A Look Back – Way Back!
Settling the Island
In July 1859, John Copland and 29 other settlers were authorized to stake their claims to 100 acres per man and 200 per family on Tuam Island. Tuam Island was a seasonal home for the Cowichan people, where they collected clams and berries and other bounties, but little heed was given to that detail and a mixture of Europeans, Polynesians, transplanted American blacks, a few Portugese and a few Anglos soon headed up the Saanich Peninsula toward their new home.
The Early Settlers
Today the name Tuam is reserved only for the dominant mountain at the south end of the island. The island itself is known far and wide as Salt Spring.
From its earliest settlement, Salt Spring Island can boast, a heritage of multiculturalism and racial tolerance. Men and women of various races have played roles in developing this timeless place.
The earliest boatloads of settlers would land at Ganges Harbour and Vesuvius Bay, favouring the northern end of the island to settle. As a result, two makeshift communities started to take shape in this area in the early years. Central settlement was fittingly named (still called central, it is today the intersection of four roads south of St. Mary Lake) and the site of the island’s first school. A second settlement, near today’s Fernwoodon the northeast coast, was anchored by settler Johnathan Begg’s general store and nursery. The first commercial business was a sandstone quarry started at Vesuvius in 1860.
In the south, Kanakas and a few Anglo farmers selected more remote settings to build a new life.
Salt Spring’s First School Teacher
Much myth surrounds early Salt spring’s “black colony” which was not a colony at all. Because many settlers abandoned their pre-empted land after harsh winters in the early 1860s, leaving the hardy black homesteaders as a majority, some newsmen deemed it a colony.
While all this was going on, one intelligent black man with a degree from an Ohio college and a recognized teaching certificate set out to do some educating close to home. One of the original 29 authorized to claim land on salt spring, John C. Jones opened the first school on the island he had rapidly come to love. In 1861, at Jones’ urging and to the delight of Reverend Ebenezer Robson, all settlers banded together to build a log structure in Central settlement at the crossroads north of Ganges. The cabin was to serve as both school and church.
For several years, with endless gratitude but no pay, John C. Jones acted as the salt spring teacher. Finally in 1869, after island residents once more pointed to their eighteen school-aged children and their reliance on his good will, government officials agreed to officially hire him for $50 a year.