This Week in History: Deep and Sheltered Waters – The History of Tod Inlet

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WatchIn 1891, John Fannin, the Royal BC Museum's first curator, published his Check List of British Columbia Birds. That was the start of the Museum's publishing program. And next month, a fascinating book on the history of a very special place here on Vancouver Island will be published.

In 1891, John Fannin, the Royal BC Museum’s first curator, published his Check List of British Columbia Birds. And from that humble beginning, the Museum’s publishing program was born.

Next month, a fascinating book on the history of a very special place here on Vancouver Island will be published.

The book is called Deep and Sheltered Waters – The History of Tod Inlet.

It is written by David Gray, a researcher, author, and documentary filmmaker, who’s connection to Tod Inlet dates back to when he was just a few months old.

“Our family boat was kept at Tod Inlet,” Gray explains. “Of course, we fished, and we swam, and we played, and we explored. And my brother and I, one day when we were exploring up the creek, on one of the steep banks, under the huge broadleaf maple trees, we found ‘stuff’.   It was basically a midden, a ‘garbage dump’, and among the things we found were the skulls of pigs.”

Gray points out that as he was ten years old at the time, he and his brother had no idea they had stumbled upon “the remnants of the immigrant Chinese community that worked at the old cement plant that was established at Tod inlet at 1905.”

Around the same time, the ten year old discovered the Royal BC Museum.

“I remember when I was a member of the Victoria Junior Naturalists Club, we would go to the museum on Saturdays and watch films, and we had various staff members talking to us. And on one wonderful weekend, Dr. Clifford Carl, the director, had us all in for a workshop on how to stuff a mouse. And that was the first time I realized that museum specimens were something that people did for a living! I didn’t know that biologists even existed then!” Gray excitedly explains.

“So” he adds poignantly, “my connections to the Museum go a long way back, and they’re still really important. And it’s an incredible honour to have my book on the history of Tod Inlet published by the Royal BC Museum.

“The book starts way back with the Tsartlip First Nation oral histories, explaining some of the things that were found, and what the villages may have been like, and then moves on to the days of cement, and the factory that started in 1904. Tod Inlet was an important place in the world. Cement from Tod Inlet was exported in the 1920’s to Australia, to South America, to Cuba, to China” says Gray.

Gray’s book also includes a tale about the Canada C3 expedition of 2017. Tod Inlet was the last stop, on the 149th day of the journey from Coast to Coast to Coast, before the ship arrived on day 150 in Victoria’s Inner Harbour.

“I was on three of the Arctic legs” says Gray, “and then I flew out to Victoria at the end of the expedition to greet the ship, as they came in by zodiac to the wharf at Tod Inlet. We had 30 or 40 school kids, [as well as] people who used to live in Tod inlet. That was extremely exciting to both welcome my colleagues from C3, and all the other participants.”

Gray feels blessed to have had the opportunity to create a legacy honouring one of his favorite places on earth.

“I had made maps of the historic sites, I’d looked at the ecology of the area, I had played there as a kid, I’d interviewed all sorts of people who lived there and worked there. The book has been a very wonderful wrap-up of all those years.”

Deep and Sheltered Waters: The History of Tod Inlet publishes November 6 from the Royal BC Museum.

Veronica CooperVeronica Cooper

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