273_Heinekey_Vesuvius-Bay-Revisited.mp3

otter.ai

19.04.2023

no

Speaker 1 0:00
gives me a great a great deal of pleasure today to introduce you, Marshall. Hi, Nikki, who's going to give his talk and of the history of Vesuvius Marshall is a born and bred salt sprinter, who left the island many years ago and has now retired back to salt screen. He's become an active member of the Historical Society. And he's a great acquisition to our group. So I'd like to introduce you today to Marshall Hankey.

Speaker 2 0:34
Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry, this is not the sound of music. I don't think I've seen so many people show up. For me anyway, he accept students that had to come. This project was a challenging one and a very rewarding one. Okay, let's keep going. For me, because obviously, when I grew up here, I had always asked questions about Vesuvius. I always got answers. But those answers were somewhat problematic to me in later life, because they just weren't true. The other thing is that, as a kid, you don't ask the right questions. You, you just go along and you just carry on and you don't realize the impact that various people had on your life in a small community like Vesuvius, and you didn't realize what role the Soviets played in the rest of the island. As far as I was concerned, it was just a farm full of cows that you had to milk by to work, and you went to school because you didn't have to work as hard. So this particular video is something that most of you see from the ferry, just the tranquil Vesuvius Bay, it hasn't changed very much over that period of time. And the people have changed. I was thinking last night is there anybody that was living in Vesuvius when I was a kid, and the only person I can come up with a sandy Smith. So if I'm wrong, please let me know that I just can't remember anybody else that was here at that same time. So that makes me very old. Or I can't remember. So what I want to do is I want to give a little bit of an introduction

Unknown Speaker 2:27
about history.

Speaker 2 2:29
History is made up of facts, we've learned the mall is made up of facts that are interpreted. And we know a lot about those. And then we read fictional stories in a factual context. And then we have folklore. And I was raised on folklore. So in this presentation, I want to cover three areas over the last 150 years series has been the beginning starting in 1860, through to the pretty much the end of the First World War, the post first World War, and up to the beginning of the Second World War is starting to get kind of gruesome. And then post Second World War, which is what I remember most, and then I'm just if the time prevails, just give you a few anecdotes about facilities as a kid. So what's in a name? This is the first thing stolen was what one tribe call it, which meant warm water. I've seen other names for it, meaning lukewarm water, but I could never pronounce that one. So it just and that's really what the service is known for. Is its warm water. It was actually named after the HMS

Unknown Speaker 3:55
sorry, ah, demonstrated pursue this.

Speaker 2 4:01
Now, if ever you want an exercise is trying to look for that particular boat, there was three HMS Vesuvius, one in 1814, one that was commissioned in 1840, which is the one that was used for RNA captained by Osbourne which was Green Bay, and tap and Richards was the one that actually was a fan of the British Navy, and named everything he could think of after a ship or a captain or the cook, or whatever else he could find, and even came and took Saltspring name and changed it back to Admiral Island, because it wasn't after British seamen and then mount Sychar This is the full four part of his history lesson. I asked my mother to sue this kid his name while there was this Italian called bitten card, and he looked out When he saw this mount sticker, and it reminded him of Vesuvius named at the Soviets. And for 20 years after he left the island when I was asked that question, I gave him the same answer. This is the HMS Vesuvius. Here's their captain. And this is a battle during the Crimean War. And it was painted and hangs in the National Marine Museum in England. So let's look at the bay. When in doubt, get Google. So there's a picture taken about two months ago by Google. And it looks just like it looked probably, except for the houses and the roads, like it did 150 years ago. And it's been the home of many families, raise kids made a living, participated in Salt Spring Island culture and commercial enterprises. And that's home.

Speaker 2 6:06
So let's look at the boundaries. This is a CRD map. The piece is represented in the red line.

Unknown Speaker 6:17
Right here

Speaker 2 6:19
was the hierarchy good rich farm at 70 acres. So try and visualize 70 acres of land that's what it is. And look how, how many times would it go into what you think is Vesuvius because a quiz at the end of this presentation, and I'm going to speak that becomes a kind of a significant fingered figure is what that land represents is 57 people, families living on that land today. And this place down here is the quarry.

Unknown Speaker 6:54
How many people in this room have heard about the quarry? Okay, now, I'll tell you what it was really about.

