Sointula

History

The name Sointula means "Place of Harmony" (literally 'the place of chord') in the Finnish language. A group of Finnish settlers founded the village in 1901 after rowing north from Nanaimo. They set up a utopian socialist society known as the Kalevan Kansa, based on cooperative principles. and wrote to visionary Matti Kurikka in Finland to lead the new community. They were looking for a way out of the mines operated by the Dunsmuir family on Vancouver Island. It was a physically hard life, and a devastating fire in the Sointula community hall in 1903 killed three adults and eight children almost bringing the fledgling community to its knees. Kalervo Oberg, a Finnish-Canadian anthropologist born in 1901, came with his family to Sointula in 1902, and they were caught in the fire of 1903. Two of his sisters died in the fire. Financial difficulties continued to plague the group. They worked for free for two years on the Capilano Bridge project, and after that the Kalevan Kansa was disbanded as a utopian colony in 1905, but many of the community members remained on the island, as have their descendants. The town remained and eventually prospered well into the 1970s as an unusually vibrant resource-based settlement. Fishing and logging activities have been the mainstay for the community. The early cooperative ventures led to other businesses that are still operating, planting seeds that are also alive today. The Sointula Cooperative Store, the oldest co-op shop in the province, still handles dry goods, groceries and fuel for the islanders. The shellfish cooperative, Malcolm Island Shellfish Coop (MISC), was involved in research on the feasibility of raising and selling abalone, but closed for financial reasons in 2006. It relocated the abalone to an area near Port McNeill…