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| Settlers
of Bella Coola, 1894 Detail of A-06942 |
Annie Levelton:
"Father had a cabin - luckily. He was the only one who really had a good cabin so we had a home to go to, but it was alarming after having been on the prairies to see those huge trees, you know. And my mother, oh, she just couldn't get reconciled to the fact that she left a beautiful home in the old country, in Norway, with servants and all that sort of thing to look after all us little ones, and to arrive up here and ... Oh dear, she didn't know what to do.""We kids all helped clear land. We had to work from the time we were quite small. Of course father was a builder of no mean ability."
Provincial Archives of British Columbia. Sound Heritage. Victoria. No. 36.
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| Ivar Fougner's cabin
at Bella Coola, company coming for coffee G-00976 |
Ted Levelton:
"When you're a kid of six, it was a grand place to run around, climb trees and chase squirrels and all this kind of stuff."You could raise good crops when you got the land cleared, but boy it was back- breaking work. The ground was grubbed with a grubhoe. There were no horses or ploughs ... you'd grub out a little spot for a garden, and another little patch for the potatoes, and that was it for the first few years. It was the women and children that did most of this because the men had to get out and hustle. Most of them who came here, I would say, were down to practically their last dollar when they arrived here.
"I know certainly my dad was...Luckily he was a good woodsman, a good man with a broadaxe. He could build just about as nice a log house as you'd want to set eyes on. And he was also a fairly good carpenter so he got a certain amount of work building homes for others here. That's the way he made a few dollars."
Provincial Archives of British Columbia. Sound Heritage. Victoria. No. 36.
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| Torger Olsen hauling lumber by ox-cart at Bella Coola, 189- B-00293 |
Although the colony was all Norwegian, they were not isolated from other people.
Milo Fougner:
"We grew up with the Indian kids, of course, and could speak with them and I suppose we heard more of the imagery of the different dances and what it meant and that sort of thing, and knew the different costumes ... The Indian people, they were a very important factor in the life of the colony. I think perhaps that both sides discovered integration and segregation wasn't so important per se as mutual trust - mutual admiration if you like - for one another's good points and mutual understanding. When I was a boy, you respected the Indian people to the point where you would never intrude on one of their affairs unless you were asked, unless you were invited and you considered it an honour if you were."Provincial Archives of British Columbia. Sound Heritage. Victoria. No. 36
By 1896 there were 158 people living in Bella Coola, who built a wagon road, cleared the land for farming, built a church, fished at Rivers Inlet. Under Reverend Saugstad they built a salmon cannery, sawmills, dairies. Regular meetings were held as well as an annual colony meeting.
Eventually the Norwegian settlers began to integrate more into the local community; the last colony meeting was held in 1909, but Bella Coola continued to be a strong community. Descendants of the original settlers still live there today, along with other settlers attracted to their valley.
