Author: vanislehistoryexplorer

Not Just “Mrs. [Husband’s Name]”: Giving Women Back Their Names and Amplifying Their Voices in the Coal Tyee History Project

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I work as the Digital Collections Assistant at the Vancouver Island University Library, and as a summer project, I was doing some reparative description work on one of the library’s electronic collections – the Coal Tyee History Project. This collection is made up of audio recordings and transcripts of interviews with Vancouver Island coal miners and their family members and is hosted online in VIU’s open access institutional repository, VIUSpace. The interviews were conducted between 1979 and 1984 by the Coal Tyee Society, and most interviewees were from the coal-mining communities of Nanaimo and Cumberland. Transcripts in the collection were primarily created by the society, with just a few missing ones completed afterwards by the VIU Library Technical Services Department.

While working through the collection I was able to correct several small spelling or transcription errors: Armanesco became Armanasco; Bodovinick became Badovinac; and Matthew Clue became Martin Clue. While these may seem like minor changes, I think they are ones that could potentially go a long way in increasing the likelihood of connecting researchers, or even family members, with these interviewees.

Interesting details about the experiences of women during the coal-mining era are embedded in the interviews of the Coal Tyee History Project. Male interviewees talk about the women in the community: teachers, nurses, and the women who worked in the Hamilton Powder Company’s explosives plant that supported the mine industry. Multiple Coal Tyee History Project interviewees recalled the nurse who entered the coal mine without permission. The collection also includes an extensive interview with Dorothy “Dolly” Gregory, who worked with her husband at their small family-run mine. Women’s stories are not the dominant narrative in the Coal Tyee History Project, but they are valuable for adding to our understanding of coal mining on Vancouver Island.

“Mrs. Frank Wall”

Although the Coal Tyee Society interviewed several women, their full names are sometimes not documented. As an example, a 1979 interview with “Mrs. Frank Wall” had no accompanying details about what Mrs. Wall’s first name was.

To be fair, the transcript shows that Mrs. Wall agreed to being identified as “Mrs. Frank Wall” during the interview. Her initials in the transcript appear as “MW” for “Mrs. Wall.”

                        SR: I’d like your full name. Mrs. Frank Wall is it? W A L L?

                        MW: Yes.[1]

This naming practice, where a woman was identified only by her husband’s name, dates back to the Middle Ages, when under the doctrine of coverture, a married woman’s identity, especially her legal identity, was tightly tied to her husband’s. Although not actually practised for centuries, the remnants of the doctrine of coverture can still be seen in the symbolic practice of people adopting their spouse’s surname after marriage. 

While not a choice that every newlywed opts for, even today, some folks decide to start using their spouse’s surname after marriage. But can you imagine also letting go of your first name too? Mrs. Wall, it’s time for you to be properly identified!

There were a couple of clues in the transcript, notably that Mrs. Wall’s maiden name was Roberts.

                        MW: Oh, why not start with my dad when he came across?

                        SR: Wonderful. And when was that?

                        MW: He landed in Frisco on his 21st birthday.

                        SR: And what was his name, Wall is your married name?

                        MW: Yes. It’s Roberts.

                        SR: Roberts.[2]

It took one attempt using the BC Archives Genealogy search tool to find Francis Wall and Alice Roberts’s marriage record from 1915.

Screenshot from a BC Archives Genealogy search

This seemed like a slam dunk, but I wanted to have at least one other source that confirmed Alice as Mrs. Wall’s first name. In the interview, Mrs. Wall also refers to her family’s story as being in “the Nanoose history book.” 

I’m both a book collector and interested in Vancouver Island’s history, so I knew what book she was talking about, and I happened to have a copy on my shelf at home. Both the Roberts and Wall families have many entries in the index of the 1980 second edition of A History of Nanoose Bay, but when I looked up one of the Alice Wall references, I found another little detail: “Frank Wall came to Nanoose with his father in 1913. He married Alice (Elsie) Roberts and they lived on the old William Wall property at the mouth of Craig Creek. In 1976, Elsie Wall deeded the entire property, 80 acres, to the Government of B.C. as a memorial to her husband.”[3]

It seems like Alice went by the name Elsie (perhaps because her mother’s name was also Alice). So, it was definitely worthwhile to dig a little deeper.

