The Sources of Our Story | This Precious Land | Those Intrepid People | A Letter from the President

by Dermott McInnes

There are many special places on the planet. We who have homes at Crystal Water Beach are aware that this is one of those places. We are privileged to be part of an extraordinary communiry.

This is the third in a series of Newsletters designed to enhance our life together here. The publications are not known for their regularity. Their sporadic appearances may serve as unexpected reminders of our good fortune in having found this place and one another. In the relaxed atmosphere of our Point Roberts life the last thing we need is to be too highly structured; yet we wish to keep strong the ties that bind us to our fascinating past and to each other

In Newsletter Number One, August 1996, Bob Culbert provided an overview of the history of Point Roberts, mentioned the families who in the 1920s established the first homes at Crystal Water Beach and secured the commonly owned foreshore and bluff which are such a boon to all of us, and wrote of the renewed development in the late 1940s and 1950s commenced when his parents, Bill and Doris Culbert, bought their lot in 1946 and which has continued to the present time.

His boyhood summers spent with his family in their South Beach cottage in the 1930s are vividly recalled by Rod Hourston in Newsletter Number Two, August 1997. Exciting adventures with friends, such as racing the Bellingham-Point Roberts freight and mail boat on their bicycles, hiking the beach or the trails to the Lily Point cannery, roller skating at Boundary Bay, enjoying Saturday night bonfires and sing songs, rowing to the seine boats to ask for salmon ... all are mentoned by Rod who also described the construction and operaton of the fish-traps in use at the time.

This issue, Number Three, will list the valuable sources of information concerning our history, emphasize the precious nature of our land and call to mind special people who have helped to make it all happen.

 

I have discovered five illuminating sources:

1. RECOLLECTIONS by Arni S. Myrdal. Six pages. First published in an Icelandic newspaper in 1953. A short account of his 1894-1908 years in Point Roberts. He retired as foreman of Alaska Packers cannery in 1930 and died in 1966.

2. ECHOES FROM THE PAST by Runa Thordarson. 27 pages. Printed in 1975. The story of two Point Roberts pioneers, her parents, Helgi and Dagbjort Thorsteinson (later the family name became Thorstenson). Contains excellent descriptions of Iceland from which her parents came, selections from her mother's diaries describing the journey to Canada, an account of their life in Point Roberts from 1894 until their deaths in the l940s and references to the births of their children, Groa, Runa. Laugi (named for a son lost earlier), Jonas and Elsa. (Runa married Ben Thordarson and they established Ben's Store which many of us remember).

3. A SHORT STORY OF A LONG LIFE: EIGHT DECADES OF MEMORIES by Laugi Thorstenson. 63 pages. 1985. A remarkably well written story of his home and family life and his challenging adventures in farming, dairying, travelling and creating a subdivision. Much of the book is devoted to his experiences in the difficult and dangerous work on the commercial fish-boats, often as skipper, in mainland and Alaska waters. A gutsy book.

4. POINT ROBERTS, USA: THE HISTORY OF A CANADIAN ENCLAVE by Richard E. Clarke. 137 pages. Teletype Publishing, Bellingham, WA, 1980. A history of Point Roberts from the time of the first known inhabitants, the Pacific Coast Salish Indians, through the period of the squatters and early settlers, then on to the heyday of agriculture and fishing to the uncertain 1970s. Much of the material is derived from the first two books mentioned above. Clarke describes Point Roberts as "A community that struggles and survives from one generation to the next with a strength and stability of its own".

The four books mentioned above are available from the Point Roberts library.

5. CEMETERY RECORDS taken from Richard Clarke's book with an update by Ernie Loreen. 2000. Thumbnail sketches of all persons buried in the cemetery, indicating those who were born in Iceland.

When our family bought the first of our two lots from Laugi Thorstenson in 1955 we did not know how precious this piece of land would become for us. It was the first bit of planet earth we had ever owned. (One should note here that none of us can ever really own part of the earth. It can only be entrusted to our care for a time).

When the Vancouver parks were crowded we could come to have a family picnic on our little bit of soil; and this we did many times before we had finished building our cottage. The first building we erected was an outhouse where we could also keep our picnic supplies. We brought logs from the beach to make a fireplace where we could heat water for tea and roast our marshmallows.

It was quite some time before we were aware that the cleared areas of Point Roberts had come at a great price ... the price of the dreams and struggles of the first settlers who came in the l890s and their families and others who succeeded them.

Many of them Icelandic folk, they cut the forest, cultivated plots of land for their fields and gardens, built their homes and supplemented their incomes by fishing and working in the canneries.

