Dunbar Residents Association News and Events

I was researching two Wooded Stern Wheelers built in False Creek for the Yukon River in 1898 . One was the “James Domville” and the other was the “Honest Citizen” .

Now my old boss at the “1941 Forest Service Shipyard on the North Arm of the Fraser River” was Thomas Edwards. Yes it was his dad James Edwards who skippered the coal fired sternwheeler the James Domville from False Creek to the town of St. Michaels near the mouth of the Yukon River !Tom told me the story of his dads trip up the coast of B. C., across the panhandle , to the town of St Michaels . Yes it was a hair raising story!

What happened to the James Domville on the Yukon River was a mystery to me , untill this evening , when I Googled the two False Creek wooden built Sternwheelers ! I slipped into a site called the” Yukoner Magazine Stories ” Buzzsaw Jimmy 1998 by Darrell Hookey ” Ah I fooled you that time you Son of a Bitch ” it was great piece of writing and opened the door to what finally happened to the J. D. on the Yukon ! And guess what , the Buzzsaw Jimmy was a wood cutter and deck hand on the James Domville , that False Creek sternwheeler had a short but interesting life on the Yukon River! What the Buzzsaw did with one leg and numerous body injuries in his life was unbelievable !

Tom Edwards my old wooden Boat building boss just died recently and I am so glad he told me the stories of the trip of the Stern Wheeler James Domville, from False Creek ,north to the gold fields of Dawson City ! Its a great story and at last it has a ending for me ! Terry

Also…

Hi All

A little history: Thought you would like this , quite a few of the Alaska Gold Rush Yukon River Wooden Stern Wheelers were built around Vancouver and in New WestMinister and after all the easy gold was gone , they were used as Lumber Barge Stake Boats on the Fraser River!

The” Senator Janson ” Stern Wheeler, Stake boat worked out of Frasers Mills side towing lumber barges for a few years ! The Greenwood, Alice, Sampson and Bonacord were Marpole Cannery sternwheelers moving canned salmon and goods on the North Arm of the Fraser River in the early days . Snag Pullers , navigation bouy tenders and floating museums are other uses for old and rotting retired Sternwheelers !

The False Creek built Sternwheeler “James Domville” on her first trip during the 1899 ice breakup season on the Yukon , was heading back to Dawson City and was wrecked in the 30 mile river, just 24 hours into her trip ! As a jesture of good faith and appreciation , Captain Ferris paid off the crew in full, including Buzz Saw and they all departed in different ways ! It is thought the stern wheelers bones and boiler are still located on the shore of Lower Lake Laberge ! Born in False Creek , the James Domville ended its life on the icy shores of Lake Laberge !

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on that marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee

Robert Service

I just happened to spot this historical book at a political gathering in Dunbar and I thought it looked interesting, so I purchased it for 1$ . The book was was called GOLD DIGGERS by Charlotte Gray , its a great book !

I have spent over 60 years gillnet fishing for salmon, on the coast of B. C. . My fishing friends on shore now call me ” The Old Man of the Fraser River Sockeye Salmon Gold Rush ” and on the river , some thing else ! The salmon fishing on the Fraser River in the old days was a Klondike Gold Rush, of a salmon kind !

At 08.00 Monday morning the salmon gold rush gillnetters , over 500 of them , lined up bow to stern on both sides of the Fraser River , to set their nets usually on large schools of Jumping Sockeye ! The river was electric with revving engines and the constant shouting of foul language coming from the stern of many of the boats ! A last boat from the dock , would try to fit itself in to the shore lineup , squeezing all the boats closer together ! Fast running Dept. of Fisheries patrol boats would try to hold back the boats until exactly 8.00 a m , by yelling and screaming at certain boats trying to set their nets a few minutes early ! At 7.56 the salmon were still jumping and most of the fleet were getting very very nervous , dropping the net end marker bouys , to indicate the begining of the setting of the net ! Its 08 .57 and a big boat just up river lets his net go off the drum full blast and the whole fleet follows , engines screaming, nets flying and fisherpeople and patrol people shouting ! Fishboats trying to avoid other fish boats and just narrowly just missing each other, my gosh I gulp down a quart of milk cream to settle down my stomach ! Fish boats running into each others nets and huge corkline ball ups , with salmon gilled through two different nets , thats a big problem who ownes the salmon ,most of the time this can only be solved with a fight on deck ! Boats yelling at each other, as nets fill and sink with Sockeye , yes the Fraser River Salmon Gold Rush is just beginning for another year !

