By Bill Irvine

May 15, 2009

Kapoor Singh Siddoo
Mayo Singh started Mayo Lumber Co. in 1917. Later, Mayo Lumber Company Ltd. was incorporated November 21, 1924, under the British Columbia Company's Act, in Victoria, BC, Canada. Kapoor Singh Siddoo became a fifty-percent partner with Mayo Singh and these two men eventually became the sole owners of their company.

In 1917, Mayo had sent money to Kapoor Singh Siddoo in Ontario to come out west and join him and his other partners as Mayo's Chilliwack operations were winding down and he had plans to move operations to Vancouver Island. Kapoor was hired on as bookkeeper as he was an educated man and could speak fluent English. Neither Mayo nor Kapoor wore turbans and both were clean-shaven, unlike many of their Sikh religion, countrymen.

Kapoor Lumber Co. ca. 1928
The company operated railway logging operations and a sawmill at Paldi (originally Mayo) and, in 1928, at Sooke Lake. The Mayo Sawmill was on the Esquiamalt & Nanaimo (E&N) Cowichan Subdivision near the Hillcrest Lumber and McNeill and Munn sites. The Kapoor Lumber Company Ltd. mill was located at Mile-35 on the Canadian National Railway (CNR) line near Sooke Lake -- now part of the Greater Victoria Watershed. Water to operate the Kapoor mill came from Council Creek where it flowed under the CNR Railway from Council Lake to Sooke River. The Kapoor Mill operated from 1928 to 1940. Kapoor Lumber Company still owns lands in the area.

Joan Mayo, in her book Paldi Remembered, states there were few whites (Europeans) working in the woods for Mayo prior to 1940. One exception would be Bruce Frederick Irvine who worked at the Kapoor Lumber Co. Ltd.'s Sooke Lake operation ca. 1928. Irvine was the g-grandson of John & Jesse Irvine who arrived at Fort Victoria aboard the barque, Tory, May 14, 1851. The Irvines started their journey around the Horn from their homeland in the Orkney Islands, Scotland.

Bruce Irvine, at 21 years old, hired on at Kapoor as a millwright and carpenter to build bunkhouses for the workers at the new Sooke Lake mill. He was there before and after the fire of 1929 which destroyed the mill but spared the bunkhouses. Irvine took about a dozen photographs at the Kapoor mill-site which are now kept in the Irvine Family Archives. None have ever been published.

Thus, viewing the Irvine photos and comparing them with the B.C. Archives & Records Service [BCARS] one can recognize the original site of the Kapoor Lumber Company's Sooke Lake mill. The company letterhead describes its location as "Sooke Lake Post Office, Mile-35 C.N.R.". See also Irvine/Wilkie juxtaposition below.

Doug MacFarlane -- an amateur Sooke historian -- states he visited the Kapoor mill-site many times prior to the 1970's and it was located where the CNR tracks cross Council Creek. Doug went on state the bulk of the mill was located south of said creek. The GPS coordinates are: 48°30'40.18" -123°41'29.24". The Capital Regional District (CRD) Integrated Water Services now has a red gate at this location on a road which connects to the Gold Stream Treatment Plant. Anyone participating in the CRD's Annual Watershed Bus Tour passes through this gate. The tour bus also crosses Council Creek which still flows here (2011).

Left: Irvine Archive's 1928 photo showing Sooke Lake Site; Right, same location by Dave Wilkie 1975
Council Creek CNR trestle can be seen in both pictures.

This page was last updated on 08/14/11.