After I did this sleuthing, I went back to the audio file in VIU’s collection and listened very closely to the recording. And once I knew what I should be listening for, I heard it. It’s not captured in the transcript, but during the interview, Mrs. Wall shares her mailing address and in doing so she gives her name as Alice Wall. A reminder to those who work with oral histories – it’s important to go back to the original source.

Elsie Roberts Wall circa 1940
image courtesy of the Parksville Museum Archives (parksvillemuseum.com).
Nanooa Historical Society Collection, PMA 03. Scrapbook 3.20 Roberts

I remembered that copies of the Coal Tyee History Project recordings and transcripts were also deposited at the BC Archives. I checked the record for the Wall interview, and they’ve assigned the first name “Margaret” to Mrs. Wall. I’m not sure how they decided on that, as there’s no mention of Margaret in the transcript nor does that name appear in the index of the Nanoose Bay history book.

I’d like to welcome Alice “Elsie” Wall to VIUSpace! I see you now and hopefully others will too.

“Before and after” screenshots of the Wall interview record in VIUSpace:

“Mrs. J. Hunt”

Similar to Elsie Wall, another interviewee was identified only as “Mrs. J. Hunt”. Mrs. Hunt’s first name was a bit harder to track down. In the interview, she mentions a daughter, Jean, who was a ballerina. A Google search for “Jean Hunt” AND ballerina led down a fascinating rabbit hole about the successful Canadian ballet dancer who used the stage name Kira Bounina while touring internationally.

But once again, a little sleuthing using the BC Archives Genealogy search tool managed to uncover Mrs. Hunt’s identity. A search for females with the surname Hunt who died in Nanaimo after 1979 (the year the interview took place) returned only six results. Hazel Melvina Hunt’s death certificate was signed by her daughter Jean Haet.[4] Haet was Jean Hunt’s married name. We have a match!

Hazel’s husband Jack had been a well-known mine manager, so it makes sense that the Coal Tyee Society sought her out for an interview. Even though she is repeatedly asked questions about her husband throughout the interview, she also talks about her own family connections to coal mining, her impression of Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company superintendent Samuel Robins, and her memories of Nanaimo. Hunt recalls the Oscar explosion, she tells stories about her brother, and she talks about miners’ picnics on Saysutshun (Newcastle Island). Just because she was the wife of a mine manager didn’t mean that she didn’t have her own thoughts, feelings, and experiences about coal mining on Vancouver Island.

Women of the coal-mining era had stories to tell. The Coal Tyee History Project includes women speaking about their roles as homemakers, and about their lives as the wives, mothers, siblings, and daughters of coal miners. Their memories have depth and meaning and can add to our knowledge about the history of coal-mining communities.

“Mrs. U” & “Mrs. S”

There were also multiple unnamed women included in Coal Tyee History Project interviews. Sitting in on interview sessions with male relatives, friends, or neighbours, they are not formally introduced on the recordings. Sometimes their presence was noted on the transcripts, but often information about their identities was vague or incomplete.

Ida Unsworth is noted only as “Mrs. U” in the transcript of the interview she participated in with her husband Jack Unsworth; Delfina Senini is “Mrs. S” which was tough to decipher as she is interviewed in conjunction with Dominic Armanasco, who was a relative that had boarded at her home.

Ida Unsworth grew up in the coal-mining community of Extension and had girlhood memories of the coal dump in the community:

                        Mrs. U: We filled our buckets when we came home from school. I was only a small girl, but I remember that.[5]

As an adult woman, now married to a coal miner, her thoughts on mining shifted to safety:

                        MB (To Mrs. U): And how did you used to feel about it, you were so used to mining, I guess, that you didn’t worry about it when he went out to work.

                        Mrs. U: I worried an awful lot about it. Because he was by himself.[6]

Jack and Ida Unsworth
image courtesy of the Unsworth family

The short comments by Unsworth that are interspersed in her husband’s almost one-hour-long interview may not seem like much on the surface, but they contribute to our understanding about what it was like for girls and women to live in coal-mining communities on Vancouver Island. They were there. They lived with coal miners and looked after their homes and children. They worried about the men in their lives and were there at the mine site after accidents happened. They also experienced the challenging economic times related to the industry and had thoughts independent of their menfolk.

            Mrs. S: My daughter says, I wish I am like you, so thrifty! I tell her you got to learn like through the depression, like we did.

