People uprooted from Great Central (58)

Great Central (or Great Central Lake), located on the traditional territories of the Hupačasath First Nation, was established by non-Indigenous settlers in the early 1900s. In 1912, the Ark Resort, a floating hotel, was built on the lake. Gold mining in the Della Falls area played a small role in early Great Central settlement development. In 1925, two logging companies, Bloedel, Stewart & Welch, and King-Farris Lumber Company, merged and purchased 11,000 acres of timberland from the Esquimalt and Nanaimo (E&N) Railway. The new Great Central Sawmills built a mill town by the lake, west of Port Alberni.

A sixty-five-house townsite was built around the mill and smaller communities for employees from Japan, China, and East India were developed. Each had houses for the families and a bunkhouse for the single men, as well as a cookhouse, a bathhouse, and a community hall. The Japanese community hall was occasionally used as a barbershop, as a shoe repair shop, and for Japanese language classes. The school opened in 1927. From 1934 to 1936 only Japanese Canadians worked in the sheds and were vital to dry kiln operation. By 1941, the Japanese Canadian community consisted of fifty-eight people.