Gerry Wellburn: Father of the B.C. Forest Discovery Centre
One of the downfalls of having to work most of the time is the number of lost opportunities. Over the years there have been many.
One I truly regret is not having known Gerry Wellburn, father of the B.C. Forest Museum, today’s B.C. Forest Discovery Centre—50 acres of trees, forestry artifacts and trains on the western shore of Somenos Lake, at Drinkwater Road and the Trans Canada Highway.
They say you can tell the real boys by their toys. For Gerald Wellburn, only the real thing would do and his B.C. Forest Museum (today’s B.C. Forest Discovery Centre), is the priceless result. —Author’s Collection
Anyone who has visited the BCFDC knows its fascination for adults and particularly for children—where else can they ride a real steam (and diesel) train on the Island? The Christmas trains in open cars under the stars is an experience to be enjoyed and treasured.
As one who grew up beside the CNR tracks in Saanich in the last days of steam, the BCFDC train is a blast from the past.
Back in the 70s when I was still writing weekly historical articles for the Colonist I had an invitation to meet with Gerry and Hall Mckenzie. I can’t remember why other than, probably, Gerry was hoping for publicity for what was then the B.C. Forest Museum.
They gave me a guided tour which impressed me but nothing came of it because I was committed elsewhere.
It was only years later, after Gerry’s passing, that I came to know son Vern to some degree and learned more about his dad’s dedication to forest and postal history.
I’ve visited the Forest Museum/Discovery Centre many times over the years, always with my camera and I’ve shot 100s of photos, viewed the exhibits and ridden the trains, just like any other visitor and tourist. I’ve also done a lot of research into provincial forestry history and invariably the name Gerry (or Gerald) Wellburn comes up.
He was both an historian and an antique collector par excellence. What few people today realize is that he was also one of the best known philatelists in the world, his stamp collection being internationally renowned.
So I’ve finally done some research into the great man himself. I’ll share my findings with you next week in the Chronicles.
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Which brings me to another aside: I don’t know if those of you who are reading this also used to read the Chronicles (twice weekly then weekly) in the Citizen, but, do you realize that the every-Thursday online product is 3-4 times that which appeared as a full page feature in the newspaper?
Meaning that, labour of love or no, it’s a lot of work, folks, and some days are harder than others!
Such was the case this morning when I pulled my Gerald Eley Wellburn file; it’s an inch thick with documents, newspaper clippings and photos and my first thought was, groan, where to begin?
You see, Gerry doesn’t fit neatly into a single file—he was a man who followed three three distinct paths through life: he was, in order, a professional forester, a philatelist of international acclaim and, finally, in his retirement years, the founder of today’s B.C. Forest Discovery Centre for which he’s most remembered.
Since, I think you’ll agree, this is pretty much the reverse order of importance, we’ll begin with his creation of the Cowichan Valley Forest Museum in 1963. One of the best sources of information is the CVFM page on the BCFDC’s website. Based upon an interview with the grand old man of forest history himself, it’s so good, in fact, that I’m going to use it as today’s launchpad.
Gerry Wellburn wearing his logger’s hard hat and as stamp collector extraordinaire. —Canadian Philatelist
http://antique.vccc.com/pioneers/wellburn/wellburn.html
Our story begins in the early 1960s when Gerry, by then retired and living on a country acreage on Glenora Road, became involved with members of the Duncan Chamber of Commerce. He soon became aware that there was a philosophical gulf and a general lack of understanding of the importance of the forest industry to both the Cowichan Valley and British Columbia as a whole. He’d noticed that, while most women expressed pride in their husbands who practised regular professions, “the wife of a sawmill worker was often looked down upon”.
This, he knew as a forester and industry historian, was unjust and counter to reality—how many small businessmen and growing townships owed their very existence to the logging industry over the years? He resolved to set the record straight by “telling people what the real story was.”
A natural storyteller, he knew that the best way to inform people was to entertain them—“and there’s nothing like a live steam railway to put people in a good humour”.
And so began, you might think, on 12 acres in the rural backwoods of Deerholme, what became the Forest Museum then the Forest Discovery Centre.
Not quite so, however. The reality is it actually began a decade earlier, as early as 1950, when logging railways were being torn up to make way for logging trucks. Overnight, beautifully maintained steam locomotives and rolling stock were worth no more than their weight in scrap metal and the cutting torches went to work; historically significant railway trains that now qualified as artifacts but were considered junk, were off to the melting pots in Japan.
