Walter and George Wray staying on up near the rapids. Some time later, Walter Wray sold to Colonel Codville who subsequently bought John Wray senior's unoccupied piece of land as well. Canon D'Easom came to live there and was soon joined by his sister, Mrs. Miles, and her husband, who took over the original Vaughan place.
When, in the fall of 1923, Henry Silvey and his family came back from the island, it was decided that there were again enough children to start a school. All the men of the community and many of the older boys volunteered their time and energies and built a shake school up behind George Vaughan's new place, mainly because his children were all quite small and it would be easier for them not to have to walk or row too far. The Griffith family, even though they owned the property on the south shore, did not yet occupy it at this point, so those children, along with the Silveys and Jefferies from the north side, made the trip twice daily by rowboat.
Bill Griffith, reminiscing, gloats a little: "I didn't want to go to school any more, and for a wonder, made my decision stick!"
The first teacher in the new school was Miss Chasney, who had, the previous year, run a school at St. Vincent Bay, where she taught, among others, Reg Phillips, who was later to marry Kathleen, George Vaughan's second daughter, and become a long time resident of the community.
The post office run by Walter Wray was turned over to Col. Codville when he bought the Wray place and he opened a store and fish buying business which must have been, by all accounts, a disaster. It is said that he lost upwards of $30,000 on the venture. With the post office being so near the rapids, the Union Steamship Company's insurance wouldn't permit them to deliver the mail there, as they had to Bailey's store, so it was brought in from Pender Harbour by gas boat.
For the next decade the mail contract bounced around from person to person, finally ending up in the hands of Mr. Miles, who suddenly decided to quit in 1931, as he and his wife reportedly felt it too dangerous to continue in the light of certain goings-on involving a rather endearingly (in retrospect) nefarious character called 'The Kangaroo'.
The Kangaroo, it seems was a fellow reputedly from Australia who was, to all intents and purposes, a fisherman. He was also a drug addict and was said to be much given to thievery to support his habit. Watchmen in the camps were all instructed to keep a sharp eye out when he was known to be in the vicinity.
One day, while gillnetting in Agamemnon Bay with several other fishmen, the Kangaroo suggested that it would be a remarkably simple matter to knock over the Egmont store. When pressed for further information about how he would carry out this supposedly theoretical operation, he outlined his plan: "The way to do it would be to start a fire down on the fuel wharf, stroll up to the store and tell them about it. Then, while they were all running around in a panic to put the fire out, all the would-be robber would have to do is rifle the till, go back to his boat and pull out, pretending he was getting out of harm's way."
One day, not long after that conversation among fishermen had taken place, a great explosion, followed by another and yet another, was heard from the direction of the store. The Kangaroo had put his plan into action!
However, like the best laid plans of mice and men, it seems the best laid plans of kangaroos don't always come to fruition, for, the store personnel, seeing the fire, decided it would be safer by far to watch it from the security of the store's porch. Sensible souls that they were, they shouted warnings to all the people on the float to get away; they had just that moring received a shipment and all the storage drums were full...The Kangaroo's pockets were, alas, empty, and his great store heist nothing more than the stuff of bitter dreams.
Bitter dreams seem to have been his lot. At one time in his life, whether before or after his plans for the Egmont store it is not clear, he had fallen in love with a girl whose father tried very hard to keep them apart. One day, he pulled his boat into the girl's father's float, dragged her aboard, threw the engine into reverse and made off with her. When her angry father finally caught up with the eloping pair, a shotgun wedding was held and the young couple moved to an island up the coast. One day, the cabin they lived in burnt to the ground and his wife and children died. It was believed that she had thrown gas, rather than oil, in the stove to light it.
When the police finally nabbed him, the Kangaroo was deported to Australia. There was a rumour that he had jumped overboard in Juan de Fuca Strait and may or may not have made it to shore. This however, was later refuted by Jack Lonsdale of Egmont, in conversation Gladys McNutt.
