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Page 6 WEST VANCOUVER HISTORICAL SOCIETY Aprit 1998 FEATURE PRESENTATION REPORT Around the Sound By: Anne Vernon Doreen Armitage, former Vancouver educator and Lions Bay resident of many years, came to our February meeting to share her knowledge of the places and people who have lived, loved and shaped a special way of life in the towns and villages of the Howe Sound area - both on the mainland and the islands. Doreen told us her stories while husband Bill showed their slides. Doreen Armitage now lives in North Vancouver, commuting frequently to a cottage on Lillooet Lake, but she and her husband Bill lived in Lions Bay for seven years, when it was a much smaller community than it is now. For most of their life together the Armitages have hiked, sailed and explored much of the Howe Sound area which has meant a great deal to them both. Doreen, who specializes in natural history, and Bill who is an avid photographer, are obviously fascinated by the Sound and now Doreen, who had articles published in many prestigious magazines, has written a book titled. Around the Sound: A History of Howe Sound-Whistler. With the backing of the Canada Council and the B.C. Arts Council, her book has been published and is now in bookstores and libraries. To begin, Doreen described how the land was formed geologically, how the explorers first came to it and why several islands and place names were given by these same explorers. (They often honoured friends as well as patrons in high positions.) The First Nations peoples also named many of the bays and islands and we still use some of these names today - although with slightly different pronunciations. Then came the settlers - mainly from Europe - who began logging, fishing, mining and eventually, farming. They were shortly followed by gold seekers, who also brought new names and habits. Many unknowns visited the Sound in the far past, but left no written or oral records; however, strange items turn up from time to time to stir our imagination and remind us that this land must have been known to ancient peoples centuries ago. One special artifact which was dug up at Hopkins Landing proved to be a 1500 year old "Speak No Evil" carving. How did it get there? One theory is that early explorers brought it from Asia. Together with our speaker, we visited, in imagination, many places around the Sound - Gibsons and Gambier, Keats, Bowen and Anvil Islands - where settlers came and, sometimes, went on further afield. It was a hard life, clearing, building and struggling to exist. There were, of course, no roads then, we are in the late 1800s at this point -and everyone travelled by boat, often rowing against heav>' winds and currents for hours to gain only a few miles. Horse logging was the order of the day, resulting in first tracks, then well travelled roads which settlers used -especially the children going to and from the schools which VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY, 193 The Steamship Burt at the Squamish Wharf, 1894. came into existence as soon as the population was large enough to justify the effort of providing a building. Floating wharfs were built and small country stores (usually with post office service) came into existence so that slowly but surely life became easier and less isolated for the settlers, especially the womenfolk. Picnics and weekly get-togethers were plarmed and almost everyone came, bringing their contributions of food and music - everyone enjoying the music and, especially, the companionship. We also "travelled" to Britannia Beach, with its copper mining community. Britannia was a large thriving community, with part of the town high up on the mountain side as well as dwellings on the seashore. People travelled on the mine railway to get to and from each part of the town and it was a good place to live but it had some bad years -1921 being one of the worst, when an enormous fire drove many of the inhabitants to spend the night in small boats in the bay. Then there were the floods which seemed to wish to wash people away, but humans are resilient and would return to their homesites and rebuild. Pioneering was a way of life - hard but surely very satisfactory. The sense of family and community was very strong and still lives on in some of the smaller settlements today. Eventually our meeting ran out of time and, unfortunately, we did not travel much past the Squamish Valley. There was so much to explain and remember and the audience would have stayed several more hours if they could, but is was approaching closing time at the Centre. If you would like to know more about the fascinating history of Howe Sound and its settlements, read Doreen's book.