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Edenbank: The History of a Pioneer Canadian Farm
The story of Edenbank Farm begins with a case of gold fever. Twenty-five year old Allen Wells leaves his new bride Sarah Wells in Ontario to strike out for the Cariboo gold fields.
It's 1862, he travels via New York to the Isthmus of Panama, overland to San Francisco, up the coast by ship to Victoria and then aboard a steamboat to New Westminister. Once there, he hires a Sto:lo paddler named Big Jim to get him to the trail head where he starts his 500-mile walk to Barkerville with supplies on his back.
Like so many, Allen fails to strike it rich. He leaves the gold fields broke. On the return journey through the Fraser Canyon, he settles in Yale where he outfits the first four-horse stage coach to travel the Cariboo Road-B.C.'s first mega-project.
Sarah joins Allen in Yale, and within three years their first child is born. Wells moves south to manage his brother-in-law's farm near Sardis. Big Jim paddles him upstream to a native trail where Wells stakes his own claim to 320 acres on the Luckakuck River. The back-breaking work begins: carving a farm from the wilderness and swamp by hand and oxen.
Help comes from local Sto:lo axmen. And so begins a friendship that lasts for generations. The land produces excellent potatoes, beans and carrots. The lush and fertile loam at the base of Cheam Mountain Range inspires the family to christens the farm Edenbank.
Allen Wells' grandson Oliver Wells puts the gold rush gamble into perspective in Edenbank: The History of a Pioneer Canadian Farm (Harbour $36.95), edited by Richard and Marie Weeden, when he writes "The true wealth of the country was in the gold of the earth - the products of the soil.";
Much of Edenbank is being published more than 35 years after Oliver finished writing it. His daughter Marie Weeden remembers her father "sitting in front of a warm fire lit in the dining-room grate, perhaps with a woollen sweater draped over his shoulders, reading old records and diaries and, with pen in hand, composing the farm's story.";
Oliver Wells completed the story in 1967, and died after an accident three years later. Marie and her husband kept the project alive with encouragement from family, friends and local historians.
Edenbank chronicles 100 years of farm life in sometimes minute detail: stumps are pulled, bulls purchased, barns built, and beds crafted from rough lumber. Strong ties are forged with neighbours, and a powerful sense of community is evident throughout.
In 1896 Wells helped develop the first farmer's co-operative in Western Canada in order to produce butter and cheese for a growing Lower Mainland. He tells his son Edwin, "once we get the farm cleared, drained and fenced, we will then be in a position to make some money!"; Edenbank became one of B.C's largest and most successful dairy operations, admired nationally for its blue ribbon Ayrshire cattle.
Allen was also an innovator, experimenting with new crops and introducing new dairy farming methods (a creamery and upright silos) later adopted by others. No drinkers or smokers need apply as hired hands, Wells wanted "a respectable, gentlemanly, clean lot of men."; Among his crew were Sto:lo and Chinese who had worked on the CPR right-of-way.
In 1867 Allen and Sarah saw firsthand the ravages of smallpox. Reverend Thomas Crosby came into the valley with a vaccine and took Wells with him to a local native village. "The chanting of the medicine men and the wailing of lamenting mothers could be heard long before they rounded the bend in the river...they were horrified to see the natives throwing their children into the cold river waters. To the natives, the fever in the children was the result of evil spirits having entered their bodies. They were desperately trying to drive them out by casting the children into the water.";
Oliver Wells was born in 1907, the same year a telephone line was strung into the Fraser Valley. "Oliver, the new baby born to Gertie Wells on May 21, was able to cry loudly enough in New Westminster to be heard sixty miles away by his father in Chilliwack.";
In his Edenbank manuscript, Oliver Wells recalls watching the first train roll down the newly constructed BC Electric Railway which also marked electricity's arrival on the farm. "Only three years of age I can remember being hoisted onto my father's shoulders for the rush to the lane gate to watch the big train come in...";
There are assorted photos of farm life: teams of oxen, dairy herds and a splendid image of Oliver and his wife Sarah on a ride to the top of Liumchen Mountain. Oliver stands in front of two horses holding their reins while Sarah stands perched on their backs like a circus rider. Both are wearing huge grins and the perspective from the mountaintop makes it seem like they're floating above the valley.
After the tough Depression years Oliver took over in 1939 as the third generation to farm Edenbank; he continued to breed prize-winning dairy cattle, and later Aberdeen Angus beef cattle and Cheviot sheep. A budding naturalist, he created a sanctuary by bringing back ponds and marshlands. Birds returned in great numbers.
In the 1950s Oliver Wells bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder to interview Sto:lo elders about their culture, language and traditions. These recordings are still highly valued by the Sto:lo and are credited with helping preserve the Halkomelem language. Oliver also helped the Sto:lo revive their Salish weaving tradition, and to breed sheep to produce black wool for finely woven sweaters and tapestries. Along the way he was the first president of the Chilliwack Historical Society.
Today Edenbank is gone-sold and subdivided. The elegant farm house still stands behind the gates of what's now an upscale housing complex. This is a sore point for daughter Marie and other heritage advocates who lament the fact a plan to preserve the farm on a proposed college campus was given a thumbs down by the Agricultural Land Reserve Commission. Later attempts to secure provincial and municipal heritage status failed, although the wildlife sanctuary is now operated by the Wells Sanctuary Society. The pages of Edenbank will do much to keep the legacy of this remarkable pioneer farming family alive.
