Charlie Cogger’s Tom Sawyer-style Summer on the Cobble Hill Frontier

In 1913 the Cogger family—father, mother and four children—left their comfortable English home for the wilds of Cobble Hill, a community they couldn’t even find on a map.

James Cogger, a professional dairyman, had been hired by wealthy gentleman farmer Sam Matson to tend his purebred Jersey herd on Hill Farm. Today’s 1200 Fisher Road, Cobble Hill, is still a working farm more than a century later.

One result of the Coggers’ brief stay, which was short circuited by the outbreak of the First World War, was that Charlie Cogger, just seven years old at the time, later wrote a fascinating, Tom Sawyeresque memoir of his year at Hill Farm.

 Inspired by his dad’s writings, son Robin Garratt and his wife visited the Cowichan Valley in 2010 and were put in touch with me. Robin has since graciously shared his father’s memoir with Chronicles readers.

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Photo: Children enjoying a ride on a hay wagon, just as the Cogger kids would have done at Hill Farm. —Photo: Author’s Collection