Historical Vignettes of Three Rural Women by Elida Peers

ANNE SANDERSON ARDEN

Anne Sanderson was living with her family on Sooke River Road when she met a young man from a Metchosin family, Eustace Arden and married him in 1909. Enterprising Eustace drove a stagecoach from Sooke to Victoria and also built a store on the corner of Otter Point Road in 1910, where Anne served the customers, her infant child with her in a basket on the counter.

In 1912 when the Sheringham Light was established, Eustace was the successful applicant as keeper, a position he retained for 34 years. Anne cheerfully moved with him to then-isolated Sheringham Point, where the couple raised a family of five sons and two daughters. In the first years, when there was no road to the lighthouse, supplies were brought in every few weeks by lighthouse tenders such as the Quadra or the Estevan.

While the keeper was kept busy polishing the lenses and winding the cable in the tower every three hours, Anne was occupied with the children and a large garden to supply their needs. She enjoyed the quiet beautiful spot with its ever-changing panorama. With a clear view of ships passing in the Strait, she made entries in her diary, such as on April 11, 1921: “Beautiful day, water calm, 11:15, Empress of Japan is passing.”

During WWII for a period after Pearl Harbour, blackout curtains were drawn over the light. Anne Arden’s health was failing, her children were grown, and the couple moved closer in to the Sooke village in their retirement.

MARY FINLAY CARTWRIGHT

In 1872, East Sooke property at Trollope Point became home to Mary Finlay Cartwright. Born in Nanaimo to Hudson’s Bay Company employee Christopher Finlay and his First Nations wife, Mary met another HBC man William Cartwright, and married him in 1869. As William would be away from time to time working, Mary sometimes found herself on her own raising the children.

She kept a diary, fascinating in its illustration of the self-reliance needed by pioneer women. In November 1882, she wrote, “I was sewing all day. In the morning Mr. Thomson and another gentleman came here .. he asked me to let him have a couple charges of powder so I gave it to him.”

And in December, “I rolled a log down and burst it, then I burst another log – one that William finished sawing for us. It was dreadful hard to split. I boiled the beef brine and skinned the feet. John Dale came here just before dark, to see if he could get the rifle but I would not let him have it … an Indian woman came here, she said that her two little ones were very sick with a cold. She asked me for a little pain killer and some hops, I gave them to her.” And still later, “After dinner I went over to Mrs. Throup for some sewing… and she gave me some apples.”

When Mary Cartwright rowed across the harbour to see Mrs. Throup and pick up the sewing, she would have tied up her rowboat at the shore below Sooke Elementary School. The Cartwrights raised a large family in East Sooke, who grew up to marry and make homes for themselves throughout Vancouver Island. Descendants still drop by to visit the museum.

KATHLEEN “JOEY” GORDON GIACOMINI

Joey Giacomini was born Kathleen Gordon, but by all accounts she was a tomboy and always called Joey. The daughter of Ted Gordon, adventurous grandson of the dean of Lincoln Cathedral and his London socialite wife Kitty, emigrants to Otter Point in 1889, Joey grew up on the Gordon Farm.

One of her early memories was of being awakened in December 1912 by a “roaring sound.” It turned out to be the wind in the sails of the grounded fourmasted bark County Linlithgow, which had become confused by the signal of the newly installed Sheringham Point lighthouse, and run directly onto Gordon’s beach. The sailors were rescued, warmed and fed, and the sailing vessel was refloated on the next high tide.

Jo married Austin Kirby a son of the Kirby Creek family, and moved with him to Jordan River. While her husband worked at Sunlock Copper Mine and also ran a stage/bus twice weekly to Victoria, Jo looked after the family’s cows and small farm on the hill above the town. She delivered milk by dogcart to customers in what was then a thriving company town, during the 1920s.

Years later, when married to Peter Giacomini, a blacksmith at CPS, she continued her farm chores until well in her 80s. By then she had established a reputation for collecting for cancer research, which she and a friend at the River undertook for 20 years. Jo prided herself that she had one of the first driver’s licenses in Victoria issued to a woman. Her old home on the Gordon farm is gone now, with a variety of modern buildings in their place.