Mark Bate: Nanaimo's First Mayor

By Jan Peterson

An insightful look at the first mayor of Nanaimo, BC, drawing heavily on his prolific and insightful written observations.

Mark Bate, elected Nanaimo’s first mayor in 1875, was a renaissance man. He loved music, writing, literature, the outdoors, community affairs, and of course politics. Bate served as mayor for sixteen terms—most by acclamation. He retired three times, returning to office after being persuaded to serve again.

Historian Jan Peterson skillfully weaves Bate’s own writing—including personal letters, business correspondence, and speeches—into the rich tapestry of nineteenth-century Nanaimo to create a three-dimensional portrait of a truly fascinating man. Bates witnessed and documented Nanaimo’s evolution from mining settlement to incorporated municipality to bona fide city. Mark Bate: Nanaimo’s First Mayor is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of this region and the settlers who helped to shape its communities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heritage House
• Release date: May 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781772031836

Jan Peterson

Born and educated in Scotland, Jan Peterson immigrated with her family to Kingston, Ontario, in 1957. In 1972, she moved with her husband, Ray, and their three children to Port Alberni. With a lifelong interest in painting, writing, and history, she is recognized for her many years of involvement in the arts and community service. As a reporter for the Alberni Valley Times, she won a Jack Wasserman Award for investigative journalism. Jan and Ray retired to Nanaimo in 1996, where she continues to research and write. She is the author of eleven books, including Mark Bate: Nanaimo’s First Mayor; Port Alberni: More Than Just a Mill Town; and Kilts on the Coast: The Scots Who Built BC .

Book preview

To Christine, Daphne, and Jill for their continued encouragement and support

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1:A LIFE OF PUBLIC SERVICE

2:A HUMBLE BEGINNING

3:JOURNEY TO THE NEW WORLD

4:BATE BEGINS A NEW LIFE

5:NEW MANAGEMENT

6:MORE FAMILY ARRIVE

7:CHANGING TIMES

8:BATE APPOINTED MANAGER

9:A RENAISSANCE MAN

10:TENSIONS RISE

11:FAMILY LETTERS

12:LABOUR ISSUES AND LAND TRANSACTIONS

13:FIRST MAYOR OF NANAIMO

14:BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

15:BRYDEN RESIGNS

16:CITY IMPROVEMENTS

17:CHANGE OF JOB AND HOMELESS

18:OUR GREAT DISASTER

19:DEATH OF LOVED ONES

20:BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS

21:BATE’S LEGACY

APPENDIX 1

APPENDIX 2

ENDNOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people have helped in the process of researching and writing this book. I began my exploration into the life of Mark Bate, the first mayor of Nanaimo, after being encouraged to do so by Nanaimo Community Archives Society manager Christine Meutzner and archive volunteers Daphne Paterson and Jill Stannard. Like them, I believed this would be a good research project that would add to the knowledge and history of the community. In this project Daphne helped with my understanding of the Black Country in England and assisted in other aspects of the book. Jill shared her knowledge of the city, which is second to none; she is a valuable resource on her own. Christine helped in so many ways by finding sources and locating documents and photos, and she also scrutinized the manuscript and offered suggestions for improvement. I had a good team at the Nanaimo Archives!

I was extremely grateful to have the assistance of Jeremy Bates, a great-great-grandson of Mark’s brother Joseph, who lives in England and had done some research into his family. Without Jeremy I could not have completed the story about Mark’s early life in the Dudley area.

In researching closer to home, I benefited from the large collection of material on Bate held in the Nanaimo Community Archives, including the Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company Administrative Letter Book that recorded letters sent by Bate when he was business manager of the Vancouver Coal Company to his business associates and family members. The archives also holds various items connected to his life in Nanaimo, including his personal letters, papers, speeches, land records, passport, and diary. Peggy Nicholls’ amazing research into the Black Country was another valuable resource. I was also fortunate to access the research online of Randolph Sydney Vickers, of Victoria, regarding the George Robinson, Cornelius Bryant and Bate families. Vickers’ research gave me a greater understanding of the family’s immigration to Vancouver Island and their lives on the Island.

