BC Logbuildings

From Necessity to Style:
A History of Log Buildings in British Columbia,

from the colonial era to the present

Prepared by Tusa Shea
for the BC Heritage Branch,
Ministry of Tourism, Sport and the Arts
September 2005

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Acknowledgements

This study could not have been undertaken without the assistance of a number of
people who generously shared their knowledge. I would especially like to thank Bill
Quackenbush, Curator of Barkerville Historic Town, for accommodating my visit to
the Barkerville Archive and providing valuable insight into the history of log
buildings; Dave Coulson of David Coulson Design Ltd. for introducing me to two of
his log preservation/rehabilitation projects; Roger Wiles, caretaker of the Stoker
Simpson property; Mike Patrick, owner of the River House; Peter Rothfels and
Sylvia Frier, owners of the Oliver House; J ohn Hudson, Curatorial Assistant at the
Kaatza Station Museum and Archives in Cowichan Lake; Bea J ohnson, President,
Saanich Pioneer Society; Gerry Borden, Commemorations Officer, Fort Langley
National Historic Site; Steve Dale, Historic Places Program, Parks Canada; and Tara
Racette at the Friends of Fort Steele Society.
In addition, I wish to thank everyone who took time out of their busy
schedules to respond to the request sent out on the BC Museums Association
listserve for information and suggestions, including: Dr. Lorne Hammond, Curator of
History, Royal BC Museum; Kris Andersen, Program Coordinator, St. Anns
Academy, Victoria, BC; Alistair B. Fraser, Kootenay Lake, BC; Steve Bender,
Manager, BC Interior Forestry Museum, Revelstoke; Leanne Riding, Vancouver,
BC; Lynne Wright, MSA Museum, Abbotsford, BC; Krista Kaptein, Courtney BC;
Troy Hunter; Tom Roper, Sointula; Sandi Ratch, Calgary AB; Catherine Siba,
Assistant Curator Social History, Courtney and District Museum; Cynthia Barwell
Hansen, Director/Curator, Heritage Park Museum, Terrace, BC; Kathleen Trayner,
Alizarin Consulting; Many provided insightful observations about their own
experiences of building, living in, and researching log structures. Others helpfully
directed my attention to significant BC log buildings all of which I have attempted
to include in an appended list.

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Purpose

This study is designed to assist in the creation of value for historic BC log buildings
in three ways. First, it provides a contextual historical overview of significant log
building trends in British Columbia. Second, this study provides a useful review of
the available published and unpublished sources of information on the history of log
buildings in BC. The review of sources will help direct future researchers to
pertinent information. Third, this study provides an appended list of log buildings
some that are designated heritage properties, and others that are potentially
significant.
The purpose of this study is to provide a contextual history of log buildings in
British Columbia, and to explore their value, while taking into account that values
are socially constructed. Thus, this study is not a systematic inventory of all log
buildings or their styles and forms, nor is it a technical manual. It is a broad
historical survey that synthesizes information from scattered sources and provides
case studies of specific BC log buildings as examples of how their value has been
constructed and, in turn, shifted over time. Being mindful of shifting values involves
viewing history as a process, rather than looking at static points in the past. Some of
the key questions posed by this study are: Why do we value historical log buildings?
Are all historical log buildings of value? And if so, to whom? In order to answer
these questions it is necessary to understand that the history of log buildings in
British Columbia is both a material history of actual buildings and a history of the
changing symbolic meanings associated with log structures.

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Introduction

With its abundance of forests, the region of British Columbia has had a long and rich
history of log building. For thousands of years before Europeans arrived, diverse
groups of aboriginal peoples who lived in and traveled through the area used logs
and hand-hewn planks to construct sturdy winter dwellings, fortified villages, and
temporary shelters.
1
In the early nineteenth century, the North West Company and
the Hudsons Bay Company (HBC) introduced their corporate pice sur pice
2
log
building technique in the form of forts and other structures. HBC log structures were
followed in the mid-nineteenth century by early log buildings constructed throughout
the province, particularly in the Cariboo and Peace regions, by European, American,
and Chinese immigrant settlers as they cleared land for mining, agriculture, and
ranching. Settlement of the land continued into the first decade of the twentieth
century. But the history of BCs log buildings does not end with pioneer
architecture; there are other distinct log-building trends that reflect specific regional
socio-economic, political, and cultural currents.
From the 1880s onward, log buildings became increasingly associated with
the aesthetic Rustic Style favoured by wealthy Britons, Canadians, and Americans
for private recreational retreats.
3
Rustic Style log architecture was also built by the
Canadian Pacific Railway for BCs National Parks between the 1890s and 1930s.
4

The romance of the log cabin and its association with wilderness recreation,
continued to play a role in the promotion of tourism in BC throughout the 1950s. An
important revival of log building occurred during the 1960s and 70s, on a more
individual scale, encouraged by the increasing value of ecology. In 1971, Bob
Mackie opened the School of Log Building in Prince George, and through his
promotion of quality hand-built log homes he helped to bring attention to the
restoration and preservation of old log structures as well. Log buildings have enjoyed
an increased popularity over the past thirty years, and there are currently over fifty
companies manufacturing log homes in British Columbia.
5
Indeed, 100 Mile House,
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in the South Cariboo region, has recently been named the Log Building Capital of
North America.
6

As this brief introductory overview indicates, the history of log buildings in
BC is a consistent but not static one, and provides fertile ground for new research.
Yet, it has received little attention as a distinct topic. Currently, information on log
buildings must be gleaned from multiple sources that range from broad surveys of
Canadian architectural history to narrow studies of specific log buildings or sites in
British Columbia. Additionally, log buildings are often relegated to a subsection of
vernacular or pioneer architecture. This treatment limits our understanding of later
log-building practices, and hinders a full discussion of the symbolic use of logs in
high style architecture. A review of the available sources demonstrates the need for
consolidation and synthesis of information in order to create a foundation for further
research on the history of log buildings in BC.

A Review of the Available Sources
Two nationally focused survey histories of Canadian vernacular architecture include
information on the history of log building in Canada. J ohn I. Rempels Building with
Wood and other aspects of nineteenth-century building in central Canada (1967,
revised 1980) discusses the technical methods used in traditional wood construction.
Although focused on central Canada, it provides both a general history and a
technical explanation of the different styles of log buildings in North America.
Particularly useful for this study is Rempels overview of the pice sur pice
building method used by the Hudsons Bay Company in western Canada.
While construction methods and architectural data are important means of
reading old buildings for which little or no historical records exist, it is equally
important to acknowledge that buildings are more than the sum of construction
techniques and styles. They are places that have multiple meanings that accrue
over time through a process that encompasses the skills of the builder, the use of the
buildings, the temporal and geographical locations in which they were built, and the
events that occurred within and around them. The more recent publication,
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Homeplace: The Making of the Canadian Dwelling over Three Centuries (1998), by
Peter Ennals and Deryck W. Holdsworth, presents such a multivalent social history
of the built landscape in Canada. As historical geographers, Ennals and
Holdsworth situate the history of vernacular housing in Canada within the social and
economic forces that shaped particular places, and then relate this specificity to
larger national and international socio-economic and political conditions. Through a
series of case studies they examine not just the style and form of dwellings, but also
the ways in which they were used in order to force questions about antecedents,
ethnicity, economy, social aspiration, interaction, and transformation.
7

Though useful in a general sense, neither of the studies mentioned above
specifically discusses the history of log building in BC. Indeed, in their treatment of
log structures, both tend to concentrate on eastern and central Canada where there
has been a longer historical record. This has had two unfortunate side effects. First it
has inadvertently supported the assumption that log building in western Canada
developed in the same way as it did in eastern and central Canada. And, second, it
has helped to perpetuate the overly simplistic explanation that log-building
techniques and styles traveled from east to west following the routes established by
French Canadian fur traders during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
8

True enough, some of BCs earliest log structures were built by the Hudsons Bay
Company in the pice sur pice, or Red River, style and many early log
structures can be attributed to French Canadian builders,
9
however, these facts
provide little insight into the historic value of BCs log buildings. While both of the
above sources supply a foundation for understanding the broader history of
vernacular architecture in Canada, a full discussion of the history of BCs log
buildings remains to be integrated in a national survey.
A recent regional survey, Building the West: The Early Architects of British
Columbia, edited by Donald Luxton, supplies information about early BC architects,
some of whom designed Rustic Style log structures, such as Bertram Dudley Stuarts
extraordinary BC Wood Products Building (1913), which used huge unpeeled logs as
Doric columns.
10
Nevertheless, most of the historic log structures in BC were not
designed by architects, but were built by individuals with carpentry, engineering, or
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mechanical skills. This is one of the reasons log buildings are often treated as folk
architecture, reflective of idiosyncratic and ethnic traditions rather than the larger
socio-economic, political, and social conditions that can be applied to buildings
designed by trained architects.
There have been only a few studies that focus exclusively on the history of
log building in BC. Gary Lee Bunneys MA thesis, Log Buildings in Southern
British Columbia: Pioneer Adaptation to Housing Need in the Kettle Valley and
Chilcotin, (1980) takes a geographical approach, analyzing field data and oral
histories in order to draw conclusions about the development of regional pioneer log-
building styles. His study documents two regional groupings of 168 log-built
structures, and provides information about the ethnic origins of a number of settlers
in the Kettle Valley and Chilcotin areas. Nevertheless, although he initially expected
to find a correlation between ethnicity and construction methods and styles, Bunney
concludes that the ethnic relationship did not greatly affect the type, form, or quality
of the log buildings, rather, log building forms are more often the result of three
conditions: expediency, the availability of logs, and the skills of the builder.
11

Bunneys study is limited by its concern only with pioneer log structures, but it is
useful because it calls attention to the shortcomings of treating log structures as
typologies that correlate to particular ethnic groups.
12

This is especially true in British Columbia, a region that was settled relatively
late by people who likely had already been exposed to the different building
traditions of their fellow immigrants from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. As Ennals
and Holdsworth explain, by the nineteenth century the population of North America
was shifting: Exceedingly high rates of geographic mobility ensured that most
people were repeatedly exposed, by their own wanderings or those of others, to a
variety of different house-building solutions.
13
In addition, as Bunneys study
shows, many of the builders of pioneer log dwellings in BC came from urban areas
of Europe and the United States and had no log building traditions of their own. In
such cases it appears they quickly adopted the prevailing building technologies.
14

One such dominant log building technology was brought to BC by the Hudsons Bay
Company. Michael Wills study A Technical Overview of Hudsons Bay Company
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Fur Trade Post Architecture in British Columbia, describes the two most prevalent
styles of HBC log building: pice sur pice and Scandinavian or log cabin style
which used squared and dovetailed logs, both of which are found in early colonial
log building.
Most published sources on BCs historic log buildings tend to be non-
academic documentary surveys. Donald Clemsons general interest book Living with
Logs: British Columbias Log Buildings and Rail Fences (1974) remains the only
published source entirely devoted to the subject. His documentary approach has been
followed by three other publications that focus on old or pioneer architecture and
include a number of log structures. Early Indian Village Churches: Wooden Frontier
Architecture in British Columbia (1977) by J ohn Veillette and Gary White
documents the missionary churches built near sites of traditional aboriginal villages
in BC. Some of these structures were constructed from squared-logs covered with
siding, and most were built with the help of local First Nations people. These
structures represent colonial missionary efforts to enforce an agrarian settled
lifestyle, which did much to alter the housing practices of a number of First Nations
groups. Veillettes and Whites study documents this history in photographs, and
provides an inventory of existing (in 1977) pioneer churches.
More recently the Royal BC Museums Living Landscapes program, working
in cooperation with local research partners has documented a number of log
buildings in the Prince George area. J une Chamberlain, a long-time resident of the
area, has photographed local log buildings and compiled information about early
homesteaders, which can be accessed on the Living Landscapes website.
15
Her study
is a model for other local studies of log buildings, demonstrating the wealth of
historical information that can be found within the community, and which adds
crucial contextual information for seemingly forgotten log structures.
Artists have also documented historical log buildings. Rudi Danglemaiers
Pioneer Buildings of British Columbia (1989) presents a series of watercolour
paintings of old buildings done by the author, which are accompanied by
descriptions. Useful for its visual documentation, Danglemaiers publication is of
general interest, but its lack of source citation limits its usefulness for the researcher.
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Michael Kluckners Vanishing British Columbia (2005) remedies this situation by
providing footnoted sources for his historical research on a number of old buildings,
which he has documented in paintings over the past twelve years. A concern shared
by all of these documentary surveys is regret over the demise of old log buildings
that have suffered from neglect.
As previously noted, the above sources tend to place log buildings in the
category of frontier or pioneer architecture. Books that discuss the later use of
logs in architecture are often how-to books that endorse log building as an
ecological alternative to the use of mass-produced milled lumber. The Complete Log
House Book: The Canadian Guide to Building with Logs (1979), by Dale Mann and
Richard Skinulis, provides a brief historical overview of log building in Canada, but
tends to over-emphasize the idea of a pioneer flourishing followed by a slow decline
toward the 1950s, and a subsequent revival in the sixties. This rendition disregards
the widespread use of logs for fishing and hunting cabins in the 1920s and 30s, as
well as the use of logs in Rustic Style architecture that continued to be popular in BC
throughout the 40s and 50s. Indeed, a number of BCs most spectacular log
buildings were built in the mid-twentieth century.
16