Jack said, "The Kangaroo seemed to be a likeable chap. He had a good singing voice and played the piano well. I think Mrs. Miles gave up the post office because she was afraid of being robbed while she was alone. Someone claimed the Kangaroo did not cause the ruckus at the store, that another person had acted on the Kangaroo's idea, hoping to have him blamed...he was actually in jail at the time of the fire and explosions. Another party claimed to have been on the ship when he was deported and said that he actually jumped ship in Perambuco, Brazil. There was quite a diplomatic hullabaloo as the noose was supposedly waiting for him in Australia."
At any rate, the Miles gave up the post office and George Hatishita finally agreed to take it on. Thus, the post office came back to the store after 10 year's absence.
During the Second World War
When war came to Egmont for the second time it did little to change the lifestyle of the community in general, but much to change the lives of a few. Young men and women donned uniforms, some to serve by staying in Canada, others to go to Europe and fight. Ben Griffith became an airman, Benny Vaughan and Stan Silvey both joined the army. Many others joined what was commonly called the Fishermen's Navy, the Water Transport Command.
Those whose lives were most directly and dramatically changed, however were the Japanese members of the community. When war broke out the Takais, Hatashitas, and Maedas were store-keepers and fish-buyers in Egmont. The two Takai boys, Yukio and Nobo, were quite popular with the young fishermen in the area. The Hatashita family was growing up with Kay, having taken a commercial course in Britannia High School, taking over the job of running her family's store and her sister, also well educated, becoming secretary to the Japanese Consul.
Kay Hatashita was well-loved in the community and is still remembered fondly by many residents. She was a hard-working young woman, determined to make the store pay. She not only ran that side of the family business but looked after the post office and fish-float as well when need be. One day she even operated a rowboat as a packer.
That day, a huge run of blue backs had come in and everyone was so busy fishing she had no customers. She closed the store and set out in a skiff to where the fishermen were hauling in fish as fast as they could. Kay and Ted Hyashi, a friend of her family who was sent out to help her, worked at their task for hours plying back and forth from boats to fish-float until finally, whether from exhaustion on the part of the fishermen, or depletion of the run, it was all over. They must have transported tons of blue backs that day.
Ted Hyashi's position was something for speculation in those days, some thinking he was an adopted child, others claiming he was a protege, but whatever he was to the Hatashitas it was generally accepted that he would one day become their son-in-law. He was a clever young man, interested in photography, radio and carpentry. It was he who renovated the living quarters at the back of the store and added an upstairs.
The main purpose of the Japanese in Egmont had traditionally been that of buying fish. The stores, both the one on the float, and Hatashita's on the beach were merely incidental to purpose until Kay took over, turning her family's business into a truly viable operation with large and varied stock. In doing this she further endeared herself to the women in the area who had been forced to do without a good many items prior to that because the owners of the two stores couldn't be bothered to stock more than the bare necessities
When in 1941, Japan entered the war, very little notice was taken of the situation, expect for the fact that the postal department decided to remove the post office from the Hatashita's store. The job of the post master was then taken on by Imer Beamish who built a small place on a float and tied it up near the store where it served for several years.
When Ted Hyashi was told the news that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbour he shook his head sadly and said, "This will be bad for us."
It is doubtful if he had any comprehension of just how bad it was to become.
Canada and Japan had been enemies for some time before the government told all the Japanese on the coast to be prepared for evacuation at any moment. Time passed. Nothing happened. Maybe it was only those under suspicion of some sort who would be taken. Local people had no fears of the Japanese in their midst. These were their friends, their neighbours, and the odd nervous comment about Ted's interest in radio and photography was snorted at by the majority.