Journalist Allan Fotheringham was eight years old when his family moved into the hired man's house at Edenbank. He salutes Oliver in the Foreword. "His death in Scotland, on his first and only trip abroad, was of course a major loss not only to his family, to Edenbank, to Sardis and to B.C. but to Canada as a whole. Because he set an example of how fine a man could be.";
1-55017-303-0
--By Mark Forsythe
It's 1862, he travels via New York to the Isthmus of Panama, overland to San Francisco, up the coast by ship to Victoria and then aboard a steamboat to New Westminister. Once there, he hires a Sto:lo paddler named Big Jim to get him to the trail head where he starts his 500-mile walk to Barkerville with supplies on his back.
Like so many, Allen fails to strike it rich. He leaves the gold fields broke. On the return journey through the Fraser Canyon, he settles in Yale where he outfits the first four-horse stage coach to travel the Cariboo Road-B.C.'s first mega-project.
Sarah joins Allen in Yale, and within three years their first child is born. Wells moves south to manage his brother-in-law's farm near Sardis. Big Jim paddles him upstream to a native trail where Wells stakes his own claim to 320 acres on the Luckakuck River. The back-breaking work begins: carving a farm from the wilderness and swamp by hand and oxen.
Help comes from local Sto:lo axmen. And so begins a friendship that lasts for generations. The land produces excellent potatoes, beans and carrots. The lush and fertile loam at the base of Cheam Mountain Range inspires the family to christens the farm Edenbank.
Allen Wells' grandson Oliver Wells puts the gold rush gamble into perspective in Edenbank: The History of a Pioneer Canadian Farm (Harbour $36.95), edited by Richard and Marie Weeden, when he writes "The true wealth of the country was in the gold of the earth - the products of the soil.";
Much of Edenbank is being published more than 35 years after Oliver finished writing it. His daughter Marie Weeden remembers her father "sitting in front of a warm fire lit in the dining-room grate, perhaps with a woollen sweater draped over his shoulders, reading old records and diaries and, with pen in hand, composing the farm's story.";
Oliver Wells completed the story in 1967, and died after an accident three years later. Marie and her husband kept the project alive with encouragement from family, friends and local historians.
Edenbank chronicles 100 years of farm life in sometimes minute detail: stumps are pulled, bulls purchased, barns built, and beds crafted from rough lumber. Strong ties are forged with neighbours, and a powerful sense of community is evident throughout.
In 1896 Wells helped develop the first farmer's co-operative in Western Canada in order to produce butter and cheese for a growing Lower Mainland. He tells his son Edwin, "once we get the farm cleared, drained and fenced, we will then be in a position to make some money!"; Edenbank became one of B.C's largest and most successful dairy operations, admired nationally for its blue ribbon Ayrshire cattle.
Allen was also an innovator, experimenting with new crops and introducing new dairy farming methods (a creamery and upright silos) later adopted by others. No drinkers or smokers need apply as hired hands, Wells wanted "a respectable, gentlemanly, clean lot of men."; Among his crew were Sto:lo and Chinese who had worked on the CPR right-of-way.
In 1867 Allen and Sarah saw firsthand the ravages of smallpox. Reverend Thomas Crosby came into the valley with a vaccine and took Wells with him to a local native village. "The chanting of the medicine men and the wailing of lamenting mothers could be heard long before they rounded the bend in the river...they were horrified to see the natives throwing their children into the cold river waters. To the natives, the fever in the children was the result of evil spirits having entered their bodies. They were desperately trying to drive them out by casting the children into the water.";
Oliver Wells was born in 1907, the same year a telephone line was strung into the Fraser Valley. "Oliver, the new baby born to Gertie Wells on May 21, was able to cry loudly enough in New Westminster to be heard sixty miles away by his father in Chilliwack.";
In his Edenbank manuscript, Oliver Wells recalls watching the first train roll down the newly constructed BC Electric Railway which also marked electricity's arrival on the farm. "Only three years of age I can remember being hoisted onto my father's shoulders for the rush to the lane gate to watch the big train come in...";
There are assorted photos of farm life: teams of oxen, dairy herds and a splendid image of Oliver and his wife Sarah on a ride to the top of Liumchen Mountain. Oliver stands in front of two horses holding their reins while Sarah stands perched on their backs like a circus rider. Both are wearing huge grins and the perspective from the mountaintop makes it seem like they're floating above the valley.
After the tough Depression years Oliver took over in 1939 as the third generation to farm Edenbank; he continued to breed prize-winning dairy cattle, and later Aberdeen Angus beef cattle and Cheviot sheep. A budding naturalist, he created a sanctuary by bringing back ponds and marshlands. Birds returned in great numbers.
In the 1950s Oliver Wells bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder to interview Sto:lo elders about their culture, language and traditions. These recordings are still highly valued by the Sto:lo and are credited with helping preserve the Halkomelem language. Oliver also helped the Sto:lo revive their Salish weaving tradition, and to breed sheep to produce black wool for finely woven sweaters and tapestries. Along the way he was the first president of the Chilliwack Historical Society.
Today Edenbank is gone-sold and subdivided. The elegant farm house still stands behind the gates of what's now an upscale housing complex. This is a sore point for daughter Marie and other heritage advocates who lament the fact a plan to preserve the farm on a proposed college campus was given a thumbs down by the Agricultural Land Reserve Commission. Later attempts to secure provincial and municipal heritage status failed, although the wildlife sanctuary is now operated by the Wells Sanctuary Society. The pages of Edenbank will do much to keep the legacy of this remarkable pioneer farming family alive.
Journalist Allan Fotheringham was eight years old when his family moved into the hired man's house at Edenbank. He salutes Oliver in the Foreword. "His death in Scotland, on his first and only trip abroad, was of course a major loss not only to his family, to Edenbank, to Sardis and to B.C. but to Canada as a whole. Because he set an example of how fine a man could be.";
1-55017-303-0
--By Mark Forsythe
Submitted on November 20, 2003 in By David.
