Photo Record
Images
Metadata
Catalog Number |
1990.007.002 |
Object Name |
Print, Photographic |
Description |
Photograph depicting Hillcrest Lumber Company's mill and dry kilning operation at Sahtlman. Shows wooden structures and a sawmill chimney blowing smoke. "Hillcrest LBR Co. at Sahtlman -- Duncan" written on the back. |
Image File Name |
1937 - Hillcrest Mill Buildings - Sahtlam - 1990007002 - jpg72 - 001 |
Date (y/m/d) |
1937/12/02 |
Place |
Sahtlam |
Provenance |
The Stuef's were originally from Alberta. They lived in a faming community near Bismarck and in the mid 1930's they moved to the Cowichan Valley where Carl Stuef worked at Hillcrest's logging operations in Sahtlam. Carl Stuef's son and Leona Portelance's brother, Frederick Walter Stuef, moved to Alberni Valley four years after getting married and was employed by MacMillan Bloedel as an electrician. In 1917, Carlton Stone built a sawmill in Sahtlam, BC, five miles west of Duncan, BC on Vancouver Island. It was destined to become the largest independently owned family sawmill in British Columbia, employing some 300 employees in the sawmill / planer mill complex and another 50 in the logging division. The company operated in Sahtlam from 1917 to 1943 and when the timber was depleted, Stone moved the whole operation lock, stock and barrel by rail to Mesachie Lake, BC, 19 miles west of Duncan, BC past the town of Lake Cowichan (From: The Last Whistle - Hillcrest Lumber Company LTD by Cecil Ashley). The work force of Hillcrest was made of five ethnic groups: European, Chinese, Japanese, East Indians and First Nations. Wages did not depend on ethnicity but rather on skill. |
Search Terms |
Hillcrest Lumber Company multiculturalism Sahtlam Dry Kiln sawmill Chimney |
Collection |
Sawmilling |
People |
Portelance Stone |
Subjects |
Sawmills Buildings & Structures Documentary, Cowichan Valley |