Occurring with regularity each summer from the turn of the 20th century, the fires were unique to this fertile delta of the Fraser. Early Richmond folk recall hearing Miss Johnson reciting her intriguing legend on this subject in the old Opera House, a landmark at 2nd Avenue and Chatham Street, now demolished.
As to the formation of the bog, it should be remembered that the islands composing the Municipality were created by the Fraser River in very recent geologic times. The Final Advance in the Great Ice Age reached its maximum extent a mere 10,000 years ago. With the melting of the mountain remnants of the various Advances, the great glacial valley of the lower Fraser, in places 2,000 feet deep, filled with alluvial soil. When this filling process finally reached the ocean, a wide delta formed, including Sea and Lulu Island.
The pattern of early sandbars and intervening water passages can be seen today in the soil maps of Richmond. Our islands are still building westward at the rate of about 100 feet a century.
The bog area of 1972 is a much shrunken remnant of the bog early residents recall.
In the early 1900's it extended from Queensboro to No. 3 Road, including the future Garden City Road (later the interurban tram artery for Vancouver berry pickers). At No. 7 Road it curved to within a quarter mile of the North Arm of the Fraser, wandering southwesterly back to Westminster Highway. Southern perimeter was Steveston Highway (then known to all as No. 9 Road) between No. 4 and No. 5 Roads.
It is said the original bog has been largely drained over the last 50 years. Much of this is attributable to the hand-dug ditches, dug beside the roads by municipal crews. The late Magistrate, R. C. Palmer, also a long-time municipal clerk, got his start in civic employment as a young man digging such ditches. These open drains connected to major drainage canals, such as along No. 3 Road, often 20 feet wide; many of which had been created by Richmond's famous floating dredge, which literally dug its own water course.
The peat bog in the twenties was characterized by wild plant smells, with the odor of [the] native Labrador Tea plant redolent on a hot summer's day. Whole families--or a few friends--got off at the train stops and hiked off, blueberry pail in hand, towards No. 4 Road to pick the tasty blueberries.
Harold Steves, Sr. recalls much of the bogland was impossible to cross when he was a boy. Somewhere around No. 6 or No. 7 road was once a small lake, where hunters went to shoot geese and ducks. Roads were built, opening up this natural wonder, and today it is preserved in the 217 acre Richmond Nature Park.
One oldtimer, then a little girl, was cautioned against visiting the peat bogs--it was "taboo". Of course there was almost no way to get there, just plank roads. One resident remembers when No. 4 Road was but a path, and No. 5 Road was constructed of 12 foot planks with turn-out places for horse and buggy (later the Model A Ford) at intervals.
It was considered a Sunday sport, helping the curious Vancouverites get their cars out of the mud and back on the planks. Not so humourous was the lot of the farmer who attempted to plow hardhack in undrained bog--and lost his horses. To preven this, farmers had their work horses shod with Tule shoes, special wooden shoes attached to the front feet when needed. The deepest place in the bog was two miles up from Woodward's Landing towards the dump, according to Richmond's oldest, Finn. The bog was 16 feet "straight down" in some places.
Despite this concealed moisture, it was the flats outside the dyke by No. 1 Road (westwards) that supported mosquitoes--and not the bog area which lacked visible surface water.
Of course there were sloughs showing stagnant water--and still are; some with dramatic skunk cabbage, and some with beautiful yellow water lilies.
Every summer there were fires in the bog--and the peat smouldered underground until the winter rains became continuous. The air was thick with smoke, and formed the haze over Lulu Island which Pauline Johnson's poetry made famous.
A furniture factory burned down, chickens were burned alive--and acres of commercial berry plants burned over, as the yearly fires continued. Attempts were made to have laws passed banning picking wild blueberries on Lulu Island.
Not until the colourful Richmond Volunteer Fire Department had been augmented with modern equipment and some fulltime employees was there a successful attack on the bog fires. Everyone, without proof, blamed these outbreaks on the scores of blueberry pickers, who, it was said, carelessly started them while farming food.
Meanwhile commercial blueberry farming flourished. Cooperative marketing of this valuable crop proved highly successful. Never again would a Cockney lady on No. 4 Road, walking home after picking in the bog, hear the "sssshh" of fire springing up behind her step--as the air rushed in to fuel the underground inferno.
Fog and bog were closely allied in the early days. And with good reason. In a bog, the air stays cold, close to the wet soggy ground. Cold air is denser than warm air from the rest of the island, hence prolonged periods of fog marked the winter months of Richmond.
So intense was the wet fog, recalls the daughter of an early milk van hauler, that she was obliged to sit on the hod of her father's car, holding aloft a lamp. She also says conditions made it difficult to pass vehicles on the old Marpole Bridge, by Grauer's Store.
Mayor Henry Anderson recalls fogs lasting several days and which were extremely heavy. Someone else remembers driving with her car door open to see the road in 1923. An early school teacher attending night school in Vancouver left her car at the Fraser Street Bridge, walked her girl friend to Cambie Road, and continued along the three miles home. This was in 1930.
The wife of the cannery caretaker, living with her young family on Lion Island had a most harassing experience. One foggy morning as she rowed her children the 75 yards across to the mainland at the foot of No. 9 Road for school, the oarlock slipped into the main river. She eventually reached the shore. Some hours later the frostiness cleared, the fog lifted, and she could return to her island home, and her twins.
Fog sometimes lasted a week in early Richmond. A veteran machinist born here recalls driving a Model T car into Vancouver with friends, to attend a motion picture. They had to follow the street car tracks on Granville Street to see their way back. Lack of windshield wipers and the dimmer lights on cars of an earlier era compounded the perils of driving in fog.
Urban expansion, better bog drainage and more roads have combined to reduce the bog area. Fog periods today are shorter. Modern fire engines attend fires throughout Richmond. No longer does the smouldering peat unfurl its scarf of fragrance and fingers of grey from the fires of Lulu Island.