Stage Ten - My Presentation

"The history of Telegraph cove is the history of the Wastell family, my family, who bought the land, established the town and managed the resources.  The Cove itself was formally established 100 years ago, in 1912 by my great grandfather, who assisted the federal government in choosing a location for a new telegraph telephone line between Campbell River and the north island, and that was close enough to the largest population, which was Alert Bay.

"The Wastells were ship captains and landowners, and came from a British heritage that valued civic leadership, and they owned Telegraph Cove until after my grandfather’s death in 1985 when it ultimately transferred to Gordie and Marilyn Graham.

"The Cove sits on 400 acres of land that my great grandfather acquired through a debt gone bad, a transaction my great grandmother thought foolish given the land had no value.  His name was Alfred Marmaduke Wastell, and he was a gentile, mild, conscientious man and not at all suited to his nickname Duke.  My great grandmother Mary Elizabeth Sharpe, was a hard-nosed practical woman and very much suited to her nickname Mame.

Mame and Duke

"Duke’s family was English and had moved in to Ontario in the 19^th century, as many Victorians did, to claim a bit of the British Empire. Duke himself was born in Ontario, the last of 10 children, so when the family moved back to England he stayed behind, moved west and got a real job in the lumber industry, first in New Westminster, and then in Alert Bay, where he managed the BC Fishing and Packing Company’s Alert Bay operation.

"Mame, the eldest of 7, met Duke in Ontario and moved out west with him.  On the surface they seemed like very different people but they each had what the other needed – Duke was considerate and devoted, and Mame had bags of common sense and financial acumen.  Their son, my grandfather, Charles Adam, who for some completely inexplicable reason was known throughout his entire life as Fred, was not surprisingly an only child, given Mame’s aversion to large families.  Born in New Westminster, he was 9 when they moved to Alert Bay in 1909.  At that time Alert Bay was essentially a Kwakiutl village, with a population of about 20 Caucasians and 200 native Indians.  The white residents were generally either C of E missionaries (who built the residential school, the hospital and the church) or fresh off the boat Brits. 

Without a second thought they imposed their society’s culture on the landscape, with tennis parties, boating parties, garden parties and overnight parties. 

Almost every photo we have of that time includes my grandfather and at least two pretty girls.

"Freddie was a flirt, and considered the local ‘catch’. He was also entirely spoiled by Mame.  In 1921 he attended UBC for about 5 minutes, and arrived back in Alert Bay with his first car (a Chevrolet 490), despite the fact that at the time Alert Bay had no roads.  Fred chose Emma McCoskrie as his wife, which indicates he must have had some common sense because she was a gentle, practical, and earnest young woman. 

"Emma came from a long line of ship captains too.  She lost her mother at age 3 and was brought up by an elderly aunt and uncle in Victoria.  She saw Victoria grow, watched its streets become paved, the parliament buildings get built, and Government House rise through chain gang labour.  She had afternoon tea with Emily Carr and her sister.  It must have been a bit tough on a young woman to attend her guardians while she grew up, and she took up nursing as a way to become independent and see more of the world. After a few years working inland in Quesnel and the Okanagan, she was offered a job at the new hospital in Alert Bay which was not even finished yet. although she lovedand treasured her time int eh interio, she missed the West coast, and so accepted the offer to work in Alert Bay.

"At the time, interacting with local native culture was either attempting to impose a set of ideals, usually religious, or just living separate lives in the same location.  There were also Japanese fishermen and Chinese mill workers, who were used to living separately together with their white employers and customers.  Duke had become a justice of the peace for the area, and was compelled to impose British-styled rules of justice to a culture that had its own rules of justice and behaviour. There were times when these clashed, but their mutual respect never lead to bloodshed. 

"1928 was a key year. Emma and Fred were married in June.  A few months later, the BC Fishing and Packing Company started to use cardboard boxes instead of wooden ones and so closed the mill at Alert Bay, rendering both Duke and Fred out of a job.  In October 1929, the stock market crashed, leading to a 10 year depression.  These events all helped establish Telegraph Cove as more than a dot on the map. 

the 'new' saltery with the lineman's shack above

the fledgling town

"Duke may have owned the land, but it was Fred who saw its potential.  They had built a small saltery and tiny mill for box making, as Japan was a large market for BC Salmon.  After the stock market crash, the Japanese market dried up. Fred decided to expand the Mill to supply wood for houses and roads and bridges for expanding communities, with their boating skills used to both source and sell lumber, and to connect with logging camps and fishing villages and native communities through the entire region.

"He and Emma and their new baby (my aunt Pat) moved into the Cove, with his parents remaining in Alert Bay.  The tiny lineman’s shack became Fred and Emma’s home, essentially a lean-to with a cold water tap and an outdoor privy, fine for a lone male government telegraph agent but not that great for a young family.  However, for Emma it did have the benefit of being a boat ride away from a domineering mother-in-law.