            MB: So, if you had to do it over again, would you do it over again?

            Mrs. S: No, I’m sure not.

            DA: It’s hard to tell, now.

            Mrs. S: No, I could not do it now. I could not carry the water and wash clothes.

            MB: Some people say, Oh yes, they would do it all over again.

            Mrs. S: Oh no, not me! But we have to! Have to, no use, you know.[7]

Amplifying Women’s Voices

Birth, death, and marriage records, newspapers, directories, genealogical tools, obituaries, and regional history books can all be used to track down these hidden women. It can take a little digging, but often, it’s possible to uncover their full names, and in the case of the Coal Tyee History Project, to update the historical record by including metadata that fully identifies them.

By not including the full names of these women anywhere in the descriptive metadata for the Coal Tyee History Project interviews, their stories aren’t very accessible, and their voices aren’t always being heard. I view this as something that contributes to a problem that I’ve seen referred to as “archival silence.” When individuals are not correctly named, it has an impact, and it’s not a good one. Libraries and archives are not neutral, and like other historically silenced peoples and communities, women’s presence in the historical record has not been as prominent as men’s and I’m happy to help elevate women’s nuanced experiences any way I can. Descriptions and metadata can be improved to help confront the bias in library collections and to help reshape and reform how context for digital objects is provided. Straight-white-male narratives aren’t the only story. So, for those of us who have the opportunity to do this work, let’s go ahead and challenge ourselves to provide new and better ways to discover and access materials related to underrepresented voices.

Notes

[1] Alice “Elsie” Wall, interview by Shirley Ramsey, Interview with Elsie Wall, VIUSpace, 1979, http://hdl.handle.net/10613/73.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Barbara Prael Sivertz, compiler, A History of Nanoose Bay, 2nd ed. (Nanoose: Nanoose Volunteer Fire Department Ladies’ Auxiliary, 1980), 56.

[4] Registration of Death for Hazel Melvina Hunt, 8 February 1983, Registration No. 83-09-002785. Province of British Columbia (Canada) Department of Health Division of Vital Statistics.

[5] Ida Unsworth, interview by Myrtle Bergren, Interview with Jack Unsworth, VIUSpace, 1979, http://hdl.handle.net/10613/176.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Delfina Senini, interview by Myrtle Bergren, Interview with Dominic Armanasco, VIUSpace, 1979, http://hdl.handle.net/10613/124.

Britannia Mine Museum

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I love it when I can get my family to engage with B.C. history, and visiting the Britannia Mine Museum had been on my to-do list for a long time. A one-way vehicle and driver voucher that we’d received because of a cancelled BC Ferries sailing plus a Family Day Weekend promotion on admission at the museum meant that we had a great opportunity for an off-Island adventure. It did not disappoint!

Taking the 8:25 a.m. ferry from Nanaimo, we arrived right on time for our 11 a.m. reservation at the museum. Soon after, we were heading underground for a guided tour of a haulage tunnel and then into the historic Mill No. 3 for the BOOM! show. We had a quick break for lunch and then spent some time exploring the other buildings and exhibits at our own pace. Overall, we spent three hours at the site and had plenty of time to get back to Horseshoe Bay for our 3:45 p.m. sailing back to the Island. We had a fun time checking out a neat place that we hadn’t been to before and learning about the mining operations there. I’d definitely recommend a visit for other families who are looking for an interesting day trip that contains a healthy dose of British Columbia history.

VIRL Local Author Fair – November 18, 2023

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I’ll have copies of Message on a Bottle: Nanaimo’s Soda History for sale and I’ll be making a short presentation at the Vancouver Island Regional Library’s Local Author Fair on Saturday, November 18th from 12 – 4 p.m. at the Nanaimo North branch. Come say hi and tell me about your bottle collection!

Come see me a VIRL's local author fair on Saturday, November 18 from 12 - 4 p.m. at the Nanaimo North branch.

Presentation to the Nanaimo Family History Society – October 16, 2023

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I will be sharing my Norwegian great-grandparents’ stories at a presentation to the Nanaimo Family History Society during their next meeting on Monday, October 16th at 7 p.m.

