A Love of Adventure – The Elfords

November 18, 2001

Times Colonist – The Islander

By Danda Humphreys

Running between Fort Street and Pandora Avenue, a short street called Elford reminds us of a family whose name lives on in South Vancouver Island. Let’s take a look at just a few of these illustrious people.

The first Elfords to arrive were Robert and Hannah. They were born a year apart in adjoining English counties — Robert in Devonshire, Hannah in Cornwall — and shared the same love of adventure. Leaving Britain behind when barely into their 20s, they sailed to Australia. But then America tantalized them with the promise of gold. Their first child, a son called John, was just a baby when they sailed away from their home in Adelaide. The good ship Bounty put in at Pitcairn Island. John was christened there and was given Pitcairn as his second name.

The Elfords spent the next few years in San Rafael. Calif. Second son Theophilus was born there in 1854. Five years later, his parents were on the move again, northward this time to Vancouver Island, just across the water from the Fraser River and its promise of glittering gold.

It was 1858. Sailing into the harbour, the Elfords would have been greeted by quite a sight. The Hudson’s Bay settlement called Fort Victoria was literally changing before their eyes. Each day, it seemed, more prospectors arrived. Tents littered the area northeast of the fort. The road named after early settler James Yates, which connected the tent town with the harbour, was lined with wooden shacks. Boots scuffed the dirt. Excitement filled the air as men gathered their gear for the gold fields and boarded the ships that streamed across the Strait of Georgia.

Hannah Elford

As the town grew to accommodate the never-ending new arrivals, and then sprouted into a city, Robert Elford bought land between today’s Yates-Fort junction and Stadacona Avenue, on the north side of what was then called Cadboro Bay Road. In the early 1860s he acquired more land. Eventually he was the proud owner of some 40 acres that had once belonged to colonial surveyor Joseph Pemberton and his assistant, Benjamin Pearse. Robert worked as a market gardener and carpenter while he and Hannah watched their bright boys turn into enterprising young men.

When he left the Colonial School, John joined his father as a contractor and builder. In 1885, when Robert decided to devote himself to fruit growing, John took over the contracting business. Shortly afterwards, he and partner William Smith took over a small brick-manufacturing business on Garbally Road. Before long, Queen City Brick Co. had outgrown its modest surroundings and was moved to Hillside and Rose (now Blanshard Street).

Eventually the partnership was dissolved, and the company name was changed to Victoria Brick and Tile. By that time, there was another Elford on the scene — John Jr., who in later years would recall the many buildings, including the old Post Office (long since demolished), North Ward School (where the Times Colonist offices now stand), Royal Jubilee Hospital, and the original, centre wing of The Empress hotel — all built with bricks fired in the family yard.

John Sr., ever interested in public affairs, was elected to city council in 1902 and 1904. He was a man with strong fraternal interests, and in later years was a Royal Arch Mason. He was also involved in the sealing business, and at one critical point, reportedly saved the industry from extinction by exerting his influence and putting his accumulated wealth to good use.

Theophilus, meanwhile, had followed a different career path. Joining his father Robert in the Fort Street fruit garden for a while, he farmed briefly at Foul Bay before going into the lumber business. With William Munsey, he organized the Shawnigan Lake Lumber Company in 1891, and became its manager. He was chairman of the Victoria branch of the B.C. Lumber and Shingle Manufacturers Association, and a member of the Rotary Club and the B.C. Pioneers Society.

In 1894, when the company was incorporated, he returned to Victoria and worked out of the company’s Government Street office while living with his wife and two daughters on Stadacona Avenue. He was still managing the business in 1917 when his health began to fail. A few weeks later he was dead, at the age of 63. Sadly, his brother John had died in Vancouver after a long illness, at the age of 67, just one month before.

The two brothers were buried in Ross Bay Cemetery beside their parents. Hannah had died at the age of 77 in 1894, and 78-year-old Robert had died two years later. Their many descendants and a short Victoria street preserve the memory of the pioneering Elfords, who settled in our city more than 140 years ago.