Sorry this account of mine having to stand so long as I fully expected matters would have been settled long ere this.
Freeman Hopkins, Vargas Island to Walter Dawley, Clayoquot Store, November 3 1913
In the early 1900s, Freeman “Fred” Hopkins, an English emigrant, was homesteading on the Canadian Prairies in Saskatchewan. A few years later, he had sold the farm and moved to Saanich, then took out a pre-emption of land on Vargas Island in Clayoquot Sound.
Between 1912-1916 Hopkins exchanged letters with Walter Dawley, owner of the Clayoquot Store — most often about Hopkins’ unpaid bills and plans to mortgage his property.
My grandpa Harold Monks lived with Fred Hopkins and family on Vargas Island in 1914. (Hopkins’ wife was the cousin of Harold’s mother). While researching Vargas Island Ranchers, I had come across mentions of Hopkins’ correspondence with Walter Dawley through Margaret Horsfield’s book Voices from the Sound. Horsfield tells the story of Hopkins and Dawley in vivid detail. I later visited the BC Archives and read many of these original letters in person.
Hopkins left financial issues unresolved with Dawley and went overseas to war service as an engineer in the Middle East. His wife was left to continue the financial discussions with Dawley. When Hopkins returned from overseas, he settled in back in Saanich, where in 1921 he was a recipient of a Saanich Soldier’s Home. But in 1929, he started exchanging letters with the Municipality of Saanich — about unpaid house mortgage payments.
In Fall 2018 archivist Sonia Nicholson, then at Saanich Archives, alerted me to the Hopkins-Saanich letters and shared digital copies. The parallels with the Dawley letters were surprising similar in tone and topic!
I shall have much regret (tho have no grounds to complain) should your Committee be compelled to take drastic action, in connection with the above. As regards my promises made, have endeavoured to carry them out, but through unavoidable causes was not able to do so.
Freeman Hopkins to Saanich Council, February 12 1930
In early 2019, I shared some of Hopkins’ story when I guest curated the Vargas Island Ranchers at Home and at War exhibit with the Tofino Clayoquot Heritage Museum. A few months later, Saanich Archives invited me to share the Saanich part of the story. In May 2019, I gave an illustrated presentation “A Vargas Island Rancher in Saanich” at the Greater Victoria Public Library, Saanich Centennial Branch. Fred’s original letters, family photos, land records and archives documents brought to life this often amusing and exasperating parallel story.
To my surprise, one enthusiastic audience member was a former neighbour of Fred Hopkins’ widow, and I was given a silver spoon that had belonged to Mrs Hopkins!
Note — Hopkins was not the only Vargas Island Rancher in Saanich. After the war, many of the original Vargas Island Ranchers settled in Saanich. Some were Hopkins’ neighbours from Vargas, who became neighbours in the Oak Street area. My grandpa left Vargas Island for war service, and after his return in 1919, lived for a few months with the Hopkins family in Saanich, where he celebrated Christmas/New Year with several former “ranchers”.
Another former Vargas resident was Mrs Helen Malon, who rented a house on Burnside Road in August 1918 (her children attended Tolmie School). The Malon family’s experiences during the Influenza Epidemic of 1918 are shared in my features on Saanich School Children, Infectious Diseases and “The Flu” and “Victoria Theatres and the Flu Ban of 1918”.
Stephanie Ann Warner 