Gerry Wellburn was heartbroken.
One day he “just drifted up to [Macmillan Bloedel’s] Chemainus [sawmill]...to see what was going on”. There were “great piles” of railway equipment lying around. He determined to save what he could; but as soon as word spread that Gerry Wellburn was buying old railway “junk,” he recalled, prices soared. Nevertheless he was able to amass 200 pieces before costs got out of hand.
Ever the historian, he bought more than railway memorabilia; one of his first purchases was a 12”x12” hand hewed timber from the demolished Hudson’s Bay Co. Warehouse in Victoria Harbour.
On a subsequent visit to the Chemainus mill he arrived just as demolition had begun on a Shay locomotive he’d ridden on as a child. Gerry wasn’t just appalled—he was outraged—and he stormed into the office. Admonished and abashed, management allowed him his pick of what was left and, for $1750, he bought the 1911 “Old One-Spot” which he considered to be “the oldest and most interesting”. She was the first Shay brought into B.C. from the Lima Locomotive Works of Ohio.
That’s when the Glenora Western Railway, the nucleus of the future Forest Museum, got started. On June 28, 1958, during B.C.’s Centennial year, with the help of members of the Victoria and Nanaimo Model Railway Clubs, the last spike of a mile of track was driven. The mini-railway didn’t take long to achieve popularity and crowds began to arrive on weekends, somewhat to the dismay of Mrs. Wellburn, an avid gardener who missed the peace and quiet of their rural homestead.
By 1963 Gerry was looking for a new permanent location and he managed to interest the provincial government in his collection. The province found what appeared to be an ideal site by Beaver Lake but the Saanich mayor favoured a golf course and Valley residents were loath to see the collection move away. With the help and cooperation of current and retired civic leaders, six wooded hectares beside Somenos Lake, the present Trans Canada Highway-Drinkwater Road location last used as a mink farm, was acquired. As was Gerry’s vast collection of rolling stock and railway and logging artifacts for a below appraised value of $50,000 that was paid out over nine years. He then donated $100,000 to the Vancouver Foundation which managed the CVM.
An early photo of the Cowichan Valley Forest Museum and one of Gerry’s rescued locomotives. —http://antique.vccc.com/pioneers/wellburn/wellburn.html
It should be noted that the museum’s location has further historical significance, having been the site of the Valley’s first school.
With what railway historian Bob Turner has described as the skill of a landscape architect, Gerry laid out the design of the static-and-live museum which formally opened, Saturday, June 4, 1966 although it had opened to the public on the Victoria Day weekend, 1965, when passengers enjoyed their first train ride. The first year’s paid 24 attendance was a respectable 16,881. Official opening was June 4-5, 1966 with attendance climbing to 28,369 and producing an operating profit. Four adjoining pieces of property including the Windeyer farm have been added over the years for a total of 21 hectares (51 acres).
The Cowichan Valley Forest Museum Society was dissolved, its functions assumed by the British Columbia Forest Museum, in 1976. The BC Forest Discovery Centre was formally established as the new name of the museum in 1999 “to better reflect the evolving mandate of the BC Forest Museum Society and the growing sophistication of our exhibits and programming”.
As a result of Gerry’s years of dedication and financial investment in rescuing historic equipment from the scrapyards, we in the Cowichan Valley, in the words of the BCFDC’s website, “have one of the province’s finest living museums containing collections of historical logging equipment and artifacts”.
His contributions to logging and railway history didn’t go unnoticed by officialdom, Gerry’s work having been recognized by the Province, the City of Victoria, the Canadian Institute of Forestry and others. He had, in fact, gained an international audience and fan club, among the visitors to the CVM being three lord mayors of London, a president of the New York Stock Exchange and Walt Disney—who, on Gerry’s advice, added a live steam engine to his attractions at Disneyland.
All in all, one would say, Gerry made a full and invaluable contribution to provincial history, one that lives on thanks to the ongoing success and popularity of the BCFDC. It hasn’t always gone smoothly but Gerry Wellburn always knew the road to travel. During his last visit to the museum, he looked out over the crowd of 3000 he was about to address, and said, simply, “I think you’re finally getting it right.”
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So much for Gerry Wellburn’s creation of the CVFM/BCFDC. Let’s look at him from a family perspective.
