User:Geo Swan/Poplar Island Shipyard
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During World War One, the Poplar Island Shipyard was opened, as a wartime expedient.[1][2][3] Poplar Island, off New Westminster, BC, had been used as a quarantine site native people, during a smallpox epidemic, in the late 1800s. It had been abandoned, for decades, because of the many deaths there. However, when the shipyard was authorized, in 1916, land was cleared, and it was open for business in thirty days.[4] As many as 600 builders worked at the shipyard.[2]
Four wooden-hulled freighters, of approximately 3,000 tonnes were known to have been built there, the War Kitimat, War Comox, War Ewen and War Edensaw, all named after coastal rivers of British Columbia.[1][5] Some accounts assert that, in addition, the shipyard constructed warships, for France, an ally.
A wooden bridge was constructed to the Island.[1]
The shipyard was closed when peace struck. The bridge collapsed in the 1930s.[1] The Island returned to forest, and is now part of a nature preserve.[2]
References
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Robin Rowland (2015-08-11). "Kitimat's unknown role in the First World War". Northwest Coast Energy. Retrieved 2017-10-22.
The company built four ships, the War Comox, War Edensaw, War Kitimat and War Ewen. The War Comox was first launched in April, 1918, but completion was held up as the shipyard waited for equipment from suppliers.
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Terry Glavin (2006-03-02). "How Poplar Island fell off the map". Georgia Strait. Retrieved 2017-10-22.
The island was one of British Columbia's first Native reserves. Then it was a quarantine island for smallpox victims, and then the site of a major shipbuilding concern during the First World War, but for most of the 20th century it was a booming anchorage for local sawmills.
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"New Westminster history told through tiny, uninhabited island". CBC News. 2015-12-30. Retrieved 2017-10-22.
Nicholson says those layers are part of the bigger story of the settlement of New Westminster. Poplar Island was home to shipbuilding and factories during World War I, and was also a site used by the pulp and paper industry.
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Ken Wilkinson (2010-10-24). "Poplar Island: A History as Thick and Colorful as the Trees". Tenth to the Fraser. Retrieved 2017-10-22.
Most of the waterfront was already used for mills and shipping, so New Westminster Construction and Engineering was founded in 1917 and within a month, they had totally cleared Poplar Island, built a rough foot bridge across from the foot of 14th Street and built a working shipyard for the Imperial Munitions Board.
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Gavin Hainsworth, Katherine Freund-Hainsworth (2005). A New Westminster Album: Glimpses of the City as it was. Dundurn Press. p. 200. ISBN 9781550025484. Retrieved 2017-10-22.
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