People uprooted from Pender Harbour (9)

Pender Harbour (ḵalpilin), on the Sunshine Coast, was the site of several shíshálh villages until the twentieth century. Non-Indigenous settlers arrived in 1900, establishing logging and commercial fishing operations. Travel between communities was primarily by water until a road connecting Pender Harbour and Sechelt was completed in 1936. St. Mary’s Hospital opened in Garden Bay in 1930, and served loggers and fishers from across the region.

Japanese Canadian families were among the community’s early settlers. In 1911, the Kayahara family purchased land in the Hardscratch area of Whiskey Slough. Saichi Kayahara carved the maple leaf that decorated the Maple Leaf School on Beaver Island, which opened around 1921 and was attended by several Kayahara children. Financial hardship during the Depression forced the family to relocate to Vancouver in 1928.

In 1926, fisherman Torakichi Ikeda moved his family to Pender Harbour after his license was stolen in the Vancouver district, towing his float house to Whiskey Slough, where he owned land. The same year, the Kawasaki family arrived after the closure of Kichitaro Kawasaki’s logging company in Union Bay. The initially lived on a small island at the head of Oyster Bay, and Kichitaro continued logging locally until 1929. In 1937, his son, Michio Roy, purchased ten acres of waterfront property at the head of Whiskey Slough.