People uprooted from Powell Lake (15)

Powell Lake, the largest lake in the Sunshine Coast region, is adjacent to the city of Powell River. A Tla’amin village, tiskʷat, was located near the mouth of the lake. Non-Indigenous settlers developed the surrounding area as farmland and homesteads around 1881. A dam was constructed in 1910.

In 1913, a shingle mill was built, and the community of Powell River formed around it. The Powell Lake Shingle Company owned multiple forms of housing, including floats and residences on Goat Island, that were rented by Japanese Canadian families. Single men worked in several shingle bolt camps along the lake and in nearby Stillwater. An H. Nakamura had a camp on Powell Lake near Bear Tooth Creek. Matsuyo Konishi was the barber for the shingle mill, and people would travel from the surrounding area to get haircuts.