However, about two o'clock one morning something crashed into McNutt's float. (They were living in houses on floats tied up in the bay east of Egmont Point at the time, having just moved down from Beaver Creek and not yet managed to pull their houses ashore.) Gladys McNutt remembered that night and the brief time which followed like this:
"When the boat crashed against the float my husband, Fred, awoke with imprecations upon the head of the one who had bashed into our float. Then there was a loud knocking at the door. There stood young Ted." "The police have come for us and we have to be ready to leave at eight in the morning. Please ask that everyone in the bay come down to the store so they can settle up with us or arrange payment of their accounts before we're taken away".
"One of the Japanese men was making the rounds of the other shore passing the same message, and another had gone through the Chuck to Doriston with a similar request.
"Next day, we went to the store to pay our bill but we were too late. They had gone. We had forgotten it was daylight saving time. It was something new then and everyone in Egmont was ignoring it as the tides and the fish didn't pay much attention to man-made regulations."
"All the Japanese from Egmont to Pender Harbour were put aboard the Union Steamship and sent to Vancouver before being dispersed. They were allowed to take only what they could carry. All their boats, some of them very fine ones, were tied up in the Fraser River where they were eventually sold for whatever they could bring."
That the boats brought little is history, but one reason for that is not widely known. It seeems that when they had been collected and taken to Vancouver many of the boats were tied up in Bidwell Bay, but damage due to storms prompted the authorities to move them to a 'safer' location in the river. There it has been reported they were further damaged and many of them sunk allegedly by the vandalism of a few irresponsible members of the Fishermen's Navy.
But back in Egmont life went on while the people learned to live with rationing of many goods and remembered the friends and neighbours who had been so rudely snatched from their homes and livelihoods and given little, if any, compensation.
After the War
When the Japanese were forced to leave their stores in Egmont, the government department in charge of the disposition of alien property sold the businesses to the Queen Charlotte Fishing Company which hired a series of managers to run them. The first, Shaw, was followed by Jack Parry, who was in turn succeeded by George Binder. These were the people who marked ration cards, collected meat tokens and kept the populace supplied as best they could during the difficult years of the war.
Then, when the war was finally over, when the waiting and worrying were finished, when the last bazaar had been held with the proceeds earmarked to provide aid to the soldiers, the boys came home. One little girl, upon being told that her uncle had sailed from Europe on the Queen Elizabeth, ran to the window to see if it were tied up to the float. Sadly, for her, it was not, but happily for the community, the three who had gone overseas from Egmont had come safely back, although Stan Silvey had been wounded. Ben Griffith returned to eagerly await the arrival of his special 'war booty', his bride, Irene, who came from England a few months later.
With the war out of the way, life could return to normal; rationing lasted a bit longer, but was presently something merely to be remembered. Queen Charlotte Fishing sold the two stores to a family named Warman who in turn sold out to someone else. Then when they decided to leave, Angus Lutz came on the scene.
Lutz made a good many improvements to the store on the beach, instituting self service to speed things for his customers. Union Oil erected three large tanks on the hill and put in a pile wharf, leaving Lutz to provide the upkeep on the adjacent floats.
Imer Beamish, who had taken over the post office when the Japanese were no longer allowed to run it, continued to act as postmaster. The Marine Express company ran a weekly ship, the Jervis Express, bringing mail and supplies. B.C. Packers and the Western Fishing Company kept a fish scow in the bay by the store.
When a Fishermen's Co-op was formed in Vancouver, small groups of fishermen all up and down the coast joined the organization in the hopes of better prices and better deals to ease a life which even in good times was difficult, with long and arduous hours of work needed merely to make a moderate living. The local members saw the need for their own fish-float and began to discuss ways, means and a possible location.
The site was finally decided upon; a part of the property which Mrs. Points had been forced to let go during the depression to pay back taxes, was still in government hands. With seven acres and a foreshore agreement, the group soon installed a scow, floats and a cabin on the the shore for the buyer. LM&N Logging held rights for some timber in the area and an agreement was reached whereby the logging company, in return for levelling as much as possible of the Co-op land, was permitted to place some buildings there.
