It’s a remnant, resting at the SW corner of Maple Avenue South and West Coast Road, but it speaks volumes in B.C.'s history. The celebration of BC Day reminds us that back in 1958, it was Eric Butler who led Sooke’s Centennial Committee in recognizing the first immigrant independent settler to take up land in what was then the Colony of B.C.
Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant of the Royal Scots Grays arrived in Sooke in 1849, purchasing 100 acres on the waterfront for One Pound Sterling per acre. He is remembered not only by the Maple Avenue cairn and the naming of Grant Road, but also by the marker for the water-powered sawmill he established at Veitch Creek.
We asked Brian Butler, son of Eric Butler, to pose at this milestone corner with the cairn remnant, along with Eric’s great-grandson Nicholas. While only a remnant remains here, the bulk of the historic cairn was moved by the Sooke Lions Club to a permanent location further up Maple Avenue where it is lodged in Sooke Millennium Memorial Park, one of our two designated regional historic sites.
The government of B.C. supported the efforts of our Centennial Committee by presenting the bronze plaque which faced the stone monument. When searching for a site in 1958 to locate the monument, the Committee chose the Maple Avenue corner, on the road allowance bordering the property owned by Sooke Harbour Fishing & Packing and Canadian Fishing.
Later in 2000, the Sooke Region Historical Society, which had led a community-wide effort to acquire the Muir cemetery land on Maple and turn it into a heritage site, set up that property with several historic monuments. We thought the Grant cairn could be permanently housed there, and sure enough, two Sooke Lion families took up the challenge. Lion Mike Thomas and his wife Marlene, together with Lion Tuck Vowles and his wife Shirley, moved the cairn to its new home.
The base stones were left behind, and these are the historic remnants in our photo. Who could have guessed, back in 1958, when organizer Eric Butler set the commemorative project in motion, that his son Brian would later own the old historic fish traps property, and continue demonstrating the Butler family’s support in carrying on Sooke’s community traditions.
