Elida Peers | Contributed
Today the name Sheilds is remembered by Sheilds Road in the centre of Sooke and by Sheilds Lake in the Capital Regional District’s Sea to Sea Regional Park. On Sheilds Road, the doors of Sooke Community Hall proudly continue to display the iron hinges wrought by blacksmith Lyall Sheilds when the hall was built in 1937.
The lure of gold first brought James Sheilds to North America, where he arrived in California in 1849. He went back to England in 1853 to marry his betrothed, Mary Ann Butcher. Eventually, they and their five children migrated to Canada, and four more children were born. In 1883, the family took up Crown Land on the west side of the Sooke River.
The Sheilds barn, built by James and his friend John Goudie, housed hay, cattle, horses, and pigs, was a landmark for almost a century. It was under Rex Kendrew’s ownership that it came down in the 1980s.
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I can remember as a kid hiking up the river and being terrified of encountering the Sheilds bull as we shortcutted through the farm, which was then owned by the Sheilds’ bachelor son William, who had been a sealer, serving on the Agnes McDonald.
Probably best known of James and Mary Ann’s children was Edward, who married Louise Charters. Going to sea and gaining his master’s papers, Edward joined the seal hunt each year, heading off for the Bering Sea. In 1896, he was on the schooner May Belle when sadly, she was lost in a storm. His four children were left to grow up fatherless: the eldest Ethel; next was Edward Jr., who married Esther Peatt; Lyall, who married Elizabeth Treloar; and Mary Ann, who married Albert Eales.
The Peatts was a well-known Colwood family; Mary Ann, whom I met much later as Mrs. Annie Eales, made her home in Metchosin and East Sooke, where she became a cougar hunter. Lyall became Sooke’s much-loved blacksmith, with his blacksmith shop standing on today’s Belvista Avenue, where we kids would stop in after school to watch him shoe horses.
Lyall’s daughter Helen provided a lot of history for the museum. His son William joined the marine service, and his daughter Elaine became one of the first graduates of Milne’s Landing High School in 1948, later marrying in the U.S. William married Florence Gray, and it is their son Darryl Sheilds, together with his wife Carol Strachan, who helps us out with history today.
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Elida Peers is the historian of the Sooke Region Museum. Email historian@sookeregionmuseum.com.
editor@sookenewsmirror.com
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James Sheilds and his wife Mary Ann Butcher took up Crown Land alongside the Sooke River in 1883. The photo was given by their great-great-grandson Darryl Sheilds.