Ole and Konstanse (Fyhn) Olsen came to Canada separately from Norway prior to meeting and marrying in Bella Coola in 1914. My talk will cover the story of their individual emigrations from Norway in the early 1910s; the life they built together in Hagensborg in the Bella Coola Valley; and their move to Vancouver Island in 1935 after they experienced a terrible flood.

This will be a hybrid presentation, happening in person at the Beban Park Social Centre (Rooms 7/8) and through Zoom. Guests are welcome!

More info at https://nanaimofamilyhistory.ca/ or by emailing infonfhs[at]gmail[dot]com

Presentation Links

Van Isle History Explorer Goes North: Bottles

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While on my trip north, and particularly while visiting the Dawson City Museum, I kept an eye out for soda bottles, and I was not disappointed. At the museum there was a nice collection of siphons and Hutchinson bottles from the Eldorado Bottling Company and Hutchinson bottles from the Bonanza Bottling Company.

Back home again, I did a little reading about these companies, which were both located in Dawson City. Eldorado operated from about 1899 to about 1916. Bonanza was an earlier company about which little is recorded. In an article written with Julia Pike, bottle collector Phil Culhane suggests that it’s possible that the proprietor of Bonanza Bottling sold his bottling equipment to the proprietor of Eldorado Bottling.1 Given what I know of the soda industry in Nanaimo during the same time period, where equipment had to be imported from afar, it seems like a very plausible story.

Soda bottles in the Dawson City Museum collection

The Bonanza bottles are potentially quite unique because the embossing on some bottles of this type reads “Bonanza Bottle Co. / Dawson City, N.W.T.” Prior to 1898 when the Yukon Territory Act was passed, Dawson City in its early days sometimes was referred to as being in the “Northwest Territories.” “‘The Northwest Territories’ was a blanket term used to cover all ‘other land’ in western and northern Canada for much of the 19th century.”2 Culhane and Pike suggest that the bottles marked with “N.W.T.” were likely used, or at least ordered, prior to 1898. I didn’t know all of this at the time of my visit, and I can’t tell from the angles of my photos if the museum’s bottles have “N.W.T.” embossed on them or not, but it’s certainly interesting.

Another bottle tucked in the corner of a display case was a bit of an unexpected find for this Vancouver Islander – a quart-sized embossed beer bottle from the Victoria Brewing Company.

Victoria Brewing Company beer bottle in Dawson City

With light exposure over time, the originally colourless glass has changed to a lovely amethyst colour. I will say that the bottle was in a display case with a bunch of purple artifacts, so the effect might have been exaggerated somewhat by the adjacent items, but it sure didn’t look clear to me. It’s my understanding that glass which contains manganese is known to irradiate and discolour into various shades of purple over time.

The Victoria Brewing Company was founded in 1859, but the museum’s bottle is not as old as that. In 2020, construction workers digging a trench at Royal Roads University in Colwood found a similar Victoria Brewing Company bottle (although it was amber coloured) and it was dated to around 1910 or 1911, likely from when the stables were constructed at Hatley Castle.3

Victoria Brewing Company bottles from my dad’s collection

I’d seen Victoria Brewing Company bottles with this same embossing before, my dad has two amber ones in his collection. But I’d never seen one that was that lovely amethyst colour. It was fun to see a Vancouver Island bottle so far from home and to think about how it might have made its way to the Klondike.

While in Carcross, a sudden rain storm saw us heading into the bar of the historic Caribou Hotel to get out of the downpour. Once there, I was happy to discover a nice collection of soda siphons. Around the room I counted over 25 different bottles, all intact and all with tops (although I wondered if some of the tops might not be original to the bottles). Most of them were were either clear or various shades of aqua or blue glass, but there were also a few nice green ones. Many of them seemed to be from New York state, particularly from Long Island. But there were also three Canadian bottles – one each from the Nu Jersey-Crème Company of Toronto; the Eskimo Bottle Works of Montreal; and the Polar Aerated Water Works of Calgary. It was hard to take nice pictures, as many of the bottles were set up on window ledges, but I thoroughly enjoyed looking at all the different labels, many of which had been acid etched. What a great collection!

Notes

  1. Phil Culhane and Julia Pike, “Yukon Gold!! The Bottles of Canada’s North,” Canadian Bottle and Stoneware Collector, 8, no. 4 (2004): 51.
  2. Culhane and Pike, “Yukon Gold!!,” 49.
  3. “A sip of history,” Royal Roads University, October 7, 2020, https://www.royalroads.ca/news/sip-history.

