Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Whaletown may get its name from an old whaling station, but Europeans really did not settle in the area for about 15 years. In today’s program Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, traces the modern community back to a logger named Moses Ireland.
First Nations people were using Whaletown Bay before that and a fish trap is believed to have once stretched across entrance of the lagoon.
The whalers came for 18 months, in 1869 and 70.
“It wasn't very many years after the whaling station left, in the mid 1880s, that Moses Ireland moved into the area as a logger and set up camp where the whale station had been,” explained Jordan.
That is where the ferry terminal is today and Ireland also preempted a number of other properties around Whaletown Lagoon. He stayed there until about 1893, then relocated to what was then called Camp Island and now the Subtle Islands. Ireland was in his 50s when he married a widow and they built a hotel on the Northern island.
“His saloon was very popular. Loggers often stayed there when they were between jobs or on a holiday from a camp. There was not a wharf to start with, but a float where the Union Steamships could stop. They often were dropping loggers off, or picking loggers up and taking them to other places,” said Jordan.
A lot of little camps and communities were starting up all around the Discovery Islands.
Whaletown’s post office made its official debut around 1894. William and Laura Drinkwater had bought the property across the bay from Ireland.
“There was a little dock, and at the top of the dock was a small building. That was a store that had not too much in it, just small items and the post office. it wasn't officially a post office until I think it was 1894. Mail was being delivered on the Union Steamship,” said Jordan.
“Post was very important in those days. There was no other communication, no telephones, no radios back then. People ordered things to come up on the boats by mail. They, kept in touch with their families and friends. When you got a letter, you kept it and you reread it many times in many cases. So there's actually a lot of saved handwritten letters, business letters too, that were typed on the old typewriters.”
The Drinkwaters house became a community centre, where there were dances and other events.
Meanwhile Ireland sold the Subtle Islands to Charlie Strange, who came out from London with his two sisters. The two women were used to an urban lifestyle and brought trunks full of fancy dresses for dances, teas and going to the theatre. They also brought hats, matching purses, fancy shoes and magazines from England, like Vogue and The Ladies Home Journal. Most of this remained in their trunks when they moved into the old building in the Subtle Islands.
Charlie Strange pre-empted 160 acres, at the bottom of Sawmill Road, around 1902. He ordered a big round saw, which came up on a Union Steamship.
Whaletown had spread out from Von Donop Inlet to Gorge Harbour by this time. A lot of people lived in float houses. The loggers used to move their house from bay to bay, as they were working. They sold a lot of logs, but at that time most buildings were log cabins.
“When that saw arrived, it was big news that spread over the whole island because now people could come to Strange and have lumber made for them to build their houses,” said Jordan.
“Charlie Strange built one of the largest houses at the time on Cortes, it had three stories.”
Sawmill Road was named after his mill.
