Several historical walks were held in West Vancouver on the weekend of

. Sept. 18-19 as part of the North Shore Heritage Weekend.
Contributing writer Maureen Curtis participated in one of the walks,
a repeat of Hugh Johnston's popular tour of local logging sites.

“ COMING UPON a large chunk of concrete and a platform
of fitted granite stones in the quiet woods above the British
Properties, our hiking group tried to picture the sawmill
that was active at this site in 1912.

According to Hugh Johnston,
West Vancouver's local expert on
logging history, five or six men
would tiave toiled here at Davis
Rogers’ mill.

Operating a steam boiler and
large rotating twin blades, they
would have turned giant cedars
into lumber that would have been
transported precariously down the
slopes to the Pacific Great Eastern
railway, then under construction
near the waterfront.

As Johnston brushed away the.

dirt around the buried piece of
‘rusty iron rail, | thought of how I
was taught in my days as a stu-
dent archeologist to carefully dust
_ off chipped stone points left by
native Indians .a few hundred
years before.

As. Johnston picked up chunks
of iron scattered in the forest and
described the machinery and
backbreaking work integral to the
North Shore’s first industry, |
remembered standing in the

- crumbling ruins of Troy in' Turkey
once and trying to imagine Hector
‘charging out to defend his city
from the Greeks 4,000 years ago.

West Vancouver logging history
only dates back to the 1860s, but
‘we've got living artifacts, like
Johnston, who has worked’ with
versions of the machinery.

At the site of Bob Shield’s

in Blinds and Draperie

By Maureen Curtis
Contributing Writer

skyline operation, Johnston acted
out the part of the fellow running
the snubbing donkey (engine) that
would contro! the lengths of logs
as they hurtled down the moun-
tain over a track made of streetcar
rails.

As a spool of cable (you can
still see loops of it sticking out of
the turf) unwound, he would be
waiting for the paint marks in-
dicating the proper time to allow
the car to pick up speed, so that it
would get out of the dips - then
jump bodily on the ‘‘brake’’ and
slow it down.

The hikers scrambled up and
down the ravines where logs
would have been felled as trestles
for the track.

Bits of Japanese rice bowls and
wine bottles indicated the probable
location of a loggers’ cookhouse
or a shake-cutting camp.

Seventy-year-old cedar stumps,
rotting slowly under a cloak of
moss, were ringed with dark not-
ches for the springboards that
would have supported the axe or
saw-wielding failer.

“It would have taken two or
three days to fall that tree and

YeOrs

101

another ‘to get it down to the
mill,” Johnston said.

He knows where to leave the
trails, including sections of the
Baden Powell Trail, to find these
sites of industrial archeology,
which are being mapped and de-
veloped into museum exhibits
through a $6,000 Green Gold
grant from the federal and pro-
vincial governments.

The West Vancouver Historical

Society is matching the grant in .

time and contributions to the
project.

Gertrude Lawson House
museum staff are also working
with municipal forester Bill Mc-
Cuaig to develop an inventory of
the forest resource which could be
compared with what we know of
the forests of our past.

On our hike, Johnston points
out the blackened stumps that in-
dicate fires ripped through West
Vancouver forests.

One such fire in the 1860s
destroyed much of the lower
slopes of the municipality.

.Early loggers moved to the
higher ground, supplying the
Moodyville mill and later the
McNair Timber Co.

McNair also ordered the
“Walking Dudiey” engine that on
at least one occasion ‘‘walked”’
into the waters of Ambleside...

Still standing 20 feet (6.09 m)
high in Lawson Creek is a log
dam that dates back to Robert
Shields’ shingle-cutting operation
of 1916-26.

The dam, which once supported
a flume to carry the logs down the
mountain, is being studied as a
possible feature of a new park in
the British Properites.

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Deg ead

WHETHER SEARCHING for old fogging operations, or just enjoy-
ing nature, the North Shore offers many hikes and watiks that
take you outside the realm of urban living and into the historic

past.

fhopear

MER CARE

VANCOUVER
JEEP EAGLE