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Historical Society: Tales from the archives

By Pauli DeHaan

Yes! We have no bananas.

A few years ago I received an old wooden crate as a donation to the historical society from a woman who spent her childhood summers at a cottage at Boundary Bay. The crate was about three feet high, octagonal in shape with upright slats spaced a half-inch apart. She described it as one of the many banana crates that had been washed ashore all the way from Boundary Bay to Tsawwassen Beach. The crate had sat in the shed, waiting for the rest of the story.

Some years later, Bill Smith was reminiscing about his childhood summers at the family cabin at the little beach colony below the foot of Paul’s Road. Upon waking at the beach, the first thing he would do is to look out the window to check the tide, the weather and look for anything interesting that may have washed up on the beach overnight. 

One morning a tropical treat had washed in – crates of bananas, laid end to end, all along the southern shore! Bill was just a boy of 12 and remembers that he and his buddies got pretty sick of them. 

Barbara Heeren, Bill’s cousin and beach neighbor, remembers that her mother made banana bread and most likely banana cream pie as “mum was a real pie person.” Barb’s mom would have sent one of the kids along to Mrs. Waters for eggs, and then on to Paul Thorsteinson’s farm for fresh cream and milk to make her pie. It was the nightly chore for the kids to go up to the farm for fresh milk only the kids didn’t mind doing it at all. It was considered good luck if your milk bottle happened to be the one with the “wavy” glass. (This must have been a bottle with flawed glass, but I have been unable to find one in the glass bottle collection at the farm.)

The special delivery of the bananas took place sometime in the 1930s. The explanation at the time was that a dispute over the low price for bananas had taken place on the waterfront in Vancouver, B.C. When neither party could agree to a price, the captain, in protest, chose to dump his cargo overboard into the Strait of Georgia. It was the time of the great depression and this time, the price of bananas turned out to be rock-bottom free.