The Story Behind That Piano in the Wilderness
Some months ago, a shopper at Walmart asked me if I knew anything about the “piano” in the bush along the Cowichan Valley Trail. Was it the one, he asked, I’d once mentioned in a Citizen column?
The one that its owner and neighbours had desperately tried to save from fire?
I could have answered, yes, but I hedged my bets and said, probably.
Compare the top photo, taken in 2009, to the one below, taken in June 2022. Note how the fir tree has grown within the frame of the abandoned E&N flat car, to the point that the two are now welded together. The first photo shows the car in the open and visible from the Trail. No longer; you have to look for it now.
He was referring to an intriguing artifact that’s still clearly visible, should one know where to look, within 30 feet of the CVT, formerly the E&N Cowichan Lake Subdivision. I’ve noticed it during several visits to the former site of a 1920s sawmill community that has all but disappeared,
First, there was the fire, then the mill, rebuilt, closed and everyone moved away. Lumber salvagers, vandals and Mother Nature took care of the rest and what was, ever so briefly, known as Yellow Fir, became just another historical footnote.
Except to those who, like myself, like to haunt these vanished sites with a camera, notepad and, sometimes, a rake and a metal detector.
But you sure don’t need a detector to find the piano...
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About midway between today’s Inwood Estates and Paldi, Yellow Fir straddled the E&N tracks, houses on the north side, siding, mill and machine shop opposite.
You couldn’t miss it 13 years ago if you watched for a large rusted frame in the preceding photo, about 100 feet off the grade on the south side and clearly visible from the grade/trail. (If you’re on a day hike, this is a good spot for a snack or coffee break as there’s something to see if you care to look around).
You’ll know when you arrive at Yellow Fir by this tree which has served as a geocache and has sprouted a motley collection of curios. Jennifer is reading photocopied pages of my book, Historic Hikes, Sites & Sights of the Cowichan Valley, that someone has posted for the benefit of passing hikers and cyclists.
Should you still doubt you’re at Yellow Fir, this homemade sign makes it official!
The Yellow Fir Lumber Co., as its principals chose to name it for reasons unknown, had a sawmill and logging operation here, served by its own narrow gauge railway, 1920-26. The firm made front page headlines in September 1923: “Yellow Fir Mill Burns - Entire camp, plan, stock and loaded cars go in disastrous outbreak on Saturday.”
The mill, “together with all the lumber in stock, bunkhouses, cook houses, residences and other buildings,” reported the Cowichan Leader, went up in flames.
It was suspected that a spark from the sawdust burner ignited flammable materials at the mill, about 11:40 a.m. Saturday morning. Fanned by a stiff breeze, “so fiercely and rapidly did it burn that, practically within 10 minutes, the building was a flaming mass...”
Government log scaler H. O’Neill was the first to spot smoke, curling up from beneath the slipway between the mill and pond, during the crew’s lunch break. Only four of the mill’s senior personnel were handy. Assistant engineer Robert Carr immediately responded with a hose but it was hopeless, the wind fanning the smouldering sawdust into a wall of flame that swept all before it, and almost cost Carr his life.
As it was, he was badly burned on the forearm before he retreated to safety.
Attempts to man two other hoses proved to be equally ineffective and the mill was left to its fate.
Reported the Leader: “With almost unbelievable rapidity the entire structure was in flames and it was quickly seen that everything on the site would go, the direction of the wind being from the mill towards the buildings on the slope above. By this time the bush crew had come in and attention was turned by everyone towards saving as much of the personal effects in the various buildings as was possible. Time even for this was limited and only a small proportion was saved...”
It so happens that not one but two pianos were threatened by the flames.
Among the contents of Supt. Johnson’s house, which was totally consumed, was his “good piano,” although employee George Pimlott, whose cabin was farther from the mill, managed to save his piano by “judiciously” moving it around throughout the fire.
What a picture of the imagination this presents.
Anyone familiar with an upright piano knows that they’re mounted on very small wheels and not really amenable to being moved about, even on a hard, flat floor. Imagine George Pimlott and fellow employees trying to wheel his piano over uneven, rocky ground!
(We’ll come back to the pianos.)
More evidence of the heat of the fire, this rail car is bent and twisted.
Little more than two hours later, much of the mill and several of its outbuildings had been consumed for a total loss estimated to be as much as $125,000. This amount did not include the personal losses of employees and their families, thought to be between $100 -$800 (much more then than now but still not a lot of money, indicating that the houses were company-owned).
Only the logging equipment and the filing and repair shops on the west side of the mill pond had been spared by a shift in the wind’s direction.
This melted bottle graphically shows the intense heat of the fire.
Although not a large firm, Yellow Fir was no fly-by-nighter if you go by its owners. President M.B. King, Vancouver, was brother to the federal minister of public works, and managing director B.M. Farris, also of Vancouver, was brother to a former B.C. attorney-general, which suggests that they had connections and money. Their King and Farris Lumber Co. also owned a sawmill in the New Westminster area.