The fisherman's group decided to carry supplies as well as to buy fish, but it was felt by many that a Consumer's Co-op would be better suited to that purpose than a Fisherman's co-op. With a loan from the latter organization and much volunteer labour, a small store was built on the foreshore above the floats along with a house for the manager. Several managers attempted to run the store but somehow it never seemed to work out to the satisfaction of all the shareholders. Eventually, Percy Crowe-Swords and his wife Sheilagh were recommended for the managership and accepted by the group.
Meanwhile, Angus Lutz had been requesting that the government take over maintenance of the floats at his store because, as he so rightly stated, they were used by the general public. While he was negotiating, the Co-op also petitioned the government for a wharf in front of their store. The decision was made in favour of the consumer group and a large float and pier were built in Co-op Bay, leaving Lutz and the Union Oil company to take care of the installations on the north side of the inlet. Shortly thereafter Home Oil set up its tanks by the Co-op store.
Since it is a general rule of business that in a place where mail comes only once a week, a store near the post office will do well on mail day, Crowe-Swords suggested that the Co-op build a small addition to the store and equip it as a post office. This suggestion started a tug-o-war with Lutz at one end and Crowe-Swords and the Co-op at the other. Great screeds passed from each camp to the postal department and back again with the final outcome being that the postal authorities asked Imer Beamish to move his post office from the north shore to the south as they had been informed that the majority of the people lived there.
Mr. Beamish, getting on in years, did not want to face the inlet crossing twice each mail day in all weather as he had only a small, open boat, and so declined. At this point, since there was no one else to do the job, Sheilagh Crowe-Swords agreed to take on the chore. The post office was thus opened at the Co-op store with a stern admonition from the authorities to the people of Egmont that this was positively the last time their post office would be moved!
The little, one-room schoolhouse on William Griffith Sr.'s property was rapidly becoming too overcrowed to bear and there were now two teachers instead of the customary one, as the number of students had increased beyond what could be managed by a lone teacher. The one room was divided by a huge, red stage curtain to separate primary grades from elementary, but a more permanent solution was desperately needed. Somehow, a new school had to be acquired.
Egmont Enters 20th Century
When it became obvious that the little Egmont school was overcrowded to the point of being useless, the school board requested and was given a portion of the Consumer Co-op property. At the same time, with commendable foresight, an acre was set aside as a site for a community hall, planned for some time in the future, with adequate road allowance as well.
The new school, a half-Quonset, was duly erected and provided two large classrooms, a staff-room, a covered play area and, wonder of wonders, indoor plumbing. It also dripped terribly atop and among the desks for some time until a problem with condensation was corrected by improving the ventilation. Condensation and all, however, it was a vast improvement over the old school which was soon bought by the community as a meeting hall.
The donation of the land for the new school was one of the last acts of the consumers' group for, with a variety of reasons being cited, the Co-op went broke. The business was sold in an attempt by the shareholders to recoup some of their losses and John Dunlop became the new owner.
John and Lily Dunlop arrived during the first week of March, 1954, and were open for business on the morning of March 8th. Lily recalls their arrival:
"We travelled from town with all our furniture aboard the Izumi V, Doug Morton's fish-packer. He was our fish-buyer. Jim Jefferies was there waiting on the dock to help us unload. We lived first in the tiny shack behind the store but later, when Jack and Carrie Clarke were moving, they sold us their house and it was floated from the other side on a raft and pulled up to where it still sits, just beside the store."
Jean Jefferies, Jim's wife, who had for years assisted Sheilagh Crowe-Swords in the post office, became the offical post mistress, a position she was to hold for many years.
A few months after the Dunlops arrived, in August, 1954, the Quilliute began sailing from the new ferry slip at Earls Cove to Saltery Bay, and the Sunshine Coast was connected to the mainland at both ends for the first time in history. Perhaps even more important, Powell River was connected to the rest of the province by road, with the Sunshine Coast forming the vital land-bridge to link the mill-town with greater civilization.
