In the museum are many artefacts portraying day to day life as it would have been in the days of the area's settlers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Further displays indicate advancements in technology through the years which made life a little easier as time marched inexorably on.
One of the cooler items in the collection is this complete miniature sawmill, the
Only Fully Operational Miniature Sawmill in Canada. About sixteen feet long, the sawmill required 25,000 man hours to construct and takes miniature logs in one end and spits out finished lumber at the other end (so to speak). Dubbed the "Little Mills Lumber Company" by its fabricator, Phil Quelch, it is one of three that he has made since 1939 and is the only operational model of the three. Accompanying the sawmill is a video showing the sawmill in operation, creating miniature lumber for a miniature construction industry which builds miniature houses.
Following is the story of the mill.
"Little Mills Lumber Company"
This unique exhibit was the brainchild of Mr. Phil Quelch. Unfortunately, Phil passed away in 1990 at the age of 87, but left us this legacy. He started making model mills back in 1939 while working as a head saw filer at a Chemainus sawmill on Vancouver Island. Phil built three miniature sawmills and each is an exact replica of the old fashioned "jack-ladder" type mill that once lined the coast of Vancouver Island, Fraser River and the interior waterways of British Columbia. The original mill that Phil duplicated was 312 feet long, following a scale of roughly 1 inch to the foot making his model 26 feet long which is currently on display at Miniature World in Victoria BC.
This working model on display is 16 feet in length. This model was built in the early 1960's, and named his 3 sawmills "Little Mills Lumber Company." Phil was determined to have a scale model that could actually take one or two inch logs and turn out miniature lumber of superb quality. While some of the components were hand- fabricated from scratch, many were improvised from; old sewing machines, a washing machine, piano, lawnmower, mix master, gramophone, typewriter, cream separator, chandelier, and even a baby carriage.
It took 25,000 hours of work, spanning twenty-eight years before Phil could tighten the last bolt on the model. The key to Quelch's success in building the small but highly complex mill was improvisation with a healthy dash of ingenuity and patience.
There are many anecdotes relating to the mill which Phil gathered over the years. Building the model sawmills taught Phil the complexities of every phase of the sawmill operation, and the skills he learnt and shared with others were invaluable.
Phil always kept busy and used his time either working as an author, consultant, teacher, or working on the model sawmills. Phil once said; "I find that it's necessary to keep active. I don't want to quit work; I'd just rust apart like a piece of machinery. After all no matter what line of work you're in, life is just made up of time, nothing else."
From the plaque at the sawmill
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