This is not to deny the importance of the log building revival that did take
place during the 60s and 70s, which is partly responsible for a growing interest in
restoring old log buildings and in producing new ones. In Building with Logs (first
printed in 1971), Bob Mackie provides a rationale for a return to unprocessed lumber
stating, log construction is the only contemporary construction method which
enables an individual to exchange his own labour and ingenuity, rather than cash or a
mortgage debt, for a home to be proud of.
17
In addition, he adds, good log
buildings may, in the next century, be all thats left of our vanished forests.
18
Thus,
according to Mackies logic, building with logs helps to preserve trees in
architecture. Bob Mackie and his wife Mary are well known in BC for starting the
School of Log Building in Prince George and a serial publication, The Canadian Log
House.
In addition to these published sources on log buildings, there are a number of
unpublished research reports and feasibility studies on specific log buildings and
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sites produced by both the provincial and national governments. The Lillouette-
Fraser Heritage Resource Study (1980), conducted by the Heritage Conservation
Branch of British Columbia, is a substantial two-volume summary of significant
heritage resources in the Lillouette-Fraser area, and a meticulous inventory of sites.
A large number of the buildings included in the study are small log structures, many
located on Reserve lands. Other Heritage Conservation Branch studies of specific log
building sites consulted for this study include Patrick Freys Keremeos Grist Mill: A
Research Report 1974; Cuyler Pages The Grist Mill. Keremeos (1995); Linda
Eversoles Keremeos Grist Mill-Machinery: Research Notes (1984); Eileen
Fletchers Wells Heritage Area Revitalization Program, Project Implementation
Manual (1982); J ennifer Iredales Wells, BC A Proposal for Heritage Conservation,
Part 1 and 2 (1984); J udith Strickers Cottonwood House Research Report (1982);
Kerr, Priestman, and Associates Ltd., Structural Assessment of Nanaimo Bastion:
Report to Ministry of Provincial Secretary and Government Services (1985); and
J onathan Yardleys Restoration Study: The Bastion Nanaimo (1989).
Parks Canada has also produced a number of studies on specific sites and a
thorough study of Rustic Building Programs in Canadas National Parks by
Edward Mills. Millss study of rustic architecture provides a thorough history of the
development of the Rustic Style in Canada, and focuses on the evolution of building
programs. In addition it provides an inventory of rustic buildings found in Canadas
National Parks. Other Parks Canada reports consulted for this study include Kate
MacFarlanes Twin Falls Teahouse Report and Character Statement (98-081); and
Edward Millss Yoho Ranch Report and Character Statement (00-002).
With the exception of Millss study of rustic park architecture, the above
government research reports and studies frequently make little attempt to relate the
construction or restoration of log buildings and sites to the larger socio-political and
economic conditions and currents that helped to shape the development of log
building in BC. Essentially, what is missing from these reports is the evolving
historical context in which these buildings were produced a context that help us
understand not only the value of log buildings but, more specifically, why we value
them.
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Methodology
Log buildings, like other forms of vernacular architecture, have traditionally been
analyzed in terms of their construction techniques and patterns of diffusion in order
to create typologies of style. Yet, a narrow focus on style and form can have a
number of shortcomings. Scholars of vernacular architecture have pointed out that
the ways in which people actually use architectural spaces cannot always be
determined by form.
19
For example, many temporary log structures were built
hastily without a thought for domestic niceties, but ended up being used as dwellings
for extended periods. In addition, studies that focus only on materials tend to lack
social relevance that is, they make little attempt to integrate their findings into
larger socio-economic and political conditions that shape, and in turn are represented
by, the built environment.
20
As architectural historian Dana Arnold states, to
consider a building in isolation as a total history in itself, and concentrate solely on
form or appearance, is to denude it of much of its meaning
21

This study presents a contextual history by using multiple sources of different
kinds. In this respect it is interdisciplinary, relying on geographical studies, the
careful data collecting done by archaeologists, and historical documents, texts, and
visual images, in order to analyze the socio-political, economic, and cultural
conditions and currents that helped to shape log building trends in BC. In some
cases, such as Section 2 on Aboriginal log building, which relies heavily on
published research conducted by Grant Keddie, Curator of Archaeology at the Royal
BC Museum, a significant amount of time was spent examining the visual record. In
other cases, such as Section 4 on Rustic Style log building, information was
compiled from site visits and archival research.
Constructing a contextual history of log buildings in BC is an ambitious
undertaking, and it is acknowledged here that each section of this paper could
comprise an independent report of a substantial size. It is also acknowledged that
there is no one single history of log building in BC. Nevertheless, general log
building trends that occurred within certain time periods can be discerned and have
been presented here, illustrated with examples from a number of regions across BC.
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Research Parameters
The parameters of this study remain intentionally loose in order to provide as
inclusive a study as possible. The way log buildings are defined here is broad,
however, this study looks primarily at log buildings that have structural walls
composed of either horizontally or vertically positioned logs. In some cases,
buildings that incorporate logs as stylistic elements will also be discussed because of
their symbolic use.
Log buildings included in this study are found in Southwestern BC,
Vancouver Island, the Cariboo, the Okanagan, and the Kootenays. While this study
attempts to be representative of the history of log building province-wide, some
regions are better represented than others. This is partly because of the method of
research undertaken, which included archival research, site visits, and outreach to the
community for input. Information was solicited from the public through a request
circulated on the BC Museums Association (BCMA) listserve. This yielded a great
deal of information about both public heritage sites and privately owned buildings.
Suggestions from the broader community sometimes dictated which buildings were
investigated a method justified because, in many ways, the communitys interest in
these buildings is testimony to their significance. Additionally, some areas are better
represented than others because they have larger numbers of historic log buildings.
Specific sites were also chosen as examples because of the amount of existing
information on them.
At the same time that the research parameters of this study have been left
intentionally loose, in order to place reasonable limits on a topic of this scope, the
time frame has been delineated from 1821, when the Hudsons Bay Company
merged with the North West Company, to the present day. While it was suggested
that this study incorporate Aboriginal log building, which began thousands of years
before the Hudsons Bay Company arrived in the region now known as BC, it is only
after European contact that we have a historical record of these building forms.
Because of this, Aboriginal log buildings are explored here in relation to the building
activities of European colonizers.
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As well, some important areas of research are touched on only briefly here
because of the nascent state of the current research. These include a discussion of
ethnic forms of log building. In particular, the study of Chinese log building in BC,
while potentially a rich topic, is in a formative stage and is not well documented. In
most cases, where gaps appear in this study, it is because of a lack of documentation
and a need for further primary research on specific sites and buildings.

Two persistent themes have shaped this study. The first theme is the material
itself: all of the buildings discussed were constructed with logs some round and
covered with bark, others hewn square and hidden beneath siding. The second theme
is the pervasive association of Euro-Canadian log structures with a romantic image
of the frontier or pioneer lifestyle. By incorporating the work of scholars who have
taken a wide variety of approaches to the study of log buildings in BC, and by
undertaking additional primary research, the present study constructs a context-based
regional history that is both a material and a theoretical analysis.
Each section of this paper identifies a general log-building trend in BC and
then illustrates aspects of this trend through concrete examples drawn from different
areas throughout BC. These examples are meant to illustrate general patterns, not to
present the only examples extant. Section 1 introduces and discusses three prevalent
myths that are embedded in the image of the log building, and which play a primary
role in the construction of their value. Section 2 provides a brief overview of
aboriginal log structures found in BC, and looks at some of the points of exchange
between aboriginal and non-aboriginal builders during the colonial period. Section 3
discusses three forms of early log architecture: HBC structures, early settler
temporary buildings, and early settler permanent buildings. Section 4 examines two
uses of the Rustic Style, on an individual level evident in the cabins built by wealthy
individuals, and on a corporate level evident in building styles used for CPR and
National Parks architecture. Section 5 discusses the connection between the
popularity of logs for recreational architecture and the rise of tourism in the 1950s,
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and the impact of the back-to-the-land revival of the 60s and 70s that helped to
resurrect an interest in old log structures and to foster a log building industry in BC.
These sections are followed by an appendix that lists a number of log buildings
investigated during the process of research.

1
Here I am referring to the winter pithouses of the B.C. interior First Nations and the portable long
houses of the coastal First Nations, both built using logs.
2
Also known as Red River Frame or Post on Sill construction.
3
Edward Mills, Rustic Building Programs in Canadas National Parks, 1887-1950 (Architectural
History Branch, Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, 1992),19.
4
Mills, Rustic Building Programs, 1.
5
Most are concentrated in the Cariboo, especially in 100 Mile House, as well as the Okanagan. Some
of these log building companies can be found at the following website:
http://www.logassociation.org/directory/builders_canada.php#britishcolumbia
6
See, for example, Demian Pettman, Log Homes in The 100 Mile House & South Cariboo Visitor
Guide (2005-2006), 28.
7
Ennels and Holdsworth, The Making of A Canadian Dwelling, xiii.
8
J ohn I. Rempel, Building with Wood and other aspects of nineteenth-century building in Central
Canada, revised edition (Toronto: U of T Press, 1980); Ennals and Holdsworth, The Making of A
Canadian Dwelling, 123-24.
9
For example, the Nanaimo Bastion, constructed in 1853, was built of hand-hewn logs by French
Canadians J ean Baptiste Fortier and Leon Labine. See, Donald Luxton, ed., Building the West: The
Early Architecture of British Columbia (Vancouver, Talonbooks, 2003), 23. Expert French Canadian
carpenters continued to build log structures throughout B.C. into the first decades of the 20
th
century
a carpenter by the name of Dan Savoie built a number of log homes along the Cowichan River
between 1901-12. See, Kaatza, Chronicles of Cowichan Lake, 1967, 42.
10
Luxton, Building the West, 380.
11
Gary Lee Bunney, Log Buildings in Southern British Columbia: Pioneer Adaptation to housing
need in the Kettle Valley and Chilcotin, (UVic, MA thesis, 1980). This conclusion is echoed by more
than one expert on log-building history, including Bill Quackenbush, Curator, Barkerville Library and
Archives.
12
J on Goss, The Built Environment and Social Theory: Towards an Architectural Geography,
Professional Geographer, 40 (4), 1988, 393.
13
Ennals and Holdsworth, Homeplace, 53
14
Bunney, Log Buildings, 36, 116.
15
Chamberlain, J une Living Landscapes, Royal BC Museum Website:
http://www.livinglandscapes.bc.ca/upperfraserbasin/cottonwood/house.html.

16
Some examples include the Grouse Mountain Chalet (1926), North Vancouver; Eaglecrest (1929-
30), Qualicum Beach; H.W. Herridge House (1937-1950), Upper Arrow Lake; and the John and
Kathleen Barraclough House (1946), Saanich, B.C.
17
B. Allan Mackie, Building with Logs (Prince George, 1977, first edition 1971), 1.
18
Mackie, Building with Logs, 4.
19
Annmarie Adams and Sally McMurray eds, Exploring Everyday Landscapes: Perspectives in
Vernacular Architecture VII (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, c1997).
20
Goss, The Built Environment, 394.
21
Dana Arnold, Reading Architectural History (London: Routledge, 2002), 7.

A building is more than it seems. It is an artifact an object of
material culture produced by a society to fulfill particular
functions determined by, and thus embodying or reflecting, the
social relations and levels of development of the productive forces
of that society.
J ohn Goss, The Built Environment and Social Theory: Towards an
Architectural Geography, Professional Geographer, 40 (4), 1988, 392

If we accept architecture as a cultural artifact then we must also
see its histories as a text open to a variety of meanings.
Dana Arnold, Reading Architectural History. London: Routledge, 2002, 7.

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Section 1: The Log Cabin, the Pioneer, and the Frontier Myth

Although log buildings appear to speak of a simple and immediate engagement with
the natural environment, they are more than they seem. J ust as a modernist
skyscraper evokes notions of machine-age progress and efficiency, log buildings are
emblematic of the romance of the pioneer, the wilderness, and the frontier. These
associations are embedded in the image of log buildings, and shape their meanings,
value, and historical significance. In order to understand why we value historic log
buildings, it is necessary to question how and why both the materials and their
symbolic meanings have been employed. This section focuses on the latter by
examining some of the ways in which log buildings have been invested with
symbolic meanings that continue to shape how we interpret them. These include the
mid-nineteenth-century American Log Cabin Myth; the iconic use of the log cabin
as a symbol of pioneer triumph over the wilderness; and British Columbias regional
identity as a western frontier.
The Log Cabin Myth refers to a nineteenth-century error in the American
historical record, which posited that the first dwellings built by the English and
Dutch Pilgrim Fathers were log cabins. In 1939, historian Harold Shurtleff traced
this tenacious popular belief to the use of the log cabin as a symbol of American
democracy in the presidential campaigns of 1840 and 1860.
1
Drawing on
associations with Abraham Lincolns birthplace, the simple dwelling of the
common man, and pioneer ingenuity, politicians used the log cabin as a powerful
symbol of national identity one that resonated deeply with the American people.
Although it has its genesis in U.S. politics, the Log Cabin Myth is important
for our purposes because it highlights a more general misconception about log
buildings: their association with traditional pioneer values, such as honesty and
wholesomeness, that are held to represent the dominant culture of white European
colonizers. According to historian Elizabeth Furniss, the myth of the frontier begins
with the settlers journey to the wilderness and their cultural, moral, and material
regression to the more primitive conditions encountered there. The frontier
- 17 -

experience involves a series of encounters with morally opposed forces, the most
important being civilization and wilderness, humans and nature, and whites and
Indians
2
In this way, the image of the log cabin stands, not just as a symbol of
the pioneer, but as a symbol of the moral triumph of the pioneer.
Myths are perpetuated largely through representations in the form of images
and texts, such as popular novels and newspaper articles that are widely circulated.
Romantic poetry, childrens literature, and travel literature have all been culpable in
strengthening the association between log cabins, pioneer values, and the conquest of
the frontier during the nineteenth century.
3
For instance, in a lengthy poem entitled
Idylls of the Pioneers, nineteenth-century Canadian poet Alexander McLachlan
posited the log cabin as a site of harmony and quietude in the wilderness:

The Little log cabin is all alone;
Its windows are rude, and its walls are bare,
And the wind without has a weary moan.
Yet peace, like an angel, is nesting there
4

This romantic vision of the pioneer experience is also reflected in fictional stories of
the frontier. An example is provided by British childrens author Elizabeth Maxwell
Comforts sentimental novel of 1895, entitled Grizzlys Little Pard, in which a young
orphan girl comes to live with an old prospector. Comforts description of the
fictional town of Gold Ledge in the Rocky Mountains, with its rudely built
cabins and rough ugliness of mud-chinked walls
5
illustrates how the image of
the log cabin was used to represent a primitive land. In contrast, a log cabin built for
the orphaned girl represents community pride and a strong work ethic when it
indicates permanent settlement of the land:

A site for the new cabin was selected among the pines and
hemlocks; the ground was cleared and evened off; the logs selected
and trimmed with great care In a very short time, with the many
willing hands doing good work, the cabin was up Altogether it
was a very comfortable, cozy little home, and all the Gold Ledgers
were very proud of it.
6

- 18 -

Likewise, nineteenth-century travel literature, with its assumption of truth, also
strengthened the association between the image of the log cabin, the pioneer, and the
frontier. In his book, On Canadas Frontier, of 1892, British tourist J ulian Ralph
romanticized British Columbias past, while traveling in a west-bound train:

where the only true homes are within the palisades or the
unguarded log-cabin of the fur-trading agents, and where the only
other white men are either washing sand in the river bars, driving
stages of the only line that penetrates a piece of the country, or are
those queer devil-may-care but companionable Davy Crocketts of the
day
7