The impact on Egmont was great, even though the end of the road was still several miles away, but now the distance was so much shorter that great savings in both time and fuel could be had. No longer was it necessary to reach Vancouver by boat or by the long run through the Chuck to Porpoise Bay to catch the bus in Sechelt. The bus was there at Earls Cove to pick up passengers as it rolled off the ferry, and people could now keep cars only a short boat trip away from home, to drive themselves anywhere on the coast and to the rest of the world if they wished. But even that was not enough. A road right into Egmont was needed to tie the little community to the rest of the Sunshine Coast where water transport was rapidly becoming an option rather than a necessity.
Such plans were laid and the proposed route was hiked and blazed by many of the local men, around lakes, up the sides of steep hills and down into gullies. Government surveyors were there, too, marking, mapping and planning, but it would take time, much time...
Meanwhile, just as the student population had burst the seams of the old school house, so the community outgrew it in its present use as a meeting hall. A camp up Jervis was able to offer just the right kind of building for sale, but it was too big to be transported by raft. What to do? With ingenuity reminiscent of their pioneer ancestors, the people of Egmont had the building neatly cut down the middle, and each half placed on a raft and towed down Jervis, into Sechelt Inlet and pulled ashore in Co-op Bay, where the two portions were reunited upon a solid foundation.
The old school, regrettably now fallen into disuse, also fell into disrepair. It continued to stand, however, traditionally red, for more than twenty-five years, a landmark with a sagging roof-line, and, for the imaginative, the faint echoes float around it. Only recently was it finally torn down. All that remains of it today is a portion of the cloakroom, far removed from its orginal location, leaning rakishly toward the forest at the back of a clearing three times the size of what was once the playground where those shrill voices cried, laughed and squabbled, the little ones in the first grade, the oldest, in the eighth, and all of those in between.
A hard fact of life for parents and students alike in Egmont in those days, even after the new school was built, was the eighth grade was as much education as was available without either leaving home or carrying on with correspondence lessons.
To leave home at the age of fourteen was traumatic, especially for the children of a small and isolated community where the family held such great importance.
All this, fortunately, was changed with the arrival of the road in 1956, when the handful of children from Egmont who had passed out of eighth grade, were taken by bus to Madeira Park and then, later, to the new high school at Kleindale.
In 1960, the first of Egmont's students to have received their entire schooling on the Sunshine Coast without having had to leave home, graduated from Pender Harbour Secondary School. It may not seem like much of an achievement today, but at that point in time, it was a triumph for the whole community. Vast distances had been overcome, rough water and even rougher roads had been traversed and the children of Egmont had entered into the 20th Century.
All it takes, it seems, to run a power line, is a road to run it beside, for a few years after the Egmont 'goat track' was pushed through, electricity followed. The soft hiss of Coleman lanterns and gentle glow of coal oil lamps gave way to the clicks of switches and the poppings of toasters. Washday no longer meant the clattering roar of the gasoline powered washing machines and many a wood stove was replaced by electric. In homes where lighting plants had provided power, the transition was relatively easy as wiring had already been done, but in those where no such amenities existed, it was a different thing altogether.
Electricians were called in and like termites, they drilled holes in walls then, unlike termites who seldom manage to be constructive, they poked and pushed and pulled, drawing wires through walls and shoving them out through ceilings to afix plugs, switches and fixtures where they were required. Then, when the power was connected and lights gleamed into the night, the less fortunate folks on the north shore would look across the water in envy, wondering when they would be endowed with electric power themselves. And the silence! After years of the constant burble of lighting plants rumbling away, the cessation of those engines was a bit difficult to accept. One young woman, home for the weekend from her job in Vancouver, awoke in the middle of the night and, hearing the silence, knew at once something was wrong. "Dad!" she yelled, "the plant's quit!"