Anyone researching the early life of British Columbia ultimately contacts the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg. My requests for information were answered promptly and helped greatly in collecting data on Bate family arrivals on Vancouver Island, as well as with the pay structure of the Nanaimo Coal Mine, the sale of Nanaimo town lots, and the record of service of HBC employees. Others who must be thanked include the Nanaimo Museum staff, particularly Richard Slingerland, who helped me gather photos for the book; my thanks also to the Vancouver Island Regional Library Downtown Branch staff, who were always helpful and friendly.

A big thank you to several Bate family members for their help: Gayle Jesperson, a descendant of Mark’s son William Charles Bate; Monte Engelson about the Cartwright family (Sarah Cartwright was Mark’s wife); and Linda Boom and Gloria Currie, descendants of daughter Elizabeth Ada Bate. Once again the Simpson family came to my rescue, as they have with all my books about Nanaimo. Mildred and son Terry are descendants of Elizabeth Bate (Mark’s sister) and Adam Grant Horne. Input from all these family members encouraged me to continue with my research, knowing that getting the story right was important to them and to the story of the first mayor.

How can I adequately thank my husband Ray, who has been by my side providing love and support throughout this and other projects? He keeps me grounded and encouraged. And I must also thank Rodger Touchie and his Heritage House staff for again polishing up my manuscript and publishing yet another history about Nanaimo, British Columbia.

INTRODUCTION

Mark Bate could not have envisioned the long and fulfilling life he would have when he immigrated to Nanaimo from Dudley in the Black Country in England. He came at the invitation of his uncle George Robinson, then manager of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Nanaimo Coal Company. Coming to the far-off British Colony of Vancouver’s Island with his aunt Maria, sister Elizabeth and cousin Cornelius Bryant was an opportunity to begin a new career. His uncle had promised him a job as a clerk with the coal company, a very different position from his job as a mine labourer in Dudley.

When he arrived in 1857 the coal mining industry was still in its infancy and Nanaimo a settlement with a collection of wooden houses along the waterfront, plus the Bastion, a fortress-like structure built by the HBC to instill fear into marauding First Nations from other parts of the Island. The local Snuneymuxw people were friendly and helpful to the newcomers, trading goods and services while working alongside the British miners. Bate found much to learn and explore in Nanaimo, and he was captivated by the countryside. Nevertheless, he felt the isolation of having mountains on one side, the Gulf of Georgia on the other, and no roads north or south, the only avenue for travel or communication by water.

When the HBC sold its interest in coal mining to the London-based Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company, Bate moved up the employment ladder to accountant and eventually to manager of the Vancouver Coal Company, as it was known locally. Also moving up a ladder in the same company, beginning as a miner, Robert Dunsmuir discovered his own seam of coal in the Wellington area that, when developed, gave stiff competition to the Vancouver Coal Company mines. Dunsmuir was an astute businessman who could take immediate advantage of opportunities, while Bate had to wait for confirmation from his London office. Adding to Bate’s frustration, his mine superintendent, John Bryden, married Dunsmuir’s daughter, a union that challenged Bryden’s loyalties. But despite Bate’s differences with Dunsmuir, the pair worked amicably on committees for improving the community.

Following Nanaimo’s incorporation in 1874, Bate threw his hat into the electoral process when he learned that Dunsmuir’s son-in-law James Harvey was running for mayor. Bate won, becoming the city’s first mayor. With the Municipal Act as a guide, he ably moved the city through its fledgling years, juggling his duties as mine manager, mayor, and justice of the peace (see Appendix 2 for the years he was mayor). His wisdom and energy earned the respect of city residents.

