Seeking ‘Utopia’ in the B.C. Wilderness
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Utopia as “a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government and social conditions; an impractical scheme for social improvement; an imaginary and indefinitely remote place.”
The Cambridge Dictionary puts it more informally: “Try and imagine a perfect society, a utopia, in which the government really got everything right...”
Alas, Merriam-Webster is closer to the mark with “an impractical scheme for social improvement; an imaginary....place.” So, time and again, to the bitter disappointment of all parties concerned, the records show.
Malcolm Island’s controversial commune founder Matti Kurrika. As did so many other ‘Utopias,’ his Sointula failed. —https://sointulamuseum.ca/sointula-history
Of the innumerable attempts at founding the perfect society which have been recorded in provincial history, probably the best known is Sointula, ‘Place of Harmony,’ the ill-fated Finnish colony on Malcolm Island near Port McNeill. Northwest coast Vancouver Island’s Cape Scott colony was a more pragmatic approach to achieving social and economic independence but it, too, failed, albeit for reasons other than internal discord.
There were others. One of them, a century-plus ago, attracted young William Kipling of Victoria who passionately believed “in all schemes having for their object the betterment of the condition of the workingman”.
Noble sentiments, indeed. What a shame that they cost him his life.
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Even today, Shushartie Bay near the northeastern extremity of Vancouver Island is so isolated that it’s only accessible by boat or plane. 130 years ago, it was almost off the map, one latter-day resident sadly conceding near his life’s end, “We’re on the right island but at the wrong end...”
No doubt it was this in-the-middle-of-nowhere location that appealed to the idealists of the Canadian Co-operative Commonwealth, founded in 1894 by G.W. Alcock, Vancouver; G.H. Turner, Mission City; B.H. West and William Kipling, Victoria; and J.A. Tingsley and J.T. Wilbard, ‘Shooshartie.’
Late in 1894 they issued a sweeping manifesto to the press, proclaiming that CCC members would “engage in every branch of lawful industry on the principal of association of competition, and for that purpose to buy and sell, to own and operate, to have and to hold, to occupy and to enjoy all the rights, powers and privileges due to the individuals under the law, in the name of this corporation to unite and blend life in the effort to make humanity better and happier...”
They weren’t finished: the CCC was out to save the world by clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, relieving the oppressed, comforting “them that mourn,” being merciful to others while “hoping for mercy again”. CCC members vowed to “seek not riches or honour or place or power for selfish motives, but to be zealous in good works”.
In short, the organizers of the CCC hope to establish peace and prosperity in their chosen corner of the earth, Shushartie Bay—known to the local First Nation as Kwakwaka’wakw—“place possessing cockles”.
There, at the north tip of Vancouver Island, they set out to establish a new way of life in a community where no one would be turned away for reasons of age, sex or condition. The founders were convinced that the greater the individual’s need at the time of joining, the greater the amount of effort that individual would be willing to invest in the Co-operative.
The only stipulations were that those under the age of 18 years, and those adults unable to read or write, would not be permitted to vote in the affairs of the society. Those who qualified “must be conversant with the moral law as recorded in the Commandments and the constitution of this order”.
Under no circumstances would the society permit a wage structure to be established as the wage system, it declared, was but “a more villainous form of slavery”.
Every Co-operative member—as long as he remained within the society's jurisdiction—was to be a joint owner in property interests and enjoy an equal right to food, clothing and shelter. Land, once acquired, was not to be sold, but to be "held redeemed for all time for the use of present and future members”.
Another of the association's taboos was the use of money as a means of exchange. All commerce within the society would be carried out in the name of the CCC by its newly elected executive, which would use money solely to acquire land, patent rights, franchises and such machinery and products as couldn’t be purchased or acquired by the society by other means. Taxes would also be paid in cash.
According to the Victoria Colonist, the CCC “especially declared in favour of the best labour-saving machinery and the encouragement of invention and home manufactures”. Each member would be assigned to a “department” according to his skill, these departments, each under direction of a “chief,” to work together in harmony for the good of the entire colony.
Each member was instructed that whichever department he worked for he was working for the society as a whole, and that it was his duty to “serve all and hinder none".
In Sections 20, 21 and 22 of the CCC's charter, the group concluded, “life is the object we seek, and the evidence of Time applied to Industry is, or ought to be, the true medium of exchange. We are joint heirs with our fellow men in the development of natural opportunities and triumph of genius, and all that has been accomplished in the way of human progress in the past, therefore we owe to our brothers and to humanity in cooperation, that surplus product which results from machinery and all inventions and discoveries, mechanical or scientific, the use of which increases production.
"We propose to utilize revealed force to relieve the heavy burdens and free the oppressed who are now by reason of weakness of misfortune the helpless victims of a system of unbridled competition which arrays in unequal warfare the arms of steel against the arms of flesh.
“Whereas the machine is now the enemy of the working man, because it is a factor in competition against him in the vain struggle for money which is not life, we propose to make machinery man's servant, by denying the value of money and exalting Life.
How ironic, even cruel, that with such sky-high aspirations for the betterment of humankind, William Kipling’s eager participation in the Canadian Co-operative Commonwealth would be his death sentence, three months later, in the early hours of Oct. 29, 1894.
It took almost a week for the news that Kipling had been killed, and two of his companions seriously injured when their cabin was swept into the sea by a landslide, to reach Victoria. Word of the tragedy was brought to the capital when the SS Princess Louise docked in Victoria with Kipling's body, which was being returned to his parents.
