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Vizarddesky | 6 years ago

I live on this mountain. These are not settlements. These are logging camps or seasonal work camps. My grandfather worked up there and he was jealous of the Japanese for their beautiful shacks when the Norwegians were in canvas tents. Of course, he admitted that the Japanese just worked harder to make their own quarters.

There were orchards, livestock, farms of potatoes, onions and legumes, but most of the activity was in hauling out doug fir to tidewater with oxen or steam donkeys or building miles-long flumes to shoot WRC shinglebolts down to the river or Burrard Inlet.

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metaphor|6 years ago

The article noted the following:

> But it is the third site, which seems to have transitioned from a logging camp to a thriving village, that fascinates [the archaeology professor] the most.

Must be a real privilege for your grandfather to share that bit of vivid history with you. My grandfather would have been a young adult during WW2, and the small island that both he and I grew up on has a deep history with the Japanese which had a direct impact on its indigenous population; he supposedly spoke fluent Japanese as a consequence, along with Korean (by birth), the indigenous language (married a local), and eventually English (after American occupation). Unfortunately, he was unable to speak coherently by the time I was in my late teens and old enough to be interested, so the only history lessons I've gotten of the time were second hand, passed down from the stories he told my father.

navane|6 years ago

doug fir: a tall, slender conifer with soft foliage and, in mature trees, deeply fissured bark. It is widely planted as a timber tree.

tidewater: an area that is affected by tides, especially eastern Virginia.

flume: a human-made channel for water in the form of an open declined gravity chute whose walls are raised above the surrounding terrain, in contrast to a trench or ditch

WRC shinglebolts: [Hand-sized chunks of wood] relatively small cubes of Western Redcedar which are later processed into redcedar roof shingles.

tom_mellior|6 years ago

> There were orchards, livestock, farms of potatoes, onions and legumes

And presumably there were non-loggers living there tending to these things. So by what definition is this not a settlement?

dleslie|6 years ago

Generally, if the site was temporary or seasonal-use only. Such 20th century sites are relatively common here in BC.

jacobush|6 years ago

Is it not possible some maintained a year round presence there, especially given apparently Japanese were not well seen in other parts of Canada?