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474 South Fletcher Road |
British Columbia Tourism Region : Vancouver, Coast, & Mountains
Description From Owner:
- Gibsons - Originally 'Gibson's Landing,' but in 1947 local businessmen persuaded the post office to drop the 'Landing.'
- The Gibson here immortalized was George William Gibson (1829-1913), who arrived on this coast with his two sons when he was in his mid-fifties.
- J.W. Bell of the Nanaimo Saw Mill remembered how he had sold Gibson rough lumber to build himself The Swamp Angel, a thirty-foot, double-ender sloop. Bell further recalled:
- One day he asked me if I knew of any place on the coast where he could take up a piece of land preferably on the mainland not isolated — reasonably near some town.
- 'I have a family; I would like to make a home for them some place. I have not many more years ahead of me. I have not money enough to buy a place.
- What I would like is enough ground to raise vegetables, keep a cow, some chickens and where there is good fishing so I can make enough money selling fish to buy necessities.'
- Bell declared that 'Gibson was a fine character, good citizen. His path was not strewn with roses it had many thorns and rough spots, but he did make a home for his family.'
- (See Leslie R. Peterson, The Gibson's Landing Story [1962].) Bell recommended to Gibson a small sheltered bay just inside Howe Sound, and there Gibson and his sons staked their claims to the land in May, 1886.
- Gibson lived to a ripe old age, becoming in time magistrate and postmaster at Gibson's Landing.
- Gower Point - Although Captain Vancouver gives no indication as to whom he had in mind when he gave this name,
- Captain Walbran and Professor Meany agree that he was thinking of Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower (1742?-1814), who was knighted in 1792 shortly before sailing with HMS Lion to carry Lord Macartney, the first British ambassador to China, to his new post.
- Hopkins Landing - After George Henderson Hopkins (1853-1931). After some years as an engineer on the ships of the British India Steam Navigation Co., Hopkins gave up the sea
- and became a partner in the engineering firm of Richards and Hopkins, Monmouthshire.
- He retired in 1906 because of ill health and came to British Columbia. Soon after arriving on the coast, he bought 160 acres on which to build his summer cottage, but he liked the place so well that he spent the rest of his life here.
- Keats Island - After Admiral Sir Richard Goodwin Keats. When Keats and HMS Superb were under Nelson's command in 1803, the great admiral wrote,
- 'I esteem his person alone as equal to one French 74, and the Superb and her captain to two 74-gun ships.' Keats was Governor of Newfoundland in 1813. He died in 1834 and was carried to his grave by six full admirals.
- Mariners Rest - A place where the remains of seafarers are committed to the deep.
- 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/GibsonsBC
