House Washing for Chemainus Homes

Why Chemainus Is Its Own Problem

Six Houses That Came Here by Barge

Chemainus became a company town in 1862, when Thomas Askew built the first sawmill and the place began providing its residents work, housing and goods, and the housing has kept arriving in batches ever since. After the Second World War the Victoria Lumber Company turned the mill’s old lumber yards into subdivisions for employees, particularly returning veterans. In 1948 dozens of houses were barged in from a US military base at Bremerton, Washington to put mill workers under a roof, and six of those are still standing in Old Town. A wall built in the 1940s and shipped across a strait has a different tolerance from one put up on a lumber yard a decade later, and both are softer than anything built since. Older painted timber is a low-pressure job with the solution doing the removal, and on paint that old the lower layers are best assumed to contain lead, which makes containing the runoff part of the method rather than a courtesy.

• About four square kilometres in the Chemainus Valley, fronting Stewart Channel and reached from Highway 1
• Fifty-three outdoor murals are painted directly onto walls along the main street