Van Isle History Explorer Goes North: Five Finger Rapids

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The old barn at my parents’ property contained its fair share of treasures. One interesting item my dad found in there was a framed photograph of a steamship making its way through a narrow channel. There weren’t any accompanying details, and my dad was curious to know more, so he brought the picture to one of the Nanaimo Historical Society’s Show & Share events. Members and guests bring artifacts, stories, and memorabilia to discuss, and he was wondering if anyone could identify either the ship or the location.

Parker Williams, a retired marine engineer, immediately suggested Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon River as a location where the photo might have been taken. Other members with connections to the west coast’s shipping industry strongly agreed. And they were absolutely correct!

Someone who worked for Yukon Tourism and Culture saw my online post asking about the photo and she also confirmed the location as Five Finger Rapids. She suggested reaching out to the Yukon Archives in Whitehorse for help with identifying the ship. I was in touch with Yukon historian Murray Lundberg, who identified the steamboat as the W.K. Merwin. Finally, the mystery was solved!

The W.K. Merwin was a sternwheeler than carried passengers and freight on the Yukon River during the Klondike Gold Rush. She was originally built in Seattle in 1883 and worked for a time on Puget Sound and on the Skagit River before being abandoned. To meet the demand of those rushing to the Klondike, she was put back into use. She was towed up the coast to the mouth of the Yukon River and she arrived in Dawson City in 1898. The W.K. Merwin was wrecked on the beach at Nome, Alaska in August 1900.

Once I knew more details about the photo, I was able to find it online. It’s a photograph taken by Eric A. Hegg from around 1898, and it is in the collection of the Museum of History & Industry in Seattle. A photographer based out of northwestern Washington, Hegg joined those rushing to the Klondike, setting up photography studios in Alaska, first in Dyea and later in Skagway. In the summer of 1898, Hegg headed to Dawson City, travelling north on the Yukon River in a boat with a homemade darkroom onboard. I wonder if the photo of the W.K. Merwin is from that trip.

On the drive from Whitehorse to Dawson City, the Five Finger Rapids Recreation Site was a must-see for me. We spent about an hour making our way down (and then slowly back up again!) the 219-step staircase that takes you to a viewing platform. Even though I didn’t have my dad’s picture with me, I wanted to see if I could get a modern-day photo of relatively the same spot.

According to the Government of Yukon’s website, the name “Five Finger Rapids” comes from the four islands that split the river into five channels. The rapids were a major obstacle for those heading to the Klondike, and only one of the channels was deep enough for sternwheelers like the W.K. Merwin. Sometimes ships even had to use a cable attached to the rocks to winch themselves upstream. Starting in 1900 and continuing until about 1927, blasting was done to widen the channel.

If you’re looking to visit a historical landscape as well as stretch your legs a little during the long drive between Whitehorse and Dawson City, I recommend you stop in at Five Finger Rapids.

Van Isle History Explorer Goes North: Whitehorse

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I was happy to take a recent trip with a friend to Whitehorse, Dawson City, and Atlin, and over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing a series of posts about my time there.

While I would have loved to make the drive, timewise, it made sense to fly to Whitehorse from Vancouver. We travelled with Air North, and I’d just like to say: “Wow!” Not only did they not charge me for a checked bag, but there was also a complimentary sandwich and a WARM COOKIE! Two thumbs up!

My first significant stop was the S.S. Klondike National Historic Site in Whitehorse.

The S.S. Klondike was launched in 1937 by the British Yukon Navigation Company, a subsidiary of the White Pass & Yukon Route Railway. She replaced an earlier sternwheeler of the same name which had been active from 1929 until her wreck in 1936.

The Klondike carried both passengers and freight, and primarily worked between Whitehorse and Dawson City. Notably, she was the last sternwheeler to be used commercially on the Yukon River. The Klondike was hauled ashore at Whitehorse in 1955 and donated to the Government of Canada in 1960. She was moved to her present site in 1966, designated as a National Historic Site in 1967, and opened to the public in 1981.

There are multiple guided tours offered by Parks Canada throughout the day, but access to the Klondike itself is currently somewhat restricted as she is undergoing restorations. One of just a few remaining steam-powered paddlewheelers of the hundreds that once worked on the Yukon River, the Klondike was definitely worth a visit.