These examples demonstrate that by the 1890s, when settlement of the land was still
occurring in BC, the log dwelling already had a number of frontier associations.
The tenacity of the association between log buildings and pioneer values
continues to endure today, for example the 2005-2006 South Cariboo Visitor Guide
proclaims for over a century residents have used logs to build their structures. You
will often see these historic buildings, long forgotten, but still standing as tributes to
pioneer character, will power, and hard work.
8
As Harold Shurtleff reminds us, the
log cabin, along with the Indian, the long rifle, and the hunting shirt, is associated
with one of the greatest of all conquests, the winning of the west.
9
It is this
connection between the log cabin and settlement of new land that forms the basis for
a discussion of the myth of the frontier in British Columbia.
Due in part to its geographic isolation from central and eastern Canadian
centers of culture and government, a strong regional western frontier identity
developed in British Columbia, and continues to endure. British Columbia entered
confederation relatively late in 1871 and, at that time, the Canadian Pacific Railway
played an important role in promoting the province as an undiscovered wilderness
land a topic revisited and discussed in greater detail in Section 4 of this paper. As
political scientist Philip Resnick has commented, The sense of being a geographical
region apart seems deeply ingrained in the BC psyche.
10
Those in doubt need only
look to more recent examples, such as the first issue of Big Country Cariboo
Magazine, which referred to the region as Canadas Romantic West,
11
or the many
- 19 -

pioneer restaurants and hotels that dot BC highways. Even urban areas of BC, such
as Vancouver, are influenced by a frontier sensibility, articulated by contemporary
author Douglas Coupland as stemming from a tradition of abandoning [the] centre
to try something new.
12

The perception of British Columbia as a frontier can be recognized as a
vestige of the Frontier thesis of American History articulated by Frederick J ackson
Turner in 1893.
13
Turner isolated the pastoral West from the civilization of the
urban East and Europe, equating it with cultural simplicity, stating that the West, at
bottom, is a form of society rather than an area. It is the term applied to the region
whose social conditions result from the application of older institutions and ideas to
the transforming influences of free land.
14
To early colonizers, western regions of
North America were thought of as unclaimed territories, where free land awaited
the improving efforts of agrarian pioneer settlers. Indeed, in BC the Land Ordinance
Act of 1861 encouraged settlers to claim large tracts of unoccupied Crown lands
for a small fee, on the condition that they occupy the land within thirty days.
15
The
fact remains, however, that land settlement was rife with dispute, not only between
the United States and Britain, but particularly between settlers and Aboriginal
people, who had different traditions and expectations of land use. Implicit in the
narrative of land settlement is the celebration of the pioneer and the marginalization
of the Aboriginal people who originally inhabited the land.
16

Historian Elizabeth Furniss has examined the conflict that arises when
pioneer narratives intersect with Aboriginal histories, using the community of
Williams Lake as a case study. She cautions:

Frontier histories provide Euro-Canadians with a sense of collective
identity paternal benevolence and natural superiority constructed
in opposition to Aboriginal peoplesGiven how deeply embedded
cultural myths are in the dominant worldview of a society, it would
be simplistic to suggest that the solution to this situation is to
abandon the frontier genre or to censor or criticize those who choose
to express the past in this format. Important, rather, is a reflexive
awareness of the pervasiveness of the frontier myth and of the way
in which frontier narratives convey implicit values, assumptions, and
beliefs that reflect the legacy of Canadas colonial past.
17

- 20 -

A well-known example of the ways in which revisionist interpretations of the
past can elicit angry responses from those who identify with pioneer histories can be
seen in the 1991 exhibition The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the
Frontier, 1820-1920. The exhibition, curated by William Truettner of the National
Museum of American Art in Washington D.C., scrutinized popular beliefs about the
heroics of American westward expansion, and criticized its effects on Aboriginal
people.
18
Angry viewers felt that criticism of pioneer history was an affront to white
Americans. In her book Making Representations: Museums in the Post-Colonial Era,
Moira Simpson explains how reactions to the exhibit sparked political debate: the
matter was raised at an appropriations hearing when two senators accused the
Smithsonian Institution of having a political agenda and called for cuts in the
Smithsonians public funding.
19
Frontier and pioneer histories are important ways
in which people identify with their heritage. At the same time, the cultural biases
embedded in historical narratives need to be acknowledged.
Historical interpretations of pioneer log buildings have tended to
emphasize frontier histories without examining how this might perpetuate a colonial
attitude in which aboriginal people are positioned in opposition to the civilizing
efforts of the pioneers. The
building of the Saanich Pioneer
Memorial Log Cabin (fig. 1) in
1933 provides an example of the
deliberate use of log construction
to evoke associations with
pioneer values. The structure was
built as a museum and meeting
hall by the Saanich Pioneer
Society on Vancouver Island.
Even though the society had been
gifted a large amount of milled lumber toward the construction of a hall,
20
the use of
logs was an important choice deliberated at length in society meetings. One
Fig. 1 Saanich Pioneer Memorial Log Cabin
- 21 -

- 22 -

suggestion was put forward that each pioneer family supply a log for the building,
with older pioneer families supplying the bottom logs and newer families logs
continuing upwards.
21
In fact this never took place. But, a supply of logs left over
from the building of the nearby Sidney wharf was eventually procured for the
construction of the museum.
At the opening celebration for the new museum in 1933, Premier Tolmie
gave a speech and presented to the Pioneer Society a copy of the agreement of
purchase of land made by Sir J ames Douglas with the First Nations Chiefs of
Saanich.
22
In doing so, the premier drew a connection between the building of a log
cabin by pioneers and ownership of the land. In 1932, however, just prior to the
building of the Pioneer Memorial Log Cabin, the Saanich Chiefs had sent two legal
documents to the provincial government denying the validity of both the North and
South Saanich Land Treaties, stating that gifts of blankets had been given in
exchange for peace, not land.
23
Premier Tolmies presentation was a symbolic act
that reinforced the legitimacy of the colonial directive. While this interpretation may
seem overly analytical, it is presented to highlight the pervasiveness of the frontier
myth, and how it encodes our understanding of history.
This is not to say that all log buildings constructed during the colonial period
are symbols of oppression. Individual log buildings are material objects with their
own specific histories. But, as symbols they can also be understood to represent the
values perpetuated by the frontier myth. Government legislation of land acts and
Western ideas about the value and proper use of land have also played a role in
sustaining the association of pioneer values with the myth of the frontier and its
symbols, such as the log cabin. The role of such myths in the construction of history
needs to be discerned and accounted for, especially in a discussion of log building
during the colonial period. The complexity of the colonial encounter is a topic that
reappears in other sections of this paper. In particular, the following section on
Aboriginal log building examines the different cultural perspectives on land use.

1
Harold Shurtleff, The log cabin myth; a study of the early dwellings of the English Colonists, 5.
2
Elizabeth Furniss, The Burden of History: Colonialism and the Frontier Myth in a Rural Canadian
Community (Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 1999), 18.

3
Harold Shurtleff notes that it was the publication Pageant of America (1925), which was widely
distributed to schools, that solidified the connection between pioneers and log cabins in the United
States (page 194). In particular, he points out that illustrations, as visual representations, are
especially forceful in the perpetuation of myths.
4
Alexander McLachlan, The Poetical Works of Alexander McLachlan (Toronto: W. Briggs, 1900),
234.
5
Elizabeth Maxwell Comfort, Grizzlys Little Pard, (London: Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, 1895), 2.
6
Comfort, Grizzlys Little Pard, 34.
7
J ulian Ralph, On Canadas Frontier: Sketches of History, Sport, and Adventure, and of the Indians,
Missionaries, Fur-Traders, and Newer Settlers of Western Canada (London: J ames R. Osgood,
McIlvaine & Co., 1892), 249.
8
Demian Pettman, Log Homes, The 100 Mile House & South Cariboo Visitor Guide, 2005-2006,
28.
9
Shurtleff, Log Cabin Myth, 6.
10
Philip Resnick, The Politics of Resentment: British Columbia Regionalism and Canadian Unity
(Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 2000), 4.
11
1976.
12
Douglas Coupland, City of Glass (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2000), 106.
13
Frederick J ackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 1921), first edition published in 1894.
14
Turner, The Significance of the Frontier, 205.
15
For more on the selling of British Columbia lands to immigrant settlers, see Newton H. Chittenden,
Settlers, prospectors, and tourists guide, or, Travels through British Columbia, first published in
Victoria, B.C., 1882 (Vancouver: Gordon Soules Book Publishers Ltd., 1984), 19.
16
See, for example, the main argument in Furniss, The Burden of History.
17
Furniss, The Burden of History, 78.
18
Moira G. Simpson, Making Representations: Museums in the Post-Colonial Era (London:
Routledge, 1996), 30.
19
Simpson, Making Representations, 30.
20
Saanich Pioneer Museum Archive, F2005S26, Minutes.
21
22
23
See Grant Keddie, Songhees Pictorial, 49.
- 23 -

Section 2: Aboriginal Log Building and the Colonial Encounter

Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian architectural forms are not often discussed together;
they stem from radically different cultural values and traditions.
1
As historian Susan
Buggey has pointed out, indigenous people in many parts of the world regard
landscape in ways common to their own experience, and different from the Western
perspective of land and landscape. The relationship between people and place is
conceived fundamentally in spiritual terms, rather than primarily in material terms.
2

In particular, in colonial BC Aboriginal and European ideas about the use and value
of land differed greatly.
3
For that reason, this section on Aboriginal log building
focuses on the intersection of those values as they manifested in the built
environment. After a brief overview of the types of Aboriginal log buildings found in
BC, this section discusses conflict over land use by looking at the building of log
missionary churches near Aboriginal settlements throughout British Columbia, and
the changing landscape of the Songhees reserve in colonial Victoria.

BC Aboriginal Log Buildings
Long before Europeans set foot in the region now known as British Columbia,
diverse groups of Aboriginal peoples had been using well-developed forms of log
and plank construction to build both permanent and temporary dwellings. Relying on
archeological, archival, and visual documentary sources, a number of researchers
from different disciplines have investigated the origins and cultural uses of
Aboriginal dwellings.
4
These can be roughly divided into two general types: plank
houses on the coast and pit houses in the interior. In addition, a third type of structure
Aboriginal defensive sites also used logs for fortification.

Defensive Sites
The remains of Aboriginal defensive sites are found throughout BC. An example is
the Kitwanga Fort National Historic Site, in northern BC near the Skeena and Nass
Rivers, which comprises the remains of an eighteenth-century Gitwanak fortified
- 24 -

village. According to Grant Keddie, Curator of Archaeology at the Royal BC
Museum, Aboriginal defensive sites usually consisted of a group of houses
surrounded by a log or plank palisade and a deep trench. Descriptions by early
explorers of palisaded forts indicate that they were fairly common due to feuds and
raids between neighboring groups.
5
Archeological excavations conducted since the
1960s reveal that some of these sites are thousands of years old.
6
Keddies research
suggests that fortified villages were common from the late 1700s to the 1850s due to
increased warfare.
7
This hypothesis is supported by oral history stories associated
with the Kitwanga site. According to legend, the chieftain Nekt used the fortified
village as a base from which to raid other Aboriginal groups for goods such as food
and slaves, as well as control over trade routes such as the Grease Trail so called
for the candlefish oil traded along the Nass River. The Kitwanga fortified village was
destroyed in the early nineteenth century in a battle between the Gitwangak and other
Aboriginal groups.
8

Aboriginal groups in BC were familiar with the purpose of defensive sites. In
his book Songhees Pictorial, Keddie describes how in 1843 HBC Chief Factor J ames
Douglas spoke with the local Songhees people about constructing a fort in the
vicinity of present day Victoria. Many Songhees procured logs for the palisade in
exchange for blankets. After the fort was erected, HBC officer Roderick Finlayson
recorded that a large number of Songhees camped around the fort, all armed,
without any of the wives or children, which looked suspicious.
9
Perhaps cued by
the building of a fortification, they were expecting a raid. Songhees were sometimes
employed at Fort Victoria and defended it against threats from other Aboriginal
groups.
10

Pit Houses
Another type of Aboriginal log
structure found in BC is the pit
house, used by the Interior Salish,
the Kutenai, and the Plateau
groups as semi-subterranean
- 25 -
Fig. 2 Interior of Pit House at Hat Creek
Ranch Historic Site

winter dwellings.
11
Pit houses were generally constructed of four to six upright
beams, angled together with an opening at the top and splayed outward at ground
level. Horizontal poles were lashed to the beams in a concentric web, which formed
a cone shaped roof frame over a dug-out pit. This roof frame was then covered with
bark and packed earth. Examples of reconstructed pit houses can be found at the Hat
Creek Ranch Historic Site (fig. 2), and at X:ytem, near Mission, where the remains
of ancient pit houses were uncovered in 1991. One of the excavated houses at
X:ytem originally measured eight meters by eight meters, and had been repaired
numerous times indicating a sustained occupation over a long period. Artifacts and
deposits associated with the site have been carbon dated to between 3,300 and 3,650
BC.
12

Plank Houses
Of all the types of log structures built by Aboriginal groups in BC, the sophisticated,
and sometimes monumental, plank houses of the coastal region have received the
most attention. The Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Kwakwakawak, Nuu-chah-nulth
(Nootka), Nuxalk (Bella Coola), and Coast Salish groups all produced different
versions of the plank house.
13
Early European explorers were mystified by the
advanced construction they encountered on the coast. In 1790, the explorer Meares
wrote of a Nuu-chah-nulth dwelling:

The trees that supported the roof were of a size which would
render the mast of a first rate man of war diminutive, on a
comparison with them; indeed our curiosity as well as our
astonishment was on its utmost stretch, when we considered the
strength that must be necessary to raise enormous beams to their
present elevation
14

- 26 -

Each coastal group had its own local
refinements, however, for the sake of
brevity they are categorized here as
northern plank houses of the Haida,
Tlingit, and Tsimshian; central coast
plank houses of the Kwakwakawakw
and Nuu-chah-nulth; and shed-roofed
houses of the southern Nuu-chah-nulth
and Salish-speaking peoples.
While the Haida built a number
of variations on the plank house, the
two most common types were the six-
beam (fig. 3) and the two-beam house.
15
In both cases four corner posts were
mortised at their tops to hold sloping front and rear plates. At the ground level, the
posts were notched to receive wall plates, which would hold vertical wall planks in
place. Either six or two roof beams, and a ridgepole, comprised the roof structure,
which was covered by planks or sheets of bark held down by rocks An opening was
left in the roof for a smoke hole.
These dwellings were
embellished with carving and
painting. In particular, Haida
dwellings usually had an
entrance pole with an oval
opening for a doorway.
16

Tlingit plank houses were
similar in form to Haida
dwellings, but with a more
complex roof structure (fig. 4).
In addition, the Tlingit did not often use entrance poles, but rather had carved and
painted facades around an oval entranceway.
17
Tsimshian plank houses were also

Fig. 3 Six-beam Haida House, after Duff
and Kew (1958:49, figure 1).