Our Crystal Water Beach lands were settled by William Taylor in 1897. By 1904 he had a house, barn, outhouses, 30 acres fenced, 20 acres cleared, seven acres under cultivation, the rest in grass, with a total estimated value of $700.00. In the 1920s he sold the land to a small group of New Westminster people who subdivided the south part and built four homes on the front lots. In his book Laugi Thorstenson describes how he purchased the property from a Mrs. Pollard, one of the original group who had taken over the land, for $6,000.00 in 1946. He began selling lots and shortly afterwards subdivided the entire 20 acres. Ours was the first lot north of Waters Road and we soon discovered that we were in the field where Laugi was still pasturing his cows.

So the land is priceless far beyond its monetary value!

 

In our search for an area in which to establish a recreational home we were exceedingly fortunate to find Crystal Water Beach for it gave us more than a piece of land in an ideal location. It introduced us to a marvellous body of people, the founding families of Point Roberts. Friends had suggested we look at Bell's Grove but when this did not appeal to us we made inquiries at the South Beach store. The friendly woman in charge of the store suggested we might find something to our liking if we were to call at the large white house up the hill to which she drew our attention. We did not know then that th16 January, 2007 12:10 PMember of one of the pioneer families. Finding no one at home at the this house (the home of Laugi and Ella Thorstenson) we left a note with our name and address.

We received a call from the Thorstensons and a few days later we arrived to purchase our lot. We came to know and appreciate Laugi and Ella and to be aware in a general sort of way that they were part of a very special brand of people who had created the community of Point Roberts. I must confess, however, that it was not until I began reading the books I have mentioned that I really came to understand who these folk were and what they had done. The Thorstensons were representative of the forerunners who had carved out this unique society on a small peninsula below the Forty-Ninth Parallel.

Who was this Helgi Thorsteinson I had been reading about ... this enterprising leader in the company of people battling to make their way in this virgin land ... this man who wrote such descriptive letters to his parents in Iceland about the efforts he and his wife, Dagbjort, were making to create a living from the products of the soil and the sea

and to build a life for their family?

Then it came to me. Helgi was Laugi's father, Dagbjort his mother. These were the parents of Groa, Runa, Jonas and Elsa too, and I was glad that I had met Elsa on many of her annual visits to her birthplace. These were Sylvia and Bob's grandparents. Now I knew how important it was for Sylvia to live on the cherished land first nurtured by her grandparents. Now I knew why Bob loves to come back to walk on the trails and the fields and to smell the ocean air. Now I knew who Joan was, Jonas' daughter, Sylvia's cousin.

Now I can visualize Helgi, his foster brother, Paul Thorsteinson, Bent Sivertz. Arnie Myrdal and his father coming from Victoria, where they were facing an economic downturn, to Point Roberts in 1894 to see if they could make a life here, deciding to buy squatters' rights from a number of the earliest settlers and moving their families to small undeveloped lands in this largely wooded peninsula. I can see the Helgi Thorstensons living in a log cabin until they were able to build their home in 1900. This house still stands near the home erected by Laugi and Ella in 1932. When Elsa told us she was born in that home in 1903 it took on special meaning for me. I had known it was historic, but now I wanted to examine it closely, touch it and preserve it on our camera. Now I know why there is a Paul's Road and why our whole scene becomes so treasured. Historic events and people have suddenly become alive.

Yes, we in Crystal Water Beach are privileged to be on the site where truly intrepid people have been and continue to be.

There was one unforgettable day for the people of Point Roberts. It was a day in 1908 when they received a letter from the President of their country. Some years earlier a man named Ferguson (first name unrecorded) had arrived from Texas, built a cabin and began cutting and stockpiling cordwood which he sold to one of the canneries to provide power for their engines..

When some of his neighbors complained to the U.S. Government that he was destroying the forest the Department of the Interior sent a special agent, Ed. C. Ellett, to investigate the situation. After a careful study over a period of months, Mr. Ellett prepared a comprehensive report on the lives of the residents and sent it to the Government in 1904. He recommended that Point Roberts should no longer be considered a military reserve and that the land should be made available for homesteading. This would mean that those who had squatted could now legally own their land. In 1908 the Govern

ment acted on this recommendation. A group of residents went to Seattle to file on their plots of land and when they returned on the mail boat the women welcomed them with a wonderful picnic in celebration of the new policy for which they had waited so long.

One of the settlers, Edward Tinkham, suggested sending a gift of appreciation to the President. Helgi Thorstenson butchered one of his finest sheep and donated the woollen hide which was tanned and made into a rug by a Mr. Elsner and sent as a gift to the President. The community received a letter of thanks from Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, Preident of the United States, expressing appreciation for the rug and saying that it was being used in his bedroom in the White House.

So in Crystal Water Beach we have inherited an enchanting history, a fulfilling present and an inviting future.

 

by Dermott McInnes June 2001