In Bate’s private life, he married Sarah Cartwright in 1859, a union that produced five sons and five daughters (see Appendix 1 for the Bate lineage). He was a man of many talents; he had a life-long love of music, wrote prolifically about early life in Nanaimo, and was part owner of two early newspapers and president of the Nanaimo Literary Institute. He was a founding member of Ashlar Lodge No. 3, and a member of many societies, such as the Odd Fellows and the Order of Foresters. He proudly boasted of having received every Governor General who had visited British Columbia since Confederation. There is much to learn about Nanaimo’s first mayor.

1

A LIFE OF PUBLIC SERVICE

ON DECEMBER 11, 1925, FIFTY years after Mark Bate was first elected mayor of Nanaimo, Mayor Victor B. Harrison presented the City of Nanaimo with a fine oil portrait entitled The First Mayor of Nanaimo, by George Henry Southwell. The painting was commissioned by the Native Sons of British Columbia, Post No. 3, as a gift to the city during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of the municipality in 1924, to be hung in city hall as an incentive for the youth of the community.

Bate had not seen the finished portrait until that evening and was moved by the thoughtfulness and generosity of the gesture. He looked at the painting and said,

I can now see myself as others see me. But what a difference, what a contrast between that face and the features of the first mayor when elected in 1875 . . . The first 25 years of incorporation mayor and councillors of Nanaimo were not paid for their services, yet all took pains—took the fullest interest in the work of serving their fellow citizens, each as an Here in the strife. I know I gave my best service when in office—always endeavoured to do my duty effectively. The whole of us strived to deserve well of the ratepayers. To feel that you are doing all that is expected of you in a public capacity is very gratifying, a pleasure is given to the individual, in such a circumstance, which cannot be paid for in gold.¹

It is clear from Bate’s public service, both in his long service as mayor and through his many years as manager for the first coal mine company in Nanaimo, that acquiring gold was never his goal. He arrived in 1857 and very soon established strong roots, becoming well known among miners and administration alike and building a family whose descendants spread throughout Vancouver Island and beyond.

Bate could never resist reminiscing about those early days of Nanaimo, and audiences appreciated his perspective, given his long and accomplished life. He reflected on Black Diamond City, as the town was sometimes called, when the first Princess Royal pioneers arrived 71 years earlier. His stories set the scene of a booming town with an abundance of food and a ready supply of coal and wood, where forests were alive with game and the waters teemed with fish. Despite the primitive living conditions and the lack of communication with the outside world, they had food in plenty—fresh fat salmon and venison always. Those stories have proved invaluable in building a picture of the early pioneer days of Nanaimo.

2

A HUMBLE BEGINNING

A LARGE AND LOVING FAMILY SURROUNDED Mark Bate in his childhood, including uncles and aunts from both sides of the family, as well as numerous cousins. They lived in the historic town of Dudley in the West Midlands, England, located six miles south of Wolverhampton and eight miles northwest of Birmingham. It is the largest town in the Black Country. The three counties of Worcestershire, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire border the town. Dudley had once been a Saxon village, complete with castle. Village life changed dramatically when the lord of the manor started a market sometime during the Middle Ages. People came from all over the West Midlands to buy, sell, or trade. By 1850 the region, once predominantly green and rural, had become the most populated and economically prosperous part of the Midlands, tied economically to coal mining, iron foundries, steel mills, and the glass industry.

The Black Country is an area roughly ten by twelve miles, with Wolverhampton and Walsall in the north, Stourbridge and Halesowen in the south, and Dudley in the centre. Between 1801 and 1861 the town’s population rose from 10,000 to 45,000, and the number of houses from 1,900 to 9,700.¹ Situated on a hill, it was a difficult place to base any kind of heavy industry. In bad weather, roads were almost impossible to navigate for heavy wagons. The many mines in the area operated mostly in the lower lying land to the north and west. Adding to the difficult conditions was the lack of a decent water supply, which was not solved until the turn of the century.²

