Gerry Wellburn first began his collection of forestry related equipment in the early 1950s. Personal interest sparked his dedication for seeking out and preserving these artifacts from all over Vancouver Island, and the artifacts were brought to Wellburn’s 15-acre property in Deerholme where he personally fixed them up. Along with machinery, locomotives, and various tools, […]
The term ‘Plywood Girl’ holds significant pride for many women who worked at the Alberni Plywood Plant during World War II. The HR MacMillan Export plywood plant in Port Alberni, nicknamed ‘ALPLY’, was opened to meet wartime demand for plywood products to manufacture things like ammunition boxes and Mosquito warplane components. Due to many men […]
The key to any war effort is ensuring you have a steady supply of critical resources. One of the resources that proved crucial to the nascent aviation industry was the Sitka Spruce. Right from the beginning of modern aviation, spruce has been identified as ideal for the needs of airplane construction. It was found that […]
BC Forest Discovery Centre received two stencils from Gail Klein, whose husband worked in the shingle mill industry in the last month. Both stencils show grades of lumber and the name “Smith Cedar Products Ltd.,” a company established in 1955 near Point Ellice of Victoria by Hershell A. Smith (1920-1998). He bought out Horton Cedar […]
Surviving as a small business can be difficult, especially in the logging industry with so many big companies fighting over timber, similar to a tiny sapling vying for sunlight in a dense forest of towering cedars. However, there have been tales of triumph by local loggers over their corporate counterparts, like one protest in 1956, […]
Winifred Maitland-Dougall:A Cowichan Valley Pioneer and Red Current Jelly Winner Born on November 26th, 1873, in Thurgoland, Yorkshire, Winifred Maitland-Dougall (née McKinstry Watson) moved to the Cowichan region in 1890 with her family. She married James Maitland-Dougall and had two children with him: William in 1895 and Hamish in 1897. Tragically, both of her sons […]
The BC Forest Discovery Centre began working with the South Asian Studies Institute (SASI) in January 2023. Since then, we’ve shared photographs and archival materials with them. One of the more notable pieces, collected by our founder Gerry Wellburn, is the Mayo Lumber Company payroll ledger from 1915. Below is SASI’s blogpost featuring one of […]
Photo Courtesy BC Forest Discovery Centre. Photo taken in May 2007 of Bruce Russell standing beside the 1958 LeTourneau Log Transporter, series T that he operated for Crabapple Creek Logging when it was new. Young loggers moved through various camps in BC and worked in many different positions from whistle punks to equipment operators. Although […]
(Cowichan Leader, November 1969) The attached article, Old Locomotives, old cars have a special appeal, is about the then Cowichan Valley Forest Museum’s new hire Fred Bell. Fred volunteered as a fireman at the Forest Museum during the 1967 and 1968 seasons, so as to supplement his firing time with MacMillan Bloedel’s Nanaimo River operation […]
The following article “Ghosts of the Grade” is by Tom W. Parkin is a Canadian non-fiction writer living in Nanaimo, British Columbia, who specializes in researching and writing on topics of western history. The much larger original story, which ran in the magazine Branchline, is about the long-defunct Lenora, Mt. Sicker Railway between Mt. Sicker and […]
