Chemainus, Cowichan Valley
Power Washing in Chemainus, BC
Eleven ferry round trips a day leave from Oak Street for Thetis and Penelakut, and every one of them is preceded by a queue of vehicles standing on a small town’s pavement. That is a very specific kind of deposit, and it is not one a garden hose will shift.
What Chemainus Does to Your Property
Eleven Sailings a Day Across Four Square Kilometres
The terminal at 2830 Oak Street runs eleven round trips daily to Thetis and Penelakut Islands, and the town it runs them from is about four square kilometres. Chemainus also sits just off Highway 1, 80 km north of Victoria and 35 km south of Nanaimo, reached by a marked turnoff rather than by the highway passing through — so vehicle traffic here arrives with a destination and then stops. Both of those leave oily, bonded deposit on approach roads, parking aprons and commercial frontage: rubber, exhaust film, drips from a stationary queue. None of it is alive, which is the entire point. Growth comes off with a cleaning solution given time; bonded residue does not, and cold pressure works it into a surface rather than off it. Heat is the right answer to the second problem and an expensive answer to the first.
- Old Town sits near the water while the post-war subdivisions sit on the mill’s former lumber yards, so build era changes street by street
- Six of the houses barged here from Bremerton, Washington in 1948 are still standing in Old Town
Chemainus Questions
Old Town holds the oldest stock in Chemainus, and some of it arrived already built — dozens of houses were barged here from a US military base at Bremerton, Washington in 1948 to house mill workers, and six of them still stand. Around them are the subdivisions the Victoria Lumber Company laid out after the Second World War on the mill’s old lumber yards, largely for returning veterans. Older painted timber wants a soft wash: the cleaning solution doing the work at low pressure, joints not driven full of water, and the paint left on the boards rather than taken off them. It is worth saying which era your house belongs to when asking for a price, because the method changes and so does the time it takes.
Around Chemainus
Chemainus is four square kilometres, which means everything in it is close together and almost none of it is uniform. Old Town, the post-war streets on the old lumber yards and the newer development out by the mall are three building eras inside a ten-minute walk.
Landmarks nearby: Gerry Smith Park · Wul’aam (Echo) Park · Chemainus Theatre
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