Remembering Ioco
IOCO Memories
Chapter 21
Depression
One of the best places in the world to live. I mean we didn’t have any depression you know. All this big depression in ’29. Moody- we were giving them as much as we could but they used to want one day’s salary per pay cheque to the Welfare for the people in Moody.
All the sawmills were shut down and the Ioco refinery was the only place that was operating as it seemed. Burnaby was in receivership. Moody had the sawmill in it, and it would run maybe for two days a month. I was working at the refinery at the time and you’d go to work in the morning and people would be walking all the way from Haney all the way down here to stand at the gate and see if they could get maybe one day’s work. There’d be maybe thirty or forty people waiting. We used to have to walk through them to get inside the gate, inside the fencing.
Mr. Laidlaw:
Garbage Removal
Bobbly Blair was important he learned a lot of trades. Tinsmith- did a lot of furnace work.
“The garbage. We had, well I don't know where it went. But the fella who maintained the hall, name was Bobby Blair, whose job was looking after the hall, but was also on the garbage truck that would come around, pick up the garbage and take it away. I'm not sure where it went. But they had garbage removal for sure. And even in those days, Bobby, we had wooden sidewalks, part of his job was to repair the sidewalks till they became cement”.
John Hart
Everyone Knew Each Other
The kids used to head over to Port moody to the theatre as they walked anyone driving that way would pick them up. It was like having 80 moms and dads, it was a small place everyone knew each other. John Hart
Marjory Kingsbury
I can remember when I was a child too, there was an old lady in Ioco, Mrs. Collett and she was a beautiful dancer. And she used to train a lot of us young kiddies to do the lovely dances, the…what do they call them? The old time-The French minuet and all that type of thing and we-She used to get us all practiced up and take us over to Port Moody where the [Perry’s Café] is now or it used to be the [Jeanie Dean] and the people that owned it, I think he was the – with the mill or maybe the mayor of Port Moody. His wife used to put on afternoon teas, quite often she put on what we called Pink Tea Parties and Mrs. Collett would take us kids over to dance for the people and I remember I used to just love it cuz you got all dressed up and you wore bells on your ankles and I was only about six or seven I guess. And we used to go over and dance for the people, all these beautiful French minuets and the old dancing. I can remember her, [Patton], she used to be very proud to take these kids over you know”.
Ioco Buses
Jeanette Machan
They did have buses that came into Ioco and you could take them – But they only came about every four hours so
Bike Riding and Other Activities
I did a lot of bike riding, around Ioco. It was easy to go bike riding around Ioco.
Oh, we’d hike. Up to the big rock. I went up there not too long ago, the big rock was at the top of 3rd Avenue, went up the trail.
Marjory Kingsbury
There was a dock that was straight down from the school. When you were a good swimmer you swam off the end of the dock and that was great. You used to be a great swimmer if you could dive off the dock and swim you know. And then you could swim from the dock to the Ioco Beach to the left and it was a lovely sandy beach and they really fixed it up, all the men cleared all the rocks off it and they built a bathhouse and they had circular seats around a big bonfire and picnic tables. And every Sunday families from the townsite used to go down and they’d take their picnic and more or less stay there all day with their kids. And the parents would swim and that’s why all the children really learned to swim in Ioco you know.
There was a pier in Port Moody because it used to be a thing that if you could swim-My mother used to swim from Ioco pier to Port Moody pier believe it or not.
Helen Moore
Well for several years we had swimming classes down at the beach below Ioco Church there. I arranged the schedules for them, course it had to be by the tides. They we had young girls that were, you know, red crossed trained that would teach the classes. Both my boys took them. One of them swims like a fish.
George Kingsbury
I think Ioco was about the best place that a young fella could have been raised.
Marjory Kingsbury
To keep the grass down. Instead of having - now they have men of course that mow the lawns, but those days they had sheep. And they used keep all the grass trimmed all around the tank.
Telephones didn't come to Ioco until about 1937 with party—lines, three or four on a line. Before that, the only telephone was at the gate of the refinery to be used only in an emergency.
Marjory Kingsbury
I can't help wondering who had the best years. I think it was my generation. We also never had keys in our doors, they never needed to be locked.
I'm glad we were able to raise our two sons in Ioco, it was a good place when they were children, it was safe for them too.
