My great-grandfather, Robert Firth (stern looking sucker!), was from Orkney, and like a lot of Orkneymen, hired on with the Hudson's Bay Company around 1850. He was sent by Chief Factor James Douglas at Fort Victoria to survey and assess San Juan Island for raising sheep. Charles Griffin was put in charge of the Belle Vue Farm sheep ranch on San Juan Island. My great-grandfather replaced Griffin in 1861, leased the land from the Hudson's Bay Company, and eventually gained ownership. He raised nine children there, one of whom was my grandfather, Robert Firth Jr. My father, also named Robert Firth, was born on San Juan Island. I have cousins all over the islands.

There were Kanakas on San Juan Island, employed by the Hudson's Bay Company and various locals, and I understand that both Griffin and my great-grandfather relied on them heavily, finding them to be generally reliable, hard workers.

Amazon lists a book entitled Kanaka : The Untold Story of Hawaiian Pioneers in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, by Tom Koppel, HERE, but it appears to be out of print. Maybe a local library could track it down through library loan. Looks like it might be promising.

Some info about the Belle Vue Farm HERE. The article describes my great-grandfather as "a shepherd," but according to other sources, he was considerably more than that implies. I have several books on the history of the San Juan Islands in which my great-grandfather is mentioned prominently, and a park ranger at American Camp informed me that he was head of the whole shebang there for a number of years before the Hudson's Bay Company pulled out after Kaiser Wilhelm I drew the line and gave the San Juan Islands to the United States, ending the infamous "Pig War" (a nine year "war," with English troops garrisoned on the north end of the island and American troops on the south end. The only casualty in the war as the pig).

Incidentally, Stilly River Sage (Maggie Dwyer, John Dwyer's daughter) was a park ranger at English Camp during the Eighties (1980s, that is) and arranged for a bunch of us to come up one weekend and sing for the tourists.

Don Firth