People uprooted from Union Bay (12)

Union Bay (previously Union Wharf), originally inhabited by the Pentlatch People, was established by non-Indigenous settlers in the 1880s. Japanese miners did settled near Union Bay as early as 1891, but after the closure of the Union Colliery Company (UCC) mine (No. 1), most residents returned to Japan. In 1889, construction of the port began, and Union Bay became a major deep-water shipping port for coal mines. A primary export was coke coal that required special beehive-shaped ovens to produce. These coke ovens were built in 1895. The ovens ran for days at a time, and Japanese Canadians were often assigned to monitor them, shoveling the slack coal and dust into the ovens before ignotion and stoking the ovens. The last shipment of Union Bay coke was in 1922. Many Japanese Canadians in Union Bay worked for logging companies in the Comox Valley region, including the Royston Lumber Company and Hill’s Lumber Company in Duncan.