Vancouver Island

David Mattison is a librarian with the B.C. Provincial Archives and
Records Services Library.

The ghost towns of Vancouver Island are primarily abandoned townsites built around coal mines or sawmills. A few odd cases have been documented, such as the Danish colony at Cape Scott and the real estate scam at Clo-oose. The earliest ghost town was Fort Defiance, established in 1791 as winter quarters by Captain Robert Gray. As would be expected, most of the towns have disappeared beneath the cover of the rain forests. Some sites are also protected under provincial statute (but after antique collectors scavenged buildings and grounds). In most cases Paterson provides informative and fascinating overviews of each town’s rise and fall. Some of the facts pertaining to coal mining are monotonous and repetitious.

As a guide to finding the sites, the book doesn’t offer much to the curious reader. No standard description is given under each town; there is no information on how to locate the town or whether it is even worth visiting. Maps provide some visual aids in location but should not be considered reliable, since road conditions are not adequately identified. The volume is well illustrated with historic and contemporary photos, but the reproduction quality is poor. There is no index nor bibliography. All of the material has been reworked from the author’s Encyclopedia of Ghost Towns & Mining Camps of British Columbia (Sunfire, 1979-80, 3 vols.). Libraries and readers on limited budgets might wish to compare the two works before purchase.