Caleb Pike and two of his brothers were among several labourers recruited from Dorset and Kent in England by the HUDSON BAY COMPANY to work on its farms around Victoria and in the Lower Fraser Valley. He set sail as a young man in the fall of 1849 on the 120-foot barque, the NORMAN MORISON. The tiny sailing ship carried, as well as its crew, 80 would-be colonists, including the Pike brothers and Fort Victoria’s first doctor, John Sebastian Helmcken. Caleb worked for the duration of his five-year contract, which earned him either 25 pounds (about $125) if he went back to England, or 25 acres of land in the colony. He elected to stay. In 1856 he and Elizabeth Lidgate, the 16-year-old daughter of other early colonists, were married by Bishop Cridge in Fort Victoria. They farmed in several different locations, as far a field as the Fraser Valley, and built at least two other homesteads in the Highland District.
Elizabeth died in 1878 after the birth of her tenth child and a battle with tuberculosis, which was very common in those days. Now a widower with five children Caleb came back to the Highlands to build his final home. Caleb and his teenage sons, Henry and Charlie, started building the house and outbuildings in 1883, miles from the few scattered homesteads near Thetis and Pike Lakes, which was the nearest habitation. The trip to Victoria and back was a good days ride by horse and buggy, maybe a little less than that in the saddle.
Using a cross cut saw, broad axe and adze, the Pikes hand built the little farmhouse with laboriously squared Douglas Fir logs, neatly dovetailed at the corners. They stacked up and joined entire logs before cutting windows and doors into the new, thick walls. The hardworking settlers then placed smaller logs across the top of the structure as ceiling joists to support a second floor, and above that erected pole rafters, strapping and a gable roof of hand-split shake.
Somehow they found room in the 20 by 30 foot, one and a half-story building for five bedrooms, a kitchen and a sitting room. Caleb rejected the easier method of construction using notched round logs which is favoured today, following instead the style of his former employer, the Hudson Bay Company, which had brought him to Vancouver Island more than thirty years earlier. Caleb Pike died in 1888. In 1892, shortly after the new homestead was built, Henry purchased a Crown Grant for his father’s 160-acre “pioneer farm” for $160. He and his young family as well as his brother, Charlie (who never married) lived in the house for another 20 years before selling the property and moving to Langford. In 1983 the development company that owned it donated the property to the Capital Regional District. Several concerned Highland residents formed the HIGHLAND HERITAGE PARK SOCIETY, in early 1983 for the purpose of restoring the exterior of the log house and managing the small park, then under the auspices of Juan de Fuca Parks and Recreation and now as a Municipal Park. The Society did substantial restoration work on the old building, even replacing several of the logs, and returning the exterior to its original condition. They left the interior as a single room, in order to accommodate the groups of people that would be using it as a community centre. |
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