Fig. 4 Tlingit House Structure. From Shotridge
(1913: Figure 69).
- 27 -

similar to the Haida and Tlingit, although here too a number of variations could
occur. Plank houses built by the Haida, Tlingit and Tsimshian are characterized by
their careful mortising and precise integration of parts.
18

On the central coast,
both the Kwakwakawakw and
the Nuu-chah-nulth built
massive versions of the plank
house. Kwakwakawakw houses
were built of eight large cedar
posts and four large beams (fig.
5). Two pairs of posts at each
end of the building, hollowed at their tops, supported two heavy round roof beams.
Four other posts defined the corners of the building and supported two more beams
at a slightly lower height than the centre beams. This provided a sloping roof. As
with the Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian, the log frame was the permanent element of
the structure and was independent of the wall planks, allowing for easy removal and
relocation of the boards.
19
The Nuu-chah-nulth, on the West Coast of Vancouver
Island, built similar expansive plank
houses.
20

Fig. 5 Kwakwakawakw House Structure. Front
elevation showing wall construction from Boas
(1888:Figure 2).
Both the southern Nuu-chah-
nulth and the Salish-speaking groups
built shed-roofed longhouses, which
consisted of clusters of individually
constructed units that could be
extended in either direction. Each unit
had four upright posts, with the front
posts higher than the rear, and two
heavy beams laid on the tall and short
posts. Rafters were then laid
crosswise and topped with roof planks
(fig. 6). The roof was sometimes used
- 28 -

Fig. 6 Coast Salish House Structure.
From Waterman and Greiner (1921: 15).

as a platform during potlatch ceremonies.
21
Like the northern and central plank-
houses, the shed-roofed house had independent plank walls that could be removed
and re-erected on other permanent frames at different locations.
BC Aboriginal log buildings are the result of a highly refined response to the
environment. Heavy log frames provided sturdy, long-lasting, and large structures
for communal living and ceremony. Plank walls were easily transported between
village sites, and several planks could be hewn from one tree. The dwellings built by
these Aboriginal groups served as both practical shelters and as ceremonial centres.
Their forms reflect cultural traditions that included communal living arrangements,
communal ceremony, and seasonal movement between summer and winter
villages.
22

The Colonial Encounter
Although they both used logs as raw materials, the structures built by Aboriginal
people and those built by early colonizers reflect different attitudes toward land use.
As Susan Buggey emphasizes, The orientations of these two broad cultures differ
radically. The Aboriginal world-view is rooted in identification with the land.
Western experience is rooted in objectification and rationalism.
23
The colonial
perspective on land use was influenced by the frontier myth in which newly
discovered territory, such as British Columbia, was seen as an uninhabited
wilderness that could be civilized through settlement and harnessed for resource
extraction and farming.
24
Traditional Aboriginal lifestyles were associated with the
wilderness and relegated to the past. As a turn-of-the-century article in the Victoria
Daily Colonist opined, the Indian, as we know him today, is degenerate from the
somewhat heroic figure we were wont to associate with the wilderness on the
continent of America.
25

Appropriation of land and the assimilation of Aboriginal peoples were both
central concerns of colonial society. An example of how these two directives merged
in the built environment can be seen in the numerous wooden churches built near
traditional Aboriginal settlements. From the mid-nineteenth century onward in BC,
missionaries of all denominations sought to convert Aboriginal peoples to
- 29 -

Christianity.
26
In doing so, they attempted to eradicate what they saw as foolish,
wasteful and demoralizing cultural
practices such as potlatching and
seasonal relocation, and to inculcate
Western values of permanent agrarian
settlement, industrial growth, resource
exploitation, and capital gain.
27

Churches were central
meeting areas for instruction and
worship, and missionaries encouraged
Aboriginal people to build permanent
houses around them.
28
From the time
of missionary contact in the 1860s,
milled lumber was becoming
increasingly available in BC, however,
log churches continued to be built in
isolated and poor rural areas by
Aboriginal builders under missionary
instruction.
29
Most of these log
structures were built with tightly-fitted
squared dovetailed logs, and covered
with siding. A number of examples,
such as the Roman Catholic St. Peters Church in Quesnel, built sometime between
1904-1910, can still be found in the Cariboo and Peace regions of BC.
30
Likewise, a
log church owned by the Skwelwas Band stands at Cayoosh Creek, just south of
Lillooet (fig. 8).
31

Fig. 7 Church at Fountain, n.d., built from
logs and hewn timber, RB.C.M 16601.
Fig. 8 Church at Cayoosh Creek, 1974,
B.C. Archives 27818N.
While these early churches can be seen as symbols of missionary efforts to
convert Aboriginal people to Christianity, and thereby to alter their traditional social
patterns, it should also be acknowledged that many old log churches are valued by
Aboriginal groups today. The Upper Sttimc History Through Photographs
website provides an example of how these churches also hold histories that are based
- 30 -

on experiential engagement with community members and places, rather than
symbolic representation. In interpreting a photograph of the old church at Fountain
(fig. 7) Sttimc storyteller Angus Doss remembered helping to disassemble the
church, and that it was built with a combination of logs and sawn timber. Albert
J oseph recalled that it was a centre for Christmas celebrations and feasting.
32
It is
crucial to recognize that the power relationships inherent in the colonial discourse
are also part of a Western paradigm that may not hold the same power or meaning
within the Aboriginal world view.
Establishing churches as central meeting places around which permanent
settlements could be built, was one aspect of the colonial directive. Strong beliefs
about land productivity led to the relocation of aboriginal people to inadequate
reserve lands.
33
In particular, the Aboriginal tradition of traveling between seasonal
camps led colonists to believe (either ignorantly or willfully) that they were a
nomadic people, with no concept of land ownership. Thus, settlers, backed by
government legislation, felt justified in claiming large tracts of land for farming and
ranching.
34
By 1873, BC Commissioner of Indian affairs, I.W. Powell was embroiled
in a number of resulting land disputes, noting in some instances great injustice has
been done the Indians in not reserving sufficient land for their use, and in some
cases land actually occupied by Indianshas been pre-empted by white settlers
and certificates granted.
35

The changing landscape of the Songhees Reserve in colonial Victoria
provides an example of how
Aboriginal peoples log building
traditions were affected by colonial
attitudes toward productive land use.
As noted previously, after Fort
Victoria was erected in 1843,
Songhees and Clallam groups
camped nearby (fig. 9), and by 1845
they had built a double row of plank
houses parallel to the shore on the
Fig. 9 Henry Warre, Clallum Village next to Fort
Victoria, Sept. 27, 1845. American Antiquarian
Society (Keddie: 2003, 28).
- 31 -

site of the future Songhees Reserve.
36
These were traditional shed-roofed, permanent
frame structures with removable
wall and roof planks (fig. 10).
Between 1845 and 1886, the
Songhees lived in these houses on
the reserve across the harbour from
the original fort, however, colonists
increasingly petitioned for the
removal of the reserve, often citing
the lack of land improvement on
what they saw as increasingly
valuable land as one of the reasons.
Fig. 10 Paul Kane, The Canoes Returning from
gathering camas to Esquimalt, watercolour, 1847.
Stark Museum of Art, 31.78/58,WWC58
(Keddie: 2003, 24).
In 1849 Vancouver Island became a Crown Colony, and the British
government agreed to let the Hudsons Bay Company continue to use the land as
long as they promoted permanent settlement. In response to this new directive,
Governor J ames Douglas began to create Aboriginal reserve lands that would be held
in Trust by the Crown. According to HBC instruction, only lands that the Aboriginal
people had built houses on or cultivated were to be considered.
37
Thus, occupied
villages were considered Aboriginal lands, while unoccupied hunting grounds were
not an oversight that demonstrates the colonists lack of understanding of the
Aboriginal relationship to the environment. In his book Songhees Pictorial, Grant
Keddie offers this summary of the traditional Songhees relationship to the
environment:

Traditional Songhees culture experienced a different reality in the
natural world than Europeans did To the Songhees, the human and
natural worlds are interwoven by threads of spiritual powerThe
Songhees had the knowledge necessary to find what they needed to
survive in their territory. They understood the cycles of time by
observing the movement of the stars and planets and the patterns of
wind, water and plant growth
38

- 32 -

Unlike the traditional European idea of the land as a static material resource, the
Songhees, like other Aboriginal groups, saw themselves as intimately connected to
the environment. The concept of a reserve would have likely seemed not just
strange, but absurdly abstract.
By 1859 an assembly of colonial landowners had begun to petition the
removal of the Songhees reserve. Aside from the fear of violence, one of the main
reasons cited by spokesman J ames Yates was that the Songhees did not know the
value of the land, and their presence on the harbour of the growing city of Victoria
would devalue adjacent properties.
39
Douglas attempted to appease the colonists by
proposing to lease portions of the reserve to persons who will undertake to build
and to make other improvements upon it
40
In J une of 1860 Douglas met with an
assembly of Aboriginal leaders. During the meeting he instructed that they must
erect suitable houses on the reservations [sic], under the instructions of an Indian
Agent.
41

Plank houses had
long provided suitable
housing, appropriate for
the traditional seasonal
migration between
summer and winter
camps. But, as traditional
ways of life conflicted
with the values of the
largely European and American immigrant settlers, pressure to abandon traditional
ways of life, and housing, increased. In spite of an 1862 smallpox epidemic, which
led to the burning of Aboriginal villages and camps near the Songhees, villagers
returned to the site after the epidemic had run its course and rebuilt their dwellings in
the traditional plank house style (fig. 11). Such actions can be seen as an indication
of their poverty making do with salvaged materials as well as the continuing
strength of their building traditions. It was only after British Columbia joined
confederation in 1871 that federal pressure to assimilate Aboriginal people into the
Fig. 11 Front of the Songhees Reserve Village, 1863-64
(Keddie: 2003, 80).
- 33 -

- 34 -

dominant Euro-Canadian culture led to the abandonment of the old plank houses. By
1886, anthropologist Franz Boaz noted that most of the Songhees had built European
style houses.
42

The overwhelming urge to improve the land through building and
cultivation shaped the colonists perspective. In contrast, the Songhees traditional
way of life was disrupted by complex forces that included foreign government
policies, disease, and, after 1871, a strong federal assimilation policy. The colonial
perspective on land use was influenced by the frontier myth in which newly
discovered territory, such as British Columbia, was seen as an uninhabited
wilderness that could be civilized through settlement and harnessed for resource
extraction and farming.
43

Nevertheless, Aboriginal groups have continued to preserve their building
skills and reconstructions of pit houses and plank houses serve as both as teaching
and interpretive aids as well as ceremonial centres. By incorporating a discussion of
aboriginal structures into the larger context of the history of log building in the
province, this study acknowledges the multiple perspectives of different cultural
groups. The following section examines the types of log buildings built during the
colonial period largely by European and American settlers.

1
Two recent exceptions are Harold Kalman, Aboriginal Building in Donald Luxton ed., Building
the West (Vancouver: Talon Books, 2003); and Michael Kluckner, Vanishing British Columbia
(Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 2005).
2
Susan Buggy, An Approach to Aboriginal Cultural Landscapes, Parks Canada Website,
http://www.pc.gc.ca/docs/r/pca-ac1/sec1/index_e.asp.
3
Susan Buggy, An Approach to Aboriginal Cultural Landscapes, Parks Canada Website,
http://www.pc.gc.ca/docs/r/pca-ac1/sec1/index_e.asp. See also, A Sto:lo-Coast Salish historical atlas.
Keith Thor Carlson, ed. /Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre; Seattle, WA: University of Washington
Press; Chilliwack, B.C.: Sto:lo Heritage Trust, 2001.
4
See, for example, Kenneth M. Ames, Doria F. Raetz, Stephen Hamilton, and Christine McAfee,
Household Archeology of a Southern Northwest Coast Plank House, Journal of Field Archaeology,
vol. 19, no. 3 (Autumn 1992), 275-290; Roy Carlson, Excavations at Kwatna, in Roy Carlson ed.,
Salvage Archaeology Undertaken in British Columbia in 1971. (Burnaby: Simon Fraser University
Department of Archaeology Publication, 1972), 41-57; George F. MacDonald, Haida Monumental Art
(Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 1983); and J oan Vastokas, Architecture of the Northwest Coast Indians
(PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1966).
5
Grant Keddie, Aboriginal Defensive Sites, Part I: Settlements for Unsettling Times, RB.C.M
Website, www.royalB.C.museum.ca.
6
Grant Keddie, Aboriginal Defensive Sites, Part III: Modern Archeologists Collect Evidence,
RB.C.M Website, www.royalB.C.museum.ca.
7
Keddie, Aboriginal Defensive Sites, Part III, www.royalB.C.museum.ca.