Ironically, Yellow Fir’s days had been numbered even before the disastrous fire, its owners having already decided to move their operation to Great Central Lake when their small Sahtlam timber limit was exhausted. As records show that they continued at Yellow Fir into 1926, it likely took them that long to finish off their lease.
The news report of the fire noted that two flat cars and two box cars were destroyed–“all burnt clean to the iron and steel framework,” and even their wheels melted.
One was fully loaded and one partly loaded with more then one million feet of lumber valued at more than $22,000. The skeletons of the two flat cars are there today, with large trees growing through them, as are pulley wheels and other bits of scrap metal from the sawmill. Graphic evidence of the fire’s heat are the standard gauge steel rails from the siding that linked to the E&N that are twisted like pretzels.
The Duncan agent for the E&N, upon being alerted of the blaze within minutes of its discovery, dispatched a work engine to haul the loaded lumber cars to safety. The relief train arrived within 20 minutes–too late even to approach the siding. In fact, the Lake Cowichan Mainline had to be shut down, too, when it was found that several lengths of rail (likely those still to be seen today) had buckled from the heat and required replacement by a work crew from Lake Cowichan.
Of the mill and its outbuildings, you can find concrete footings in the trees and over the bank where the millpond was located, and the machine shops were on the other side of the creek. Old truck parts and milling equipment have attracted the attention of relic hunters as evidenced by their scratching.
Pulley wheels from the mill and the frame of another flat car.
Several years ago, Peter Roosen who’d built a narrow gauge railway on his property in East Wellington, recovered several lengths of narrow gauge rail from the creek. How ironic that the Nanaimo Regional District shut him down and he took his railway rolling stock and collectibles to the U.S.
Of Yellow Fir’s loggers’ cabins, which were on the opposite side of the E&N, just melted shards of glass, china and Chinese bottles and pottery are to be found with effort and mostly broken, probably from the heat of the fire. A stash of embossed Silver Springs Brewery beer bottles appear to have been used for target practice, years ago.
It’s enough to make a bottle collector weep.
One thing we’ve never found is the company safe which supposedly was to be seen even in recent years. It could well be there—it’s not likely that it would have travelled far—but the salal and undergrowth can easily hide it from view.
The 1923 disaster meant unemployment for 50 mill workers and 30 loggers, the latter employed under contract by the firm of Horsfall and Jordan. The mill had but recently resumed operation after a lengthy shut-down because of an inadequate water supply. If you look at Curry Creek today, where it meanders under the E&N grade at Yellow Fir, you can see scant evidence of this pond which was contained by earth and concrete and fed by a flume. Even this precarious system was said to have cost King and Ferris dearly.
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Now about that piano...
As we’ve seen, Supt. Johnson lost his house and his piano, but employee George Pimlott saved his by spiriting it away from the approaching flames. So it has to be the Johnson piano, what’s left of it, that’s there today.
How do I know that’s the frame of a piano? Because the name of the manufacturer and place of origin is clearly cast. After rubbing away the dirt and surface rust with a piece of bark, Jennifer is able to read:
Wormwith Piano Works, Kingston, Ont.
A check with Google quickly turns up pages of information on the Wormwith Co., which began as a partnership between John Fox and George Weber in 1865. The Weber Piano Co. moved to Kingston where, upon Fox’s death, Weber assumed complete ownership.
There was a subsequent partnership and change of name to
Stevenson & Co.,” then, in 1896, William Henry Wormwith entered the picture—as office boy then foreman. As of 1907, and yet another name change, both the Wormwith and the Weber Piano Companies produces a full line of upright and grand pianos.
Upon Wormwith’s retirement in 1919, the firm became The Weber Piano Company, Kingston Limited.” By the late 1930s, Depression-era, the company was in financial difficulty and its assets were acquired by the Lesage Piano Co. which continued to build grand, square upright and player pianos under the previous names.
It had been a bumpy ride for the Ontario firm(s) which also had survived near-bankruptcy and the loss of its Kingston factory to fire in 1908. At one time, the piano maker had been the largest manufacturer in Canada, producing almost 500 instruments a year.
Upon taking control of the company, Wormwith had begun production with serial number 12000; a piano on display in the Canadian Piano Museum is number 12005, meaning it’s the fifth one built under his management. Too bad the frame at Yellow Fir isn’t numbered. (At least, I don’t think it is.)
Both a Wormwith and Stevenson piano are in the museum which occupies the former home of onetime piano making partner, John Stevenson who also served on Kingston City Council.
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Next year will mark a century since fire swept the little community of Yellow Fir and Supt. Johnson lost his “good piano,” as the Leader described it. But much of its iron frame, as shown in these photos, is still there and clearly visible atop the soil.
I’m sure many hikers have seen it and wondered over the years. Well, at least Chronicles readers now know the story behind Mr. Johnson’s Wormwith piano.
More parts of the piano, some of them showing signs of having been burned.
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