Unknown Speaker 7:02
So early history,

Speaker 2 7:05
preemption of land, pre emptive land mail service, the murder of William Robertson, and the bitten courts, and the quarry. These are five areas that I'm going to cover in the next few minutes here, preempted land. Well, what was happening was before BC was a province, under the colonial government of the time by James Douglas. He wanted people that were coming here to settle so they put land for sale, he was from the Hudson Bay Company, so who would ever think of anything but selling land. So he surveyed out the Saanich, some of the islands and Vancouver Island, and he set up for the for people to buy at 250 an acre, and hopefully live there, but nobody did. People bought it, and then they took off somewhere in a gold rush or whatever. So what he came up with Copeland is surveyors who, where we do some preemption of land. And here is some of the terms now there's at least five acts that have come in to preemption giving different terms. So I just sort of took the mean that there happened to be for Saltspring, a single male, no women were allowed to single males, were allowed to have 150 acres 200, if they were married, they had to clear fence work, and put up a dwelling. They couldn't be absent for more than two continuous months. And they couldn't, once they'd done the improvements and somebody finally got around to surveying the land, they had to come up with the money at a buck an acre. And the idea was that people would stay there work the land start to develop the province and go from there. And you only got ownership upon the survey and paying the money. Remember that? Okay, so preemption started around Saltspring, around 1859 and through to about 1870. But it's it actually kept on going. And at that time was mainly Afro African Americans had settled with Sufis. In fact, they covered all of the Soviets, there was nobody else there at that particular time, regardless of what you've heard. And here's just some of the families they didn't all have preempted land but either work for people with preventive land there was Lewis Stark, Abraham Copan, John Craven Jones, William Robertson, Harold, Harold eights, and Moses Mahaffey. Here are some key individual those that came here. Mail Service mail service, the first mail service to Saltspring was at the CVS. And it had to have started somewhere around 1863. And why I say that is because this guy begged Jonathan Bay is an interesting guy that driftwood we just love this guy. He'd have four pages filled up every day. He wrote consistently about his he's lived at Fernwood, and what is known as big settlement, sometimes called Big fill. And he was upset with the suit is having hail. So he petitioned the government to have a boat stop at Fernwood. And he did that in 1865 wrote this very, he was a very good writer. What does he do? They turned him down. And he complained because he had to hike over the mountains to get to the studios to get his mail. So channel registers now, with mountain it somehow shrunk over the time and it's not as big as it used to be. This is not the first mail service, but this is typically what happened. You have to remember that there was coal being mined in, in Nanaimo, and these quotes were going back and forth, along the inside of Saltspring, stopping at places like Lady Smith's yumminess and Vesuvius, so it made it natural for them to get their mail service that way. And believe it or not, the last place to have nail service was Ganges bluffs that Vesuvius thought that that was even should have stopped but they Musgrave came there beaver point, big finally one Odin Fernwood and then find the Ganges and the first post office was here Central. So this is the Joan it was commissioned at 95 implied up and down the coast. But there was other boats I tried to find one boat that actually stopped here before that. Couldn't find the actual name. Okay, the who done it, the murders this will blow you away. First of all, there was an unknown Afro American, American American African American, and he was shot in the first quarry is two quarries and saga is more than that, but this was one of Sunset drive. Near stonecutters Bay was a quarry that lasted about a year and a half. And they found this poor fella half buried and he was shot. And that murder is unsolved. I call these murders around salt but that one they didn't think too much about and it was William ride Robertson this guy was shot to

Speaker 3 12:59
shit Sheshan has set

Speaker 2 13:04
or so Watson or however you want. I call them Tom. He was eventually tried for this murder and hung. But this if you go on and and type in who murdered William Robertson, he'll get 470,000 hits. This guy ranks in Canada, the sevens on the unsolved murder list. So somebody got hung. Most people think that this person didn't do it. He was turned in by his enemy. And it's really interesting what happened in this particular murder. They couldn't find any evidence and most of the times that natives would kill somebody usually stole from them. So they went to his cabin they couldn't find anything. So Norton, a Portuguese settler on Saltspring why he took an interest in this is a bit odd, wrote over two humaneness rode back reported that he had found it Robertson's agar in his cabin but if unfortunately when he was rolling across he dropped it overboard but he so they investigated this the crown investigated and hauled Behold, the middle of the floor was an X in his cabinet and that acts fake claim Norton claim belong to privacy. So the tribe that you belong to said, Well, we really liked this guy, Tom. So we have a few slaves that we got up the coast so we'll treat the slave you will be able to have Tom back. And they didn't do it. They hung them anyway. But while this was going on, hold the hold. There was an Other murder. This guy Giles Curtis worked for Harold asked. In 1868, so in about a 14 month period, there was three murders. This one's even more bizarre, they blamed the natives because they had to blame somebody, they actually, a guy turned, a woman turned her husband and Willie, she disappeared. They didn't have a crown witness. So who really went free. So, while this is an interesting story, and you can go and research this all you want, and I spent far too much time on it. But the aftermath is really what's of interest.

