Cowichan Valley … the settling and opening up: Blessings be to the Major … part 4

That man, Major JFL MacFarlane from Victoria bought his Mill Bay farm in the Cowichan Valley sight unseen: which perhaps was a buyer beware mistake … but he was another of those intrepid explorers …

Major JFL MacFarlane

… MacFarlane understandably wanted to see the farm … what he hadn’t realised was … there was no easy easterly route to Mill Bay over or around the monstrous Malahat mountain … there was an 1861 trail, adequate for driving livestock, but useless for wagons …

Some of the sort of granite to be surveyed

… the government had undertaken to build a wagon road in 1877, but within a year had abandoned it.  

The dizzy views available on a clear day ... 

A road with steep grades and tortuous curves, was eventually completed in 1884, which still made it undesirable for heavy traffic … as the Major found out …

Here - the car had arrived ... must have been in the
early 1910s ...

… he and seller toiled off towards the summit (the road today is over 1,150 feet) but had to resort to walking as soon as the ground started to rise …

Red River ox cart - used in mid Canada:
the Red River area

… at the top finally - now for a rest – well no! … it was much too steep … having no brake on the wagon – the wheels were tied together, the men held on and “by degrees” descended towards the Valley (the way they say that the lawyers get to heaven).

An iphone photo from the blurb
at the rest site at the top of the
Malahat.  The easterly route is the
one we use today, skirting the
Saanich Peninsula.  The dotted line
depicts the original 1861 trail;
the railway and westerly routes
are shown too

MacFarlane at this point was informed there was no other route if he wanted to use his wagons … he had been in India, so this self-taught surveyor armed with a hand-compass and an aneroid barometer mapped out a route from the Cowichan Valley to the Goldstream lowlands on the outskirts of what is now Victoria …

… he’d had to do something … he was fed up with taking the three-day westerly wagon trip to get his produce to market …  so down on his hands and knees, crawling through the undergrowth … searching every nook and cranny … he went …

Overlooking the Saanich Peninsula and right across to
Mount Baker in the US - its sun capped top shining through

… at times he had revised his view-point by sailing his sloop up and down the Saanich inlet, and, where logical, taking the railway tricycle to determine a viable route.  The railway in 1886 went inland through to the valley …

iphone photo of Kinsol Trestle
part of the railway route

… this took three summers, without payment, locating a new route … Frank Verdier, a respected local woodsman, supported his venture, which ultimately swayed the government …

Those government men were wrong – and they were going to be proved to be wrong – a more coastal route could be built up and over the Malahat … connecting Victoria with the sheltered fertile eastern side of Vancouver Island and his farm …

A narrow, mostly single lane, road was built – precipitously clinging to the sides of the mountainous heap … no guard rails … was hacked through and opened just before Christmas 1911 … guess who hanseled it …

Apologies for the vandalised photo - but shows
the precipitous route

… that Major with a bottle of his favourite Burke’s whisky to hand and the road gang … had found a way through, where the Government surveyors and engineers had for decades dismissed the possibility of a road …

I want to call him the galloping major – but can’t … he must be something else – the Blessed Major … opening up the trading route linking the capital, Victoria, to the very fertile Cowichan Valley.

From what was that original route ... transformed into a
view point and/or rest area - where my other photos
were taken from ... 

We are indebted to him and the persistent efforts of succeeding generations in achieving a route through, and in the present improvements that are being made to the road … not easy, even today, blasting through that exceedingly difficult granite terraine …

… which leads us to six inches of ice … part 5

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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