8
All of the information on the Kitwanga Fort in this paragraph came from: Kitwanga Fort National
Historic Site of Canada, Parks Canada Website, http:// www.pc.gc.ca/Ihn-
nhs/B.C./kitwanga/index_e.asp.
9
Roderick Finlayson, 1843, as quoted in Grant Keddie, Songhees Pictorial: A History of the Songhees
People as seen by Outsiders, 1790 1912 (Victoria, B.C.: Royal B.C. Museum, 2003), 22.
10
Keddie, Songhees Pictorial, 27.
11
Kalman, Aboriginal Building, 31.
12
Ellen Lee and Lyle Henderson, Hatzic Rock Comparative Report, Archaeological Research
Branch, CPS, http://www.xaytem.ca/ancient.htm
13
Harold Kalman, Aboriginal Building, Building the West: the Early Architects of British
Columbia, Donald Luxton ed. (Vancouver: Talon Books,
14
Meares, as quoted in Joan Vastokas Architecture of the Northwest Coast Indians of America
(PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1966), 21
15
J oan Vastokas, Architecture of the Northwest Coast Indians of America (PhD dissertation,
Columbia University, 1966), 27. See also, Kalman, Aboriginal Building, 29.
16
Vastokas, Architecture of the Northwest Coast Indians, 32.
17
18
19
Kenneth M. Ames et al. Household Archaeology of a Southern Northwest Coast Plank House,
Journal of Field Archaeology, vol. 19, no. 3 (Autumn 1992) 275-290.
20
Vastokas, 42-59.
21
Vastokas, 62
22
Keith Thor Carlson, ed. A St:l Coast Salish Historical Atlas (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre,
2001),41-43.
23
Susan Buggey, An Approach to Aboriginal Cultural Landscapes: Aboriginal Versus Western
World Views, Parks Canada Website, http://www.pc.gc.ca/docs/r/pca-acl/sec1/sec1f_e.asp.
24
See the following sources for more on this: Paul Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The
Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849-1989 (Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 1990); Robin Fisher,
Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia (Vancouver: UB.C. Press,
1992); Cole Harris, The Resettlement of British Columbia (Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 1997); and Cole
Harris, Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia
25
A Vanishing Race, The Daily Colonist Magazine, Victoria, B.C., 15 December 1912, n.p.
26
See the essays by Robin Fisher and Warren Sommer in J ohn Veillette and Gary White eds, Early
Indian Village Churches: Wooden Frontier Architecture in British Columbia (Vancouver: UB.C.
Press, 1977).
27
J ohn Veillette and Gary White eds, The Missionaries in British Columbia, Early Indian Village
Churches: Wooden Frontier Architecture in British Columbia (Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 1977), 7.
28
Warren Sommer, Mission Church Architecture, Early Indian Village Churches: Wooden Frontier
Architecture in British Columbia (Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 1977), 13.
29
Sommer, Mission Church Architecture, Early Indian Village Churches, 18.
30
Sommer, Mission Church Architecture, Early Indian Village Churches, 19.
31
This photograph taken in 1974 comes from the Upper Statimc History through Photographs
website, but can also be located at B.C.A, #27828N.
32
Upper Sttimc History Through Photographs Website:
http://www.maltwood.uvic.ca/statimc/default.html.
33
See the overarching arguments of the following: Paul Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics:
The Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849-1989 (Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 1990); Robin
Fisher, Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia (Vancouver: UB.C.
Press, 1992); and Cole Harris, The Resettlement of British Columbia (Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 1997).
34
For a case study, see Soren Larsen, Collaboration Geographies: Native-White Partnerships During
the Re-settlement of Ootsa Lake, British Columbia, 1900-52, B.C. Studies, no. 138/139
(Summer/Autumn 2003), 87-114.
35
I.W. Powell, Papers connected with the Indian Land Question, 1850-1875 (Victoria, B.C.: R.
Wolfenden, 1875), 34.
- 35 -

36
37
38
39
40
Governor Douglas, Reply to the House of Assembly, 8 February 1859, as quoted in Keddie,
Songhees Pictorial, 59.
41
42
Edgar Fawcett, Evolution of the Songhees, Victoria Times, 23 March 1912.
43
See the following sources for more on this: Paul Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The
Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849-1989 (Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 1990); Robin Fisher,
Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia (Vancouver: UB.C. Press,
1992); Cole Harris, The Resettlement of British Columbia (Vancouver: UB.C. Press, 1997); and Cole
Harris, Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia
- 36 -

Section 3: Early BC Log Buildings, c. 1820s-1880s

When most people think of early log buildings,
they think of the typical pioneer log cabin, of
the type commemorated by the popular
Lincoln Logs toy (fig. 12). However, colonial
log buildings took many forms. Some were
humble dwellings constructed from round logs,
keyed with a simple saddle notch, and others
were sturdy buildings constructed from
squared logs with tight-fitting dovetailed corners. In fact, the keying of corners in
early log buildings is often complex and idiosyncratic, with more than one notch
style occurring within the same structure.
1
Some log buildings are hidden behind
shingle siding to give the appearance of frame construction, while other buildings
that appear to be made of logs turn out to be frame buildings faced with log half-
rounds. Some log buildings form the core of larger frame additions and, likewise,
early frame buildings can have later log additions. The construction styles and forms
of log buildings are often dependent on the wider context within which these
buildings were constructed.

Fig. 12 Lincoln Logs Toy
In spite of the variety of styles and construction techniques, early BC log
buildings can generally be fitted into two categories: Hudsons Bay Company (HBC)
fort structures and early settler log buildings. The log buildings constructed by early
settlers can be further divided into permanent and temporary structures
categories that overlap at times, but which are generally useful. Permanent log
buildings often have squared logs with tight-fitting dovetailed or lap-jointed corners,
while temporary log structures often have round logs with simple saddle-notched
corners. As J une Chamberlain has recently observed in her documentation of log
buildings in the Prince George area, while the barns were often built with round
logs and saddle-notched corners, the houses were built more meticulously by
squaring the logs with a broadax and dovetailing the corners to make a neat square
built log house.
2
The time allotted for building was also a factor in quality log
- 37 -

buildings erected to fill immediate needs were expected to be replaced in a few
years.
3
In short, permanent log buildings often display a degree of finish, while
temporary buildings are rudimentary.
Of the three types mentioned, HBC log structures are the most homogenous,
and exhibit a corporate style that is readily identified. This section begins with a
discussion of the history of HBC log building in British Columbia and looks at how
it influenced early permanent log structures, such as Cariboo roadhouses. It
concludes with a discussion of the diversity of construction styles in early settler log
structures.

Hudsons Bay Company Log Buildings
HBC log buildings are the oldest surviving non-aboriginal log structures built in
British Columbia. There were other log buildings constructed prior to these, such as
the original 1811 Fort Okanagan post founded by David Stuart and Alexander Ross
of the American Pacific Fur Company, however these buildings were torn down
when the post was bought by the North West Company in 1816.
4
From 1821, when
the HBC first amalgamated with the North West Company, to the 1840s, hostilities
between American, British, and Aboriginal trading interests often arose, and violent
encounters were anticipated.
5
The HBC therefore required secure defensive fort
structures, which usually consisted of a palisade and bastions surrounding a group of
utilitarian buildings. From the 1820s to 60s, the most prevalent form of HBC log
construction was the pice sur pice (also referred to as post on sill or Red
River) style, adopted from the North West Trading Company when the two
amalgamated.
6
The pice sur pice method was largely spread throughout the west
by the French Canadian
labourers who worked for the
HBC and were generally
hired as builders of all kinds
of structures.
The Fort Langley
storehouse, built in the early
- 38 -
Fig. 13 Fort Langley Storehouse, 2005.
Fig. 14 Fort Langley Storehouse
detail of wall construction, 2005.

1840s (figs. 13-14) provides an example of this building style. The construction of
Fort Langley on the Fraser River, began in 1827 under the direction of Chief Factor
J ames McMillan. A saw pit was used to square timbers and cut planks for the
bastions, storehouse, and living quarters.
7
However, in 1838 a new fort was built
three miles upstream in order to bypass what turned out to be turbulent waters at the
former site.
8
Within 18 months the new site had burnt down and had been
reconstructed by 1841. A stockade wall, 18 feet high, was constructed of round cedar
logs, and bastions built at
all four corners.
The storehouse,
originally used for storing
trade goods, is the only
original fort structure to
have survived to the
present day. It is a one
and one-half storey
building with squared
cedar logs, topped with a
hipped roof, and built in the pice sur pice style. This type of construction consists
of a log foundation, known as a sill, on top of which squared posts are set. These are
tenoned into the sill logs at the corners and intervals along the length of the sill.
Squared logs with tenoned ends are then placed horizontally between the upright
posts. An early form of pre-fabrication, the pice sur pice method had many
advantages, including tight-fitting bullet-proof walls and a heavy carrying capacity.
Above all, it allowed for uniform construction that facilitated quick assembly,
disassembly, relocation, and repair.
Fig. 15 Fort Langley Storehouse, 1925. B.C.A HP107733.
Two factors that likely helped to preserve the Fort Langley storehouse were
the relative ease of repairing decayed timbers and its usefulness as an outbuilding.
After 1886, when Fort Langley stopped operating as a company post, the storehouse
was used as a cow barn.
9
Its usefulness as a farm outbuilding up until the 1920s
ensured its maintenance and repair. In the 1920s, the Native Sons of BC recognized
- 39 -

its historic value and made some repairs to the building (fig. 15). It is possible that
timbers were replaced at this time, as there are several areas in which milled timbers
have been scored with an axe to resemble hand-hewn timbers. In 1954 the
government of Canada bought the building and replaced some logs.
10
It has since
been used as a model for the reconstruction of other buildings on the site.
Most other surviving early HBC structures
were also built in the pice sur pice construction
method, such as the Nanaimo Bastion (fig. 16)
built in 1853-55 as a defensive refuge for HBC
residents of Colville Town (Nanaimo) who settled
there in 1852 after the discovery of coal in the
area. A unique variation of HBC log construction
can be seen in the Fish Cache (fig. 17) at the Fort
St. J ames National Historic Site, built in 1888.
Although constructed in the pice sur pice style,
the form of the building was adopted from the
Carrier people, who raised their food storage
buildings on posts.
11
Fur traders relied on
Aboriginal food gathering skills for survival and
the Carrier, who had long been trapping and drying salmon to store or trade with
other peoples, were an influential presence at Fort
St. J ames.
Fig. 16 Nanaimo Bastion
Fig. 17 Fish Cache, Fort St. J ames
National Historic Site
There are also examples of other, slightly
later, HBC log construction styles, particularly
those used for non-defensive structures. Some
early HBC retail outlets were built by contractors
in the Scandinavian or log cabin style.
12
For
example, the Quesnel Post (fig. 18), built in 1867
and rebuilt in 1881, exhibits this log construction
style, with single squared timbers running the
whole length of the building and dovetailed
- 40 -

corners. This style of log construction is prevalent throughout BC, especially in the
permanent structures built by early settlers in the Cariboo region.
Although the HBCs primary interest in British Columbia was commercial
profit, it also looked after other
interests of the British crown,
including territorial expansion.
13

Among the earliest settlers were a
number of retired HBC officers,
who either built their own log
structures, or hired HBC
carpenters. In doing so, they
perpetuated the two common
styles of HBC log construction
discussed above.
Fig. 18 Quesnel Post

Early Settler Log Buildings
A number of permanent colonial log
buildings such as missionary churches
and dwellings were built in the pice sur
pice style by French Canadian HBC
carpenters. The first St. Anns
schoolhouse (fig. 20), built in the mid-
1840s, and the J ohn S. Helmcken House
(fig. 19), built in 1852, were both constructed in this style and covered with shingle
siding to add a veneer of refinement. In
his Reminiscences, Helmcken provides a
rationale for building a log house in this
style: To build a house now is a very easy
matter but a very different matter
thenThere being no lumber, it had to be
built with logs squared on two sides and
Fig. 19 Helmcken House
Fig. 20 St. Annes Convent c. 1864
- 41 -

six inches thickthe timber had to be taken from the forest squared there and
brought down by water. All this had to be contracted for by French Canadians
14

French Canadian carpenters hired by the HBC as labourers were schooled in the
pice sur pice style, thus this is the form of construction they used. Early structures
were built from logs as a matter of necessity rather than choice because milled
lumber was not yet available although, saw-pits were often erected to manufacture
planks for flooring and interior finishing.
15

Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that in British Columbia, log
structures cannot be treated solely as a simple or primitive building technology that
was replaced by frame construction as soon as milled lumber became available. As
Dale Mann and Richard Skinulus state in their book on Canadian log buildings, one
popular log cabin myth is that the availability of sawn lumber from the proliferation
of saw mills caused the decline of log building. But we have seen too many log
structures built with great numbers of mill-sawn boards to accept this theory.
16

Locally milled lumber was available in Victoria by 1854, and in most regions of the
province by the 1890s.
17
Because of the provinces late settlement, log structures
were being built by settlers in remote areas at the same time that balloon frame
houses were being built in urban areas. Likewise, in some areas both log and frame
construction were used simultaneously. In Barkerville for example, some early frame
buildings, have later log additions, suggesting that the use of log materials was
simply a matter of expediency that is, its suitability for a given purpose was reliant
on the immediate circumstances.
18

In fact, many, if not most, log buildings built by early settlers in BC were
products of expediency. Small temporary log dwellings were often built hastily to
establish the owners intent to claim a certain parcel of land. In Hubert Bancrofts
Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth, for example, a log cabin meant to
mark a land claim was the centrepiece in an 1845 HBC boundary dispute between
U.S. and British territory. According to Bancroft, Henry Williamson of Indiana
and Isaac W. Alderman erected a small log-cabin half a mile from Fort Vancouver,
and posted thereon a notice that they intended to claim the land. McLoughlin [chief
factor of the HBCs Columbia Department] pulled down the cabin and tore the notice
- 42 -

to pieces.
19
By destroying the cabin, McLoughlin erased evidence of the claim.
Later, in the Colony of British Columbia, the Land Ordinance Act of 1861
encouraged settlers to homestead by claiming tracts of unoccupied Crown Lands of
up to 160 acres for a nominal fee, and perpetuated the custom of using hastily built
log cabins as markers. One of the conditions of homesteading was that the settler
must occupy the land within thirty days and continuously reside there.
20
This
inevitably involved quickly building a temporary log structure for shelter, while land
was cleared.
While the Hudsons Bay Company corporate style influenced the
construction of the earliest settler buildings in areas adjacent to forts and posts,
settlers also brought building skills with them, which they often shared with their
neighbours. Early settlers built a diverse array of log structures and were willing to
adopt new ideas that would improve the quality of their buildings. Those who had
the means, hired contractors to build for them, while those who did not, used their
ingenuity, common sense, and often the assistance of neighbours.
The Cariboo-Chilcotin region of British Columbia has a number of surviving
early utilitarian log structures that were built along the historic Cariboo Wagon
Road. Ashcroft Manor provides an example of the evolution of early settler log
architecture. In 1862 the University of Cambridge educated Cornwall brothers,
Henry and Clement, left their comfortable lives in England and traveled to BC,
where they had aspirations to found a gold mine in the Cariboo. However, they soon
changed their minds and sought out land for farming. J ust south of Hat Creek, they
pre-empted two 160 acre parcels of land that they eventually developed into a
thriving 6000 acre ranch. In 1862, they hired two men to build a sort of shed a
single-storey log structure with two bedrooms and an attic.
21
The following year they
hired Cutter & Holes to build a larger log roadhouse to accommodate paying
overnight guests. Additional lumber for finishing was whipsawn by two men by the
names of Pringle and Nicoll.
22

In addition to these permanent log dwellings, they also built, or had built for
them, a number of small log outbuildings, some of which survive today including
two sod-roofed structures with unusual extended dovetailed corners (figs. 21 & 22).
- 43 -
Fig. 21 Ashcroft Manor Log Outbuilding
with sod roof
Fig. 22 Detail of extended dovetail corners

