By Garth Harvey, longtime Shawnigan resident; Museum, Family Caregivers and community supporter and all around great guy.
It was about 1979 or 1980 when I sort of assumed doing the maintenance on the hall. It was in bad shape - neglected for I do not know how long. One wore Wellingtons to move about in the basement which housed a huge, gravity air furnace and thousands of spiders. It is in stark contrast to today, as those who used the Hall lit the furnace and fired it for heat. The furnace consumed cord wood which were logs four feet long and up to 8 inches in diameter.
The chief complaint was smoke coming from the registers due to a rusted-out heat exchanger. The unit was three tapered steel tubes, which sat just above the fire. Flame and smoke went around these pipes on their way to the chimney. These pipes had rusted out, so someone had been pushing ordinary stove pipes inside of them. This would only work for a couple of fires.
With enthusiasm, I set out to fix it. First, I had to remove the sheet metal covering which is what one saw as the furnace. It was a “tank” of galvanized steel about 7 feet in diameter and 7 feet high, out of the top, which came four heat pipes 24 inches in diameter, and an equal number of cold air pipes went in the bottom of the tank. The whole shebang was held together with 5005 sheet mental screws and four miles of duct tape.
Inside was a great cast iron fire box the front and back of which was joined by three, tapered 12 gauge rolled steel heat exchanger pipes or what was left of them. New pipes were rolled in Duncan of 14-gauge steel as that was the thickest steel they could handle. Then it was put together again with about 5003 screws…I lost a couple in the process…and more miles of duct tape than Red Green ever saw. It worked just fine!
The next job was to clean the basement. For years, the wood was stored in the basement, 10-14 cords, and the bark and chips were never cleaned out. This created a sponge for water and was starting to rot the bottom of the posts supporting the hall floor.
Wood for the furnace is another story. Each year we ordered 10-12 cords of hemlock or fir from wherever we could get it. One year I ordered wood from a chap, the sort that lived on the edge of the law. He brought excellent wood and put it in the basement. He even brought a cord of cedar for kindling and sent his teen-aged lady friend to get his $975.00 cheque. The girl was all over him to get to the bank as she could not believe it was real money so I wished him a good night and never asked where the wood came from.
Another year there was $1000 budgeted for wood. I offered it to the Scouts as I was sure that they could get it donated. They did. One day a huge log truck arrived from Mac & Blo dry land sort near Burnt Bridge. The logs were 2-4 feet in diameter and mostly spiral grain or open grown fir. It was really tough to cut and split. The hardest job was to organize the parents to cut, split and pile it in the basement. I believe, in the end, Heather Plumb organized it and really was the best “man” on the job. Another year, the wood came from clearing on Empress Road along the E & N. Another 1 ½ cords of fir came from one huge fir that had to be removed, as it posed a danger to the new fire hall.
As mentioned, the basement of the hall was a disaster of poor drainage and a lack of ventilation. The septic field for Elsie Miles School was up hill and directly behind the hall. During school time, the effluent ran down over the top of the hard pan and into the basement. So, the first job was to trench across the base, and the adjacent road to drain the water toward the lake.
This project brought another village anomaly to light – the septic field for the hall. Originally, the eastern edge of Heald Road was the western wall of the hall and as the hall owned property on the west side of Heald Road, the septic tank was located there. In 1936, the highways department gave the hall the land extending 20 feet out from the west wall of the hall in exchange for the hall property on the west side of Heald Road. Everybody was happy but few people, if any, now know that the hall’s septic tank is located in the middle of Heald Road.
Note: The beloved Hall is now gone…it was deconstructed and the site is not developed.
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