"Fred wrote to his childhood friend Alec Macdonald to join him and become manager of Telegraph Cove Mills Ltd. and Broughton Lumber and Trading Co.  Fred’s job was to go out and source purchasers, and to hunt for stray logs on the Mary W, a pleasure boat turned workboat he named after his mother.  Mame and Duke also went out on log selling boat trips on their boat the Klinekwa, Mame as captain and Duke as engineer which worked well as long as Duke didn’t decide that he knew better and overrode Mame’s orders, often to almost disastrous results. 

Fred and Alec - friends and business partners

"When Telegraph Cove was established, there were no lush hills of forest around it, but rather blackened stumps from logging operations and a fire.  The first two winters the logs froze solid in the Cove.  Fred and Alec built houses and put in a waterline and essentially created a town as well as a business.  To start with, Alec lived in a bunkhouse with the other single men.  3 Chinese men who had worked for Duke at the Mill in Alert Bay just appeared one day in a boat and were taken on, 1 as a cook and the others to join the mill crew at the going rate of 25 cents an hour, not bad during the Depression considering it included accommodation.  

"A sense of community was vital in this isolated part of the world, but especially during the Depression.  Besides loggers and fishers, there were the unique characters that remote landscapes often seem to attract, and that became part of the broader community linked by boat trips. And of course there were the two Union Steamships Cardena and Catala, one of which would arrive every week with 7 days worth of newspapers as well as letters, people and news.

"The Depression was felt but not suffered.  Everyone worked hard.  The Cove was a company town and at 7:50am, the mill whistle blew and everyone went to work, men, women and children in their own way. It was definitely a ‘can do’ lifestyle which suited my grandparents’ temperaments.  Fred was bookkeeper and supervisor, delivery man and salesman, barber, wallpaper hanger extraordinaire, a tease and a charmer who always wore a shirt and tie and always kept his cool. My grandmother had to be nurse, triage medic and midwife, a bit of a nervous nelly who never felt comfortable on the sea but was always rock solid in an emergency.  And some of those were pretty dire: fish poisoning, fingers cut (sometimes off, sometimes almost off).  There were only two fatalities, a Japanese worker who fell over the dock and hit his head, dying instantly, and a sad case of two boys, who ignored all warnings, and were playing on the logs in the water. One fell in and the logs closed over him and he drowned.  But there was new life too, with babies born, the first right in the mill yard itself to a Japanese women who couldn’t get to Albert Bay due to engine trouble and was wheeled back home in a baby buggy but didn’t make it quite that far. 

"In 1934, with 2 children now Emma decided a school was needed.  The closest one was in Beaver Cove, which on the map looked close enough but in reality was completely inaccessible without a road, and with strong tides that prevented rowing.  So she went off to Victoria to convince the department of Education that they deserved a license.  She was told the Cove needed at least 7 children and a building. For awhile, potential mill hands were taken on more for their family size than their experience. When all requirements were met Emma advertised for a teacher and had great luck with a series of young, energetic women who were willing to come teach here despite its modest pay. One of these, an almost blind young teacher Doris Gray, later because Dr. Doris Gray a professor at Columbia University in New York who did great things for children with disabilities.

"The single men lived in the bunkhouse and were a motley collection of youth.  Some came and went and some came and stayed, including Jimmy Burton, who was also boat crew for Fred, and who later married Thelma who ran the post office. Although my aunt Pat and her younger sister Bea, my mother, lacked a lot of playmates there were pets galore.  They never learned to ride a bike but they could row like a hot damn.  When they weren’t in school they watched in fascination the mill operations, especially the sawyers, who worked beside 2 5’ circular saws and a wall of sawdust. No wonder sawyers occasionally lost a finger.  My mom and aunt played with kelp dolls and fished through the cracks of the dock, and later took up beachcombing, which became their first paying job. The waters here are icy and the tides run fast and Emma, always nervous around the sea, made my mother and aunt wear lifejackets that were homemade and stuffed with slabs of cork.  When the girls were old enough to be on the boat without a lifejacket, my mother jubilantly threw hers in the water, only to see it sink like a stone!

"Duke and Mame were often over for visits or to help out.  Duke often puttered around trying to use up bits of leftover paint, his frugality much appreciated in the Depression.  One day he decided to varnish the boat, which was a big job and he rustled around in his workshop to find enough varnish in old jam jars and syrup tins.  Mame came down to check on his progress and saw more dust and bugs on the wet finish that usual for a still day.  She sniffed, then touched, then tasted, then yelled out “Duke, you’re a jackass.  You’ve varnished the boat with Rogers’s golden syrup!”

