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6871 Island Hwy W. |
British Columbia Tourism Region : Vancouver Island
Description From Owner:
- Bowser - After William John Bowser, Premier of British Columbia 1915-16.
- Dunsmuir - After Robert Dunsmuir (1825-89), British Columbia's first industrial magnate. Born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, Dunsmuir married Joanna (Joan) White in 1847.
- Promising that one day he would build her a castle on the Pacific, he persuaded her in 1850 to accompany him with their three children to Fort Rupert on Vancouver Island, where he worked for the HBC as a coal miner, soon being transferred to Nanaimo.
- After leaving the service of the HBC, Dunsmuir engaged in various rather unsuccessful ventures in coal mining until he discovered and obtained complete possession of the very rich deposits around Wellington.
- He also entered the lumber business, acquired an ironworks, built the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway, and became a very wealthy man.
- During the last years of his life, he made good on the promise given years earlier to his wife, building Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria, though it was not completed until a year after his death.
- Fanny Bay - None of the various explanations comical, romantic, local, or historical — for this name can be regarded without scepticism.
- Fanny Bay and Henry Bay (Denman Island) six miles to the north first appeared in the 1864 edition of the Vancouver Island Pilot.
- If Captain G.H. Richards, RN, whose surveys provided the basis for that volume, knew who Fanny and Henry were, he apparently left that information unrecorded.
- Horne Lake - After Adam Horne (1831-1903), HBC storekeeper in Nanaimo, who discovered the lake in 1856. Horne, a man of tremendous personal courage, was perhaps the first white man to cross the waist of Vancouver Island.
- Mount Mark - Named in 1860 after Mark Bate, who came to Nanaimo from England in 1857, was employed by the HBC, and subsequently became manager of the Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company.
- In 1875 he became the first mayor of Nanaimo and was repeatedly reelected, often by acclamation. In 1887, when he was believed to be unwilling to stand again, 90 per cent of Nanaimo's voters signed a 'requisition' calling upon him to do so.
- With permission from G.P.V and Helen B. Akrigg 1997 British Columbia Place Names. UBC Press.
Address of this page: http://bc.ruralroutes.com/Bowser