The paper mill and main townsite, right at the head of Cousins Inlet. Link Lake, 16 miles long, can be seen above the town with Mt.Baldy in the background. Mount Caro Marion is on the left and Sawmill mountain on the right. Everything you see was owned or controlled by Ocean Falls Corporation. Directly below where I stood to take this photo lies Martin Valley with the only privately owned houses, but O.F.C. even used to have most of those well tied up with mortgages and fine print on the titles.

Over 200" of rain annually, and a dam replacing the original "ocean falls", gives abundant power, now used to supply nearby Waglisla (Bella Bella) as well. Log booms, supply for the mill, can be seen in the deep-sea harbor.

Gus Herman on his fishboat, with the old multi-colored duplexes of Ocean Falls in the background.

When I first arrived in January 1975, after a slow and stormy voyage from Vancouver in my 28' boat with household goods lashed on deck, it was Gus who made me welcome and found a space for the Sea Truck at the crowded float.

Fisherman, millworker, wharfinger, logger, and who knows what else, he had lived there for 50 years, remembered it all, and was respected by everyone. He had helped to build almost everything in town and had the stories to go with it.

Gus is gone now, as is everything else in the background behind him. He did not live to see the final destruction, and probably didn't want to. His dearly loved wife (Gus always called her "Ma" and so did everyone else) soon followed.

With a strong community spirit and lots of clubs and activities, the town was a great place to bring up small kids. This boatload is heading out on a summer picnic to nearby Wallace Bay aboard my good ship Sea Truck 15.

The large high school and elementary school were full of children in those days, but there are fewer now in the whole town than in this photo taken in June 1975.

Tied up at Jenny Bay, where the Ocean Falls Yacht Club maintained a float. The fishing was good there and it was a favourite spot for picnics.


Canada Day - July 1, 1980

A bittersweet occasion. This crowd knew it was the last big Canada Day celebration their beloved home town would ever see. Ocean Falls' only industry, a paper mill, had been shut down a month before by B.C.'s Socred government and almost everyone was forced to leave their home. The politicians at that time made many promises about the town's future, but none were kept.

When they finally sent the bulldozers in years later, those few of us left put up the best fight we could. A wildly successful media campaign, some civil disobedience and hard negotiating. We saved a bit of the old town, some of the unique wooden roadways, and a whole subdivision of newer housing in Martin Valley. We also brought democratic local government to Ocean Falls for the first time in its long history - it's no longer a "company town" controlled by distant politicians and big corporations.

Nearly all else is gone - hundreds of good apartments and houses, the Crown theatre, fine wooden churches, the swimming pool where Olympic champions trained - all smashed to matchsticks and burned to the ground. Then, as if this were not enough, the surrounding mountainsides, beautiful inlets and lakes were all logged bare.

Not quite a ghost town, Ocean Falls is still home to a few dozen people in winter and more in the summer, but I'm not sure I want to return to see what's left - too many memories, good and bad.

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