Unknown Speaker 15:44
Robinson first of all, the Crown hadn't been granted. So going back to my first statement about preemption.

Speaker 2 15:58
If you've done the work, and it hasn't been surveyed, and you haven't paid the dues, you don't own the land. So this fellow Robeson didn't actually own the land. And this is the land that the ferry war that the government had allotted for a ferry worth. So keep that in mind. The land was worth about $500. And they claimed there was no heirs, but they didn't look for any heirs. So then it started a series of mystery transfers of this land. And we'll get into those. But first of all, we have to bring in the bitten courts. Now, you've all heard of the bitten courts, and one of them became the Tsar Vesuvius. So these, this just trace back how these people benefited from this murder. First of all comes Anton. Betancourt couldn't quit and Portuguese always go by their second name. He arrived on Saltspring in 1918 63. And he lived very close to his buddy, John Norton. And he had a habit of trying to claim jump. So if you were gone for two months, your law and you hadn't bought the land. Somebody could come along and take it. So he tried to do this in Ganges, and he didn't have much luck. So here's a picture of Anton and his two sons, which later came back to Salt Spring and were quite famous builders on the island. That's another story. So this was then entered Anton's brother. Now, most of the research, or most of the public documents say that these two guys came together. And they've had a very colorful life getting to Saltspring especially as Stallone Escalon, swam through his first boat, caught a boat from the Azores where he was born, went to Australia, caught another boat came to Victoria, they wouldn't let them off. So he swam ashore, this guy could swim. I would, if someone told me he swam to Saltspring off the June I would have believed it. He he is living in Victoria. My research says that he didn't actually come to the island to live till 1870. And this makes a lot of sense when you think of what was going on. So Anton gets a hold of his brother and he says you gotta get a lawyer.

Speaker 3 18:38
And so what he does is he gets his lawyer. Here's a picture of

Speaker 2 18:45
Escalon. The plot thickens a little bit more. Before he got the lawyer, Robinsons land was mysteriously auctioned, I don't think it was auctioned at all. I think that the person living next to the land, which happened to be a fellow by the name of what's his name, just escapes me. Those come from the second. Lester Lester, on the land next to Robinson, Robinson had been dead for a while that means he hadn't been living on the land. So and he hadn't paid for it. So you could jump that land. And I actually think that's what Lester did. And then he owned the neighboring land. But he didn't either pay for his or the piece that he that it was on and he left the island. So, along comes Abraham Copan. He says, Well, let's try that. I'm going to try it out too. And he took over the land briefly until he started negotiating with the government over a wharf. The veteran Bittencourt brothers heard of this, and they petitioned legal action using John Booth who was the elected representative Have to the colonial government at the time. And he went and those two guys got a lawyer he filed a legal action against the government government got kind of intimidated by this. And the short of it is that the brothers got glammed. But the problem was that these brothers didn't get along. So the first thing that Escalon did was he's he got a writ to Goddess warrior to get a writ on the land. And he wanted to conditions change to them. First, he wanted the government to give up their claim to a wharf property on the land. And that was denied. And the second thing is that he wanted his brother taken off the title. So what they did was they took the title gave epsilon the north half, which contains the the war, and his brother, the south half. And his brother was never heard again until 1880, when he burnt down a building in Victoria and was put in in a sailor silence. So then there was Moses, McCaffrey, Moses owned a piece of land that didn't Cortes actually wanted, or at least Asalaam wanted, and he had all of a sudden was charged with a mysterious charge, and he died. And when they went through his artifacts that he was married to, he owed epsilon, the exact sum of money as the property was worth. So he took it over. The wife took off, and now he owns all of the service almost all the way down to Boothbay.