His stamp collecting was legendary. The hobby he’d begun as a child made him internationally known in philatelic circles and he was often in the media because, in the course of his collecting stamps, he also collected related letters and documents from the past. Some of these offered fascinating and illuminating insights into B.C. history and ranged from the esoteric to the exotic—such as the only known existing letter written by Vancouver’s Gassy Jack Leighton. Where and how he came up with some of them in the world before online shopping, I don’t know know, but he must have subscribed to every leading auction house in the western world and scoured antiquarian shops. Too, his reputation would have brought other collectors and dealers to him.
An example of a unique Gerry Wellburn collection cover. —https://www.allnationsstampandcoin.com/gerald-wellburn/
Gerry didn’t just collect stamps and ephemera, the fancy word for written or printed memorabilia—he researched their history and created beautiful albums which he illustrated himself. In short, he actively pursued British Columbia history and he saved it for posterity. (A man after my own heart—TW.)
Because of their uniqueness, collections known as Gerald E. Wellburn collections are still in existence but in other collectors’ possession; as recently as December 2020 his Panama Railroad Collection was put up for auction. Among the better known are the San Juan Islands and 1858 Fraser River Gold Rush collections.
Each time All Nations Stamp and Coin (www.allnationsstampandcoin.com) advertises a Gerald E. Welllburn collection at one of its weekly auctions, they post a warm “family perspective” written by an unidentified family member. Almost typically, it begins with a humorous anecdote: “Gerald E. Wellburn was born in Yorkshire England on January 6, 1900, too late to be the first baby born in the new century.
“In his family it was well known that was the last time he was late for anything!”
His grandmother started him collecting stamps with a penny red stamp when he was eight years old. When, still a boy, his family moved to Victoria, and he learned that Vancouver Island and British Columbia had issued their own postage stamps as separate colonies, he began what would become a lifelong passion, the saving of B.C. stamps and historical documents.
He was quick to spot opportunities, taking advantage of family visits to some of Victoria’s pioneer families and asking to see family albums and letters. One attic in particular, that of an elderly woman who still lived in the original family house, “was full of boxes of historic B.C. letters and documents”. Even in later years, he remembered that treasure trove which, but for his childhood intervention, might well have found its way into a fire or garbage can.
Invariably, after dinner, he’d work on his collections and research them until bedtime. In later years he gained not only recognition for his philatelic efforts but awards.
His love affair with steam locomotives began when he worked for a short time for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He spent much of his working career as a self-employed logger and as manager of the Shawnigan Lumber Co., all the while continuing his collecting and researching of provincial history in general and forestry and railway history in particular.
Come retirement, Glenora and the demise of railway logging, he created a three-foot-wide narrow gauge railway on the property with a genuine working steam locomotive and passenger cars. His rescuing of logging railway artifacts also picked up steam: “He collected everything: logging equipment, locomotives, trucks, buggies and cars until he almost outgrew his ten [sic] acres.” He even had the Duncan Volunteer Fire Department’s No. 2 fire engine which, since restored, is on display at the Canada Avenue fire hall.
As for his treasures that formed the nucleus of the CVFM, he liked to say, “It’s a shame to break up a collection!”
Upon eventual retirement and a move to Victoria, Gerry resumed working on his stamp collection in earnest, remounting some of his earlier albums with their unique Wellburn graphic layouts and illustrations. Even when he returned to the Valley on family visits he’d bring along a collection he was working on. “It was amazing how much he knew about the people behind the stamps and covers.”
He published much of that knowledge in The Stamps and Postal History of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Privately printed by a member of the Eaton family, this 164-page treasure trove of historical information with colour plates was last listed online for $195 US funds. It included letters by explorer Simon Fraser and a telegram to Dr. J.S. Helmcken relaying the news of B.C.’s admission to Confederation.
Ever the storyteller and public speaker, he’d weave spellbinding tales of the stamps themselves and tell the stories behind their creation. He never lost his childish enthusiasm over the acquisition of a new find and, by the 1980s, he was determined that his collection would not go into a museum “where it would sit in a dusty corner neglected”. Instead, he wanted his life’s work to “go to a collector who would appreciate it and show it to others. He really appreciated other collectors.”
When all was said and done, “He wanted to know the people behind the history and to tell their stories; that was Gerald E. Wellburn.”
Gerry Wellburn, predeceased by his wife Ethel May and daughter Kathleen Joan Kennedy, passed away in his 92nd year in Victoria in May 1992. He was survived by son Vern, daughter Lois Phillips, nine grandchildren and 17 great grandchildren.
And by his wonderful stamp collections and the B.C. Forest Discovery Centre where a fund in Gerry’s honour was set up to finance and upgrade museum programs and education.