Sod roofs are an outstanding characteristic of Cariboo log outbuildings that provided
temperature regulation against heat in the summer and heat loss in the winter. The
roofs were gently pitched to avoid erosion.
23
More research on these buildings is
needed to determine when they were built, which was likely between 1864 and 1868.
Similar sod-roofed outbuildings can be found at Hat Creek Ranch Historic Site,
including a root cellar and two poultry houses, built during the 1860s. Likewise, the
adjoining property to the south of the Cornwall property, known as the Basque
Ranch, also has a group of similar sod-roofed log buildings believed to have been
constructed in the early 1860s.
During the 1880s these
buildings housed a group of
Chinese gardeners who leased
fields for vegetable
cultivation.
24

Chinese miners and
labourers travelled to BC, in
particular to the Cariboo
during the gold rush. Many settled in
Barkerville and the nearby town of
Stanley, where they built both log and
frame buildings.
25
However, beyond the
use of stud walls a European form of
construction there is no evidence to
suggest that their log buildings
conformed to ethnic traditions.
26

Logging and mining operations were
common in Guongdong province, where
most of the Chinese who came to BC
were from (fig. 23), and it is likely that
some brought building skills with
them.
27
Nevertheless, log buildings
Fig. 23 Sawmill, Guongdong Province, China,
The World and Its People (1967, 143).
- 44 -
Fig. 25 Detail, Chih Kung Tang building,
Barkerville, B.C.
Fig. 24 Chih Kung Tang building,
Barkerville, B.C.

owned by the Chinese in Barkerville are difficult to distinguish from the other log
buildings because so many styles of construction were used. The Chih Kung Tang
building (fig. 24), for example, consists of a central frame building constructed in
1877, with two later log additions, from 1885 and 1908 respectively. Both log
additions have round logs with squared dovetailed corners (fig. 25), a feature shared
by a number of other log buildings in Barkerville.
After the decline of the gold rush, Chinese labourers were employed to
construct the western portion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Photographs
depicting Chinese work camps suggest that it is likely that they built log structures
for shelter, but there is little documentation to back this up. After the completion of
the railway in 1885, a number of Chinese settled in the Okanagan areas.
28

Not all early log buildings were simple dwellings. An example is the Cotton
Ranch house,
29
which was built in 1880 in the relatively remote Chilcotin region by
an affluent British immigrant (fig. 27). The Cotton Ranch is an ambitious two and
one-half story log house bisected by two gable roof halves facing the front of the
structure, and connected by a hip roof. Mr. Cotton chose to build it with logs, not
out of necessity, but because he had a particular Western Ranch style in mind.
30

Thus, while many of his less affluent neighbours may have built log dwellings
because of the availability of the material and the need to provide a quick shelter, it
is important to be mindful that not all
settlers shared a common origin or
goal, and logs were not always a
make-do material. A similar example
is the Emeny Log house (fig. 28) built
at Springbend in the Okanagan by the
Emeny brothers in 1908-09, which was
a large nine-room, two-storey home
constructed in a Georgian style with a hip roof. Built with vertical logs rather than
horizontal a method sometimes called stockade style the new log mansion was
a replacement for an older log home that had been built in 1889. For some, logs were
Fig. 27 Cotton Ranch
- 45 -

- 46 -

not just an expedient raw material with which to contruct a utilitarian dwelling, they
also symbolized the frontier lifestyle.
Increasingly, building with logs was a conscious choice of style, and log
buildings were described as picturesque. In 1906, an article entitled Old Timers
Cabins: Their Usefulness and How They Should Be Built, appeared in the
Boundary Creek Times, stating: The most enduring handiwork of the old-time
miners was the picturesque log cabin.
31
Now an aesthetic product of handiwork,
the log cabin was valued as
much for its aesthetic presence
as its utilitarian use. These
picturesque rustic cabins,
built hastily and often left to
decay in the landscape,
provided a stylistic prototype
for Rustic Style log buildings
particularly the use of
exposed crowns and round logs that remain popular today. The following section
discusses the shift from logs as an expedient material to their stylistic use in Rustic
Style buildings.
Fig. 28 Emeny Log House,
Springbend, Okanagan, B.C. 1908-09

1
Even in the corporate building style of the HB.C. at Fort Langley one can discern both dovetail and
lap joints on the sill. This is also seen in log buildings at Barkerville and at the Stoker-Simpson House
in Cowichan Lake.
2
J une Chamberlain, From Broadaxe to Clay Chinking: Stories from the Early Homesteaders in the
Prince George Area, Living Landscapes, Royal B.C. Museum Website:
http://www.livinglandscapes.B.C..ca/upperfraserbasin/cottonwood/house.html.
3
Gary Lee Bunney, Log Buildings in Southern British Columbia (Masters Thesis: University of
Victoria, 1980),127.
4
J ean Webber, Fur Trading Posts in the Okanagan and Similkameen, RB.C.M Living Landscapes,
http://www.livinglandscapes.B.C..ca/thomp-ok/fur_trading/index.html.
5
Michael H. Will, A Technical Overview of Hudsons Bay Company Fur Trade Post Architecture in
British Columbia, (ARCH 499 Honors Essay, Simon Fraser University, 1992), ii.
6
Will, A Technical Overview, iii.
7
Will, A Technical Overview, 204.
8
9
Personal correspondence with Gerry Borden, Commemorations Officer, Fort Langley National
Historic Site.
10
For more information about the restoration see, Fort Langley Restoration Society Fonds Langley
Centennial Museum, MSS 91.

11
Fort St. J ames National Historic Site of Canada, Parks Canada website: http://www.pc.gc.ca.
12
13
Arthur J . Ray and Donald Freeman, Give Us Good Measure (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1978), 12.
14
Smith, Dorothy Blakey, ed. The Reminiscences of Doctor John Sebastian Helmcken (University of
British Columbia Press, in cooperation with the Provincial Archives of British Columbia, c1975),
127.
15
Helmcken describes how the finishing lumber for his house was cut by hand by Kanakas. See
Reminiscences, 128.
16
Dale Mann and Richard Skinulis. The Complete Log House Book: A Canadian Guide to Building
with logs (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited,1979), 21.
17
See the Hudsons Bay Company Archives, W.K. Lamb, Early Lumbering, 42-43.
18
An example is the Chih Kung Tang, which was built ca. 1877 and had two later log additions built.
See, Ying Ying Chen, In the colonies of Tang: Historical Archaeology of Chinese Communities in the
North Cariboo District, British Columbia (1860s-1940s) (PhD dissertation, Simon Fraser University,
2001), 17.
19
Hubert Howe Bancroft, Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth: Historical Character
Study Vol II (San Francisco: The History Company Publishers, 1892), 528.
20
For more on the selling of British Columbia lands to immigrant settlers, see Newton H. Chittenden,
Settlers, prospectors, and tourists guide, or , Travels through British Columbia, first published in
Victoria, B.C., 1882 (Vancouver: Gordon Soules Book Publishers Ltd., 1984), 19.
21
Don Tarasoff, Report on Ashcroft Manor, B.C. Heritage Branch Reports, B.C. Archives,
GR1548/8/6, 1974.
22
All of the information in this paragraph came from Branwen C. Patenaude, Trails to Gold (Victoria:
Horsdal and Schubart Publishers Ltd., 1995), 95-96.
23
Gary Lee Bunney, Log Buildings in Southern British Columbia: Pioneer Adaptation to Housing
Need in the Kettle Valley and Chilcotin. (Masters thesis, University of Victoria, 1980).
24
Branwen Patenaude, The Basque Ranch: Tomatoes in the Desert, Big Country Cariboo magazine
(Winter/Spring 1978), 12.
25
For more information on Chinese settlement in the Cariboo see Ying Ying Chen, In the Colonies
of Tang: Historical Archaeology of Chinese Communities in the North Cariboo District, British
Columbia (1860s-1940s) (Simon Fraser University, PhD dissertation, 2001).
26
This is an observation made by Bill Quackenbush, personal correspondence, J uly 20, 2005.
27
The World and its People (New York: Rand McNally & Company, 1967), 143.
28
For more information on Chinese agriculture in the Okanagan see the Living Landscapes website
at: http://www.livinglandscapes.B.C..ca/thomp-ok/ethnic-agri/chinese.html.
29
Not to be confused with the Cottonwood Manor.
30
Bunney, 109.
31
D.H. Stovell, Old Timers Cabins: Their Usefulness and How They Should be Built, Boundary
Creek Times, 14 September 1906, B.C.A Vertical Files, D-19, 081/588.
- 47 -

Section 4. Rustic Style log buildings in BC, c. 1890-1950

By the 1890s, logs were no longer just a readily available, if rustic, construction
material, but had become increasingly associated with the aesthetic Rustic Style. In
particular, from 1908 to the 1930s the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) built a
number of log stations, teahouses, and bungalow camps in the Kootenay, Yoho,
Mount Revelstoke, and Glacier National Parks of British Columbia. Encouraged by
CPR advertising and immigration campaigns, a number of wealthy British
immigrants also built Rustic Style log homes in BC. In search of a picturesque life of
ranching, farming, and leisure, these so-called remittance men, settled largely in
the Okanagan, the Kootenays, and the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island.
1
This
section provides an overview of the development of the nineteenth-century Rustic
Style, and cites examples of both the corporate CPR building program and the
individual log homes built by British immigrants who settled in BC at the turn of the
century.
The Rustic Style was promoted in North America primarily by American
architect Andrew J ackson
Downing and English architect
Calvert Vaux.
2
Drawing on the
European model of the Swiss
chalet, both advocated a romantic
ideal in which architectural forms
existed in harmony with their
surroundings. Thus, a house built
in a wilderness setting would be
enhanced through the use of local
natural materials, such as rough-
hewn logs and field-stones. In his
book of 1864, entitled Villas and
Cottages, Vaux included a plan
(fig. 29) for a very simple log

Fig. 29 Calvert Vaux, Design for a Log
House, Villas and Cottages
(New York, 1864), 128.
- 48 -

house for a well-to-do settler and his family.
3
Here the author elevated the use of
logs to an aesthetic, stating:

Log houses are frequently occupied, for years together, by well-
educated, active, energetic men, who are the pioneers of
civilization in the thinly-inhabited districts in which they take up
their abode; and much good would result if such men would set the
example of devoting some thought to the beauty, as well as to the
utility of the homes they erect for themselves and their families.
4

An emphasis on the beauty of rustic architecture had its roots in the English romantic
tradition and the late-eighteenth-century concept of the picturesque landscape,
which did much to influence landscape design in England. The taste for the
picturesque, fostered by the artist/philosopher William Gilpin through his series
Picturesque Tours (1782-1809), encouraged British travelers to appreciate the rough
irregularity of the natural landscape. In his Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, on
Picturesque Travel and on Sketching Landscape, Gilpin explained that picturesque
beauty could be found among all the ingredients of landscape trees, rocks, broken
ground, woods, rivers, lakes, plains, vallies, mountains, and distance.
5
Gilpin
further defined the picturesque as a combination both the sublime, or awe-inspiring,
and the beautiful: Sublimity alone cannot make an object picturesque. However
grand the mountain, or the rock may be, it has no claim to this epithet, unless it's
form, it's colour, or it's accompaniments have some degree of beauty.
6
A log
structure, built with aesthetics in mind, could thus become part of a rugged and wild,
but harmonious, picturesque scene.
In his report, Rustic Building Programs in Canadas National Parks,
architectural historian Edward Mills points out that the promotion of log building as
an aesthetic style was equally bolstered in the nineteenth century by the iconic use of
the humble log cabin as the embodiment of the pioneering spirit that made
America great.
7
In the United States, the Great Camp Movement of the 1870s
saw large numbers of wealthy Americans building rustic log vacation homes in the
Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.
8
A widely-read book of 1889 by
William S. Wicks, Log Cabins: How to Build and Furnish Them, includes advice on
- 49 -

how to harmonize a log structure with its surroundings through the use of
decorative log details for railings and verandas. Interestingly, a number of Wickss
sketches are of Canadian log buildings from the Muskoka District of Ontario, where
a similar camp movement arose. It was partly due to the tastes of these affluent
Americans and Canadians, who had the means not only to spend leisure time at
camp, but also to undertake transcontinental tours, that log construction was
popularized for hotels and resorts in North America.
Touring, in particular the
Grand Tour through northern
Europe had long been a staple of the
upper-class British traveler. The
Swiss Alps, especially, were thought
to have a transcendent and
invigorating effect through a
combination of picturesque views
and physical challenges.
9
However,
as the popularity of the Alps increased the region became more crowded and less
desirable. Many British tourists began to look to the undiscovered wilderness of
the Canadian West. The Canadian Pacific Railway capitalized on the popularity of
touring, and national parks were established along the CPR route in order to generate
a tourist economy that would finance the expensive railway line through the
mountainous regions of Alberta and BC.
10
Under the direction of general manager
William Cornelius Van Horne, an advertising campaign was launched to attract first-
class passengers through posters, newspaper advertisements and brochures. The
Rocky Mountains of Alberta and BC were promoted as the Canadian Alps, and a
Swiss chalet theme was used in a number of early prominent park structures.
11
When
giving instructions on the building of stations in the Rocky Mountains, Van Horne
stated Lots of logs there. Cut them, peel them and build your stations.
12

Fig. 30 Emerald Lake Chalet, 1902
(Mills, 14).
- 50 -

During the early
period of Canadas
national parks, from 1887
to 1911, questions of
building design were left
up to the park
superintendent at Banff.
Early rustic CPR hotel
architecture, such as the
Emerald Lake Chalet (1902), near Field (fig. 30), used rough hewn timber and
preceded the peeled-log construction that would characterize later tea houses and
bungalow camps.
13
After the formation of the National Parks Branch in Ottawa in
1911, Commissioner of Dominion Parks, J .B. Harkin, attempted to regulate building
design and construction, however, an internal design unit was not established until
1929.
14
Prior to that, most prominent park buildings were commissioned from
private architects, while smaller buildings such as patrol cabins and hikers refuge
cabins were commissioned through local builders using log-building techniques.
15

Fig. 31 Twin Falls Teahouse c. 1923,
Yoho National Park (Mills, I.b.5)
An early example of the latter is the Twin Falls Teahouse (fig. 31), situated in
the Upper Yoho Valley, likely built by either the CPR or its trailride outfitters.
16

Originally constructed in 1908 as a one-storey refuge cabin for hikers and horseback
riders, the building was expanded in 1923 to accommodate a growing number of
tourists when the park opened to automobile traffic. The original one-story section
has horizontal, peeled spruce logs with roughly cut saddle-notched corners. The self-
conscious use of exposed log crowns is typical of the Rustic Style. In contrast, many
of BCs early permanent pioneer log structures have squared logs with dovetail
corners that downplay rusticity. The cabin also has heavy log surrounds for its
windows and door, which, according to Mills, was another deliberate attempt to
enhance its rustic character.
17

In 1923, commissioner Harkins annual report provides a reason for the
expansion of the Teahouse, there was a considerable increase of visitors to the park
compared with the previous year. This was largely due to the additional camps that
- 51 -

have been constructed for tourist purposes.
18
The two-storey addition, also likely
built by the CPR, uses similar spruce horizontal logs and repeats the use of heavy log
window and door surrounds. Like the original 1908 cabin, it has a prominent roof
overhang supported by heavy logs. The corners, however, have been squared to
create a tight lap joint a superior construction technique, and one that probably
resulted from the skill of the builder. While the exposed crowns were eliminated, the
two-story addition has other Rustic Style features including a second story porch,
which was an essential characteristic of the Swiss chalet style.
The CPR increasingly promoted the Rocky Mountain area as an alpine
wonderland (fig. 32). Grand alpine scenery, log chalets, and even Swiss mountain
guides were marshaled to woo tourists. In particular, upper-class British travelers
were targeted. A CPR pamphlet entitled The Canadian Pacific, The New Highway to
the East Across the Mountains, Prairies & Rivers of Canada, addressed its target
audience:
May I not tempt you, kind reader, to leave England for a few short
weeks and journey with me across that broad landIf you are a
mountain climber, you shall have cliffs and peaks and glaciers
worthy of your alpenstock, and if you have lived in India, and tiger
hunting has lost its zest, A Rocky Mountain grizzly bear will renew
your interest in life.
19

Indeed, many took up this invitation to tour
western Canada, subsequently writing about
their journeys in travel books that further
promoted the image of British Columbia as
a frontier land of opportunity and
adventure.
20
Among these writers, perhaps
Clive Phillipps-Wolley is the best known
and most prolific.
21
In A Sportsmans Eden
(1888), he encouraged his fellow
Englishmen to consider immigrating to BC,
writing: Fig. 32 CPR Brochure, 1917
(CP Archives EIX3772).