My first day finished off with an evening visit to Miles Canyon. The beautiful turquoise waters of the Yukon River are a lot tamer now due to the nearby hydroelectric dam, but during the initial stages of the Klondike Gold Rush, many boats were wrecked in the canyon’s dangerous rapids.

We hiked for about an hour on parts of the extensive trail network in the area. The first point of interest was the Robert Lowe Bridge. Named after a long-serving politician, the 85-foot suspension bridge was built in 1922 as a tourist attraction. We also checked out the former site of Canyon City, a gold rush ghost town. Very little evidence is left of the townsite, which at one time apparently included a hotel, saloon, restaurant, store, stables, machine shop, and a North-West Mounted Police post, but there’s some interpretive signage and a restored tramway car. Prior to being a stopping place for those heading to the Klondike, the area was used for fish camps by local First Nations communities.

Even though we’d spent a good part of the day travelling to get there, I felt pretty happy about my initial day in the Canadian North.

Nanaimo Historical Society AGM

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I’m excited to share that I will be giving a short presentation about my self-published booklet Message on a Bottle: Nanaimo’s Soda History at the Nanaimo Historical Society’s upcoming AGM on Thursday, March 9th. Everyone welcome!

Message on a Bottle: Nanaimo’s Soda History

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I’m excited to share that I’ve self-published a booklet, and that Message on a Bottle: Nanaimo’s Soda History by Dalys Barney is now for sale!

Available for $10 if I can connect with you locally near Nanaimo, or $12 if you need it mailed to you, the booklet will likely appeal to bottle collectors and to those interested in Vancouver Island history.

Starting as early as the 1870s, Nanaimo had entrepreneurs who were bottling and selling soda in the city. A small luxury that could be enjoyed by the young and old alike, bottled soda was especially welcomed at well-known Nanaimo summer events like the miners’ picnic. While independent local soda businesses have faded away with time and industry consolidation, what we’re left with today are the bottles, some of which feature iconic Nanaimo images like a crossed miner’s pick and shovel or the Bastion.

Not a pricing guide, but an attempt to tell the history of the city’s soda industry, the booklet focuses on single-serving glass soda bottles and Nanaimo manufacturers like William Rumming, John Mitchell, and Louis Lawrence.

Special thanks to the Nanaimo Historical Society and the Nanaimo Community Archives for helping to fund my printing costs.

South Wellington Mine

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At the end of May 2022, the UBC Library Digitization Centre’s Twitter account featured a series of photos from their collection which depicted Nanaimo. I followed along closely because I love seeing old photos of Vancouver Island and of Nanaimo in particular. There was one photo from the Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs that immediately caught my interest because it was of above-ground coal mine structures.

The accompanying tweet read: “This coal mine, owned by Pacific Coast Coal Mine Limited, was located at Wellington between 1910 and 1915.” That made me pause, because having done some research on local coal mines, as well as being from the area, I know that Pacific Coast Coal Mines Ltd. was active in South Wellington, and not in Wellington, which was a Dunsmuir family interest.

I did some searching through the books I had at home and found a picture in South Wellington: Stories from the Past (a book complied by the South Wellington Historical Committee) of what I believe to be the same mine site from a different angle. This is a photo contributed by Jack Ruckledge and the mine is identified as the South Wellington Mine. That white “Pacific Coast Coal Mines Limited” sign on the roof of the building sure looks the same to me, but others can draw their own conclusions.

Above: South Wellington Mine photo found in South Wellington: Stories from the Past1
Photo used with permission of Helen Tilley

[Pacific Coast Coal Mine at Wellington, now Northern Nanaimo]
Photo UL_1088_0007 is from the Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs and is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

The UBC image has a supplied title: “[Pacific Coast Coal Mine at Wellington, now Northern Nanaimo]” which I think is incorrect. When I looked more closely at the metadata for the item in UBC’s collection, it appears that the image was the front of a postcard. On the back of the postcard, which is unused, someone has written the following: “1918 Wrigley’s B.C. Directory lists: PACIFIC COAST COAL MINES Ltd. S. Wellington. This is 5 miles north of Nanaimo, on the E.N. Railway. Pop. 400. The mine itself is listed in the Nanaimo listings”.