Terry

Musqueam Elder Rose Point will be leading two ‘Nettle’ walks in order to acquaint people with this extraordinary healing plant and to teach them how to use it to advantage. Her walks are scheduled for Wednesday March 14th at 10.00am and on Saturday March 19th at 1pm.

Meeting point: The second parking lot on Crown Street south of Marine Drive. Please wear boots and appropriate clothing.

Cooking with nettles will also be the topic at one of the upcoming Salmon Berry Days events in May when on Thursday May 3rd in the kitchen of St. Philip’s Church Hanno Pinder will demonstrate how to make a delicious nettle soup from nettles picked in the neighbourhood

Wadham’s Salmon Cannery Rivers Inlet B.C. 1940 , it was a place where Ravens Watched salmon fishermen and lady fisher people mending their gillnets on the huge net floats ! This gathering place was a place to work and get ready for next weeks fishing and to be happy or very sad , while talking about about this week catch .

One of the net repair floats was located near a huge floating out door bath room , with logs and old loose planks near its edges , you could not miss it ! it had low ars level railings all around it and some joker put “Mens and Womens Only” at each of the ends ! On the big flood tides the Inlet current ran through the marine pit toilet and cleaned every thing out !

The ravens were always watching for some one to leave his net and also leave behind his open net repair box unattended ! They would immediately swoop down and steal the net repair needles and balls of twine and fly off to their nest ! We kind of fooled the Raiding Ravens , we had a wooden ladder up to the nest and brought all our gear back and they took it from us again, it was a game that we all learned to play!

The cannery had notice boards that gave fisher people news from the big city to the south and lots of warnings about falling in to the monster outdoor toilet, especially after a night of drinking and card playing at the camp managers house ! The Rivers Inlet Sockeye over time kind of got fished to death and canneries like Good Hope , Goose Bay Wadhams and many others, closed and the old cannery places were left for the ravens to look after by themselves again !

The Wadhams fishermens notice boards and the glory hole toilet gave in to the tides and new returning forests ! The little white camp managers house crumbled down to the forest floor and behind one wall was a old glass covered notice board with the beginnings of a song written on it ! It went like this :

Now some of us think of the future
While others have things to forget
But most of us sit here and think of a school of sockeye salmon , just hitting and splashing in our net .

Terry” A Story From Rivers Inlet B. C. “

He is a little male male hummer no bigger than your thumb ! We thought he came on a south west wind just to visit Dunbar or just to maybe have a new” Great White North vacation , away from the desert heat and cactus that he loved so much down south . He arrived in June 2010, probably from Southern California and got stuck in our Greenhouse, we released him in one hand and had a bird book in the other ! Yes a positive I.D. he was a Costa ! Would he go back home to Southern Cal.or Oh My Gosh try to stay here for the 2010, 2011 winter seasons , and find a place some where in Dunbar ? Fall came and the brave little bird fed on the last wild flower nectar in our yard and other gardens near Camosun Street . We set up two different humming bird feeders to see which one he preferred and I panicked and made a hang down a electric heat lamp , ready just in case of a cold spell .

He came most mornings in the cold weather, as soon as it broke light and we had to have the feeder out, before our dog went out. As soon as the day time weather warmed enough for insects, including spiders, to be active, he was busy hunting for them ! Our grand-son asked ” where does he sleep at night grandpa? well thank goodness for old Dunbar houses that leak heat from under the eaves , outside of one of those secret houses, yes under the eaves, that where he finds the best place to sleep the night away ! By about 6.00 P. M. the little bird, snuggled under the eves, slips into a Torpor , “a strange death like sleep that lasts all night long” until he is awakened by the first rays of morning light ! All his energy has now slipped away, gone by his deep sleep and now he has to rush to the nearest feeder, that hopefully is not frozen, to renew his energy, with long drinks of early morning sugar water ! He must also find protein and that is the spiders that are still found alive under the eves of numerous old heat leaking houses !

He stayed all winter and then disappeared in the spring and summer of 2011 , well we all thought he has just got fed up with a Vancouver Winter and like the old Maizy, Lazy Bird in the children’s story book , he must have just headed back down south to his desert home . His vacation in the great North was probably over !

