Elida Peers | Contributed
Centred in this mid-1930s photo is a ball diamond, with players in their positions on a Sunday afternoon. The scene took place at Bear Creek Camp, in the Bear Creek Valley near Port Renfrew.
This game would have been in the midst of the Great Depression, and is an indication that the logging companies recognized the need for workers to have some relaxing and camaraderie time as they struggled long hours to earn a paycheque, deep within B.C.’s coastal forests.
Directly beyond the ball diamond stands the cookhouse which doubled as a dining hall as well; it was equipped with giant mixers and ovens which the cooks needed to feed the 200 to 250 men employed. Coming in from the woods ravenous from their strenuous work, the loggers could go through massive meals to replenish their strength for the next day’s efforts.
No wonder the employers, Malahat Logging, understood their crews needed some fun time as well. Most of the men in this camp were housed in bunkhouses, while there were some camp cottages for married employees as well.
Not shown in this view are the machine shops which serviced the equipment. At that time harvesting the Douglas-fir clad hillsides, sprinkled with redcedar, hemlock and balsam as well, was done by rail, mostly steam-powered Shay locomotives. Logging trucks did not come into use in the valley for another decade or two.
A school existed at Bear Creek Camp; some of the teachers who served there would be known to many Sooke readers, and included Marilyn Jackman who married Pete Hansen and has descendants in our area, and George Gurney, who went on to become principal at Sangster elementary in Metchosin.
Right after the war, in 1946, Malahat Logging was bought by newly-formed B.C. Forest Products Ltd. It was during the 1950s that Bob Robertson, father of Sooke’s Jeannette Wilford, was employed as superintendent for Renfrew Division of B.C. Forest Products, and ran this camp.
During Robertson’s tenure it was he who saved the famous Red Creek Douglas-fir, the icon in the Red Creek Valley which still stands though it has suffered damage from severe windstorms recently.
The fellows seen playing softball here would no doubt have been shocked if they could have foreseen the fine roads that lead to their valley today, as opposed to travel in their time, when weekly trips by the CPR’s SS Princess Maquinna was the only way to reach Port Renfrew.
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Elida Peers is the historian of Sooke Region Museum.
editor@sookenewsmirror.com
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