Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - When the Union Steamship company started operations, in 1889, there was a single ship servicing Burrard Inlet. Three years later they expanded their market to include the canneries, logging camps and small communities springing up along the coast. The first reference to a ship stopping in Whaletown is found in an 1899 story in the VANCOUVER PROVINCE.
“There was an elderly gentleman from Whaletown who had come down on the ship for medical reasons. He'd been ill for some time. His name was Hitchcock and I have actually found no listing of him in the gazettes or the early census listing. I have no idea what his occupation was, whether he was a logger or a farmer,” explained Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum and author of a manuscript about Whaletown’s history.
She mentioned steamships with names like the ‘Comox,’ the ‘Coquitlam’ and the ‘Chelosin.’
A lot of people called the latter ‘Charlie Olson’ because it was easier to say than ‘Chelosin.’
Most ships came to in Whaletown at some point, often going to Mansons Landing either before or afterward. Other ships serviced Squirrel Cove and the Eastern side of Cortes Island.
Big wharfs were built to accomodate those big steamships, in many rural coastal communities.
Whaletown was no different. There was a small, long wharf when Moses Ireland owned the property. After he left, in 1893, the Drinkwaters added a small store and post office off what is now Bayview Road.
The Thompsons “ … built a bigger wharf so that the ships could come in more easily and safely to unload In downtown. It was considered downtown because so many things that were there. There was the store, of course, and eventually there was fuel supplies, but there was also the post office, the library, the church, the clinic and the school just up the road,” explained Jordan.
“The Union Steamships really were a necessity of life for all those living along the coast. They were the connection to the outside world and they delivered supplies that had been ordered from stores and places in Vancouver.”