Not so , this year in the fall , sightings of him started to come in again from Dunbar , near Camosun Street , he was feeding from feeders again near our house ! Wow he is still here, amazing news to us all , but will he remember our winter back yard feeder from one year ago , well two cold weeks ago on a very frosty morning,, we grabbed for our binoculars, yes , yes our Greenhouse Costa had returned !

Its 6.30 am in the morning , have you put out the humming bird feeder yet ? ? ? ?

Terry

Hi This is a a Old Slack Family Christmas Story, its kind of sad , but a part of early life in Canada for the Slack Family ! It was a cold and wet winter in 1951 and 4 float houses were anchored or tied next to old abandoned lumber scows under the cliffs of Point Grey, at a place know by the log boom tug boats, as the C. M. E. booming grounds ! Grand dad Frank Slack , Jack and family and Alf and Family moved their float houses from Iona Island to this place under the cliffs, in July 1950 ! A slippery trail followed beside a roaring creek and up to” civilization a , road” , as mom put it ! It was a long walk east along the S. W. Marine Drive road to P. O. Box 13 and a little shopping center at Dunbar and 41st Avenue., it was at last our first introduction to the real Vancouver and had no river to cross to get there !

It was about 2 weeks before the Christmas of 1950, when the rain storms started and they never stopped , the snow melted and the big tides and southeast winds rocked our float house ,. Jack and Alf managed to get more ropes to tie the houses and shore catwalks to trees on the shore line under the cliff ! We had a good supply of cut firewood for our stoves, they made it warm and cosy and it was kind of nice listening to the wind and rain, as we were sleeping next to the warm stove ! We opened our Christmas presents from England a week early and I was really happy to get a Tiddly Winks game and a Boys Own book ! Valerie opened her present to find a Snakes and Ladders game , boy that was great we all enjoyed tossing the dice and moving up the ladder and passing by the snakes ! Just a few days to go to Christmas and the rains came down harder and harder and dad and mom could hear trees cracking on the top of the Cliff ! The tap water from the cliff springs got muddier and muddier and then it clogged up the hose pipe , dad said he would fix it in the morning and we all went to bed, with rain water coming off the roof in sheets,it was like sleeping under a waterfall !

The crashing of trees continued long into the night and then there was a roaring noise , it was the steep bank of mud and shrubs crashing down on top of our float house , the trees missed Franks and Jacks float house and scored a direct hit on the roof of ours !

One large fir tree caved in the roof of our house , just missing us in bed and dad yelled get out , but the deep mud was all around the float house and dad got mired in up to his waist in it ! Jack and Frank came to lend a hand in the pitch black dark and helped us get to a safer place, away from the falling trees ! It was morning and the tide was coming up and flooded out the float house, for it was stuck in the land slide mud and trees and mom just looked and cried and cried ! We had lost every thing that was so precious to us , all our “Christmas Presents” , clothing and food was covered in mud ! It took Dad , Frank and Jack all day to dig the float house free of the mud and thank goodness it floated on the next high tide ! We all pitched in and cleaned up the float house , fixed the roof and got the wood stove going again all in time for Christmas ! Val and I glued up the coloured paper chains to decorate the inside of the repaired roof and I cut off the top of a Hemlock tree that missed our house, it made a lovely well earned Christmas tree ! About 5 days later we celebrated Christmas, next to our old but warm stove and we all played the Tiddly Winks Game long into the night ! This was a never to forget Christmas at the Booming Grounds . I still go down the cliff trail today to see the slide that nearly killed us all and remember that Christmas of 1951 !

Terry

I can remember as a boy when I lived on Iona Island and in the Blenheim Flats , during this time of year I was always siting on the front porch and watching flock after flock of calling Geese moving by , high in the sky ! It was something special to see the V formation leader changing positions and giving another bird the leadership role .

As kids living on Iona Island in the 1950ies, we all ways ran from our floating scow house and watched in wonder as a big flocks swooped down on a foggy evening, to settle on the tidal marshes of Sea and Iona Islands ! The Geese hunters with their camoflaged Duck Punts and strings of decoys were waiting , just as it got dark . My cousin and I always held our ears when the gun barrels and camoflaged hats popped up out of the duck punts and the shooting started ! The hunters Black Labrador retrievers always got very excited when the shooting started and jumped in the” chuck” and paddled around looking for instructions to a downed bird . The hunters called the dogs with a whistle and we thought that was real funny as we blew on our whistle also and that confused the dogs no end, the dogs went splashing kind of round and round and the hunters got real mad . Many of the hunters set up camoflaged blinds on the beach made out of driftwood and cattails, we always ripped them down when they left .