"Go back to sleep," came the grumbly reply. "We don't have a plant any more." Oh, well, I thought I was helpin...
The Egmont road, as welcome as it had been when it first went through, deteriorated rapidly from a bad, dangerous, dirt track to a worse, dangerous, dirt track. In the summer, one choked on the clouds of dust and in the winter, cars wallowed in thick, gluey mud. The corners were all blind, the hills were of a nature that even four-wheel drive vehicles found them a challenge and many were the times that the school children pushed their bus up to the top of nearly every hill along the route. As time went on and conditions became worse, the rumour that the government surveyors had followed a drunken snake on its way to Earls Cove gained credence. More cars were ruined, it has been said, on the Egmont road in its first ten years of use, than have travelled the entire Alaska Highway since 1946. Something had to be done!
And something was done. In the mid-sixties, after several visits from Isobel Dawson, that indomitable lady of provincial politics, upgrading, straightening, filling of gullies and widening the road began to take place. preparatory to the eventual paving. Dave Pollack and his crew blasted rock, threw down tons of fill, pushed trees and stumps out of the way and began to create a road out the incredible mess they had been hired to tackle and they managed, somehow, to do it with the least possible inconvenience to the people, who needed the road to travel from Egmont and back again.
There were many people beginning to discover Egmont and it became, not just a stopping-off and refueling place for water-borne tourists, but for campers and fishermen who travelled by road, as well.
Both the Bosch family and the Bathgate Brothers, who had long provided marina services for cruisers, found themselves with a whole new breed of tourists to care for. Bathgates put in a laundromat and showers, still primarily to cater to boaters, but the Bosch's erected cabins and a cafe to complement their boat rental and launching service.
West's Resort, owned by Mary and John West, on the property once pre-empted by John Wray Jr. many decades before, grew into being from simply a convenient place for travellers to skid their boats into the chuck. From sliding boats out over the logs, to launching them properly from a concrete ramp, the Wests rapidly progressed to full-fledged camp-site proprietors, clearing more land each winter and adding more and more attractive, shaded nooks with tables and benches for their guests. An extensive float area completed the picture and many fine fish are brought into boats by their guests each summer, as well as by the guests of the other tourist camps in Egmont.
But sadly, in the early sixties, even as the road made tourism the growing industry of Egmont, the lack of bait, in the form of the grossly over-fished herring, made commercial salmon fishing in the inside waters next to impossible. The local fishermen were forced to go farther afield to earn their living and many new boats, bigger and stronger to withstand the northern conditions were built or bought. Summers came to mean the absence of many of the men and early June became the time of departure with boat after boat sailing away to Bull Harbour and points north, not to return again until some time in September.
Even that change was progress of a sort, for the living was better, even if it meant a long summer's absence for so many. With radio phones on the boats, and telephones in the homes, families were able to keep in touch as voices were patched through from station to station. And then there were the home-comings, the trips here and there as the good summer's profits enabled husbands and wives to take vacations, or to make needed improvements to homes and boats.
September meant rest for those who stayed home to look after the tourists, as well, for after Labor Day, the visitors became fewer and fewer until at last Egmont curled up for the winter and dozed except for the times when maintenance must be done to ready equipment for the coming spring, for the fishing, and for the tourists who were sure to arrive in even greater numbers than the year before.
A State of Mind
With the paving of the road from Earls Cove to Egmont in the late '60's, the tourists which had been coming in moderate quantities began to arrive in much greater numbers, to rent boats, cabins and camping space. They helped Egmont open up to the world as the '70's came along, bringing changes, new ideas, and a cash-flow greater than in all the times before.
Industry other than tourism played a great part in the developing of the community in the encouraging of the youth to stay or to return, and in bringing in new blood to enliven the scene. Some of these industries struggled briefly and died, others came to stay. One which falls into the prior category is still deeply regretted by many as it could have been a prime source of employment for the community and should have, for it involved the very element of what had made Egmont come into being in the first place.
