Jun
28
Ogden Point - Our Working Harbour
Jun 2011
Before: Image I-20616 courtesy of Royal BC Museum and Archives
After
By Doreen Marion Gee
The history of Ogden Point reads like an epic Hollywood movie with twists and turns, rise to glory, fall into obscurity and eventual triumph. It has had many colourful faces and bustling industries over the years and been a place where dreams are made and lost. Success, loss and tragedy speckle its past. But I remember red skies and a long stone path covered in mist. I recall my first crush. And childhood memories of a beautiful getaway with ocean waves and endless horizons.
Ogden Point is named after a notorious figure. Peter Skene Ogden was a violent man with a trigger finger and volatile temper. In May 1816, Ogden served with the North West Company in Green Lake, Northern Saskatchewan. According to the federal government's Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, "Ogden and a small group of men forced the Hudson Bay Company clerk to hand over to them a local Indian who had persisted in trading with the British company" and "the Indian was butchered in a most cruel manner just a short distance from the fort." A charge of murder was laid against Ogden so his superiors quickly transferred him down south to Oregon. He was eventually hired as a chief trader in the new HBC/NWC coalition and gained trapping rights over a huge territory. The introduction to his own 1825 journal states that Ogden travelled and explored more widely and brought in more furs than anyone else in his time.
My own childhood in James Bay was filled with adventures on the Ogden Point Breakwater. Many times I raced down that treacherous wall with my brothers, almost plunging into the frigid cold waves. The concrete and granite breakwater was built in 1916 in anticipation of a huge shipping industry. In the early 1900s, Ogden Point was a busy industrial and ocean trade port. 1918 saw the completion of a cargo warehouse and two piers. In 1925, prairie grain was sent all over the globe with a new $500,000 grain terminal at Ogden Point. Three years later, the fish processing industry arrived with B.C. Packers' cold storage plant. Pier A was raised and a huge 100,000 square foot concrete warehouse built in 1978. Back in the fifties and sixties, millions of board feet of lumber passed though decks and storage areas. I can still smell the pungent earthy aroma of raw wood filling my head as I played hide and seek among the gigantic piles of lumber at Ogden Point as a child.
Ogden Point has had its share of bad fortune. In 1977, a furious fire destroyed the Canadian National Railway Building (built in 1911) and reduced almost seven thousand tonnes of wood pulp to cinders. My mind still reels from memories of monstrous flames cutting the night sky as huge hoses sprayed water from ocean tugs. By 1993, the fish, lumber and grain industries and buildings were gone, either from lack of product, bankruptcy or they were merely shut down. Ogden Point became a dusty ghost town, a silent wasteland.
But Ogden Point's real glory days were ahead. A federal study in 1990 concluded that Ogden Point would function as a port for marine cargo, passenger ships and Helijet Airways. In 1996, Ogden Point Restaurant and Dive Shop opened. Since 2001, cruise ships from all over the world have injected new life into the barren docks and millions of dollars into Victoria coffers. After the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority took ownership of the property, it injected three million dollars into upgrading Ogden Point in 2003. Pier South B was raised and Customs facilities established.
Ogden Point is alive again but with different players. My next installment will deal with the wonderful aesthetic improvements to the landmark area by the Ogden Point Enhancement Society plus more recent developments.
At sixteen, I wanted to run away with a Japanese sailor. Our family hosted him and his pal from the Nippon Maru ship docked at Ogden Point. Those memories are jewels that I treasure. The history of Ogden Point is also a treasure chest of glorious achievements, crushing defeat and final resurrection.
A sincere "Thank you" to the Ogden Point Enhancement Society for its great website, an excellent research source: www.ogdenpoint.org.