I have added to the story of our
- 52 -

wanderings a few words about British Columbia as a land to live
in, for I hear, on trustworthy authority, that there are more English
gentlemen (retired soldiers and others) asking for information about
our most western towns in America this year than ever beforeIf
you like the sketch I give you, take my advice; go and see the
original for yourself.
22

Attracted by the prospect of ranching and farming, many British remittance
men the second sons of the nobility or landed gentry who, due to the law of
primogeniture, found themselves without any capital-generating property settled in
BC. Not surprisingly, some built Rustic Style log homes that expressed their frontier
sensibilities. While the majority settled in the Kootenays and Okanagan, a number of
them built recreational log homes in the community of Cowichan Lake on
Vancouver Island.
From 1885 to the beginning of the 30s Cowichan Lake was a popular destination
for hunters and fishermen from the United States, Europe, and other parts of Canada.
Early visitors to the lake, mostly explorers searching for gold and other resources,
came up river by boat or canoe in the 1880s.
23
Instead of gold, these visitors
discovered abundant wildlife for hunting and fishing, fertile soil for farming, and
immense stands of valuable Douglas Fir trees. Tourism increased in Cowichan Lake
after 1893 when the first Lakeside Hotel was built on the North Shore. It catered to
an upper-class clientele, with guests such as H.R.H. Prince Arthur of Connaught and
Lord and Lady Aberdeen.
24

Cowichan Lake became a playground for wealthy British immigrants largely due
to its proximity to the provincial capital of Victoria, where a number of ex-Indian
Army officers had retired. Many British travelers used Victoria a base from which to
embark on wilderness adventures in the surrounding areas.
25
In 1904, for example,
Lady Bromley visited Cowichan Lake, took a thrilling trip down the Cowichan River
in a canoe, and encountered a typical remittance man living in the wilderness in a
log cabin, which she recorded in a letter to a friend:

I took a six mile walk all alone yesterday, the forest is so
fascinating! I came to a small clearing, a log hut and some out
buildings, by the side of the lake, with a lovely view and of course I
- 53 -

felt I must find out who lived there!!Out came a tall handsome
man I soon saw he was an English gentleman I hear he is a
younger son of Lord Clanwilliam and his older brother sends him
money.
26

The log cabin, with its romantic connotations of rusticity and wilderness,
appealed to the picturesque ideals of upper-class Britons. The Stoker-Simpson
house, now owned by the
University of Victoria,
provides an example. In 1893
Dr. Richard Nugent Stoker, a
retired Indian Army medical
doctor, acquired a twenty-five
acre parcel of land with 3000
feet of waterfront at Marble
Bay on Cowichan Lake.
Sometime between 1893 and
1903 he had a log house built on the property (fig. 33). Stokers decision to build a
log home was influenced by both aesthetics and the availability of materials. His
Cowichan Lake property was a summer retreat, where Stoker and his wife Susan,
both keen botanists, transformed sections of their land into a large and picturesque
wilderness garden filled with rare plants, in particular rhododendrons.
27
The Rustic
Style of their log home was in keeping with the picturesque setting. Nevertheless, the
use of logs was also partly a necessity. Although there were lumber mills nearby, it
would have been difficult and costly to transport the large amount of sawn lumber
required to build a frame house. In contrast, logs could be felled on the property, or
floated up river quite easily, and there were at least two skilled log builders in the
area, French Canadians Clifford Therrien and Dan Savoie.
Fig. 33 Stoker Simpson House, Cowichan Lake, B.C.
Stokers house was constructed of peeled cedar logs with saddle notched
corners, and exhibits several elements of the Rustic Style, including a field-stone
chimney, prominent log corner brackets under a large roof overhang, and unique
hollowed-out half-log eavestroughs (fig. 34). It is believed to have been built by
- 54 -
Fig. 35 Detail of Riverhouse, Cowichan
Lake, B.C.
Fig. 34 Detail of eavestroughs at Stoker Simpson
House, Cowichan Lake, B.C.

Savoie, yet it differs in construction from the other log homes that he is known to
have built in the area. A comparison can be made with the nearby Riverhouse (fig.
35), built for Col. Andrew C. P. Haggard, also retired from the Indian Army service.
Like Stoker, Haggard was a keen outdoorsman, as well as an expert at fly-fishing. He
commissioned Dan Savoie to build a log house on the riverfrontage of his property in
1901. Originally a single storey bungalow with a wrap-around porch, it was
constructed of large peeled cedar logs with squared lap joints. Indeed, another log
home built by Savoie the Oliver House shares this squared lap-joint construction
technique, and this alone provides good evidence that Savoie did not build the
saddle-notched Stoker house.
Another difference is the
positioning of the fireplaces. In both the
Haggard and Oliver Houses the
fireplace was built in the centre of the
house, while the Stoker House has a
fireplace on an external wall. While it
is doubtful that Savoie would use such
different building techniques, it is
possible that he helped to build the
Stoker House. He is known to have
worked on other builders projects,
especially making cedar shingles and
planks. Savoie built a number of local
frame structures with small diameter logs and split cedar planks.
28
Indeed, some of
the outbuildings on the Stoker property, including the cooks hut and the garage were
built in this manner (fig. 36) and may be the work of Savoie.
Fig. 36 Cooks Hut, Stoker Simpson House
Outbuilding, Cowichan Lake, B.C.
These Cowichan Lake recreational log homes, built at the turn of the century,
can be likened to the camps of the Muskoka District of Ontario. They reveal both
the early influence of the aesthetic Rustic Style, particularly on upper-class British
immigrants who were additionally encouraged by ideals of the picturesque landscape
in the nineteenth century, and the continuing association between the frontier and the
- 55 -

log cabin. Recreational log homes were not the only log structures built in the area,
however. Working class residents built smaller homes from logs as well. In the mid-
seventies, a local newspaper article lamented their disappearance, stating, not too
long ago, the mountain country of the Cowichan district had a generous sprinkling of
cabins on it, some at abandoned sawmill operations, some built by prospectors, some
by recluses, of which there were many in the early days, and some constructed by
hunters.
29
Much of the history and identity of Cowichan Lake is preserved in its log
buildings so much so that the present day tourist information centre has also been
constructed from logs. Built in a popular contemporary chalet style, it features an
exposed post and purlin roof support
system with gable end support
trusses for a wide overhang front
porch, and has exaggerated exposed
log crowns a legacy of the Rustic
Style found on most new log
buildings.
The Rustic Style building
program of the CPR and the
popularity of recreational log buildings among the affluent during the first decades of
the twentieth century encouraged
both individuals and businesses to
commission grand log buildings
designed by architects. Stately log
homes were built by wealthy
individuals, such as the Gun Lake
Lodge (fig. 37), built as a
recreational retreat by the Austin
and Woodward families in the
1920s, near the town of Goldbridge
in the Fraser Canyon region.
Although the large two-storey home
Fig. 37 Gun Lake Lodge,
Goldbridge, B.C., c. 1920
Fig. 38 Eaglecrest, Qualicum Beach, c. 1936
(B.C.A I 28382)
- 56 -
Fig. 39 Grouse Mountain Chalet, 1926-62,
Townley & Matheson, North Vancouver

- 57 -

is reminiscent of the Georgian Style, it also uses typical Rustic Style motifs such as
exposed log crowns on the exterior and exposed log purlins and trusses on the
interior.
30
Another grand example is Eaglecrest (1933) (fig. 38) in Qualicum Beach,
Vancouver Island, designed by Vancouver architect C.B.K Van Norman. Likewise,
recreational buildings, such as the Grouse Mountain Chalet, (1926-62) (fig. 39) in
North Vancouver, designed by the Vancouver firm Townley & Matheson, and
constructed by Swedish and Finnish carpenters, capitalized on the popularity of the
rustic lodge tradition.
31
The following section discusses the use of log structures in
the promotion of tourism in BC during the postwar era, and the subsequent drawing
of attention to the historical value of old log structures.

1
The term remittance man was often applied to the second sons of the British nobility or landed
gentry who found themselves without a means of earning income due to the law of primogeniture.
While the first son inherited his fathers property, and thereby could generate income, the second son
was usually encouraged to take up a profession in medicine, law or the clergy. The colonies provided
a chance for a number of second sons, with the help of a regular family remittance, or grant, to
develop their own landed estates. For more information about remittance men in B.C., see Mark
Zuehlke, Scoundrels, Dreamers, and Second Sons: British Remittance Men in Western Canada
(Vancouver, B.C.: Whitecap Books, 1994).
2
History Branch, Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, 1992), 19.
3
Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 124.
4
Calvert Vaux, Villas and Cottages (New York: Harper & Bothers, 1864), 124-25.
5
William Gilpin, from Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, 2nd edition (1794). Essay II. On
Picturesque Travel.
6
Gilpin, from Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, 2nd edition (1794). Essay II. On Picturesque
Travel.
7
History Branch, Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, 1992), 7.
8
Robert A. M. Stern, Pride of Place: Building the American Dream (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1986), 173-77.
9
E. J . Hart, The Selling of Canada: The CPR and the beginnings of Canadian tourism (Banff:
Altitude Publishing Ltd., 1983), 42.
10
11
Hart, The Selling of Canada, 21.
12
Cornelius Van Horne, as quoted in Ian Baird, Canadian Pacific Railway Stations in British
Columbia (Victoria, B.C.: Orca Book Publishers, 1990), 16.
13
Mills, Rustic Building Programs, 16-19.
14
15
16
Mills, Rustic Building Programs, np.
17
Mills, Rustic Building Programs, np.
18
Dominion of Canada. Canadian National Parks Sessional Papers No. 12, Annual Report of the
Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 1922, Report of the Commissioner,
J .B. Harkin (Ottawa: Kings Printer, 1923), 80.
19
E.J . Hart, The Selling of Canada, 25.
20
Some of these include, W.J . Clutterbuck, B.C. 1887: a ramble in British Columbia (London:
Longmans, Green, 1888); J ulius Price, From Euston to Klondike: the narrative of a journey through

British Columbia and the Northwest Territory in the summer of 1888 (London: S. Low, Marston,
1898); H. Somers Sommerset, The Land of Muskeg (London: Heinemann, 1895); and Charles T. Fort,
From Coast to Coast: a farmers ramble through Canada, and the Pacific Railway system (London:
Bearne Brothers, 1899).
21
Phillipps-Wolley wrote three travel/adventure books about B.C., including Gold Gold in the
Cariboo!: a story of adventure in British Columbia (London: Blackie, 1874); The Trottings of a
Tenderfoot: a visit to the Columbia Fiords, and Spritzbergen (London: R. Bentley, 1884); and A
Sportsmans Eden (London: R. Bentley, 1888).
22
Phillipps-Wolley, A Sportsmans Eden, xv.
23
Ken Hicks, Escape to the great Outdoors, Riverside Inn History,
http://riversideinn.ca/KenHicks.htm
24
Saywell, Kaatza, 43.
25
Zuehlke, Scoundrels, 38-39
26
Lady Bromley as quoted in Saywell, Kaatza, 183.
27
The Stokers were aided in this by Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan Simpson who came to Cowichan Lake in
1912.
28
Saywell, Kaatza, 42.
29
J ack Fleetwood, Once Upon a Cabin, Cowichan Leader, 14 December 1977, 2.
30
Heritage Conservation Branch, Ministry of Provincial Secretary and Government Service,
Lillooet-Faser Heritage Resource Study, Vol. I (March 1980), 680-81.
31
- 58 -

Section 5. Post-war Period: Tourism, Heritage, and Revival

From the 1950s onward in BC, log
buildings were generally associated
with the romance of the pioneer
log cabin and wilderness
recreation. During the 1950s
leading up to the BC centennial
celebration in 1958 a number of
historic log buildings were restored
as part of a renewed interest in
constructing a provincial
identity. Since the 1970s, BC has witnessed a revival in log building, and the
province has become home to a number of log building schools and construction
companies. This section investigates the creation of a provincial identity that centres
on wilderness recreation and the historic themes of the gold rush and pioneer
settlement all of which have been symbolized by the log building. It begins by
looking at the influence of tourism on the construction of log hotels, lodges, and
private holiday residences and discusses the social conditions that encouraged the
restoration of historic log buildings. It concludes by looking at the log building
revival that began in the early 1970s.
Fig. 40 B.C. Canada House, Sitka Log Homes, 100 Mile
House, B.C.
The success of the log building as an international symbol of the province of
British Columbia can be exemplified by the recent BC Canada House (fig.40),
designed and manufactured in 100 Mile House by Sitka Log Homes for the 2006
Olympics in Italy. The BC Canada House is intended to showcase a uniquely BC
home and uniquely BC culture to the world.
1
An online article entitled BCs
Global Symbol, The Log Cabin? questioned whether the use of a log building as a
symbol of BC was a stereotypical image of an outdated and irrelevant building
form.
2
After questioning Walter Bramsleven, General Manager of Sitka Log
Homes, about this, the author reported his response: nothing defines Canada more
- 59 -
Fig. 41 B.C. Wood Products Building, c. 1913,
Hastings Park, Vancouver.

than a log home; it paints a very romantic picture. Everyone's idealistic vision of
winter is sitting around a fireplace in a log cabin on a ski hill. This is a well-defined
Canadian image.
3
Whether it is an image to be promoted or rejected, there is no
denying the strong association between log buildings and BC in the popular
imagination.
The log building as a symbol of BC has had a long association with the
lumber industry. In 1913, another uniquely BC log structure, the BC Wood
Products Building (fig. 41) was designed by Vancouver architects Bertram Dudley
Stuart and Howard E. White to promote BC wood products.
4
Designed in the
Classical Revival style, it had huge unpeeled logs as columns and resembled the
Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition Forestry Building constructed in Seattle in 1909
(fig. 42). Lumber products have been a major BC export since 1919 when the H.R.
MacMillan Export Company was formed to sell lumber internationally.
5
With over
1000 million cubic feet of timber harvested per year by 1955, the logging industry
played a large role in the economic development of the province, and this in turn
strengthened the association
between logs as a natural resource
and BC in the public imagination.
6

Equally significantly and
discussed at length in the previous
section from as far back as the
mid-1880s and well into the 1930s,
the CPR developed a widespread
advertising campaign that promoted
BC as a wilderness adventure land
(fig. 43).
7
Continuing in this tradition,
during the 1930s writers such as Grey Owl,
an Englishman who masqueraded as an
Aboriginal person, also promoted western
Canada as a wilderness frontier. In his 1936
book Tales of an Empty Cabin he wrote,
- 60 -
Fig. 42 Forestry Building, 1909, Seattle, Alaska-
Yukon-Pacific Exposition Collection (U of
Washington, Norwellx408).
Fig. 43 Bungalow Camps, Charles J .
Greenwood (CP Archives BR-176).

