Not long ago, the town of Woodfibre was a small yet bustling community before being known for its pending liquefied natural gas plant.
The town of Woodfibre began around the construction of the pulp mill in 1912. It blossomed throughout the mid-century until about the 1960s and early 1970s when the townspeople began to move out to neighbouring communities such as Squamish and Britannia Beach.A former resident, Beth Dinesen, who lived there from about 1955 to 1971, described a thriving community.
“It was very idyllic. You know, everybody knew everybody. It was a safe haven,” said Dinesen.“We had baseball; we had many sports, we had [a] swimming pool, which was a central thing for all the kids every summer. That was like the place that, you know, everybody congregated, and all the kids were swimmers because of it.”
Dinesen also recalled having a general store, a community hall, a library and even a bowling alley.Similar to Dinesen, Wayne Cherney, a resident from about 1948 to 1972, described a supportive community.
“Everybody knew everybody. And unfortunately, everybody knew everybody’s business,” he said with a laugh.“If you had a problem, your neighbour was there to help you. And not just your neighbour, I can’t really say strangers — you were only a stranger if you had just moved in there.”
Dinesen said that when she lived there, the school had converted to kindergarten through Grade 8 only. So when it was her time to attend high school, she ferried to Squamish.“We would take the ferry every day, well, every school day. And then if it got windy, we couldn’t come home, we’d have to be boated out.”
“Or, we couldn’t go to school,” she recalled. “Sometimes it felt like ‘Oh yay, a day off!’”Cherney also remembered those windy days on Howe Sound.
“There were some days they didn’t shut the ferry down and it was quite a ride. So windy that they had trouble docking the ferry. I remember that they had to do several tries to get the ferry into the ramp.”On the calmer days, Cherney said there were many games being played rather than schoolwork.
“There was a lot of card playing,” Cherney said. “On my part, there was no homework being done, and I probably should have been doing it.”‘Everybody pulled together’
Both Dinesen and Cherney recounted a couple of incidents that tested the strength of the Woodfibre residents.“There was a big explosion when I was a kid in the mill, and that was pretty horrific,” said Dinesen.
According to the archives at the Squamish Public Library, a wood pulp boiler exploded in mid-August of 1963. Seven people were killed and it left about 300 workers out of work until it was fixed.Cherney said he remembered the incident quite vividly.
“We were sitting having our afternoon meal. Dad was going to be going on shift in about an hour,” Cherney said. “It was really noisy, so I ran to the window because you can see the mill.”“I knew something was wrong because all I could see was smoke. Black smoke coming out of the top of the building. [Dad] didn’t finish his meal. He says, ‘I have to go to the mill, they’re gonna need help,’” said Cherney, his voice heavy with emotion.
“And I recall my dad took me for a tour of that building after,” Cherney continued. “I was pretty young. I was 14 or 15 and I was curious. I’m glad he took me through, but I still didn’t understand the immensity of the event.”Later that same year, a flood from the creek spilled into the town, though people had time to evacuate from their homes.
“The creek overflowed and cars were washing out to the ocean, and trailers,” Dinesen said. “It was something. We could take a rowboat around the town, the lower townsite. Our house was okay, but it was pretty devastating for those that were on what we called the flats.”
“What happened is it was a lot of rain and there was a lot of debris and boulders [that] came down Mill Creek and filled up the creek bed. The water had to go somewhere,” said Cherney.Cherney said his home was also safe, but he remembered other buildings being filled with water, such as the bowling alley.
“The water was right over all the nice hardwood lanes. And the coffee shop, which was attached to the bowling alley.”
“Everybody pulled together,” said Dinesen about the town’s response to the flood.
“It was a real community that way.”
Woodfibre loses Japanese population to forced internment
Before either Dinesen or Cherney lived at Woodfibre, another event affected the community and exhibits the history of racism from the Canadian government.
In 1942, the government forcibly moved Japanese-Canadian men, aged 18 to 45, to internment camps just a few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Takeo Ujo Nakano lived at Woodfibre before his removal, as he wrote in his memoir Within the Barbed Wire Fence: A Japanese Man’s Account of his Internment in Canada.Nakano wrote that at the time, he estimated that approximately half of the 1,000-person population was Japanese. Nakano left behind his wife and eight-year-old daughter.
Nakano wrote that it took approximately 21 months before he reunited with his family.Though Dinesen was not at Woodfibre when the men were moved to internment camps, Dinesen wrote an article for the Vancouver Sun that recalled seeing the dilapidated buildings where the Japanese lived before internment.
“There, tucked away, was a ghost town of crumbling buildings, disintegrating furniture and the skeletal remains of a bird hanging in a shattered window. ‘What is this place?’” wrote Dinesen.“All Auntie Suzie said was ‘Japanese people lived here before the war.’”
Between the early 1920s and the forced move to internment camps in 1942, Squamish historian, Eric Andersen, said in an email to The Chief that he estimates that Japanese people made up about 25% of the pulp mill workforce. A book published in 1940 estimated about 200 Japanese people were working at the mill in Woodfibre.After they were removed, Andersen said Chinese-Canadians moved in as China was an ally during World War II. Dinesen also wrote in her article that the “Chinese workers moved into this space” where the Japanese once lived.
‘I just have lots of good memories’
Despite these tumultuous events, Andersen said the town endured until 1961, when the residents were starting to be encouraged to move to Squamish because of mill expansion.
Some residents remained until 1973, when Andersen said the residents were again encouraged to move to Squamish because of another mill expansion. He said the mill finally closed in 2006 because of a lack of chip supply on the coast.For Dinesen, she said she still feels a connection to the other people who lived in Woodfibre and she’s happy that they stay in touch and share pictures on social media.
But, she said she is disappointed that she can’t visit the old town very easily.“You can’t just show up. It’s a process,” she said. “You can’t take your children to where you grew up, so that’s sad. That’s why I wrote the article in the first place.”
Cherney said he was fortunate to be able to take his own boat to view the area from the water.“I’ve taken my children over there and kind of pinpointed where our family lived,” he said.
But, seeing the crumbled town can bring up its own emotions, he said.“One of my close friends, and I’m not going to name any names,” said Cherney. “He said when he didn’t see the church, he had tears in his eyes.”
But, for Cherney, he said the good memories are more overwhelming.“I just have lots of good memories. I really do. I have lots of good memories. And I still talk, I still have lots of friends, so we love to reminisce.”
“I enjoy every time that I get together with somebody and talk about Woodfibre.”
