Sechelt Community Archives -- Series 10, Union Steamship and All Red Line, Page 1

Helen Dawe Collection -- Index

Series 6
   Aerial Photographs (6.1)
    Bog, Marsh Sechelt (6.2)
    General, Panoramic views (6.3)
    General, Panoramic views (6.4)
    Identified buildings (6.5)
    First Nations of Sechelt (6.6)
    Individual people/groups (6.7)
    May Days, picnics, etc. (6.8)
    Resource Industries (6.9)
    Schools (6.10)
    Ships (6.11)
    Transportation (6.12)
    Whitaker family (6.13)
    Cook, Dawe, Steele, Whittaker familes (6.14)

Series 2
General A-Z -- The Crucils

Series 10
Union Steamship and All Red Line Companies

Series 11
Captain Sam and Ada Dawe

Series 13
The Sechelt Inn

Series 20
Souvenir brochures, postcards

Series 24
Merry Island lighthouse

Series 10 -- Union Steamship and All Red Line Companies, 1889-1971, Page 1

The Union Steamship Company, one of the first Vancouver-based shipping lines, was founded in 1889, acquiring the assets of the Burrard Inlet Ferry Company. The new company's first passenger and freight vessel, the SS Cutch, was purchased in India, arrived in June 1890 in Vancouver and immediately was put on the Vancouver-Nanaimo route. The Company, requiring vessels to supply the increasing number of logging camps and new settler's homeas along the British Columbia coast, had three vessels built in Vancouver's Coal Harbour. The first was the SS Comox which sailed regularly to Powell River and stopped at various settlements along the Sunshine Coast. The Union Steamship Company acquired Sechelt resident Herbert Whitaker's Sechelt Shipping Line, his hotel, cottages, wharf and general store at Sechelt after his death in 1926. From then until the mid-1950s, thousands of visotors and permanent residents were transported regularly to and from their homes, holiday cottages and places of work by Union Steamship Company vessels. The All Red Line operated two vessels, the SS Selma and the SS Santa Maria from 1911 until 1917 between Vancouver, Selma Park, Sechelt and Powell River. The company had acquired seven acres in the Selma Park area and established a successful resort with a wharf, dance hall, cottages and lodge until the ships and buildings were taken over by the Union Steamship Company in 1917. In 1951 the Black Ball Ferry Company began to carry cars and passengers between Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast causing an increase in traffic along the coast by highway. By 1957 the last stretch of highway linking Gibsons to Egmont and Powell River was completed and in 1959 the ferry terminus was moved to Langdale. Two years later the Black Ball Ferry Company was purchased by the B.C. government. For over fifty years the Union Steamship Company had serviced B.C.'s coast communities and resource industries. Without it, logging operatiosn, fishing, fish packing plants, mining exploration, and tourism and the communities that grew up aruond these industries would not have developed as they did.

1 2

10.1a

1925 or 1926 -- cover and inside material from Union Steamships brochure promoting their Vancouver to Savary Island route.

Brochure by Union Steamships Company

10.1b

1925 or 1926 -- map from one side of Union Steamships Company brochure promoting their route from Vancouver to Savary Island.

Brochure by Union Steamships Company

10.2a

1926 or later -- cover and inside material of Union Steamships Company brochure promoting their Vancouver to Savary Island route

Brochure by Union Steamships Company

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