You can find more online about Gerald E. Wellburn at http://antique.vccc.com/pioneers/wellburn/wellburn.html. From Vern’s tribute to his father we learn that Gerry attended Victoria High School then, aged 16, worked as a wiper in the CPR locomotive shop in Vernon. But upon becoming ill during the Spanish ‘Flu epidemic in 1918, he returned to Victoria to recuperate and became active with the Boy Scouts, met future wife Ethel and gave up all thoughts of returning to Vernon.
After a few years with the Victoria Daily Times circulation department he was offered a job with the Gwilt Lumber Co., his introduction to the forestry industry. By 1928 he had his own sawmill and logging company in the Cowichan Valley. As Vern noted, 1928 was “not a good year to start a business! The mill was shut down and Gerry was out of work for many months in the early ‘30s [the Great Depression—TW] but by 1934 things had improved and ‘Wellburn Timbers’ grew.” He sold his company to H.R. Macmillan in 1945 with whom he served as manager until his retirement in 1963.
Active in community affairs, he became friends with Duncan high school principal Lawrie Wallace who’d go on to become Provincial Secretary—the perfect door-opener for Gerry when he sought government assistance to found the CVFM.
The Depression and the Second World War had limited forest companies’ financial ability to renew equipment but by 1950, as we’ve seen, there was a rush to truck logging. As Vern wryly notes, “Scrap dealers had a bonanza!
“When Gerry saw his beloved locomotives being broken up he became alarmed! ‘We are throwing away our heritage,’ he said. So he put his stamp collection on the shelf and started to collect everything: logging equipment, locomotives, trucks, buggies, farm tractors, fire engines, you name it!”
When, in 1955, he bought a three-foot gauge steam locomotive that his friend and chief inspector of railways Bob Swanson told him was operational, he laid some track—the start of what the family called “Grandpa’s Railroad”—with the volunteered assistance of dedicated railway and logging buffs on weekends.
Vern, who was working in Port Renfrew, commuted on weekends; during a visit to Renfrew in 1957, Gerry bought a 1918 Federal truck, the ‘Scrambola,’ which Vern had restored to running condition in the company shop before shipping it to Deerholme. This was Vern’s first experience with antique vehicles and the start of his own love affair with vintage cars.
That year was the start of Gerry’s antique car collection beginning with a 1924 Model T and a 1924 Morris Cowley with which they participated in the Centennial car run from Fernie to Victoria; as a result the Vintage Car Club was formed.
By this time Ethel was into the spirit of old cars, too, after seeing a yellow Packard; Gerry bought her her own Packard and had it painted yellow.
By 1960 friends and fellow auto collectors Phil Foster and Cliff Scroggie had 15 cars between them and wanted to open a car museum. But when Foster became ill and Americans expressed an interest in his share of the collection, he turned to the Wellburns, who bought most of them to keep them in Canada. Gerry got the 1912 Hupmobile, 1902 Holley, 1911 Stanley (steamer), 1909 McLaughlin, 1912 Detroit Electric, 1911 Mitchell, 1907 Model N Ford, Vern the 1912 McLaughlin and 1910 Russell. The 1912 Ford went to the Provincial Museum.
Left: The model N Ford in a parade when Phil Foster owned it.
Right: Vern Wellburn driving the 1911 Stanley on tour.
—Both photos: http://antique.vccc.com/pioneers/wellburn/wellburn.html
By 1963, according to Vern, ‘Grandpa’s Railroad’ was “out of control!” with the 12-acre family farm the home of more than a mile of track and “a city” of storage sheds. With as many as 100 visitors each weekend it was more than the family could handle; that’s when Gerry approached friend Lawrie Wallace, now high in government, the B.C. Forest Service and local community leaders.
The result, as we’ve seen, is the B.C. Forest Discovery Centre which Gerry managed on a volunteer basis for 12 years. Only the vintage cars weren’t part of the disposition. Although attempts to start a car museum in Duncan didn’t succeed the provincial government opened a transportation museum in Cloverdale, only to close it because of “political controversy”. The vehicles on display were sold or dispersed to museums throughout B.C. Some trucks which were in almost new condition after years in a warehouse because of a labour dispute ended up in the Teamsters’ museum in Chilliwack.
Gerry and Vern participated in several antique rallies as far away as England. Vern summed up his father’s life thus: “He had a wonderful life; he contributed greatly to the preservation of B.C. history and to the Vintage Car hobby—and he had a lot of fun doing it.”
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