Viewing Object

Object Description

Object Name

Print, Photographic

Object ID

2008.072.001

Title

Joe Morrison.

Date

May 1961.

Description

Photo of Joe Morrison, taken at the rest home on Glover Road in Fort Langley when Joe was just over 100 years old. Accompanying write up by Edward Villiers dated May 23, 2008 reads, "This photograph of Joe Morrison was taken by me, Edward Villiers in May, 1961, in his room at the Fort Langley rest home, Glover Street, Fort Langley, B.C. Joe was just over 100 years old at the time. He was born in Yale, B.C. in March, 1861. He told me in an interview I had with him on the front porch of his little home about a mile east of the present fort park site, on May 16, 1954, 'When my mother was going to have me there were no doctors around Fort Langley so she went up to Yale where there was a doctor. I was born at Yale. Mother returned with me about a month later.' He also told me, 'I can remember when Vancouver consisted of a blacksmith's shop, a store and a few houses situated where the Union Steamship dock is today.'
"One of his first jobs was 'to patrol the telegraph line that went through between New Westminster and Yale. Another fellow and I, Wilkes was his name, were paid ten dollars a day to patrol it from here to New Westminster and fix breaks. The poles were no more than twelve feet high, but we earned our money. It was winter and the snow was quite deep. Sometimes we had to go through water up to our knees and at night dried out by a big bonfire built under a big cedar tree. Those cedar trees around here in the those days were really big and held out the rain.
"'The building down next to my house was the first flour mil around here. It was built around 1882, the same year as this house was built, only it was situated over where those CNR tracks run now. See all those trees down there on the river front? Well they weren't always there. There used to be wharves there at one time but look at it now!'"

People/Subject

Morrison, Joseph J. (1860-1963)

Joe Morrison was born on March 18, 1861, in Yale, and spent his youth in and around Fort Langley as the son of Kenneth Morrison, an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Langley, and his wife Lucy (nee Allard). As a youngster, Joe used to see the fur brigades arrive at the fort. Joe worked as a logger at Cape Midge and at Cowichan on Vancouver Island. He was hired out to cut ties for the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1884. One summer Joe did construction work on a canal in the East Kootenays. He patrolled and fixed breaks in the telegraph line between New Westminster and Yale. He rode the first train in B.C., operated the first steam winch in the logging industry, saw the first fery in operation between New Westminster and Surrey, saw the first flour mill constructed on the Lower Mainland and rode on the "Beaver, " the first steamboat to ply the Pacific Ocean. He was honoured in 1955 with a life membership in the Native Sons Post No. 19 He celebrated his 100th birthday March 20 in Fort Langley, and died March 31, 1963. He is buried in the Fort Langley Cemetery.
Term Source: Fort Langley Cemetery pg. 41 (Hannay)

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