Elida Peers | Contributed
It’s acknowledged in local history that, for the 1920s in particular, international movements brought together groups of individuals at various locations on the west coast to await “the second coming” of Jesus Christ.
One sect called the Standfast Bible Students settled in the Whiffin Spit/Nordin Road/Wright Road area of Sooke in the early 1920s.
They numbered between 300 and 500 people and pooled their resources, living in tents with a few solidly built houses. They held services in a tabernacle made of alder. We know the adherents were in Sooke for just a few years before they broke apart in disarray and headed elsewhere.
Details of the departure of some to Port Renfrew are less known.
This photo came from Port Renfrew’s June Gamble.
The large house in the scene was the Godman Hotel, standing at Gordon River. The cabins and tents nearby housed one of the Bible study groups that went on to settle in the San Juan Valley.
In 1973, Josephine Godman, who was the daughter of a Port Renfrew pioneer, Rev. W.G.H. Ellison, wrote a booklet about early Port Renfrew life, in which she said: “The Standfast Bible students, 300 strong, moved into Port Renfrew … and took up residence in various areas … including Corregan’s Cove, the old cannery buildings, Godman’s Hotel, Deakens farm … the old British Canadian campsite above Fairy Lake … and at another site.”
With the onset of the Second World War, there was a lessening worldwide focus on this particular type of Bible student commune philosophy. However, different philosophies of communal living are very much a part of current international life.
We are not aware of any particular business enterprises undertaken by the sect in the San Juan Valley. Still, while they were in Sooke, they operated the Star Construction Company, ran a bakery, a cheese factory and even ran a pilchard reduction plant on Whiffin Spit.
The group also counted a dentist among their numbers, a Dr. McCarter, who continued providing dental services in a shop next to Sooke School after the group’s dispersal.
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Elida Peers is the historian of the Sooke Region Museum. Email historian@sookeregionmuseum.com.