Thanks to one of our volunteers, Bonnie Hartup, for sharing the story of Richard & Mary Simpson who were the heart and soul of the CNR Station in the early part of the last century. Their family home would later become the Simpson Private Hospital. Read the story HERE
December 2024 marks the bicentennial of the McMillan Expedition that searched out the site for Fort Langley, built three years later at Derby. The Livings Arts Society took to the river with the Fort Langley Canoe Club to recreate the Voyageurs' journey from Astoria, Oregon (Fort George) to the Fraser River. Most of the original Hudson's Bay Company paddlers were Voyageurs joined by Indigenous peoples. Songs, readings from expedition journals and a brisk paddle on the Bedford Channel beside McMillan Island, (home to the Kwantlen people who first traded with the HBC) made for a memorable day. The Langley Heritage Society was one of the sponsors of this event which included presentations from BC and Washington State historians. Read more about the expedition HERE.
The Hudson's Bay Company established a trading post at Derby Reach on the Fraser River in 1827, and 9 years later, the London-built SS Beaver went into service. It carried furs, food, supplies and people to forts along the coast for almost 40 years and has been described as, "a floating HBC trading post". (See HERE) The steam-driven paddle wheeler was eventually sold to a Victoria merchant who converted it into a tug-boat; its bell was then put into storage until Henry Wark (HBC factor and Fort Langley postmaster) spotted it and asked to have it for St Andrew's Church in Fort Langley, built in 1885. Read more about the bell's story below. (Information from Tribute a book about St Andrew's United Church by Marjorie Rosberg) SS Beaver (photo UBC) Fort Langley Advance 31 December 1964.
Langley Heritage Society member Tom Hammel is a talented songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. "The Ballad of Billy Brown" is his new song about one of Fort Langley's most legendary characters. Billy Brown built houses (including Haldi House), scrambled to move the Towle Commercial Hotel with teams of horses, and signed up with the Canadian forces during the Great War. Tom says, "The street I live on is named after him, so I got curious about who he was!" Watch and listen HERE.
Above photo: Commemorative cairn and memorial garden at St George's Church in Fort Langley. The Hudson's Bay Company Cemetery is located on the grounds of present day St George's Church in Fort Langley. (It's also included on our Fort Langley Walking Tour HERE). This was the Company's second cemetery, the first was established at Derby where the original fort was built in 1827. Only a few markers remain at the St George's site, but ground-penetrating radar indicates at least 24 burial sites, and possibly more. This is the final resting place of many from the fur trade era: Britons, French Canadians, Metis, Sto:lo, Iroquois and Kanaka peoples. Among them is Katrina, a high ranking Kwantlen wife of Peppeoh (Pion Pion), a Kanaka employee of HBC. The cross on the Anglican Church is in Katrina's memory, and is a Roman Catholic symbol of the Oblates. Read more in historian Warren Sommer's [...]
When was this aerial photo taken above Fort Langley? The Fort Langley Hotel beside the Haldi Bridge was still standing (it burned in 1974), CN Station is in its original location, 240 metres down the tracks from where it stands today at Mavis & Glover; the original firehall with two doors & tower was at Glover & Mavis. Reid's Garage (red roof) stands further up Mavis, and the Parks Canada National Historic Site features just two buildings (including the storehouse built in the 1840s) and a partial palisades (lower left). The photo was taken sometime before 1958, because three more buildings were constructed at the National Historic Site for BC's Centennial. Send your thoughts to: [email protected] or check our Facebook page.
The Morrison family lived at The Grove, Fort Langley. This photo came to us from Lianne Pryce whose grandfather once lived in this house. She asked if we knew where the home was actually located. It didn't take local historian Warren Sommer long to identify it as the Morrison home, AKA The Grove which once stood near the base of Armstrong Road where it meets River Road, below Barvis Hill. Warren interviewed Toody (Morrison) Wilson for the Langley Centennial Museum archives; she was part of a Fort Langley pioneer family and grew up in the house. Toody's voice can be heard on the March edition of Valley Voices. Warren also located another image with the Morrison family in front of the house (all but the uniformed man in the photo), probably sometime after the Great War. We enjoy receiving images that help tell the story of the Langleys. Please send [...]
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