Tag Archives: Whaletown Post Office

Communications, History

How telephones came to Cortes Island 

According to Lynne Jordan,  former president of the Cortes Island Museum, there have been telephones on Cortes Island for more than 110 years. They arrived in 1910, along with telegraphs, but only in the stores.

“Telegrams were really cheap. They were so much for 10 words and so much for 100 words.  People got really good at confining their messages to 10 words. Telegraphs that came in for people were just put in an envelope and then pinned on the bulletin board at the store.  Then they either had to check themselves or a friend would tell them that there was a message there for them,” she said.

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History

Birth of Whaletown as a community abt. 1885-1914

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Whaletown may get its name from an old whaling station, but Europeans really did not settle in the area for another 15 years or so. 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 the 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 whaling station had been,” explained Jordan.

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History

How Gorge Harbour Road changed Cortes Island

Squirrel Cove was much more important during the first part of the 20th century. Union Steamships tied up at the long wharf twice a week. There is still a Squirrel Cove General Store and post office, but there were once log boom, a sawmill, boatyard, machine shop, community hall, church and a school. Much of this infrastructure disappeared during the years that steamships were supplanted by motor boats and floatplanes. However Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, has another explanation for Squirrel Cove’s decline.

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History, Transportation

Twilight of the Union Steamships

The Union Steamship Company served communities along the West Coast up until they were supplanted by airplanes and small motor boats in 1956. Few would have guessed that as little as a generation earlier, when they were still the main way of transporting people and supplies. In the conclusion of her segment about the Union Steamship company, Lynne Jordan talks about the company’s twilight years.  

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History, Transportation

The Union Steamships arrive in Whaletown

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 edition of the VANCOUVER PROVINCE. 

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