VIU ElderCollege presents Those Lake People: Stories Of Cowichan Lake

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Saturday, April 18th, 2020
10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Presenter: Lynne Bowen, R.N., B.Sc., M.A., lecturer and writer

About the talk:

No one comes to Vancouver Island by accident. And no one braved the rickety trail to Cowichan Lake unless they were looking for a job, a fortune or a refuge.

Twenty-six miles of fresh water teeming with fish and surrounded by old growth forest: this was Cowichan Lake at the end of the nineteenth century. Home to trappers, hunters, sports fishermen, retired British India Army officers and a handful of remittance men, the lake was also a favourite holiday destination for dukes and duchesses, Hollywood actresses and New York tycoons.

When the giant trees began to fall to the crosscut saws of immigrant loggers from Finland, Norway, Sweden, India, Japan and China, the lake became the site of intense union activity spurred on by clandestine organizers who walked the railway rights-of-way and slipped into isolated logging camps after dark.

Cougar hunters, fledgling school teachers, legendary timber bosses, take-charge women--a wide variety of people added their stories to the history of the lake. Included in their numbers were expert gardeners who coaxed exotic rhododendrons and alpine wild flowers into bloom and sold the seeds all over the world.

From the villages, sawmills, float camps and gardens of Cowichan lake comes a wealth of personal vignettes which make this isolated body of water in the centre of Vancouver Island a treasure trove for students of Western Canadian history.

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