In younger years we always had a restaurant that we went to, Hobbies, we always went there so that you would call a tradition. My dad was great that way.  Do you remember Leung’s on Fifth Street downtown? They had a coffee shop there and my mum and dad used to go there. Dad used to go there because when he worked in his final working years he was with Courtenay Chrysler selling cars in the lot there, and he would go there for coffee all the time. Continue reading →

The very first ambulance in Courtenay was a Model T Ford.  It was actually owned by the St. Joseph’s Hospital Ladies Auxiliary. They bought it and it was kept in Sims garage across from Tulio’s, in the City parking lot there.  There was a garage there called Sims garage and it burnt down in 1932 and the ambulance was in it, so Courtenay had no ambulance.  I don’t know what happened when people got sick or hurt.

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Prior to 1910, Comox Logging brought all their logs down by rail and dumped them in the Tsolum River, and then the logs were taken down the river and made into booms, and then shipped over to the Fraser River.  Then Comox Logging decided that wasn’t working good.  So they made the rail across the Puntledge River right down behind those Puntledge Terrace buildings, and the rail bridge went right through Courtenay and right clean down to just this side of Royston and that’s where all the logs were dumped into the bay. Continue reading →

Some people wonder about the bridge on Fifth. The very first bridge was built in 1874. Then the second bridge was built in 1900. It was a wooden bridge. The first steel bridge was built in 1923, and then the bridge we’ve got now was built in ‘59/60 and all of them basically in the same spot. Then there was a slough bridge, and the 17th Street bridge was built in ’81. Continue reading →