Unknown Speaker 21:55
This picture taken from

Speaker 2 22:00
Ruth Samuels book shows this is in 1868, the black indicates all the African American properties that were preempted. And this is an 1881 This is supposed to be red. It looks like to me that this is all of pestilence property. You know what now you know, I call them the Tsar of Vesuvius. So Escalon was born in 1842. Portuguese from the Azores. He married me marry, and 1871 couldn't find a record, but they were Catholic, and I counted up the birth of their kids who'd have to be married about that time. They had 11 kids over 15 years. She then separated from him. And she committed suicide. He married Catherine Madden in 1901. She was 59 years old at that time, so there's some conjecture that she had kids? I don't think so.

Unknown Speaker 23:18
So here's a picture of all 11

Speaker 2 23:24
I think the the woman there is Katherine because the oldest girl in there I've only just tried to judge ages. And I know when they were born. And this picture has been taken around to 1903. They married in 1901. This was the only one I really know this is Joe or he was the brother after farming and Vesuvius for 30 years he joined the brotherhood and was a teacher for 66 years and died in his 90s and there was only one bit in court that survived him that was his younger sister

Speaker 2 24:11
so Bittencourt house, you need a house this big for 11 kids. And you'll notice that how bare the hillside is, this is one of the mountains and the claim over for their mail I guess. And they've cleared it all off and how rough the road is.

Unknown Speaker 24:46
Okay, sorry.

Speaker 2 24:49
So what he took was off. Unfortunately, none of these are dated pictures. I tried to put them in some kind of sequence based by what the construction was or the roads We're in that and ran through how this piece of property evolved so the wife is getting in better shape is no change the mountains are still all there's no reforestation. This is more than 11 kids so I think there's some wives and some husbands in here this is taken at the back and this is taken after the front was often there's no wharf. So, this is now getting into art as the wharf was not there for a while and put a front on but it was still the original building I actually remember this because you just have to go round on the road and somebody else don't get by this time. So I think this is probably in the 4050s this this particular picture was called a lodge and that said just before the fire

Unknown Speaker 25:58
so

Speaker 2 26:18
Okay, now used to being double like this pictures become kind of famous for Saltspring the three houses that you see there are the, what they call the gallery houses is three houses, all of them are still in existence today. The this one and this one are still in their original location. And this one has been moved to the top of the CVS by the little church. And this is laying street here. This powerful bothered me for a while, but must have indicated that that was a time that there was some lectricity brought in which I heard was around 1920. This is the Betancourt barn

Speaker 3 27:07
and just notice how naked This is of trees. Now, if I go to this picture,

Speaker 2 27:15
which one came first? I think the previous one went came first. I think this one came before this one. The power pole is there. The road is wider. And these are all deciduous trees. So I'm assuming that they popped up.