[Pacific Coast Coal Mine at Wellington, now Northern Nanaimo]
Photo UL_1088_0007 is from the Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs and is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

The person making this notation is correct is some respects, the Wrigley’s British Columbia Directory for 1918 does list Pacific Coast Coal Mines Ltd. in the Nanaimo section rather than in the tiny South Wellington section. Flipping through the alphabetical listings of the Nanaimo section, Pacific Coast Coal Mines Ltd. is in fact listed with “S Wellington” noted on page 303. The “5 miles north of Nanaimo” part of the notation on the postcard might have just been a small error made after looking at the brief description of South Wellington in the directory which reads: “a post office and coal mining town on the E. & N. Railway, 5 miles south of Nanaimo, and 68 north of Victoria, in Newcastle Provincial Electoral District. Population, 300. Local resources: Coal-mining.”2

The Nanaimo write up in the directory refers to South Wellington as being “but three miles from the city,” and I can assure you as someone who lived there for several decades, it’s south, not north of Nanaimo. Perhaps the person who wrote on the postcard was thinking of the earlier South Wellington, which was actually north of Nanaimo. In part two of my previous blog post series about the Wellingtons of Nanaimo, I look at this in more detail, but in the late 1870s, there was a small coal mining outfit which operated near the boundary of Robert Dunsmuir’s Wellington Colliery. This short-lived South Wellington Colliery was located just south of Dunsmuir’s Wellington, and the small settlement that developed around this mine was indeed “north of Nanaimo.” However, by 1879, the South Wellington Colliery was acquired by Robert Dunsmuir, and it was incorporated into the larger Wellington Colliery workings.

It’s important to note that coinciding with the discovery of coal at Extension, the mines at Wellington were winding down by the late 1890s, and that the last coal was removed from the No. 5 Wellington shaft in October 1900. In the tweet, UBC gives the photo’s date range as between 1910 and 1915, but that doesn’t actually fit with any Wellington mine timeline.

After Dunsmuir negotiated significant land and mineral rights as part of the E&N Railway deal, he began exploring coal prospects up and down the Island in the railway belt. In 1884, the Alexandra Colliery (also inconsistently remembered as the Alexander and Alexandria) was opened by Dunsmuir’s E&N Railway Company in the Cranberry District, south of Nanaimo. In addition to the mining rights obtained by Dunsmuir as part of the E&N deal, adjacent mineral rights were purchased from James Beck, a significant landowner in the area.

As typical with coal mines at the time, a small settlement grew up around the mine site. The townsite initially called itself Alexandra, but an 1899 application to the post office proved a very similar name was already in use in B.C. Fort Alexandria, north of Williams Lake on the Fraser River, had been opened by the North West Company in 1821.

The original small north-of-Nanaimo South Wellington townsite had faded away, so that town name was available. The Alexandra townsite in the Cranberry District was renamed South Wellington when the post office opened there on August 1, 1899. The possible suggestion of a connection between the new Alexandra Mine prospect with the well-known Wellington Colliery reputation was a bit of a stretch. Although the Alexandra Mine was certainly a Dunsmuir operation, it worked the Douglas Seam rather than the Wellington Seam which was known for its high-quality coal.

The Alexandra Mine didn’t prove to be a winner in the area, but in 1907, John Arbuthnot, the former mayor of Winnipeg, formed South Wellington Coal Mines Limited after securing mineral rights from early South Wellington settlers. Under the 1904 Vancouver Island Settlers’ Rights Act, local families that could prove that they had been on their railway belt properties prior to 1884 were able to apply to retain mineral rights rather than have them surrendered to Dunsmuir as part of the E&N Land Grant. Arbuthnot’s company arranged a 3-year mining lease on the 160-acre Fiddick property as well as a 20-year mining lease on the adjoining 320-acre Richardson property. In 1909, Arbuthnot reorganized his company as Pacific Coast Coal Mines Ltd. with the intention of further developing coal mines in the South Wellington area as well as exploring other prospects further up the Island near Suquash.

Not far away from the South Wellington townsite, the PCCM operated the Fiddick and Richardson slopes together as the South Wellington Mine until 1917. Boat Harbour opened as the company’s shipping point in 1909, with a seven-mile company rail line running from there to South Wellington. Parts of today’s Morden Colliery Regional Trail, which has a section that starts at the Morden Colliery Provincial Park and ends at the Nanaimo River, make use of some of the old PCCM rail grade. You can even see a small piece of rail next to the path in one section.

