THE HEADQUARTERS TOWNSITE

By Anne Minard

A heritage from the past.  Lessons for the future?

Recently, TimberWest “aggressively” logged its’ property surrounding the old Headquarters town site on the Tsolum River.  TimberWest plans to sell the land as real estate and neighbours wonder what will become of the old town site.

Today nothing remains but the holes dug by bottle hunters among the salmon berries and the road muddied by 4 x 4 tire tracks that have cut deep ruts, skids and spinouts. 

For those who search there are still the remnants of fruit trees struggling for light among the maples and alders and across the road, completely buried by salmon berries, are the foundations of the so called “Round House”. It was built to maintain the companies 5 steam locomotives and all the other machinery it took to cut down and move huge trees.

The brains behind Comox Logging were a group of the early settlers who, by the turn of the 20^th century were related, not only by their experiences, but also, by marriage and by blood. Over many years they had shared the tasks of building their houses, developing their farms and businesses and in 1911 opened their new Comox Logging and Railway Company’s headquarters among the towering cedars, spruce, balsam and firs along the Tsolum River.

The story goes that the government of the time offered timber cutting rights on the 60,000 acres, known as “block 29” to anyone who would build a mill.  Legislation did not stipulate that the mill had to work, only that it be built and to this day it’s skeletal remains providing mystery and drama for late night “rave” parties, paint ball sharpshooters and graffiti artists.

The town site was an almost perfect little company town with a straight row of houses for the families of administrative staff and skilled tradesmen. There was a school and a house for the teacher, an administration building, a post office, store, dance hall, restaurant, hotel, bunkhouse, as well as all the tool sheds, boiler rooms, blacksmiths shop, etc that were needed to keep the ‘lockies’ hauling the huge logs out of the bush and all the way to Courtenay to be dumped into the river, along the bank just up stream from where Lewis Park is today.

A generation grew up at Headquarters to start their work life at age 14; right there at home serving their apprenticeships on site, or in the bush. Railroad lines built into the forest were moved as the great old growth trees fell to the muscle, brawn and skill of the loggers.

For the first 10 years the town site was isolated, except for the railroad into Courtenay where the logs were dumped into the water, boomed up and taken to mills on the mainland.

In those early days all supplies were brought back to Headquarters on the railroad.  From huge steam engines and steel rails to pots and pans, needles and pins, everything depended on the train.  On holidays everyone in town climbed onto the flat cars for a long day at one of the lakes or to Courtenay for a celebration. 

One of the locomotives served as ambulance and was kept ready for any emergency. All the work was gut wrenchingly hard and very dangerous.  There were many serious, often fatal, accidents.

The company’s owners, having themselves lived through the hard work of pioneers chose to hire as many local men as possible.  Few were available until the 1920s when post WW 1 veterans were settled in a place they had named Merville.  The company’s policy helped many of them to develop their own land and earn some much-needed ready cash. 

            For these new comers it was a time when there seemed no end to the       backbreaking work of dynamiting the stumps of the old forest giants, picking    seemingly endless rocks to make pasture as they struggled through the mud and    rain. Then off to the bush, when ever paid work was available.

The advent of industrial logging, while it brought economic prosperity and development to the whole valley, it inadvertently succeeded in degrading the rainforest ecosystem.  Draining the land for crops and livestock provided much needed food for an increasing population but was the next step in drying out the land. The water was ditched sending it, full of silt and rocks into the newly dug ditches and on into the creeks and the river. Essential upland rearing areas were drained.

An old timer who spent a childhood at the town site suggested it be left to re-grow the forest.  One of today’s local residents said, “Leave it to the swimmers, the kids and the partiers.  Where else do they have to play?”

Most suggest that as the site is an important part of our heritage it should be kept as a park “of some sort” so opening the question, “What sort of a park?” 

Should it be one that looks back to the heritage of steam engines and clear cut logging or forward towards new methods and technologies that search out new ways to help us adapt to present day realities?”  While a wise voice asks “and where will the money come from to do anything but let it be sold for development?”

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