New Lease on Life for Historic St. Andrew’s Church?
St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, Cowichan Station. —www.templelodge33.ca
As I recently reported, the Cowichan Station Area Association, operators of the Hub, is working to take possession of the deconsecrated St. Andrew’s Church. Negotiations are underway with the Anglican Diocese of B.C. Apparently the beautiful century-old church beside the Koksilah River needs serious and expensive repairs and funding remains to be determined.
Should a deal be struck the CSAA wants to use the former church as a non-denominational community centre, “a place for weddings and funerals or a quiet place for contemplation,” said spokesperson Melanie Watson.
The fact that it comes with a wraparound cemetery obviously narrows down its potential options.
Ten years ago I published Tales the Tombstones Tell: A Walking Guide to Cemeteries in the Cowichan Valley, the culmination of 100s of hours of boots-on-the-ground research, 100s of photos, miles and miles of driving, and decades of archival research.
I love cemeteries. To me they’re oases of peace and quiet even when situated beside busy thoroughfares. A sense of peace transcends all, at least it does for me. Morbid? Hardly!
St. Andrew’s, Cowichan Station, is one of my favorites. Situated beside the Koksilah River and our last surviving wooden truss road bridge, within yards of the original sandstone E&N overpass, it and its surrounding cemetery is worth a visit at any time, particularly on a spring morning.
Be sure to check out the headstone that shows in the left foreground of the above photo—this has to be one of, if not the, most distinctive grave markers in all of B.C.
The news of St. Andrew’s possible new lease on life set me to thinking that many Chronicles readers (for shame!) won’t have read Tales the Tombstones Tell. Which explains why the chapter on St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, Cowichan Station, is this week’s Chronicle.
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This view of St. Andrew’s from Koksilah Road confirms its description as being a pretty, neat ecclesiastical building”.
There is no ‘downtown’ Cowichan Station now. What was a community unto itself is rural residential and a far cry from the thriving whistlestop known as McPhersons (aka McPhersons Station).
There had been a settlement before the railway: the Colvins, the Fleetwoods, the McPhersons, the Mearnses and others. Giovanni Ordano, of the pioneering Cowichan Bay family, built the Central Hotel, opposite the railway station in 1885, for his son. Upon Austin’s death by influenza in the ‘90s, his sister Marie Antoinette took over the hotel, adding a bar, grocery store and post office and operating it until it burned down in December 1925.
With the E&N came the Koksilah Quarry, a mile or so to the north, and, coincidentally, a Mr. Jones who had abandoned farming for the hotel business. What he really was after was a liquor license and, that granted, he opened the Jones Hotel beside the railway tracks. Despite having the amenities of a bar, however, the Jones Hotel failed and he and his family moved on.
When, by 1896, the hamlet had grown to the point of needing a school, parents converted the vacant Jones house to a classroom. A young David Tait taught there until he moved to Victoria to become a successful lawyer. He was succeeded by a man named Dove, “a graduate of Oxford University, England and originally a Presbyterian who forsook the church for the school room. He was an impressive-looking man, sporting a goatee, and was an excellent teacher”.
Thanks to the late Jack Fleetwood’s prolific writings over half a century as the Cowichan Station correspondent for the , and his near-photographic memory, we know that the community did thrive for a time. At its heyday, daily freight and passenger service by the E&N, its own siding and shipments of farm products, logs, lumber and sandstone kept the place busy. There was a small railway station, doctor’s office, shoemaker, smithy, apparently two community halls, a butcher’s shop, real estate and insurance office, a hardware store, livery stable, grocery store, post office, two hotels and, later, a gas pump. Today, only the tiny station-house maintains its vigil beside the E&N mainline, watching for trains that (as of this writing) no longer come.
Cowichan Station when it was an up-and-coming community on the E&N Railway.
But the siding’s long followed the other business establishments into history and modern homes occupy the former town lots. As with other trackside communities, the coming of the automobile has changed everything.
A Cowichan Station landmark that survives since its construction in 1906 is St. Andrew’s Church, tucked diagonally between river and road beside the railway overpass on an acre donated by Arthur Parry. When the Diocese of British Columbia attempted to register the deed, they discovered that Parry owned just two-thirds of the lot, former village postmistress Ada Cook retaining the balance. She graciously ceded her third-share by swearing before a notary public that she was of legal age and of sound mind–necessary protocol for a woman in those days.
A dance and concert raised $20, enough to hire William and Jim Mearns to build the “pretty, neat, ecclesiastical building” that originally seated 60, and an E&N train crew donated a locomotive bell for the steeple. Because of a declining membership, however, St. Andrew’s, Cowichan Station, held its last service on Sunday, July 18, 2010.
