Description du lieu patrimonial

The Youbou Mill site consists of the remains of a former sawmill located near the community of Youbou on the north shore of Lake Cowichan, B.C. The site is at the end of Highway 18, 38 kilometres west of Duncan, on central Vancouver Island B.C.

Valeur patrimoniale

Youbou Mill has historic, cultural, social and economic significance to the history of South Asian Canadians in B.C. because it was the site of a large sawmill and associated community that employed many South Asian Canadian immigrants. The site represents their contribution to the expanding resource-based economy of the province.

The site of the former sawmill at Youbou has social and historic value for demonstrating the ways in which South Asian Canadians helped to build the economy of B.C. through their labour, resilience and innovation in the lumbering and sawmilling industries.

Founded in 1913 by the Empire Lumber Company, the Youbou Mill is valued for its association with the South Asian Canadian labourers that helped fuel its growth from a small portable sawmill to one of the largest sawmills in the Lake Cowichan area. The mill's craneway was known as one of the longest craneways in the British Empire in the early 1900s.

The community of Youbou that grew up around the sawmill is named after two founders of the Empire Lumber Company which operated the first sawmill there. The mill site at Youbou has historic and social value for its employment of many South Asian immigrants, particularly after 1947 when the Canadian Citizenship Act allowed residents of Canada to obtain citizenship regardless of their country of origin. The site's value is heightened by the fact that multiple generations of South Asian Canadians worked at this mill as a means of raising their families and making a living.

This legislation also resulted in the growth of the number of South Asian families who resided in the adjacent community of Youbou, a still-existing, former company town historically associated with the now-defunct sawmill site. Youbou grew to house the mill offices and workers' accommodation, and to support a church, an elementary school in a converted bunkhouse, volunteer fire department, and community hall, all of which served the mill-working community.

Today the few remains of the sawmill at Youbou, visible at a distance from the town, include wharf remnants, wood pilings and other small structures are valued as a reminder of the once-thriving sawmill that existed until the relatively recent past. These remains are important as physical indicators of the location and scale of the mill site and its relationship to current townsite of Youbou.

The former sawmill site at Youbou is important for its relative longevity and viability in a small community that endured the boom and bust cycles of the industry. The final closure of the sawmill at Youbou in 2001 is important because it signalled the end of an era of logging and sawmilling on Cowichan Lake that was highly significant to B.C.'s South Asian community, and set the stage for an important alliance between former mill workers and environmentalists, both of whom opposed the mill's closure.

Éléments caractéristiques

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