People uprooted from Port Alice (156)

Port Alice (formerly New Caledonia) was established by Whalen Pulp and Paper as a mill town in the late 1910s. Sixty acres were cleared beside the mill to build a company town of fifty houses, a hotel, and a boarding house. In 1925, the BC Pulp and Paper Company took over the mill, continuing a company-town system that controlled housing, policing, stores, and education, and kept workers dependent. That same year, the Japanese Labour Union led a strike for equal pay; although workers successfully received a raise, all union leaders were fired and one was deported.

In 1929, local union president Tomisaburo Ideta was fired for coordinating purchases of cheaper goods from the Japanese Union Co-op in Vancouver. Protests followed, but approximately sixty Japanese Canadian workers and their families were forced to leave, and the Port Alice union branch was dissolved. In 1931, Port Alice had an approximate population of 470, about 150 of whom were Japanese Canadians. By 1940 there was a Japanese community hall, Youth Association, Friendship Association (Ya-Ai-Kai), and a Japanese Language School. Landslides in 1927 and 1935 prompted the community’s eventual relocation to Rumble Beach, resulting in the loss of historical documents and buildings.