Disappearing Company Towns
Company towns are created by business decisions, but communities are formed by people.
The northern Vancouver Island communities of Englewood, Beaver Cove, and Kokish were typical of the many resource-based company towns that were scattered throughout British Columbia throughout the 20th century, created purely for economic reasons, often later purchased by larger companies and then abandoned when that economic purpose shifted. Nearby Telegraph Cove was also a company town, but it has survived. The Cove was, and still is, privately owned, and its various owners have been able to adapt to challenging and changing times.
Telegraph Cove and Englewood
In Alert Bay in 1925, a young Fred Wastell, the only son of BC Fishing and Packing Company’s mill manager Alfred Marmaduke (“Duke”) Wastell, went into a partnership with his father and local businessman Charlie Nakamura to develop a fish saltery and a small box mill. These businesses — in tiny Telegraph Cove — were developed to gratify Japan’s demand for British Columbia’s fish. Duke had purchased the 376 acres that encompassed the town in 1911, buying out a bad debt, to the vivid consternation of his wife, Mary Elizabeth (“Mame”). By the time the stock market crashed in October 1929 and opened the door to the Depression, Fred was married with a new baby — and no job. Mame encouraged
