Pender Islands Historical Timeline

Royal Canadian Legion Branch 239 (Pender Island) receives its Dominion Command Charter. The Legion Hall is located on MacKinnon Rd just west of today’s ferry terminal.

Mrs. Marie Craddock sells Waterlea, but it continues to host “paying guests“ until 1952.

Operating almost continuously on land acquired in 1937, the Pender Island Golf and Country Club is officially incorporated as a society.

World War II ends, and the island again counts the loss of its promising young islanders: Fred Conery, Alan Crane, and Philip Teece of South Pender; brothers Edward and William Corbett of North Pender.

R.S.W. Corbett, longtime proprietor of the first general store on Pender at Hope Bay, dies.

Pilot Officer Grover Sargent crashes his Hawker Hurricane near Clam Bay Road on February 4th. A memorial cairn is erected later in the year.

The Pacific Coast Militia Rangers were organized in 1942 in response to public pressure after the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbour. Volunteers, often too old, too young, or medically unfit for regular service, enlisted to patrol BC’s largely undefended coastline.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Pender’s Japanese residents, mostly fishermen and farmers living at Otter Bay, are forced to leave the island. Their boats and possessions are confiscated, auctioned off, without compensation.

“Mille Fleurs” is sold to Wallace and Nefia Lynd and opened as Beautyrest Lodge the next year. (It is named for the brand of mattresses used in the lodge bedrooms.)

The fish reduction plant at Shingle Bay closes due to a fire.

Real estate developer and island booster, A.E Craddock, subdivides the former Higgs family land on South Pender as the “Andover” subdivision.

Canada enters World War II, and the Great Depression ends.

On May 1, the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd opens on South Pender on land donated by Gerald Richardson’s sisters in England.

Several Pender residents put up money to purchase a 60-acre parcel from George Grimmer for the Pender Island Golf and Country Club. Early members volunteer their time to plan and build the tees and greens.

The J. H. Teece family of North Pender buys the Spalding farm on South Pender and operates a mixed farm. Lilias Spalding moves to the house of Helen and Tom Walker after Helen’s death earlier in the year, and Tom leaves for Kenya.

The Hope Bay Store is further enlarged using lumber salvaged from a dismantled Doukhobor settlement on Piers Island.

Prohibition ends in the US, thus bringing an end to the risky but often lucrative smuggling from the Gulf Islands.

The first Fall Fair is held at the Hope Bay Community Hall.

In January 1932, South Pender settlers and friends Gerald Richardson and Arthur Spalding pass away. A tribute describes them as “the best type of what used to be commonly known as English gentlemen, upright in character, sincere in their opinions, courteous to strangers, they exercised no small influence in their local circle“.

The Hodgson family open a general store on Bedwell Harbour on South Pender. They later add several rental cabins and a hall. By 1935 it’s a resort.

The fish reduction plant at Shingle Bay declares bankruptcy, but is reconstituted and continues to operate until it is destroyed by fire in 1959.

Work bees are a popular cooperative approach to fundraising, helping islanders in need, building barns, and looking after community halls and the cemetery. In 1931, eleven ladies of the Women’s Missionary Society of the Pender Island United Church of Canada host a “wool teasing bee“.

Robert Stewart Wallace (“RSW“) Corbett of the Hope Bay Store retires. His son Percy becomes Postmaster and takes over, assisted by his son Stuart. The store will be sold in 1951, with Percy staying on as Postmaster until 1961.

Washington Grimmer, one of the first settler-era arrivals on North Pender, dies at 79.

“The Maples” on Port Browning is opened for guests by Evelyn Pollard. It will operate until 1970 when guests are no longer accommodated in the large main house.