The historic neighbourhood of Webster’s Corners is well known for its Finnish heritage.
In fact, David Koehn still lives on the property his Finnish grandparents settled on in Webster’s Corners back in 1935, and the 83-year-old still holds fond memories of the log house they built as well as the first school in the area he attended.
The first Finns made their way to Webster’s Corners purely by chance, late historian Sheila Nickols explained in her book “Maple Ridge: A History of Settlement.”
“Work became available just at the time when a small group of Finnish men were looking for a place to locate,” she said.
The men had initially travelled to Malcolm Island, along the northeast coastline of Vancouver Island, to build a new idealistic society called Sointula, or Haven of Harmony. However, building their utopia proved more difficult than they had anticipated and the men, with their leader Matti Kurikka, travelled to Vancouver to find work, recounted Nickols.
Finding only low-paying jobs, they looked elsewhere. In 1905 they started shingle bolt cutting in Webster’s Corners. Then, after a summer of fishing for sockeye, the men were able to purchase land, and established the first Finnish settlement in the area.
The first documented settler to Webster’s Corners, whom the neighbourhood is named after, was actually a Scotsman James Murray Webster. He moved there in 1882 from Ontario.
At that time, Dewdney Trunk Road was only a forest path through wilderness, said Nickols. A few years later he brought out his family to join him. And only a few years after that more families started arriving.
“Perhaps it was the rumours of huge trees and good soil, perhaps the challenge to open up the wilderness that brought them,” Nickols speculated.
For Koehn, his grandfather August Hilland, (his Finnish name was Akusti Vuorimaa), landed in the United States in 1910 and eventually made his way to Canada, to Ucluelet – where he met his future wife, Koehn’s grandmother Borghilde Olsen.
The two were married around 1915 and started farming in Saskatchewan. However, during the Depression, their farm was hit by drought and they were unable to grow grain.
So, Hilland travelled to Webster’s Corners where he had heard of a large Finnish population. Finding the area agreeable, he returned to Saskatchewan, gathered up his wife and seven children, and drove wagons from the Prairies to Maple Ridge, where they would build a home (of log) and a life.
“I remember we used to have Christmas parties there and all us kids would be, you know, under the table and all over the place,” he recalled.
“It was a great time,” said Koehn, who could also recall his uncles talking about building the log house and peeling the logs for it.
He also remembers helping his grandmother churn butter in the log house. They had one or two cows, so they always had fresh milk and butter, he recalled.
“But, most of the Finns around here did that,” Koehn shared.
During the Second World War, his father was overseas working as an aircraft mechanic for Lancaster Bombers stationed in northern England. Koehn’s mother, with the help of her father and brothers, started building a house along 252 Street, or what used to be called 23 Avenue. They dug the basement by hand with a horse and scoop.
In Grade 2, Koehn remembers attending the old two-room schoolhouse along Dewdney Trunk Road, the second room being added in 1922. Koehn recalled a big concrete pad in the front of the school where the well was located and the bay that contained the wood for the stove that heated the classrooms.
In fact, Nickols said, the arrival of the Finnish settlers in 1905 gave the school population “quite a boost.”
Koehn also recalled the Finnish Hall at Sampola, known locally as Sampo Hall, that was built in 1915 by volunteers from the Finnish community – including men, women, and children.
“It was built by the Finns, for the Finns and for the community. That was a focal point and social point of the community,” he said of the hall, which, after its opening in 1916, was home to a number of Finnish community groups and hosted a variety of performances from plays to concerts to folk dancing and sports activities like wrestling and gymnastics. A library was also housed in the building, according to the Maple Ridge Museum.
Webster’s Corners has passed through many phases, as Nickols elaborated in her book.
“Logging has moved to the distant hills, formerly inaccessible, and the lumber mills have moved away. The Finnish poultry farmer has all but vanished,” she said, along with the Finnish ethnic influence.
“The day is probably not far in the future when the area will be intensively developed as one of the more pleasant residential suburbs of the Lower Mainland,” she speculated.
Tyler Westover, director of economic development for the City of Maple Ridge, agrees. He anticipates that the area will continue to be a place where people can recreate, and be gainfully employed.
He speculates Webster’s Corners will keep its rustic charm.
But, Westover does see continued growth north of the Webster’s Corners intersection, where you can already find the Justice Institute of BC, the Fraser Regional Correctional Centre, the Webster Corner Business Park, and the International Union of Operating Engineers training centre, among other businesses.
It’s about supporting the businesses and companies that are within that area, Westover said, “as we move forward into the next 150 years.”