Speaker 2 27:37
This is a bit another mystery to me. This is a breakwater that bitten courts are supposed to have built. I don't know who the people were in. It's not the person. Not the reason I have this picture. This breakwater couldn't have been used to house big boats to come in because it's below as above low water. But if you look at this picture, the remnants of that is still in existence today. This was taken last week. I just had a curiosity went over there to see if I could still see it. And it runs right under the wharf. And they've used it for Foundation's other piece of digging. Take a look at what's going on there. So the Bittencourt businesses were extensive. They had stores they had farm, very large farm and the sons that was the other advantage that he had over his kids. The first five were boys. And then he got at his girl. So he had a built in labor force right off the bat that he could control. He was in the transportation, he had a small boat and he was had water, taxi, rent goods back and forth. Other farmers would bring their goods to the service and he would transport them around or make sure they got loaded up onto the boats. He had a quarry. He had a mind he actually sold coal. And there's that it's down towards Musgrave where he thought he had final copper or gold or something that they measured minerals down there, parts per billion by the ounce building, these guys could build like nobody's business. And he had a bar sandstone quarry. This, the people that worked on their their houses were built on my grandfather's property, the quarry was not on our property. But the quarry started in 1886 and went through to 18 or 1913 Probably would have kept on going. But the war broke out. And at that particular time or he was shipping rock to Victoria and to San Francisco. And he employed 25 East Indians. I have to check this one record. I'm not I wasn't sure that's true. I know that the call will Henry Carlos, grand father, great grandfather grandfather he has actually worked in his quarry This is part of one of the faces of the quarry before you today you can't you can't have access unless you know the owners. These this was in teared all the way down to the water. And they used to use feathering wedges, drilling little holes on the top, putting the feather and wedges bang them and these big slabs would come off and they would chisel them and the chisel things were done at the water's edge where the scout was. And you would, they would see these cars where they're worn away quite a bit but partial causeways going out where the chips and everything were fell I was quite open as a kid. I'm about this is me in this picture this. I was about nine years old. What happened was a reporter came say you want to do an article on them, Korea and he was just going to jog down and see it. And my mother said no you don't. Why not? Because you kill yourself. You take my son Marshall, he'll show you how you knows where every rock and everything is there. And He'll guide you in your comeback. So So these were the fireplaces, what they would do is to build a small say 16 by 10 cabin, went and would have a large sandstone fireplace. And then they would have a Dutch oven at the other end. And the folklore was but they were all Portuguese. So they all made their bread in Dutch happens. I don't think there's a connection. But anyway, that was what I was told. So these are fairly massive and they're still in existence. And one person's been very careful to protect it. And there was lots of there's cordwood as a kid that would be all cut, and then it just sank over time just rotted and just condensed down. We were not. We were allowed to do a lot of things. But one thing we're not allowed to do we're not touch any artifacts. We found a bottle if it was empty, we weren't supposed to touch it. If there was boots, lanterns, all that stuff, we would come home tell them where was it was left there. We're sorry, we did that now. Okay, bizarre of Vesuvius dice. So epsilon died in 1979 74. He was predeceased by his wife, his second wife, and his two sons died in that period of time as well. The estate had 20,000 cash in 1917. And he had 473 acres. At his height, he had 512 acres. So just visualize how much land that would have taken up around Vesuvius when most people living there on an acre lot. So just sort of imagine how big that was. And then the odd thing is except for Arthur and and read that kept on building most of them all moved away. And I don't I don't think there's any descendants left here. Maybe. Maybe there is. Okay, let's look at postscript, one. There's Sony for five people. They want to mention here, Inglis. The partnership between schaffen oz as well and Smith, Langley and Goodrich. So the English bought up around the dowry houses, right in Tantramar. And they had a camp and that camp, people came over and it was just like, what you think and this, they bought this in 1918. And a lot of the folklore was that we all bought from the bitten cars who might have bought from the Bittencourt state, but nobody bought directly from Bittencourt because he was dead. So they own Tantramar This is season two, they had little cabins all over the place. And people would gather up these cabins and move them around and do a bunch of things like that in later years. And of course, the depression came along in it, and then the wars. That was sort of the lifecycle. Come here after the First World War, have a fairly good 20s And then 30s were pretty rough. And so people would there's one of the dowry houses and people in their best swimming gear. Langley I don't know very much about I know he was related to the Carlos. He was live from West Vancouver. Everybody, anybody on both sides of Langley road, and I believe I can be stand corrected. This was one of the houses he built. And he lost most of it. through the Depression, Oswald Chapman and and Smith had a partnership. And these guys had chickens. Did they ever have chickens? This is a 1920 picture that I got a couple of years ago. This land. This is probably where Kevin Bell lives right now. And all through this area up and take gales so this is Goodrich road goes right up past these houses. So it's everywhere from there over to Vesuvius road. This is the chicken houses a brooder house. And they built for more of these things over from 1920 to 1930. Here's the middle dowry house. And this house here was owned by a Chinese fella by the name of chi had five daughters. And he ran a laundry and then one day disappeared. Daughters and everybody left. Some of the chickens from this chicken farm were sent to this cn exhibition grounds, the fall fair in Toronto, and they won prizes. So

Speaker 2 36:23
this is the Oswald house. So it's still in existence, still in the same location. Like everything in the movies has been renovated, fairly extensively. Good, rich family. This is my maternal grandmother, grandfather. And 1918, Jack and Phyllis. Good rich, settled on 70 acres of the farm, which I showed you. And this is the couple in Victoria. Phyllis doesn't look too happy. She was probably pretty choked up coming over from England to Victoria. And she just got the news she was going to sell spring. The background here. Jock is his nickname, because his first name was Aaron, Clarence Albert, which he hated and forbid anybody to call him that. And that's what's my middle name is Jacque and I get lots of questions have come up happened. He was born in Vermont. And because of religious persecution, he left home he had to go to the Methodists. And he had to go to church three times on Sunday and he had enough of it and he went, Oh, he left. This is just while he was worried when he joined up. He wandered around, it's really hard to try and trace where he wandered, but Washington, Oregon, Montana. He purchased a quart half section in Saskatchewan but he never homesteaded. He crossed into BC and was hired onto a survey crew by the famous BC land surveyor. Frank's twin owl in 19. Eight. This is something only found out this week that actually went out all surveyed on Saltspring in 1910. And this might have been another missing link that probably Jacque came with him it was his first time of actually seeing Saltspring and stuck in his mind. Because the story that just because I had deer and pheasants and it was easy to catch fish I don't think was a motivator. And both Frank and Chuck joined up for the army. Chuck was wounded in 1915. Your passion Dale, three months into the campaign, and he convalesced the rest of the war in England. Obviously nursed by Phyllis Frank I show this picture there's Frank's Brunel. I think it's about 1930. That's Jacque, I don't know who this guy is. But even when I was working for BC Hydro I would come across survey monuments put in by Frank Snell and one of the senior engineers would say don't worry about that. If he did it is bang on. Now this is Phyllis is the first picture and only picture ever seen her with black hair. And she born in Sussex she was 10 years younger than than Jack. When war broke. She was a nurse when war broke out and she nursed him nurse chuck for three years. And they got married in 1918. And he's in convalesce back for almost a year and a half in in scramble