Canada consists of about the finest and most valuable Wilderness area in the world.
Settlers still go unbelievable distances into the backwoods to hew out, if possible
their fortune
8
While Grey Owl was likely referring to northern Saskatchewan
and Alberta, his statement is an appropriate description of the settlement of northern
BC as well. As J une Chamberlains recent study of log buildings in the Prince
George region demonstrates, much settlement in that area took place in the 1920s
and 30s. For example, in 1936 J ake and Bertha Weisbrod applied for a homestead at
Crescent Lake where they lived for some time in a small trapper cabin.
9
Likewise,
the Allan family homesteaded at Nukko Lake in 1927.
10
These and other
homesteaders built log homes
and outbuildings from trees
cleared on their land well into
the 1930s. In this respect, log
building has been a consistent
tradition in BC.
Nevertheless, for most
people, the availability of
milled lumber and the rise of
Modernist style architecture
made building with logs a much more self-conscious undertaking than it had
previously been. Most log buildings built from the mid-twentieth century on resulted
from a conscious choice of style, rather than necessity. An example is Shorehome
(fig. 44), a log house built by H.W. Herridge, an M.P. for Kootenay West, who
sometimes signed his name with the epithet log cabin socialist.
11

Fig. 44 Shorehome, Kootenay Lake
With the advent of widespread automobile travel and the construction of
major highways after World
War Two, roadside lodges and
restaurants were built to appeal
to tourists in search of a
wilderness experience. Often,
these accommodations mirrored
- 61 -
Fig. 45 Alexandra Lodge, near Mission, B.C.

larger corporate and government building programs, such as Canada Parks use of
rustic log buildings. Privately owned lodges, such as the Alexandra Lodge (1927)
(fig. 45), near Mission, used decorative half-log facing to reinforce an identification
with both the pioneer history of the Cariboo and the regions appeal as a
sportsmans paradise. Similarly, after the creation of Wells Gray Provincial Park,
J ohn and Henry Hogue built the rustic log Helmcken Falls Lodge as a base for
guided hunting and fishing tours in 1948. In the fall of that same year, The
Dominion-Provincial Tourist Conference in Ottawa reported that at this present
moment 837 resorts auto courts and camps, hunting and fishing lodges, guest
ranches, ect. are registered with the British Columbia Government Travel
Bureau.
12
Even so, the demand for resort facilities was so great that the Tourist
Conference reported ample
room for expansion.
13

Tourists came to BC then, as
they do now, largely for the
scenery and outdoor
recreational activities that
helped to crystallize BCs
super natural provincial
identity an identity that is
enhanced by the symbol of
the log building (fig. 46).
Fig. 46 Cariboo Log Cabin Camp, c. 1947, Quesnel.
An emphasis on the tourist industry in BC also prompted a renewed interest in
heritage sites as tourist destinations during the 1950s. Prior to this time, the
conservation of historic buildings and sites was largely due to the efforts of local
societies and associations.
14
A world-wide interest in the preservation of cultural
heritage began in earnest after the second World War. In 1946 the International
Council of Museums was created to improve and advance museums around the
world, operating under the auspices of UNESCO.
15
Like other allied countries in the
post-war era, Canada experienced both increased nationalism and a desire for
economic recovery. In Canada, interest in the promotion of cultural identity and
- 62 -

heritage resulted in the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts,
Letters, and Sciences, overseen by chairman Vincent Massey from 1949 to 1951.
According to the report, there was a need for greater awareness and encouragement of
Canadian history and traditions.
16

The Royal Commission encouraged the commemoration of historic places
stating that, if the site is obliterated or the ancient structure gone, the time, the
place, or the person commemorated should be symbolized, it seems to us, in a vivid
and inspiring fashion because we consider the enjoyment of national history
to be a form of entertainment not sufficiently familiar to Canadians.
17
One of the
strongest recommendations to come out of the report was that greater emphasis
be placed on the restoration and preservation of historic sites and buildings including
those buildings of purely architectural significance. In the decade after the Royal
Commission was published various historic sites in BC, many of which centre around
log buildings, began to be restored.
In the 1950s the Pandosy Mission was restored through the actions of the
Okanagan Historical Society. Fort Steele began to be dismantled in the 1950s, and
local residents who were trying to promote tourism appealed to the provincial
government to make it an historic park in 1961.
18
Often, where no structures existed,
new log buildings were erected to provide a point of interest. For example, in 1953
the Fort Langley Restoration Society began to promote the restoration of the former
HBC fort, and in 1955 new log structures began to be built.
19
Likewise, Barkerville
was taken over by the provincial government in 1958 and designated as an historic
park. Historian J ean Barman has pointed out that during the 1950s there was an
increased emphasis on the psychological creation of a provincial identity that
reached its apex in 1958 with British Columbias centennial celebration.
20
The
restoration of historic log buildings and sites can be seen as a vital part of the attempt
to create a provincial identity founded on two prominent historical themes: the gold
rush and pioneer settlement. Concern for heritage, the development of tourism, and
increased automobile travel in BC all merged during a post-war period of rising
affluence and nationalism in Canada. Log buildings became the epitome of pioneer
settlement and rustic outdoor recreation.
- 63 -

In the 1970s, log buildings began to be associated with simplicity, ecology,
and self-sufficiency. The log building revival that occurred during the early 70s was
influenced by an ecological mind-set that encouraged the subversion of commodity
culture through the production of un-processed, hand-crafted goods. This grass-roots
movement shared the romanticism of the earlier Rustic Style log building revival.
Individuals sought refuge in remote areas of BC where seemingly endless forests
provided a romantic image of an unregulated wilderness in which one might find an
alternative to the turmoil of modern urban life. In 1971, Bob Mackie published his
book, Building with Logs, to encourage those Canadians who would leave the
suburban reservations to live part of their lives at peace with nature
21
In the same
year he opened the School of Log Building in Prince George. Through his promotion
of quality hand-built log homes Mackie brought attention to the restoration and
preservation of old log structures as well.
Log buildings have enjoyed
an increased popularity over the
past thirty-five years. It was in the
1970s that Donovan Clemson
focused his attention on old log
buildings, documenting them in
photographs. During the same
period, Bronwen Patenaude began
publishing articles in Big Country
Cariboo magazine on old log
buildings of the Cariboo and their
histories. The construction of new log buildings became immensely popular in the
Cariboo region. In a three-part article written for Big Country Cariboo Magazine
entitled, To Build Your Home of Logs, log builder Rick Carr voiced the rationale
of the times: in using logs as primary building material, a person is using the natural
resource of the Cariboo. It is a material that goes with the area historically, and
now with log homes coming back as a modern type of dwelling, it is set into
surroundings that are conducive to this type of dwelling.
22

Fig. 47 Williams Lake, Log Building
operations, 2005.
- 64 -

- 65 -

Log building continues to flourish in the Cariboo today (fig. 46), exemplified
by the nomination of 100 Mile House as the log building capital of North America;
and the log building is increasingly seen as a symbol of uniquely BC culture, as
exemplified by the BC Canada House described at the beginning of this section.
23
If
log buildings are to be used as symbols of BCs provincial identity, then they need to
be linked to a historical context that is unique to the province. British Columbia,
perhaps more than any other province in Canada, has had a consistent log building
tradition, which can be seen in aboriginal plank and pit houses, HBC log buildings,
early settler log buildings, CPR Rustic Style log buildings, and later recreational log
buildings.

1
B.C. Canada House One Step Closer to 2006 Olympics, Ministry of Economic Development
News Release, J uly 5, 2005.
2
Helena Gradolnik, B.C.s Global Symbol, The Log Cabin? The Tyee, August 26, 2005.
www.thetyee.ca/
3
Gradolnik, B.C.s Global Symbol, The Log Cabin? www.thetyee.ca/
4
5
First Growth: The Story of British Columbia Forest Products Limited (Vancouver, 1975), 26.
6
F.L.C. Reed and Associates Ltd., The British Columbia Forest Industry: Its Direct and Indirect
Impact on the Economy, (Victoria, B.C.: Department of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources, 1973),
4.
7
E.J . Hart, The Selling of Canada: The CPR and the Beginnings of Canadian Tourism (Banff, AB:
Altitude Publishing, 1983), 12.
8
Grey Owl, Tales of an Empty Cabin (London: Lovat Dickson Ltd., 1936), 143.
9
J une Chamberlain, From Broadaxe to Clay Chinking,
www.livinglandscapes.B.C..ca/upperfraserbasin/broadaxe/beaver.html.
10
J une Chamberlain, From Broadaxe to Clay Chinking,
www.livinglandscapes.B.C..ca/upperfraserbasin/broadaxe/nukko.html.
11
Clemson, Living with Logs, 80.
12
Report of Proceedings, Dominion-Provincial Tourist Conference, 1946 (Ottawa: Kings Printer and
Controller of Stationary, 1947), 33.
13
Report of Proceedings, 34.
14
Technical Report of the Province of British Columbia Tourism Development Strategy (Marshall,
Macklin, Monagan Ltd., 1979),192.
15
Christina F. Krepps, Liberating Culture: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation and
Preservation (London: Routledge, 2003), 21.
16
Government of Canada, Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and
Sciences, Preamble to terms of reference (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1951).
17
Government of Canada, Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and
Sciences, Chapter 20 (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1951), 346
18
Derryll White, Fort Steele: Here History Lives (Surrey, B.C.: Heritage House Publishing, 1988),
14.
19
Fort Langley Restoration Society fonds, 1953-65, MSS 91, Langley Centennial Museum, Langley,
B.C.
20
J ean Barman, The West Beyond the West: A history of British Columbia (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1991), 296.

21
B. Allan Mackie, Building with Logs (Prince George, B.C.: B. Allan Mackie and Ida Mary Mackie,
1971), 1.
22
Rick Carr, Build Your Home of Logs, Big Country Cariboo Magazine (Fall/Winter 1976), 8.
23
B.C. Canada House One Step Closer to 2006 Olympics, Ministry of Economic Development
News Release, J uly 5, 2005.
- 66 -

Summary and Recommendations for Further Study

This broad contextual history of log building in BC has identified four general log-
building trends: HBC log buildings; pioneer log buildings; Rustic Style log
buildings; and a log building revival that occurred in the 1970s and gained
momentum to the present day. Each of these log-building trends was influenced by
particular social and economic, and in some cases political, conditions and currents
that occurred over the span of 160 years.
While broad contextual studies of this kind are helpful as maps to more
complex territories, they are apt to lean toward generalization. A regional approach
to the study of the history of log building in BC may provide more substantive
evidence for the general historical trends identified in this study. In particular, a more
localized regional approach would be beneficial because of the individual nature of
the settlement patterns and the economic development of, for example, Vancouver
Island compared to the Okanagan.
One feasible option would be to adopt the model initiated by the RBCM
Living Landscapes Program study of log buildings in the Prince George area
conducted by J une Chamberlain. Conducting local research into small regional areas
of log building activity has at least five concrete and productive results, including:
1. Photographic documentation of existing log buildings.
2. Collection of oral histories of the people who in some cases built, lived in, lived
near, or now own, the log buildings in question.
3. Identification of the connection between individual peoples histories and the
development of communities.
4. Development of greater historic significance for sites that currently have local
importance. This will enable historic sites to move toward provincial and
national levels of significance, and to qualify for federal funding opportunities.
5. Development of a culturally inclusive heritage across BC. The log building
traditions of ethnic communities such as the Chinese in the Cariboo, are not well
documented. By conducting regional studies, there is a greater chance of finding
pertinent information.
- 67 -

One way to begin such localized regional studies would be to create an
information website about the larger historical context of log building in BC, which
could be accessed by local groups so that they could contribute images and histories
of their local log buildings. The Cariboo, the Kootenays, the Okanagan, and the
Peace areas are all rich in log building history. More surprisingly, however, there are
also pockets of log building history in areas like southern Vancouver Island and the
lower mainland. Each of these areas has a rich and unique history to tell.
Finally, in constructing value for historic log buildings, there is a need to be
mindful of blindly repeating pioneer histories that are not reflective or inclusive of
the histories of all British Columbians. As discussed in section 1 of this study, the
image of the log cabin has long served as a powerful symbol of the Western Frontier.
That dominant association needs to be taken into account in the construction of
pioneer histories. If histories are not inclusive, the cultural views of Aboriginal and
other marginalized groups will remain silenced. History and heritage needs to
represent the interests of as wide a cultural group as possible. While this study
attempts to be inclusive of the log building practices of Aboriginal peoples and other
ethnic groups, such as the Chinese settlers in the Cariboo, it also recognizes that
more primary research needs to be done in these areas before they can become part
of a larger contextual history.
- 68 -

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- 77 -

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