Qualla: Mesachie Lake

Mesachie Lake: Introduction

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Somebody named this place evil and it stuck. Mesachie comes from Chinook Jargon, the Pacific coast trade language, and it is not a mild word - where cultus meant merely bad, mesachie meant vile, rotten, wicked. Nobody today can say for certain what earned the lake the label. What is certain is that in 1942, a lumber company chose the shore of a lake called Evil to build a town for its workers and their families, and that the town is still here, eighty-odd years later, long after the mill fell silent.

Read more: Mesachie Lake on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Mesachie Lake: Houses That Came by Rail

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. The Hillcrest Lumber Company had spent a quarter century at Sahtlam, near Duncan, and by 1942 the timber around it was gone. So the company moved - not just the machinery, but the town. Workers' houses at Sahtlam were cut into sections, loaded onto rail cars, hauled west to the s...

Read more: Mesachie Lake on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Mesachie Lake: The Mill That Powered the Neighbours

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. What went up at Mesachie Lake was not a relocated relic but something new. The mill was redesigned from the ground up, with more efficient modern equipment, and it came with a powerhouse of its own. Those generators produced more electricity than the mill and the townsite needed,...

Read more: Mesachie Lake on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Mesachie Lake: The Gurdwara by the Sawmill

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Will Brown, CC BY 2.0. Mesachie Lake is one of several Cowichan Valley towns with more than a century of South Asian Canadian history, most of it Sikh, most of it written in sawdust. Punjabi men came to Vancouver Island's mills in the early 1900s, at a time when Canadian law and public sentiment worked...

Read more: Mesachie Lake on Qualla

Image: Will Brown | CC BY 2.0

Mesachie Lake: After the Whistle

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Hillcrest shut down in 1968 for the same reason it had left Sahtlam - it could no longer secure enough timber. The mill site was sold. Camp Imadene bought the old Hillcrest ground in 1982 and moved its camp onto it about a decade later. Most company towns do not outlive their com...

Read more: Mesachie Lake on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain