People uprooted from Mayne Island (79)

Mayne Island, one of the Southern Gulf Islands, was established by non-Indigenous settlers in 1859. Japanese Canadians travelled there seasonally to cut wood for canneries and fish in the 1890s. In 1900 the Kadonaga family became the first Japanese Canadian family to settle permanently in Horton Bay, and the island became known among Japanese Canadians as Gon Island after Gontaro Kadonaga. More families soon followed, forming three camps near Cape Horn and St. John Point.

Japanese Canadians developed a diverse economy on the island: harvesting Pacific sand lance (ikanago) and seaweed, forestry, charcoal production, and seasonal labour including mining on Vancouver Island. In the early 1900s, the Adachi family operated a farm, orchard, and herring saltery in Dinner Bay. Around 1919, Japanese Canadians established a greenhouse (hothouse) tomato industry and, in 1935, growers founded the Active Pass Grower’s Association—a farming cooperative—to transport and market their tomatoes and other produce more economically. Poultry farming was also common in the 1920s.

By 1940, Japanese Canadians made up one-third of the population and generated over half the island’s economy. Their forced removal led to a sharp population decline that caused the local school to close.