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authority records
Cape Lazo Wireless Station
Corporate body · 1908-1962

The Cape Lazo Wireless Station operated at its original site from 1908 to 1962. It provided marine communication with weather up-dates and urgent personal messages. Between 1962 and 1993, staff were relocated to the civilian airport at CFB Comox and acted as marine and air communications. In 1993 a new building was completed at the former Cape Lazo site for the Comox Marine Communications and Traffic Services centre. The centre closed in 2016.

Cliffe, Samuel Jackson
Person · 1840-1908

Samuel Jackson Cliffe was born in Brewood, Staffordshire, England. He was twenty-two when he began the adventurous sea voyage that took him around Cape Horn and north to his future home in British Columbia. His diary gives a firsthand look at the trip aboard the 1,212-ton “White Star” clipper Silistria, which departed on July 11, 1862, from Liverpool bound for “Vancouver’s island.” Sam, after being involved in the Cariboo gold rush and coal mining in the Nanaimo area, went to the Comox Valley with partners in 1869 and staked out a coal-mining claim as part of the Union Coal Co. (later bought out by Robert Dunsmuir). Samuel married Florence Harmston in 1872 and the family went on to become long time proprietors of Comox’s Lorne Hotel.

Kerton, Frederick William
Person · 1882-1965

Frederick William Kerton was born in Yorkshire, England on January 13, 1882. He came to Canada in 1904 and to Courtenay in 1908. Mr. Kerton was a carpenter by trade. He served as an alderman for the City of Courtenay 1915-1916 and 1920-1923. Mr. Kerton was also a school trustee, a member of the Hiram Masonic Lodge and a supporter of St. George’s United Church, Courtenay.

McIver, Donald Charles
Person · 1926-2019

Donald Charles McIver (September 9, 1926 – November 20, 2019) was born in Comox to Charles and Ruth McIver. Married Joan Petrie in 1947. He worked in the logging and pulp industry for 44 years.

Meachem, Ida Josephine
Person · 1873-1965

Ida Josephine Colvin was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1873 to Clark and Emma Colvin. Her family ultimately moved west by wagon train to Washington State.
Ida Josephine (Jo) married Frank Harry Mobley (1870-1920) in 1893. They had two sons and one daughter by birth. Harry Colvin (1894-1966), Cecil Josephine (1910-1914) and Francis (aka Frank) Moys (1919-1971). The couple also adopted/fostered a girl named Jessica Mari Ada Whitehouse (1916-d?) in about 1917.
Frank Harry Mobley operated a grocery store in Prince Rupert and subsequently became the MLA for Atlin – he died while still in office.
BC Directories show Ida Josephine living in Victoria on Maplewood Road for 1920 and 1921. In April 1924, the Cumberland Islander newspaper noted that Mrs. I.J. Mobley of Victoria had purchased the Hazelmere Farm in Minto. Sam Colvin (Jo’s brother) managed the farm.
Jo married Arthur Meachem (1871-1932) in 1929 at Cumberland, BC. The family lived on Small/Grant Road in the Minto/Cumberland area until 1933 when they moved back to Victoria.
Jo and her son Frank returned to the Comox Valley in 1945. She died in 1965.

Pritchard, Allan Duncan
Person · 1928-2019

Allan Duncan Pritchard (August 8, 1928 – November 28, 2019) was born and raised in the Comox Valley. He earned his bachelor’s degree at UBC and has masters and doctorate at the University of Toronto specializing in seventeenth century English literature. He went on to have a 33-year tenure at U of T.
Dr. Pritchard was an accomplished historian who had a lifelong interest in Comox Valley history. He was editor of The Vancouver Island Letters of Edmund Hope Verney, 1862-65 published 1996.

Rogers, Rees William
Person · 1903-1993

Rees William Rogers was born in Thicket Mead, Somerset, England in 1903 to Frederick and Kate Rogers.
Rees moved to the Comox Valley in 1923 and wed Blodwen Griffiths. They lived in the C.V. from 1923-1928 and again from 1933 onwards. They had three sons and one daughter: Fred, Ray, Norman, and Iris.
Blodwen was related to the Lewis family who had settled in an area on the east side of the Courtenay River that became known as “Lewistown” and formed the original Courtenay city centre. The Lewis’s built the Courtenay Hotel and several houses nearby.
Rees Rogers had a varied early work life. He was a miner in Cumberland, BC, did carpentry repair and renovation on the Courtenay Hotel, was in a logging partnership with Floyd Cearley, and erected the fencing around the Comox Airport. From 1947 until his retirement in 1971, Rees worked and supervised building and grounds maintenance for School District 71.
Rees was a Courtenay School Board Trustee in the 1930s and 1940s.
Rees Rogers died April 1, 1993 at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Comox, BC.