DUDLEY, ENGLAND, 1837

Dudley was like many of the other small towns in the area, which identified with what was produced in their area. Brierley Hill grew from iron and steel products and glass, and Holly Hall and Woodside, usually mentioned together as a combined community, became known for the Woodside Colliery and Woodside Iron Works, founded in 1840 a quarter of a mile away from Woodside on land leased by Lord Dudley. The two separate villages of Holly Hall and Woodside were linked by High Street, but as the population grew and houses were built in the space between, the boundaries became blurred. The blast furnaces and a foundry of the iron works were conveniently adjacent to the Dudley and Stourbridge Canals, providing good access to local markets. When the railway arrived in 1850 it provided another avenue of transportation for goods and services. The company employed almost one thousand men, and was recognized internationally for its fabrication of heavy bridge girders, boilers, railway materials, and docks, and gained a reputation for quality and its ability to complete orders on time. Factory work provided good, stable, full-time employment to a large segment of the population.

The name of Black Country was coined because the area produced a high amount of air pollution. Black soot from heavy industry covered everything in the region. Charles Dickens describes the area well in The Pickwick Papers, published in 1837, the year Mark Bate was born. The narrator describes the route through the Black Country to Birmingham:

The straggling cottages by the road-side, the dingy hue of every object visible, the murky atmosphere, the paths of cinders and brick-dust, the deep-red glow of furnace fires in the distance, the volumes of dense smoke issuing heavily forth from high toppling chimneys blackening and obscuring everything around; the glare of distant lights, the ponderous wagons which toiled along the road, laden with clashing rods of iron, or piled with heavy goods-all betokened their rapid approach to the great working town of Birmingham . . . The streets were thronged with working people. The hum of labour resounded from every house; lights gleamed from the long casement windows in the attic storeys, and the whirl of wheels and noise of machinery shook the trembling walls . . . The din of hammers, the rushing of steam, and the dead heavy clanking of engines, was the harsh music which arose from every quarter.³

THE BATES OF DUDLEY

Not much is known about the early life of Mark Bate or his family other than the information from birth, marriage, and death registrations. These documents did not become compulsory in England until July 1, 1837. Parish records therefore provide the only link to paternal grandparents George Bate and Sarah Silvers, who were married in 1804 at Wombourne, near Wolverhampton. The Bate name is quite common in this part of the Midlands. George and Sarah had ten children who survived into adulthood: Ann, Sarah, Mary, Joseph, Hannah, Thomas, Eleanor, Harriott, George, and Eliza. Large families were common, partly because infant mortality was high. People had many children and accepted that not all of them would survive.

Mark’s grandfather George was a farmer and a shopkeeper in Woodside.⁴ Their daughter Eleanor lived nearby with her husband, Joseph Silvers.⁵ It is unknown if Sarah Silvers and Joseph Silvers were related, but the Silvers name is also common in Dudley. It was Joseph who registered the deaths of the grandparents and who also witnessed the marriages of their children.

Mark’s father, Thomas Bate, was baptized on February 24, 1805, in the parish church of St. Mary’s, Kingswinford, about five miles from Dudley. At the age of 20 he was a skilled glasscutter, an artisan, a role much coveted in the area. On November 1, 1824, he married Elizabeth Robinson in the same church where he was baptized.

Elizabeth was born on November 16, 1805, the eldest daughter of Joseph Robinson and Esther Shakespeare. There were eleven children in her family but only eight lived to maturity⁶: Elizabeth, Sarah, Joseph, John, Lucy, Maria, George, and Edwin. Esther’s father was a prominent member of the Methodist Church in Dudley where he helped build Woodside Chapel and established a Sunday school there. The church history dates from 1812 when the first chapel was built on Hall Street. Their daughter Maria was the first child baptized there in 1816.⁷

Elizabeth Robinson’s sister Sarah married Thomas Bryant, a marriage that produced two children, Cornelius, in 1838, and Thomas, in 1851, both close cousins of Mark. Elizabeth’s sister Maria and brother George would play a large role in Mark’s life.

