My Family’s BC History
October 8, 2022 By: Jenn Wong
My maternal great grandparents met in England after WWI and wrote to each other when my great grandfather moved to British Columbia. He came to the rapidly growing urban centre of Vancouver. Shortly after his arrival, he assisted with a rescue effort for the 1915 Britannia mine avalanche disaster at a company camp where ore was being extracted from the mountainside. Through this event, he was offered work in the mining industry in the Kootenays. He traveled to Kimberly, where he became a medic and model-maker. Part of his job was to build 3D scale replicas of the shaft and tunnel networks, and the other was to care for the men working underground. So while he didn’t directly extract any resources, his livelihood relied on the post-war mining boom. His sweetheart traveled across to meet him by streamer and rail, and they married at the train station. Her voyage was powered entirely by coal.
They had 4 children, and soon moved to Wataskin, Alberta, when her parents immigrated to start a family farm. The town was only officially formed 15 years prior to their arrival, and is the land of the Plains Cree peoples. Like many Prairie towns, the settlement formed around a railway line as a whistle stop, and land was quickly subdivided. They were part of the development and agrarian communities that rapidly transformed the landscape of the area from grasslands to farmland in a wave on European settlement.
Growing tired of the cold winters, they moved to a small island off of Vancouver Island. They moved to a farm that was established, and cleared more forest for an orchard. They traveled between Reid Island and Campbell River in a small motor boat or steamship to get supplies and sell their farm goods, and fish. Here, my grandmother attended and then taught at a one room schoolhouse. As there were few roads across the island, she commuted via row boat to avoid the hike. Here, my family was also part of an environmental transformation of the landscape with agriculture, and introduced livestock and European plants.
My grandmother moved to Vancouver for college classes and to work. In the city, she met my Grandfather and started a family of their own. His work as a bookkeeper led the family to live in the Haida Gwaii where he worked for a logging camp. Another resource extraction industry to add to the list. He later worked as purser on the Union Steamships, which moved people and goods up and down the coast. Many of the stops were resource industry company towns.
The next generation, my parents, met in Vancouver. My father became a draftsman for West Coast Energy, and they traveled to and from communities in northern BC. The natural gas industry was expanding rapidly in the late 1970’s, and my dad helped map transportation systems as they snaked down the province from the resource rich northern pockets. He worked for the company for many more years in their Vancouver office.
Looking back at my family tree, participation in nearly every resource industry in the province that dramatically transformed the environment is ticked off. I believe that each generation felt that the resources here were boundless, and they found ways to carve out a living on the west coast. Myself, I grew up with the North Shore mountains on my doorstep, and have witnessed landscapes in my community transform from forest to golf courses, housing, roads and big box stores. I am privileged to be living above subsistence living that the generations before me faced and see the repercussions of industry on the province’s ecosystems and landscapes. However, I think that we all share the same deep reverence for the natural world, and find joy being outside.