Unknown Speaker 39:56
that's probably the best

Speaker 2 39:59
of all of them. You've got Chuck and Phyllis, Iris, Ken and Ruth. And most of you know Ruth and Iris. Ken is still alive. He just turned 90 at Christmas. And the rest of all passed on

Speaker 2 40:29
this is a house a lot of you in this room have been to this house. I actually grew up totally in this house. And it was a sequence as a lot of buildings and Saltspring of many renovations. Just kept going renovation after renovation never got any better but at least it was more rooms. And this was another renovation. This was the dining room and there's a fig tree. I mentioned that could have come from the bitten chords. Iris was the animal one and they had everything goats, cats, dogs, horses, you name it. They even had one car that was Nash. So 1939 to 1960 Tantramar Tantramar became Tantramar M Smith was the founding force Gavin Boyd had a major say in how it got formed. And then Hi Nikki started to show up.

Unknown Speaker 41:34
Okay, so

Speaker 2 41:36
Emma Smith I call her the Duchess of Tantramar. She named it it reminded her of Nova Scotia that's what I'm told I see it's in the blinds book so must be right. This was am Smith's house gain at skies now the McGuire house and there's I wanted this picture just kind of showed she actually owned all of this at one time. And she was quite a lady, she moved buildings around. If you ever look at the actual footprint that I showed you earlier, you see odd shapes of land. There's a reason for it. Lloyds have a piece of land that goes out because she believed that everybody should have a piece of the beach, regardless of where the house was. So you have these odd shaped things. And there's one house and in Tantramar that the lot and the House are the same size. You always wonder what wonder where the septic tank is where if you look at the CRD map, there's another piece on another person's property that's been marked out. And that's a septic field. Oh, I wanted Gavin in 1944. But the Osmo property and and in this area here. And the story is that he logged it. So I keep looking at what we saw. When ViDan carts went through, they went through with a pretty big chainsaw. And I don't I must have been logging up in this area, because it seems but he also started some subdivisions in that. Then enter George Hi, Nikki came in with a blast, he got married

Unknown Speaker 43:26
so this Cillessen jock.

Speaker 2 43:30
Like my Georgia has two parents. He doesn't look happy. And then this is Ruth iris, and George's third brother. Everybody in that picture is gone now. And then I came along. And this is the Good Witch road. This is what it was. I didn't know I don't even think it was named them. And the big barn that everybody talks about was actually built up here. So a little bit about George, who was born in 1913. And he would have been 97. Tomorrow. He moved to Saltspring in 1919. They lived in the Broadwell house. They moved about 1925 to Stuart BC. was trained as a butcher but he worked as a miner joined the Army in 1940. He was tricked. He wanted to go to Gibraltar as a miner to honey out on ecomo. And, but he went down to volunteering Imagine going to an army he seemed to volunteer to be a miner where you'd end up at so he started farming after the war. And he volunteered for everything. Those people that know him. I can't list all the different organizations he was president of The only reason that he could keep a full job and all the other things he did was because he was married to a personal promoter. He was a CRD director and he died while fishing, which is probably the best way to go. He and the fish died together. So so this was decision day for him. They started building chicken houses, because everybody on saucepan gets into chickens. And they had some cows. And they were going back and forth back and forth about do we do chickens? Do we do cows, chickens. And unfortunately, he made this decision. And this was 1948. And further from those days on I was milking cows two days, twice a day, seven days a week. We had fun. We had our own beach and my brother Shane. And then we had to get away from it all too. And so 1960 was time for me to get out of here. And Shane was thinking about the same. And he just lost 50% of his labor force. Churches. Somebody said, make sure you talk about the churches. Well, there's the ark. There's St. Nicholas. And there was a Sunday school. So this is St. Nicholas. Is this is what it looks like today. And when we attended it, that's all it was. The ark was a former Catholic church that Bittencourt built. And the bell lots of reference to the bill. The reason it was called The ark was the way the skirting was they made it look like it was on floats. And I used to add a major contract here I got 25 cents to mow the lawn. But the lawn was when he could have done it with paper clippers, you know, just as it was. But I was always intrigued by the skirting that went around here coming in and and then Mrs. Woodward called it the ark. She lived in that thing. And then there was a Sunday School, which is now the Lloyds this was Miss Winder ran a Sunday school here that had about 16 kids going to