During Thomas Bate’s working life, five glassmakers lived in Dudley. The area was famous for its production of predominantly flint glass, which had a low glass content but as a finished product commanded a high value. It is unknown which company Thomas worked for. However, the Dudley Flint Glass Works owned by Messrs. Hawkes & Co. closed down in June 1842 when the partnership was dissolved and Hawkes retired. The company had specialized in enameled ornamental ware and in coloured glass. The closure of the glass works coincided with Thomas’s change of job in 1843.

This was a difficult time in Dudley. The miners were striking over a reduction in hours and pay due to a slump in iron production, and the local militia was called in to restore order among the general unrest in the area. Upon the closure of the Flint Glass Works, Thomas Shorthouse, clerk to the Guardians of Dudley Union, spoke about the high unemployment in the area:

Also a great many glass-makers, who used to be getting £3 to £4 a week, are now breaking stones and scraping the streets . . . The great distress amongst the glass-makers results from the termination of Mr. Hawk’s [sic] works, some of the largest in the kingdom for flint-glass, which are being pulled down.⁸

As a skilled glasscutter, Thomas would have made a good wage if he had worked for Hawkes. This would have been a trying time for the Bate family, with Thomas losing a good paying job as a glasscutter and having to work in the mining industry for lower wages.

FAMILY TRAVAILS

Mark Bate was the youngest son in a family of seven children; two siblings died, both named Ezra. It was quite common then when childhood diseases took their toll to give a later child the same name as the one who died in infancy. The name Ezra seems to have been an unfortunate one for the young family. His brothers and sisters were born in different communities: Ann, the eldest child, was born in Sedgeley, Staffordshire, Joseph was born in Dudley, and Sarah was born in West Bromwich, Staffordshire. Mark was born in Birmingham and was baptized February 12, 1837, in the parish church of St. Thomas, in Dudley.⁹ Locals called this historic church the Top Church because of its location at the top of High Street. The church dates from 1182, and was rebuilt in 1818.

Parish records give other baptism dates for his brother and two sisters. Ann was baptized May 15, 1825, Joseph on July 5, 1829, and Sarah on December 22, 1833. The birth dates of two sisters are known—Elizabeth was born January 4, 1840, and Lucy on January 13, 1843. In 1841, according to the England census of that year, the family—parents Thomas and Elizabeth, and their children, Ann, sixteen, Joseph, twelve, Mark, four, and Elizabeth, one—was living in Holly Hall and Woodside. For some unknown reason, Mark’s eight-year-old sister Sarah lived nearby with their grandmother Esther Robinson and her cousins George, who at age 19 worked as a bookkeeper, and Maria.

Thomas’s occupation is somewhat unclear. On all the baptism records except Lucy’s, he is listed as a glasscutter, which is also his occupation in the 1841 census. By 1843, according to Lucy’s baptismal record, he had changed his occupation to writing clerk, Cochrane & Bramah, Woodside Iron Works & Colliery. In 1845, at the time of his death, one newspaper report said that Thomas kept machine for Messrs’s Cochrane & Bramah at the Woodside Colliery near town. ¹⁰ This was a term used for someone who looked after the steam engines, which powered machinery used to lift coal or men up the shaft. The accident report was the first verification, other than on Lucy’s birth certificate, that Thomas worked in the colliery. His death certificate, however, simply gives his occupation as agent. ¹¹

This was a working-class community, judging by the occupations of the Bate family neighbours listed in the census: miner, collier, nailor, labourer, rope maker, boot maker, iron roller, furnace keeper, blacksmith, and stone miner. Many of these occupations were linked to the Woodside Iron Works and the coal and iron ore mines in the area. At least one member of every household worked, suggesting that one income provided a comfortable living and families were not destitute.