"In 1937 the Wastell house was raised by one of Mame’s many and very capable brothers, (this one really named Fred) making it a bit more inhabitable. Electricity was available but only for 1 hour a day, which generally meant the generator got overloaded.  With no vacuum cleaner, floors were cleaned by spreading strips of dampened newspapers all over, then swept up along with the dust.  Clothes were dried on a wooden rack in the kitchen by the sawdust burning stove, which acted as a furnace heating the entire house. But despite the rough and ready atmosphere, there was always a damask linen table cloth, gleaming silver wear and gold edged Limoges china on my grandparents’ table.  At the time, the Japanese and Chinese used the abundance of the seas for a healthy diet, but the white people in the Cove stuck mostly to their traditional English-based diet of tinned vegetables and beef.  But there were picnics galore and numerous boat trips.  Port McNeil was a favourite spot, with the forest going right down to the sea.  My grandparents saw it later became a logging camp and then a town.  

"In 1939 the second world war broke out. The Canadian air force took over the west coast fearing an attack from the Pacific and placed camps of men dotted up and down the island.  A large contingent took over the Mill, and allowed only Alec to stay on as manager, the rest were let go.  The Japanese, many of whom were Canadian born, were interned to BC’s interior.  My family was allowed to use the Klinekwa, but the Mary W was commandeered and painted battleship gray, with a crew of 7 instead of the usual 2.  The Mill, which normally employed 11 now had 65.  The CO took over the school.  A cookhouse was built and a new bunkhouse, this one with an indoor privy.

"There were several black-out nights during the war, and times when airmen stomped up the steps to tell Fred and Emma light could still be seem from their window.  Emma thought their admonishments were completely ridiculous given the mill burner belched out fire and smoke 24-7, and was a beacon for any potential enemy.  The air force supplied its men with bags of flour and slabs of bread – 8 loaves to a slab.  Not the most healthy of diets, they would trade for other items.  One man, a Chinese millworker who lived in a tiny shack, kept chickens and was happy to trade eggs and birds for bread.  When he eventually moved on and the shack was about to be rebuilt, Fred discovered that the walls and ceiling were insulated entirely with slices of old bread.

"After the war, business dropped off.  The air force dining house was divided into a community space, known as The Hall, and a kitchen with a dining area, which later became accommodation.  On Saturday evenings a movie was shown in The Hall, with sometimes a square dance to follow.  Santa Claus always made it to the Telegraph Cove Christmas party. The radio telephone replaced the party line that was often knocked out of service by falling trees.  The Mill changed to diesel from steam. My grandparents had a new boat, the Hilikum (built by yet another of Mame’s brothers) and then the Gikumi.  A road was put in to the Cove, which meant the school moved to Kokish, then to Port McNeill. 

"Sometime around 1960, Alec decided he was too old to continue as Mill manager and invited Eric Vinderskov, who had worked in the mill previously, to buy out his half of the business.  It was due to Eric’s able management that the mill lasted as long as it did. 

By the time Fred died in 1985, the consolidation of larger and larger lumber operations meant a small independent mill was unsustainable.  Luckily, someone saw the next wave of commercial opportunity and tourism rejuvenated the Cove.   

"The Cove’s inhabitants were surprisingly multi-ethnic for such a small place: Chinese, Japanese, Scottish, East Indian, Italian, Danish, German.  The baby boom was reflected, with Eric and Eva’s 3 children, the 7 member Ziggiotti family who moved into the schoolhouse, Marvin and Evie Farrant’s 2 boys, and there were lots of other children that came and went.  My aunt had one son, and my parents had 4 of us and we were lucky and thrilled to have a bevy of ready-made playmates every summer holiday.

"The Mill supplied lumber for all sorts of projects, my favourite were the boat trips to native villages to bring wood for new houses.  Grandpa Fred was a superb boatsman, who knew every rock and every tide.  About 90% of each trip he spent nappng with his feet on the wheel or letting one of us steer, but he always woke-up at just the right time to take over, or change course.  Fred’s sly humour was appreciated and matched by the local Kwakiutl and there was always a long smile-filled conversation, part of it I could never understand as Fred had picked up a surprisingly large smattering of the language during his lifetime here.  

"My grandparents kept guest books, and it was clear that right from the very early days, there was generally at least one extra mouth at dinner.  The usual manner in which new visitors were met was Fred casting an eye on an unfamiliar boat as it tied up, and saying “Nice boat”.  If he felt the response was appropriate he’d then ask “What kind of engine does she have?” and if there was yet more promise, he would extend the arm of friendship entirely by asking “Would you like a bath?”

"Alec and Mary MacDonald and Fred and Emma Wastell ended up with quite a fine collection of native art pieces that they had bought or traded for, most of which now reside in museums.  We all learned to appreciate the local art at an early age, and the landscape that inspired it.  And we were lucky to have attended pole risings and long house openings and potlatches.  Four generations of “us” Wastells worked and lived here during its first 75 years, and they made an indelible mark on both the Cove and its surroundings, but the Cove and its environs left its mark on them too, and I am both happy and proud to have been part of that."