Pioneer Victoria photographer Hannah Maynard captured the sidewheel steamship Princess Louise at Comox in 1880. —Wikipedia
It had been a wet autumn and for days, the small Shushartie colony, consisting of three shacks which served as temporary quarters for those working to construct permanent dwellings for those who were to follow, had been deluged by rain. Situated on the edge of a steep embankment overhanging the bay, the shacks had weathered the storms without apparent difficulty—until the morning of the 29th.
Kipling, who shared a cabin with Frederick Cross and Daniel Patterson, was the first to rise. He was partially dressed when, according to the others who were in the acting getting out of bed, “there was a sound like a falling tree”.
The next they knew, they were sent sprawling as their shack, picked up en masse when a 300-foot-wide section of the hill on which it was situated gave way and was swept before the landslide. Moments later, their cabin was deposited at the water's edge, swept from its foundations like “a child's toy and deposited in [a] broken heap of debris at the foot of the cliff, [beneath] an accumulation of soil, roots, trees and giant boulders".
The disaster had struck without warning; the first to extricate himself from the wreckage of his own shack was Jack McClugan. By the excruciating pain in his leg, McClugan knew that his knee was dislocated. But, terrified that Goss, Patterson and Kipling had been buried alive in the ruins of their hut, the heroic workman took a deep breath and forced the joint back into place.
Then, hobbling with pain, he hastened to the other men, being aided in finding them by the cries of Kipling and Goss. Luckily for Patterson, he’d escaped with a broken arm and he was able to help McClugan begin the work of extricating the others.
William and Polly McGarry, who occupied the adjacent cabin, had escaped the avalanche by a miracle, the half of their home that served as the camp cookhouse having been demolished. With their help, McClugan and Patterson “at once went to work with a will, stimulated by the agonizing cries of their unhappy friends”.
Although it was now daylight, the rains continue unabated and made their tasks both uncomfortable and exceedingly dangerous as, at any moment, what remained of the hillside above them could give way.
Making their race against the clock all the more torturous—making it, in fact, virtually impossible—was the lack of adequate tools, as all their equipment had been buried under tons of rock and mud. It took the four all of three and a-half hours to free Goss who’d been buried under some timbers and several feet of loose earth.
Happily for him, the collapsed timbers and a large tree trunk had formed an arch, thereby saving him from being crushed, and providing him with a pocket of air. Upon pulling Goss out of the rubble, they found that both of his legs were broken. Despite this, he was in good spirits and it was thought that he’d recover.
Poor Kipling hadn’t been as fortunate, the slide having carried him to the water’s edge and pinned him by his legs at the high-water mark. As his comrades laboured desperately to dig away the imprisoning debris with bloodied hands, the tide steadily crept higher. By this time, a wind had come up and transformed the bay into a racestream of whitecaps which, again and again, threatened to carry the exhausted rescuers away.
By the time they finally succeeded in carrying Goss out of harm's reach, the sea was lapping at Kipling's chest.
In an hour, the tide was up to his mouth and he was still pinned underwater by a broken leg. As the hapless secretary cried out in desperation, then screamed in agony, one of his rescuers dove beneath the waves. There, in the opaqueness, the unnamed workman proceeded to hack Kipling free by severing his leg just above the ankle with an axe.
After poor Kipling was freed, one of his comrades hurried to Fort Rupert for help. —BC Archives
Minutes later, the gruesome but necessary deed was done and Kipling, half-drowned and unconscious, rushed to the McGarry hut. Only then were his comrades able to send for help, one of the men hastening by boat to Fort Rupert. Immediately, a relief party, consisting of Indian Agent Pidcock, Provincial Police Officer Wollacott and Rev. Hall, headed for the scene aboard the steamer Evangelist.
They arrived on Thursday evening, four full days after the disaster, to learn that Kipling had died of shock and loss of blood, despite his friends’ every effort to save him.
“All the sufferers," it was reported, "were taken aboard the steamer, which, calling at Malcolm Island for Mr. G.H. Turner, another prominent officer of the colony, crossed with them to Alert Bay. As there was some uncertainty as to when the [Princess] Louise would be along, the [Evangelist] then headed for Vancouver.
“The same night weather, which threatened again the lives of the colonists, drove the steamer for shelter into Robson Bight, and the Louise was next morning sighted and the party transferred to her. The injured on the way down had the advantage of Mr. Hobbis’s surgical skill, and they are now on a fair way to complete recovery."
In due course the Princess Louise docked in Victoria, when Kipling's body was turned over to his family. Due to the more serious nature of his injuries, Fred Goss had been hospitalized in Vancouver, Dan Patterson continuing on to Victoria where he would also enter hospital.
On the day of Kipling's funeral, both were reported to be doing well. The Colonist reported that there was “general and genuine sympathy for the injured men, and for the friends of poor Kipling whose life was terminated in so tragic and terrible a manner”.
Such is the sad story of William Kipling whose dreams of a better world led him to an excruciating death. The landslide that killed him and devastated the temporary huts at isolated Shurshartie also killed the Canadian Commonwealth Co-operative.
Hikers enjoy the exhilarating experience of Cape Scott where, at the turn of the last century, Danish pioneers tried to wrest a living from the wilderness. But, for all their heroic efforts, they were too far off the beaten track to succeed. —Wikipedia
There were other failed co-operatives, communes and utopian settlements throughout B.C., among them Malcolm Island’s Sointula and northwestern Vancouver Island’s Cape Scott colony. Ironically, the Sointula Cooperative Store survives as the province’s oldest co-op shop.
Much of what was the ill-fated Cape Scott agricultural settlement is now provincial park.