UBC seems to have overlooked the “S.” on the back of the postcard when creating a title for the image on the front. I did reply to their tweet with my suggestion that the caption was incorrect, but I’m not sure my saying so will be enough to see a change to the image’s title. But you can’t really fault someone for trying to get their hometown community its fair share of the limelight.

Pacific Coast Coal Mines Ltd. is perhaps better known for its other mine at Morden Colliery. The two shafts at Morden were known as No. 3 and 4, as No. 1 and 2 were the Fiddick and Richardson slopes of the South Wellington Mine. Those already familiar with the PCCM’s South Wellington Mine may recall that in 1915, it was the site of a terrible disaster resulting from a map scale reading error. Rick Morgan of the Ladysmith and District Historical Society has written an extensive blog post about this tragedy in which 19 miners died. Mining at the PCCM’s South Wellington Mine continued for only two more years after the accident, and in 1917, the mine was closed, and the company focused its efforts on Morden.

Despite Morden’s modern equipment and the company’s hopes and investments, it never proved to be a very successful mine. In 1922, the mine was closed and flooded, and the PCCM went into voluntary liquidation. In 1930, Morden was briefly reopened by the Canadian Coal and Iron Company, but this also proved to be unsuccessful, closing later that year.

Both the Richardson and Fiddick slopes were reopened in the late 1920s and were worked on and off into the 1940s as small operations independently run by the Richardson and Fiddick families. The intention in both mines was to focus on recovering pillars left by the PCCM’s earlier workings. In 1928, 72 tons of coal were removed from the Richardson Mine, part of which was also known as the Ida Clara Colliery, and 1,805 tons were taken out of the Fiddick. In 1979, Dolly Gregory was interviewed for the Coal Tyee History Project and she shared stories and memories about mining with her husband, Bill Richardson, in the 1930s. Historically, coal mining has been an industry almost entirely dominated by men, so this interview with the only known female coal miner in the area is a real treat.

The only physical remnant of the South Wellington Mine that is still around today is a concrete structure that I’ve been told was likely a support for the tipple. A shorter but similar, more accessible, PCCM arch can be found within the Morden Colliery Provincial Park.

Concrete arch at the former South Wellington Mine site
photo courtesy of Maechlin Johnson

I’ve always been interested in the South Wellington Mine story because Robert Miller, an earlier owner of the property where my parents live and the builder of their barn, drowned in the 1915 accident. The Miller barn stood as a significant figure in the valley landscape in South Wellington for over 100 years, but in 2019, the old girl came down.

Barn built by Robert Miller on my parents’ property in South Wellington.
The section on the right was likely a later addition to the original loose hay barn.

While cleaning up the barn in preparation for the demolition, my dad found a miner’s tag hanging on a nail in the barn. Even though my family had lived on the property for over 30 years, we hadn’t discovered the tag. It was only when the barn’s time was coming to an end that the round, toonie-sized marker was discovered in plain sight. Miners used the tags for a variety of reasons, including indicating one’s presence underground, checking out lamps and tools, and marking cars filled with coal. They are quite collectable and my dad had been looking for one for years. While we don’t know for sure, we like to think that it was Robert Miller who hung the tag in the barn and that it may in fact be a memento from the South Wellington Mine.

Miner’s tag found in my parent’s barn

*Thank you very much to Helen Tilley for sharing her extensive research confirming that Alexandra (not Alexandria or Alexander) is the original name for the Dunsmuir mine which opened south of Nanaimo in 1884. The community that grew up around the mine (known today as South Wellington) also shared this name for a time, and I have updated this post so I don’t further contribute to the name being misremembered as Alexandria or Alexander.

Notes

  1. Tilley, Helen, “The Fiddick and Richardson Slopes of the South Wellington Mine,” in South Wellington: Stories From the Past (South Wellington, BC: South Wellington Historical Committee, 2016), 6.
  2. Wrigley’s British Columbia Directory: 1918 (Vancouver: Wrigley Directories, 1918), 424, https://bccd.vpl.ca/index.php/browse/title/1918/Wrigley%27s_British_Columbia_Directory.