[BCMA] CMA Clip Serv: Ocean Falls reborn, thanks to BC Archives

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.]

I have a footnote to this:

Ocean Falls (1926) is one of four "West Coast Communities" locations the Canadian Museum of Civilization chose to portray in the Canada Hall, its permanent history galleries. The others are Steveston (1913), Prince Rupert (1955), and Campbell River (1969).

[Vancouver (1930s-90s) is treated seperatly as the "Pacific Gateway"]

Each of the four smaller centres is characterized by very distinct socio-economic and ecological features, but displayed together they give a solid portrayal of 20th Century resource towns. Our research into Ocean Falls, for example, drew-out the community's three main ethnic groups (British. Japanese, East Indian) according to their worklife. By and large, all performed separately from the others, whereas in Steveston, the largest racial elements (Japanese, Chinese, Aboriginals, Caucasians) worked largely in unison. The chief feature that joined these groups in each instance was geographical isolation; the primary dividing attributes were class and skill-sets, not race nor language. For their times, those communities were indeed models of social harmony

Helping us most in that research was Dr. Bob Griffin at the RBCM and the heritage preservation folks at Ocean Falls itself.

Ocean Falls is a great place to visit - by floatplane or BC Ferry. Otherwise, go to the RBCM Archives to see this terrific collection.

Dan Gallacher  
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv. 
  To: bcma at lists.vvv.com 
  Sent: Monday, September 13, 2010 9:31 AM
  Subject: [BCMA] CMA Clip Serv: Ocean Falls reborn, thanks to BC Archives


  Abandoned mill town Ocean Falls is reborn, thanks to new material at the B.C. Archives 
  Dave Obee, Victoria Times Colonist, Sunday, September 12, 2010 


  A generation has passed since they packed up the history of Ocean Falls, loaded it onto a barge and shipped it to Victoria. Now, it's coming back to life, thanks to the archivists at the Royal B.C. Museum. 


  Ocean Falls was the ultimate company town. On the coast, halfway between Vancouver and Prince Rupert, it was created to support a lumber mill and a paper mill. When the pulp mill closed six decades later, most of the people moved away. 


  Ocean Falls was not for everyone. The only access in the early days was by boat. There was no point in owning a car, because there was nowhere to go. And the weather? Rain today, with more rain expected tomorrow. 


  But Ocean Falls plays an important part in the history of this province. It was a key industrial community, and back in the 1960s, everyone knew where it was, and everyone seemed to know someone who had gone there to work. 


  Today, the town at the head of Cousins Inlet has been almost forgotten. It makes the news from time to time, of course -- but it's usually when reporters get to talking about ghost towns like Sandon and Phoenix and, yes, Ocean Falls. 


  But it is possible, thanks to a newly unveiled collection at the provincial archives, to get a sense of what the community was like when it was thriving, when the mills were buzzing with activity, when the schools were filled with children, and the Martin Inn was the place to go. 


  "Ocean Falls is a fascinating case study of a company town -- a community dependent on one firm for all or most of the necessary services or functions of town life," says Claire Gilbert, the archivist in charge of the Ocean Falls project. 


  "It is a story told from the earliest beginnings, through its prosperous decades of the 1930, 1940s and 1950s, into its dismantling, within our province's biggest industry." 


  There were two sides to Ocean Falls -- the mills to the south of the bridge over the inlet, and the townsite to the north. This collection captures both sides. 


  Archivists have spent the summer going through 700 cubic feet of records, sorting them and cataloguing them to make the collection accessible to the rest of us. This week, they will all be available for researchers to use. 


  The records allow us to get a comprehensive view of Ocean Falls as a town and an employer. You will find employment records and maps and photographs and weather records, so you don't have to take my word about all that rain. There are piles of correspondence, including letters bearing the signature of H.R. MacMillan, B.C.'s chief forester when Ocean Falls came to be. There are samples of the products produced by the mill, yes, right down to the toilet paper. 


  There are about 19,000 plans, for mill machinery, the six-storey hotel -- one of the largest in B.C. when it was built -- and everything in between. 


  This collection reflects a wide range of activities, from pulp and paper production, dam construction and mill construction, through to supporting the aircraft industry during the Second World War. 


  For a sense of the size of this collection, that 700 cubic feet translates into 170 linear metres of files. Piled in one stack in front of the museum, these files would be six times higher than the carillon, a dwarf at a mere 27 metres. 


  The Ocean Falls collection is too big to fit in the archives building at the museum, so most of it will be held in off-site storage. But a finding aid and about 3,000 photos are on the archives website ( www.bcarchives.bc.ca ). 


  Why does all of this matter? 


  "The story hasn't been told before," says Gilbert, who worked with four other people on the Ocean Falls documents in a storage room at the back of the museum building. 


  Gilbert notes that many people think of Ocean Falls as being remote, yet it is in the middle of the coast, midway between Vancouver and Prince Rupert. 


  The mill at Ocean Falls was started by Ocean Falls Co. Ltd. in 1912. The company was purchased by Crown Willamette Paper Co. of San Francisco in 1914, and renamed Pacific Mills Ltd. In 1954 the name was changed to Crown Zellerbach Canada Ltd. 


  The mills at Ocean Falls were busy, turning out everything from the spruce needed by the aircraft industry to the paper used to print the Los Angeles Times. 


  In 1972, Crown Zellerbach announced that it was closing the mill the following year. The provincial government stepped in to keep it running. Ocean Falls Corp. was created by the government to take over the mill and the townsite for $789,952. 


  The equipment alone was supposed to be worth $50 million, although Crown Zellerbach said it was obsolete. 


  That, and the remote location of the mill, meant that the company believed it was no longer viable. 


  The government ownership gave the town an additional seven years of life. The mill was closed on May 31, 1980. 


  Many of the buildings in the townsite were demolished in 1985, despite the objections of the people who still lived there. The government eventually agreed that the community had heritage value, and would leave 60 per cent of the buildings standing. (Roughly 50 people still live there.) 


  ---   30   --- 


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