Unknown Speaker 47:30
businesses, there was the little store as Vesuvius store.

Speaker 2 47:36
It was seaside kitchen, and the Vesuvius theory. So I'm gonna start off with the Soviet story. These are all modern day pictures of it. Mrs. G, Mrs. G. I think her name was Garvey. She was a little old lady that ran the store. And she made money. No, there are a lot of people that have owned the store. I think Richard Mayer CAMI now owns it. But there's been rustled Thorburn or owned it for a while. I honestly don't know how it makes money. And then when you want more little cabins for men that had limited to incomes, there was a whole host of these things around here. So they had this affordable housing for him all through this area. And they all took milk so they were all great people. Seaside kitchen has some. The original building was like all things in the service. It's all started off small. And then these were added. Doug Wilson was the one that put it in, he wanted a marina. And so he put in a docks and boats and everything and he and Cecil springfed were in partnership with a water taxi. And I don't think that was making much money. Especially was Cecil driving it. So he wanted this marina. And then he sold out. Around 1952 unmasked, and Alan, Dawn and beanie back to now and they were the ones that really turned it into a cafe was an excellent facility. And then it went through a few people. I think it has had seven owners, currently owned by Tony Parker. Henry Cole all owned it for a while as well. And then there was a big dispute when the mack canals were there, because the ferry came in in 1955. And like all government things said the dark is gonna go this way. And that was gonna go right across the marina. So there was people in Vesuvius were all on on Mac tonnelle side, even though we wanted a theory and finally they were able to come up with some kind of agreement and so the ferry built the new docks for Acton hills. It also had gas and it was one of these Things that you see down a forfeited Bruce Patterson's place you know, you pump it up. So you can just imagine boats filling up, you pump the thing up the run down to the thing, you drain it down and the guy says, Oh, I only want six gallons. So who do you do? Do you let him pump and you go back up

Speaker 2 50:23
so the suit is very this was the reason I left Saltspring it was it was a it was a great life. It operated from 1948 to 1965. At its peak in 1960, we were milking 50 jerseys being operation, we bottled milk and delivered six days a week the milking machines came in and 1955. And that was I remember that day, like anything were milking cows I had said no. And this was four or five in the morning. And all of a sudden my mother got up through the the thing down on the stool down on town, dancing. So that's the last goddamn cow I milk my hand. And miraculously, the next day, we got milking machines. And I said her sooner

Speaker 2 51:31
milking parlor was put in the 1956. And it was a family affair. And it was everything. The four of us did everything. And it was a lot of work. And we used to count all our friends. I just loved all my buddies like Bruce McDonald and Alan trois. And I'll get them out and hang seasonally. So this is the farm in 1965. Before all this subdivision came, my dad had only cut off six lots up here in 1956. Here's the barn and the side of the bunker silo milking parlor. This was kind of state of the art there was four dairies on the high on that stage. The original house was still there, the singer they just happen when a plane flew over there was closed on the line. This set of trees you know, as Gavin didn't get a hold of these ones, my grandfather planted these trees because he didn't want the Northwind to come through. I don't think that was the reason. He just didn't want people to come through. The mink farm was in here. All through the war. They had mink, and they were all in here in cages. And there was little buildings all over the place. It was a riot to play there was there was different sheds for different things. You know, there was no trust in those days you could build whatever you wanted anywhere he wanted

Unknown Speaker 53:04
Okay, Frank, this is supposed to work.

