Ocean Falls was the ultimate company town. On the coast, halfway between Vancouver and Prince Rupert, it was created to support a lumber mill and a paper mill. When the pulp mill closed six decades later, most of the people moved away. It became a ghost town.
"Ocean Falls is a fascinating case study of a company town -- a community dependent on one firm for all or most of the necessary services or functions of town life," says Claire Gilbert, the archivist in charge of the Ocean Falls project.
"Ocean Falls is a fascinating case study of a company town -- a community dependent on one firm for all or most of the necessary services or functions of town life," says Claire Gilbert, the archivist in charge of the Ocean Falls project.
"It is a story told from the earliest beginnings, through its prosperous decades of the 1930, 1940s and 1950s, into its dismantling, within our province's biggest industry."
Archivists have spent the summer going through 700 cubic feet of records, sorting them and cataloguing them to make the collection accessible to the rest of us. This week, they will all be available for researchers to use at the Royal B.C. Museum.
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