CEMETERY
As the church and adjoining hall straddle the property, the cemetery is in three sections and on three levels, at the front, behind and below, and on the west side. The headstones, for the most part, are functional rather than fancy. The exception–and what an exception it is–is that of Nigel Kingscote, in the family plot in the front corner, to the left, as you enter the parking lot. The symbolism of two hands resting on a shovel could not be more fitting for a man of the soil who worked hard for much of his lifetime.
Trained for office work and originally a surveyor, Nigel chose instead to return to what remained of the family’s Cowichan Bay farm and, with his wife Dorothy, operate a commercial piggery. By implementing time-saving techniques and raising high-grade stock, their Kingscote hams, bacons and sausages became known from California to Alaska. When the government encouraged dairy farming during the Second World War, they bought back much of the land Niegl’s father had sold off and built new barns and a silo. Their ideal, he said, was to operate a self-sufficient, efficient farm.
He fertilized with manure rather than chemicals, ploughed with a team of horses and cut hay by hand, with a scythe. As Dorothy put it, “We don’t mine our land, we farm it.”
Nigel was still working at the age of 82 although he no longer raised hogs. Grandson Lyle Young inherited the farm in 1987 and Dorothy Kingscote passed away in 2004. Her obituary described her as “a hard-working, determined woman who stayed positive in spite of health limitations and a difficult farming lifestyle, where much of the work was done with horses and by hand. The farm house was uninsulated and without central heat. Daily meals were prepared on a stove, and water was in short supply. Dot loved animals, birds, gardening, music, the outdoors, and time with family. During the course of her life on the farm she inspired many friends and neighbours with her hard work, old-fashioned values and the respect she held for all things.”
Back and below the church is the plot for Mabel A. Fleetwood (nee Chapman) and William J.H. “Jack” Fleetwood, who has been introduced previously. Near the road is the grave for Cpl. Edward W. Lawson, Northumberland Fusiliers, who died April 18, 1951.
Two rows above him is the grave of Lieut. Dyce Nicol Crosbie Victor Allan, MC (elsewhere he is identified as Dyce Nicol Crosbie Victor Allan), February 17, 1942. A member of the Veterans (Home) Guard of Canada he was 44. He received his Military Cross while serving with the Seaforth Highlanders in 1918, “For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. In spite of heavy artillery fire directed on his line, this officer moved about amongst his men, keeping them steady and cheerful. So well did he control the fire of his men that all enemy attacks were beaten off, many of the enemy being killed in our wire.”
An overgrown family plot honours “our only son” Stewart MacLeod, R.C.A., killed in Normandy July 29, 1944, aged 29. He is not buried here, of course; his grave is in a Canadian military cemetery in France.
Lieutenant-Colonel Claude Moss, MID, 1859-1930, is yet another of the Cowichan Valley’s retired British Army officers who made his home here, and takes his eternal rest after a distinguished military career. After several years’ service in India, he saw extensive frontline experience in South Africa during the second Boer War. Retired with the rank of major after almost a quarter of a century in uniform, he, wife Maggy and their daughter retired to Cowichan Station in 1908. Immediately upon the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered to train infantry in the fledgling Canadian Army. However, receiving no response, he returned to uniform, as a lieutenant-colonel, with the 6th Battalion of the South Lancashire Regiment. He was perhaps fortunate in that he was too ill to accompany his battalion in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. He later served in France and in Italy, where he commanded a camp for prisoners of war. Home again in Cowichan Station by the spring of 1919, he returned to well-earned retirement for a further 11 years until his death, January 29, 1930. Fittingly, his funeral service was conducted by the Cowichan Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion.
Maggy Moss earned distinction in her own right and is memorialized by Duncan’s Margaret Moss Health Centre; ironically, it is mis-named in that her real name was, as stated, Maggy.
Also here at St. Andrew’s, “after long suffering patiently borne,” is Oswald Howey Lunham, who as a captain in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, survived the infamous Battle of Passchendaele with the Canadian Machine Gun Company, takes his rest as of November 12, 1930.
At peace, too, is the aforementioned Marie Antoinette Frumento-Cockburn nee Ordano, 1973-1934.
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Obviously, these are but a few of the fascinating pioneers who take their eternal rest in the shadow of St. Andrew's, Cowichan Station. Readers who'd like to know more will find a visit to St. Andrew's well worth their time. It's a lovely country church in a lovely country location and easily accessible. One could do far worse on a spring day than visit this small oasis of peace.
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