The Patricks, the Titanic, and the Komagata Maru

The Patrick Lumber Co. and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association had links to two infamous ships.

When Patrick Lumber was organized in 1907, H. Markland (Harry) Molson, of Montreal’s prominent Molson family was named its president. (He is pictured here in the Montreal Star in 1906.) In September 1908, Molson came to BC along with Molson’s Bank president W. Molson Macpherson and general manager James Elliott and inspected the company’s sawmill at Crescent Valley. They didn’t stay long.

Patrick Lumber’s secretary-treasurer was Montreal industrialist John Wilson McConnell, who came a year earlier to view the company’s BC holdings. He expected to stay a few weeks, but fell in love with the area. He and Joseph Patrick spearheaded fundraising for a new Methodist Church in Nelson. According to McConnell’s biographer William Fong, his brokerage firm partners George Johnston and Hudson Allison back in Montreal were able to raiee $4,000 for the project.

In 1911, Patrick Lumber was sold for a reported $1 million to the newly formed British Canadian Lumber Corp., which Johnston and Allison headed up.

British Canadian Lumber stock certificate (Greg Nesteroff collection)

The duo travelled to England in February 1911 in search of capital. Allison made a second trip later in the year for the same reason, this time bringing along his wife Bess and their two young children, Loraine and Trevor.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t have picked a worse way or time to return to Canada. Hud Allison booked passage for his family in April 1912 on the Titanic. Also on board was Harry Molson, who dined with the Allisons the night the ship struck an iceberg.

Molson perished along with Hud, Bess, and Loraine Allison. Only Hud’s body was recovered. Trevor Allison survived, but died at age 18 of ptomaine poisoning. There is lots of information online about them all, as well as a lot of crazy speculation about the identity of the family’s nursemaid, who was also on board, but survived.

RMS Titanic departs Southampton on April 10, 1912. (Wikipedia photo)

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There were Patrick links to the Komagata Maru, the freighter that arrived in Vancouver in April 1914 with 376 passengers from India’s Punjab province on board. Due to Canada’s “continuous journey” regulations that prevented immigration from India, only 24 people were allowed to disembark, and the rest were forced to return.

The BC government formally apologized for the incident in 2008, followed by the federal government in 2016, and the cities of Vancouver and New Westminster in 2021.

One of the Patrick links to this tragedy is fairly well known: when the Komagata Maru arrived at Coal Harbour, the first immigration officer to meet the ship was Cyclone Taylor. Taylor had gone to work in Ottawa in 1907 as an immigration clerk and kept that position when he came to Vancouver in 1912 to play for the Millionaires in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association.

“Group of immigration officials, including Cyclone Taylor, second from left, during departure of Chinese Labour Corps.” No date given. (City of Vancouver Archives AM 1376-:CVA 139-12)

In 1976, an extraordinary reunion occurred when Taylor, 92, met Giani Kartar Singh, 97, the last surviving passenger, at Taylor’s home in Vancouver. They didn’t remember each other but greeted each other warmly. They chatted through an interpreter, but didn’t actually discuss the Komagata Maru. Each insisted they had forgotten the incident. But they hadn’t. How could they?

Singh was at sea for 11 months. He had previously tried to come to North America on a ship that landed at Tacoma but was refused entry. He then sailed to Japan and boarded the Komagata Maru for Vancouver. Singh returned to India and survived an ensuing riot with British police, but he and other passengers were placed under house arrest for five years.

Taylor, meanwhile, recalled that the incident almost cost him his life: “About 24 of us (immigration officers and police) went out in a launch to board the Komagata Maru and somebody — I believe it was in our boat — fired a shot. Immediately we were bombarded with large chunks of coal from the deck above. We were nearly killed.”

(Yet in a 1964 CBC Radio documentary, Taylor offered a contradictory account. He said “there was no commotion” and that he calmly met with the captain and Gurdit Singh, who had organized the voyage. “We exchanged greetings, picked up the papers, explained to the captain that his men for the time being — that is the East Indian passengers — would not be allowed to go ashore. And, well, after 20 minutes or half hour conversation we left.”)

Taylor was on board the ship “frequently” in the ensuing weeks and described conditions as “terrible.”

The Vancouver Sun, Sept. 18, 1976

It’s unclear from the Sun story above what Taylor thought about the entire affair in hindsight. However, his son, John Taylor, who became an immigration lawyer and an MP in the John Diefenbaker government told the Sun in 1989 that his father felt the passengers hadn’t been treated fairly.

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The Patricks’ other Komagata Maru link is presented here for the first time. One of the few passengers allowed to land was Hakam Singh (also known as Hakum Singh and, perhaps in error, as Nehal Singh). This was because he had been in Canada before. Border manifests show him crossing into the United States at Northport and Marcus, Wash., in 1907.

From the Komagata Maru, Singh proceeded to Crescent Valley to work for the British-Canadian Lumber mill — the former Patrick Lumber Co. operation. It’s not clear how long he stayed. By 1918, he had moved west to work at a different sawmill near Christina Lake.

Singh would be involved with a second historic tragedy a few years later. On Oct. 29, 1924, he and a couple of other Sikh men were on a train heading to Grand Forks to visit his close friend George Mehmal when the passenger car he was in exploded. Singh was one of nine people killed. It’s always been presumed the target was Doukhobor leader Peter (Lordly) Verigin, who was also among the fatalities, but no one ever claimed responsibility and no one was ever charged, if indeed it was the result of a bomb.

Singh’s funeral was attended by a large number of South Asians, including some who came from Golden and Vancouver Island. Following his cremation, his ashes were deposited in the Pacific Ocean.

The Patrick Lumber Co./British Canadian Lumber Co. sawmill at Crescent Valley, BC, shut down in 1918. Its ruins are seen here in 2017.