In Agamemnon Bay, there was a fish farm. It was a first in all of Canada. In it, salmon were to have been raised from the egg stage right through the entire cycle of growth up to edible sizes, in a series of salt-water pens, much as other live protein is commercially produced on dry land in other parts of the country. All the necessary elements were available; the water in which the fish would grow, the tides and currents to flush out the debris, and the will of the people who so desperately wanted to see this happen. Like an infant failing from lack of sustenance, the operation weakened and died, for one other essential was missing, that of co-operation from those who held in their hands the power to say yea or nay. And so the fish farm lies fallow with the land above it now sold and hopes of its ever becoming a pilot for a viable project long since dead.
Other industries, however, thrive, and while none of them may be as aesthetically pleasing as the growing of silver salmon in clear water, they do provide jobs for the community. Among them are S&W Logging, who have employed many young men over the years; Argus Aggregates, which quarries gravel on the north side of Sechelt Inlet near the rapids; Delta Rock Gravel in Jervis Inlet, and the Crown Zellerbach dry log-sorting operation in Goliath Bay. Many people from both Egmont and Pender Harbour are able to earn their livings by working for these companies and are thus able to make their homes in the area.
The coming of industry other than logging and fishing has almost certainly been resented or regretted by some. There have been complaints, valid ones, about both noise pollution and the unsightliness of open gravel pits, although the former is not perhaps as great as some may have feared it would be. The concerns expressed that silt being dumped into the inlet would damage and even destroy fish, clams and oysters seem largely to have been discounted by the local fishermen, of whom there are still a few. The fishing, they say, was already severely damaged by the depletion of herring stocks which had been caused by other fishermen who were equipped to, and permitted to, take far greater quantities of herring than was safe for the continued population of that species. Given time and protection, these men say, the herring would recover to the point where both cod and salmon would return to inside waters and fishing would again become as great a part of the Egmont scene as it was in the past.
Apart from industries, it is Egmont itself which calls to many to come and live there, to make their homes in the serene beauty of Sechelt Inlet. In the '60's they came, some to stay for only brief spells, others to find what they sought and to remain into the following decade and the one we have just entered. There is always something for the new-comer to do, be it log salvage, pottery, fishing, logging or working for one of the new companies. There is new life, new interests and new blood singing along the veins that sustain the community, and the Community Hall is now the scene of greater activity and action than in many of the years which went before.
Smorgasbord dinners, movies, volley-ball games, dances, bazaars and sales involve the whole community as does the Sports Day every spring, and the arrival of the CBC crew to film Ritter's Cove was one of the greatest boosts the Community Club has ever received.
In addition to the rental paid for the hall, the CBC has spent thousands of dollars re-wiring, re-plumbing and insulating the building which was once cut in half and floated to its home in Egmont. All the improvements may have long been needed, but the community, in spite of the work done to raise money, might never have managed it alone. While the scenery soon to be broadcast to the world will be known as belonging to 'Ritters Cove', to those who hold it dear, it is Egmont and always will be.
In this, the ninth decade of the community, babies are still being born, families are still living, working, playing. Fourth generations of Silveys, Vaughans, Griffiths and Jefferies are arising and new names, like Van Arsdell and Deacon and many others are appearing on the rolls, perhaps to stay and create their own dynasties.
Yes, things have changed. There may be few 'Trollers, wheeling in The Deep'; cod boats may no longer come home with gunwales all but awash; the tenor cry of "Timber!" may no longer echo in the 'hills reflected deep below', but those hills themselves remain and scars will heal, green growth will reappear, and through it all, the Chuck, immortal, rumbles on, the green glass wall farising, building, spilling out or spilling in to disappear at length in a froth of foam, a swirling eddy, leaving the observer to wonder, was it really there, did it truly happen...or was it just a state of mind?