A few doors away from the Bate family, their neighbour’s children, Joseph and Simeon Russon, aged ten and eight years, worked as iron rollers. At that time, no law restricted children working from an early age. Opinions differed about children working in a mine for 12 hours a day. Some believed it would affect their health, while others thought the children looked remarkably well when cleaned on Sundays. ¹² In 1844 a new law came into effect that prevented all children aged eight and under from working.

THE DEATH OF A FATHER

The year Mark Bate was born, 1837, was the beginning of the Victorian era: On June 20, Victoria became Queen of England. This heralded an era of technological progress, especially in steam power for boats, ships, railways, and factories, all requiring coal. The South Staffordshire coal seam that divided the counties of Staffordshire and Worcestershire was 30 feet (9 metres) thick, the thickest seam in all of Great Britain. It provided the fuel to accommodate heavy industry in the area.

The Bate family home would have been like many others in the Dudley area. Built of brick, these ‘one up, one down’ terrace-style homes had dirt floors that had to be swept daily. Some homes had two rooms upstairs. Families shared the washhouse and sculleries. These were called brewhouses, and were generally outside building. Those who lived in Dudley baked their own bread in a shared oven, and the ovens in many parts of the town were external to the houses, built like furnaces; one oven would be common to all the houses in a court. Many people also kept pigs, which, as William Lee reported to the Board of Health in 1852, was unhealthy, as was the lack of a proper water supply.¹³

The men and boys in the family worked ten or twelve hours a day or more, six days a week, while the wives and daughters stayed home, cleaning, washing, and cooking. Children were expected to help out at home with the daily chores. Sunday was the only day off, when families usually attended the church or chapel of their choice, and children attended Sunday school. The Bate, Robinson, and Bryant families attended the Methodist Church in Dudley. Most social events revolved around the family and church. The musical group at the church may have been where Mark Bate was introduced to music and learned to play the violin, a passion he enjoyed for the rest of his life.

As a benefit for those who worked in the mines, coal was delivered to their home. When the men left for work early in the morning the women’s routine would be to slop out then prepare the bed. This was done should an accident happen at the mine. Any injured miners were taken home and laid on the made-up bed, as there was no hospital available. (It was not until 1867 that a hospital was built in the area.) To cover the cost of a doctor should someone be injured, the workers paid a little each week or month toward a sick fund, or else they relied on charity. All after-care was carried out at home. When an accident happened at the mine, a whistle blew to alert the town, and women put on their shawls and went to the mine to find out if any of their loved ones had been hurt or killed. There were no pensions or injury payment; families relied on each other and on charitable handouts.¹⁴

The rapid growth of Dudley brought with it disease and a high death rate. What was shocking was the average age of death. Lee reported that in Dudley Parish the average age of those who died was sixteen years and seven months, and he concluded, As far as the duration of life therefore is concerned Dudley is the most unhealthy place in the country. ¹⁵ It is hoped that the Bate family lived in more clean and comfortable living conditions than that described in Lee’s report.

Opportunities for recreation included hiking and outdoor activities, with lovely areas to explore, such as the ruins of the old Dudley Castle on the hill, which was covered with beautiful trees. However, the general population of working-class Dudley was more inclined to enjoy a few drinks at the local tavern after a hard day’s work. One event that was well attended by all in the Black Country was the Dudley Castle Fêtes held for three days every Whitsun (a Christian holiday celebrated the seventh Sunday after Easter).

The Bate family settled in Woodside in 1843 when Thomas began working at Bramah and Cochrane, Woodside Iron Works and Colliery, the mine that supplied the coal to fuel the furnaces and forges of the Woodside Ironworks. This same year Mark’s eldest sister, Ann, married William Sharratt. The young couple moved to live in Droylsden, Ashton under Lyne, Lancashire, where they raised five children.

Mark was eight years old when, on May 6, 1845, his father, Thomas, died in a traffic accident. He was only 40 years old. The Wolverhampton Chronicle reported the accident the next day:

Yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, between three