Next morning we got up early and the the Iona kids hunt was on for the spent shot gun shells and pop bottles that we collected and took back to Mr. Piats Confectionary in Lower Dunbar! We got the the 2 cent deposit if we lugged them in our row boat back to Dunbar . Now Terry, Mr Piat would say , I told you before, there is no refund on those Spent Shotgun Shells, but there should be ,Yep Mr Piate was one of the first historic Lower Dunbar recycler,s ! He was nice and always took our muddy pop bottles, but no beer bottles .

I thumped down the 2 cases of Pop Bottles on his pride and joy Black Marble counter ! He pointed to his Candy Display Case, now how many jaw breakers do you want for them Orange Crush ones ? We left his store with two bags of spent shotgun shells and a big bag of Jaw Breakers ! We walked 3 miles, along S. W. Marine drive , down the hill to the Booming Grounds and rowed home to Iona Island sucking on our last Jaw Breaker !

Terry

Its July 10 1957, I can see the first light breaking over the city as I start picking up my salmon gillnet from between the old W.W. 2 Searchlight Towers and the Bell Bouy on Point Grey . The smell of burning wood from the night beach fires that are still l sparking on Wreck Beach ! In the stern of my little gillnetter its also the smells of my navigation kerosene lantern fastened on top of the cabin that I also remember !The silver Sockeye and the few Jack Springs I am saving under the net drum to later take home to eat , each one of them has its own a distinct fish smell !

The rising sun now that seems to be sliding slowly up from behind the West Vancouver mountains and bursting gold off the many windows in the pink apartment over in West Van. is a sign of a great day coming on ! The night stars and the full moon that have been above the beach all night and have been lighting up the corks of my gillnet, they now have all slipped away in the first morning light . !

The gulls above my little gillnetter are calling and looking down trying to see what the night tide might have provided for them ! The big ebbing tide coming out of the harbour now and grabs my gillnet and pushes my boat south across the shallow sand bars off the North Arm of the Fraser River and on to the green light on the end of North Arm Jetty ! The nets wooden corks are down indicating a big catch and the Early Stuart Sockeye are still trying desperatly trying to pass by the net and enter the river ! A early morning cool Westerly Point Grey Wind picks up as I fill the hatch with sockeye !

I watch seaward as other fishboats turn off their “stern pickup lights” and finish picking up their nets ! I see a man on one boat close to me, reach down and lift up the net end light and blow out the sputtering wick inside the hurricane lantern . The night of fishing for Fraser River Sockeye off Wreck Beach is over, yes I am tired its been a long but lovely night under the stars and full moon waiting patiently for the Sockeye !

I watch as other boats near the Point Grey Bell Bouy and Green Light, crank up their night iddling engines and their exaust pipe puffs out grey smoke , yes the night of gillnetting for Stuart Lake Sockeye between the”Wreck Beach Search Light Towers and the North Arm Jetty is over , Yes we are all very tired and at last on our way home !

Its just one of my fishing stories from the past and I always enjoy telling it with my 4 year old grandchild on my knee !

Terry

We can only hope that in the ocean just off San Jaun, deep in the salt water there is enough Early Stuart Fraser River Sockeye moving home to just fill a little piece of their spawning grounds, north of Prince George !This year I can only hope they are just some how late again !

Many times in the past, only during El Nino events on the West Coast of course, those” Sneaky Stuarts” come from the deep ocean and through Johnstone Straits following the mainland shore to the mouth of the Fraser River ” the north entrance route” and on July 10, they will move past Point Atkinson , have a quick peek at Siwash Rock and the mouth of False Creek and pause to drink some Fraser River Freshet Plume Water ! Now they can really smell home ! On the big evening tides during the week of July 10 to July 16th, jumping with joy, on a full moonl rising , the historic Great Stuarts on mass, move in to the river mouth to start their long River Migration home !

Yes for all the years that I gillnetted the Stuarts I was amazed with their precise migration timing and they were the week of Full Moon travellers, as they entered the Fraser River Estuary ! I can only hope to day they have avoided detection and are waiting all along Spanish and North Sturgeon Banks for the full moon of July 15th , to send them all on their way home to Stuart Lake and the spawning streams they are longing so hard for !

Terry Slack ” The Stuart Sockeye Guy”