Carryings On - Early Social Life at Shawnigan

by Brownie Gibson

When “Green Branches & Fallen Leaves” was written in 1966, edited by Brownie Gibson, as noted, there were still a number of families living in the area, that were a source information from “the early days”.

Now there are fewer of these families to pass on information, but at the Museum, we are always eager to hear stories of the past, no matter whether from just a just a few years past, or from stories that your grandparents shared with you.

After all… memories make stories…stories make history.

Here is a 1966 except from “Green Branches…” that describes the early life in Shawnigan…

With some twenty old-time families still represented here, we have become pretty well convinced, even though grudgingly, that those really must have been the days. One paradox of the 1900’s that we moderns have to accept because of the records, concerns modes of travel and distances. There was not much trouble over the former.

If a train passed nowhere within several miles of one’s destination, there was a choice of two kinds of pony, legitimate or Shank’s. Distances also were taken for granted. The housewife of the day didn’t wash in the morning and visit in the afternoon. Rather she washed on Monday and visited on Tuesday, either  being an all-day occupation.

 During the earliest days the settlers often went by horse and buggy to church either to the little Anglican Mission Room started at Cobble Hill in 1891, and known as St. John’s; or to the Methodist Church at Mill Bay, built in 1897; or to the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church at Mill Bay.

For those of the Catholic faith who did not have transportation, there are records of Masses held during the early period in the home of the Rivers family, at the Hartl farm and at the Shawnigan Lake Hotel. The first school, where the Catholic Church now stands(sic) [now a parking lot for the Black Swan Pub], was built in 1893. Its very name, Malahat School, (until 1914), is indicative of the large district it served. Children from around and down the lake and from as far as the end of Sylvester Road, walked, rode or rowed to this school.

Following the advent of the Railway and the Mill, the village gradually grew up around the railway stop. There was no agent then, but a ten minute stop at least could be counted on to allow interchange of mail and various types of supplies at the Hotel.

The hill behind the village was first logged off by the Mill (selective logging in those days) and then completely cleared down to a large area of stumps by Chinamen (sic) cutting fuel wood. The land was then bought up in large holdings and eventually subdivided by old-timers such as Major Dundas, E. M. Walbank, James Finlay (the Kingsley property), I. Eardley Wilmot and the Gibbs family.

The names of several village streets keep fresh the memory of these old-timers.

The very early social and business life at Shawnigan centred in three spots—in the mill cookhouse where dances were often held, and in the two hotels. In Koenig’s Hotel were the first store and the post office. There, also, most of the teachers boarded and there was born the first Community Christmas Tree, which eventually moved over to the Hall where it is still maintained as an annual event. [this event faded out during the 1970s and 80s when the population grew significantly and the Old Hall shut down]

There, on the north side of the hotel, the “latch-string was out” in the guise of a row of hospitable hitching posts for the use of the horse and buggy by summer and the horse and sleigh by winter.

As to weather, all the early settlers seem to agree that the old-time winters carried a wallop that seems to have lost some of its vigor in recent years. And they have incidents to prove it. We know without a shadow of a doubt that the lake froze over sufficiently to bear traffic at least four times between about 1900 and 1930, and it is doubtful if we can count that many freeze-ups since. The “big snow” of 1916 was known to have covered fence tops and again in 1928-29 snow necessitated closing the school for a week——and that not to accommodate the school buses, of which there were none!

A big snow is also remembered in 1937. The settlers took weather, as they did everything else, in their stride. They had lots of time. The community was spread out but closely knit, in spite of the fact that there was no telephone until 1913. They visited back and forth between Mill Bay and Cobble Hill and Shawnigan for card parties, dances and meetings, etc., with apparently as much ease (mentally, at any rate) as we do today. The longer the distance the longer they stayed; which explains how families at Shawnigan could know so much that went on at Cobble Hill or Mill Bay.

A lot more information can change hands on an overnight visit or a two-hour horse and buggy ride than on the fleeting contacts made in the speedy life of today. Old-timers recall many enjoyable dances held either in Strathcona Lodge, the Koenig Hotel or the Mill cookhouse.