THE ORIGINS OF A HIGHWAY The Malahat
To the thousands of drivers who move north and south on Vancouver Island the Malahat is just another busy and dangerous route jammed with traffic. It is relatively easy now, traffic jams aside, but more than a hundred years ago it was very difficult to travel north up Vancouver Island from Victoria.
In the early 1900s, it took Major James Francis Lenox MacFarlane almost three days by horse-drawn wagon to reach Victoria from his farm at Cobble Hill. The wagon road wandered in a grueling route through the giant trees of Goldstream, turning toward Sooke Lake, emerging at the shore near Mill Bay. The road, consisting of a single set of wagon tracks, was often rutted and slow going with stretches of switch-back negotiating the hills. The only alternative at the time was to make the trip by boat or rail. Travelling by boat entailed going all the way around the Saanich peninsular to Mill Bay or Chemainus and then continuing by wagon.
Irish born MacFarlane settled in Alberta in 1898. He was granted a commission in the 3rd Prince of Wales Dragoon Guards in 1867,