Speaker 2 53:09
Okay, so it gives you a little closer view always had boats. And the new house was then put a new house it's 43 years old this year, right in here. So and all these fields over here we never owned, but we they we treated them like they were ours. We get all the neighbors favors by taking the hay off the plowing it. Everything else like that. Goodrich road ran right up through here. And

Speaker 2 53:42
this is a significant felt for me as a as a member of this family. And I left home my dad was fighting with milk board and the health board over raw milk. He was 52 years old. They were wanting to shut him down saying you got to gotta pasteurize. We used to have a label that said, Soviet stereo the home of good rich milk and play on my mother's maiden name. And we had 5.4 was the butter, no content to these fights, he wrote letters, they increased the testing so he was testing up to two times a month which is a heck of a lot of testing of milk just to try and keep the thing going. They just kept bringing in a hassling them and harassing or harassing. And so one of the things they said you can't, you got to change your tops. You got to put your name on it and you got to put up pasteurized.

Unknown Speaker 54:58
Going

Speaker 2 55:16
The short of it was said he got a quota. One day he's told the quota and the cows on a Friday and Monday morning started with Northwest creameries. He went another 10 years selling milk. It was never the same. He also realized that who had 50% of his workforce gone that getting older he wasn't going to be able to handle anyway. So this is a significant issue for us as a family. So I thought I'd just throw it in just as still got about five minutes here. Couple of oddities about Saltspring. Commander forester, Commander Forester is a fitness room gnome. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 56:03
He bought the, the lodge.

Speaker 2 56:07
And he always delivered the food. They had rooms upstairs and they had the restaurant. Somebody would order oysters. So in his coveralls, he'd just run out on the beach, pick up some oysters, pick out a plate, put some sand on it, bring it in, take the top off one valve off, sit the thing on the sand. And so people would look for a week, they'd last one night, and they would carry on. Second thing is he had the station wagon and he'd drive it to the little church at the top of the CVS Hill pocket, and then walk the Ganges and then he would have Moses deliver the stuff to his to his opponent. He was a weird guy. And yet, he was he was one of our top commanders in the first second World War. The tree house. I've asked how many people here know about the tree house.

Unknown Speaker 57:03
Now who knows.

Speaker 2 57:06
You know, right at the corner where the steps go down to the beach. There's a big maple tree. And I think his name was Lloyd or Lloyd, his last name was Britain. Anyway, he was Dick Britain's son. And he was in the Navy. And he came home for about a month a year to visit his folks. And he built this tree house. Great tree. And it was beautiful was only in at once. It was beautifully done even at a fireplace in it. It was all made of wood. Had toilet and everything. We don't want to go there. But it also had had a bed and everything and it was completely contained. And it just sat there. And when I left home, it was gone. It was there. When it came home like you fast what happens is a tree has gone. Obviously property changed and somebody didn't want it or maybe a branch broke off or whatever. But it was a really a neat feature. Just try and build a tree house on the suttas beach today. The tea house was across from the tree house. And Dick Britton and his wife ran a tea house starting in the after the first row second world war through there and you can actually sit down and have property and that's where tenants live today. chicken houses there's two houses in the sewers that were made from chicken houses. And the rules were you had to leave a wall up so you had to jockey around to do this thing. One of these

Unknown Speaker 58:49
just to the see.

Unknown Speaker 58:52
One of these chicken houses

Unknown Speaker 58:54
was was part of the

Speaker 2 58:58
inglis's camp and they used it as a kind of a communal kitchen. And then later in the 50s Bruce MacDonald's mother used to rent this. And that was their summer. Stay there for the summer

Unknown Speaker 59:16
by guests all the time,

Speaker 2 59:18
and renovations if you just next time you just drive around Vesuvius to try and visualize what the original hosts look like and what it looks like today. And you'll see and that tells you something about some of our land use issues and how we have to play with the rules. So this is one of the chicken houses today. And it's right on the property line. It's behind the the mailboxes at Bayview and Tantramar.

Unknown Speaker 59:55
This is the tea house

Speaker 2 1:00:00
And this is a picture that all of us sort of can think of about the zoo this. This is my last slide. This slide signifies to me the tranquility and peace and everything that comes from the Sufis, what it's like to live there. The number of families, number of people that have lived there grown up their work and in the safety and set for of this area, and it still has had today and as I said earlier that there was only one individual still living in Vesuvius. When I had the specter when I was there is still the same as four years coming back. It's been changed meeting people that I didn't know before. But I walk that area and it's, you know, it's gratifying that in all the challenges that have gone on over the past 150 years, all the external things are there's still a piece of land that still fosters these values, and allows people like me to grow up and have a successful life. And I'm really pleased I was able to share it with you today.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:19
questions out there. I think