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A Cyber
Tour of Fort Langley
For those
of you who can't make it out to Fort Langley, our webmistress
would like to share some pictures she and her brother took on
their June 2000 visit there. If you click on an image
with a blue border, you will be taken to see a larger version
of that picture; click the back button on your browser to
return to this page.
Having been to Fort
Langley once, I had to go back again. And because I had
said that going to the fort had felt like Coming Home, my
brother Don had to come see for himself. Both of us
brought cameras. Don's pictures are the sepia tone,
mine are the color.
Hopefully the pictures
presented here will give you a feel of the place -- but
nothing beats going there in person.
Many thanks to Erin
Easingwood, who provided building names and dates they were
built, and the whole Fort Langley gang for putting up with my
over-enthusuastic self.
Lisa Peppan
Edmonds, WA
September 2000
| Fort Langley National Historic
Site of Canada |
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The Parks Canada Beaver |
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PO Box 129
23433 Mavis Avenue
Fort Langley, B.C. V1M 2R5
Canada |
| Phone: (604)
513-4777
Fax: (604) 513-4798 |
| Email:
fort.langley@pc.gc.ca |
Fort Langley is located east and a bit
south of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. To get to Fort Langley from:
Follow the I-5 north to Bellingham.
Turn off at the Bellis Fair Mall exit and go north on Guide Meridian.
Go for 14 miles to the Aldergrove border crossing. Continue north on
264th Street to Highway 1, and then take Highway 1 west. Take the next
exit at 232nd Street. Turn right on Glover Road, and continue north
into the village of Fort Langley, and turn right on Mavis Avenue. They
are located are the end of the street. Do not turn onto River Road.
- Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster and the
North shore areas:
Follow the Trans Canada, Highway #1 East
to the 232nd Street North exit. Follow 232nd Street to the stop sign on
Glover Road. Turn right. Follow Glover Road into the village of Fort
Langley. At Mavis Avenue, just before the railway tracks, turn right. They
are located at the end of the street. (Do not turn onto River Road).
Follow Highway 99 South to Highway 10.
Follow Highway 10 east to Glover Road (about 30 minutes). Turn left at
Glover Road and follow it north to Fort Langley. At Mavis Avenue, just
before the railway tracks, turn right. They are located at the end of the
street. (Do not turn onto River Road).
- Areas east of Fort Langley:
Follow Highway #1 West to the 232nd Street
exit. Follow 232nd Street North to the stop sign on Glover Road. Turn right.
Follow Glover Road to the village of Fort Langley. At Mavis Avenue, just
before the railway tracks, turn right. They are located at the end of the
street. (Do not turn onto River Road).
- The north side of the Fraser River:
Take Highway 7, Lougheed Highway, to the
Albion ferry to cross the Fraser River. Continue driving on the south side,
and turn left on Mavis Avenue after crossing the railroad tracks. They are
located are the end of the street. (Do not turn onto River Road).
DO BE AWARE: there are
two Langleys -- Fort Langley and Langley township. Fort
Langley is on the south bank of the Fraser River; the Fraser River is the
snaky squiggle running across the top of the middle map, below. Langley
township is southwest from there at the other end of Glover Road, in the
light area of the lower left hand corner of the map on the left. Glover
Road is the line that runs at a 45 degree angle between the two.
Once you get into Fort Langley, follow
Glover Road to Mavis Avenue. Mavis is just before the bridge to
MacMillan Island. Stay on Mavis and go straight up the slight hill.
Do not turn onto River Road; see the map on the right, below.
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Northwestern Washington & Southwestern
British Columbia
map courtesy of
MapQuest |
The Greater Langley area
map courtesy of the Greater Vancouver & Fraser Valley Street Atlas by
MapArt |
Fort Langley National Historic Site of
Canada
map courtesy of
MapQuest |
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Click on either any of these three square maps for larger versions.
Click the back button on your browser to return to this page. |
 The
first thing you really see is the Visitor Centre (at left). The white area
on the front of the building is a mural of Fort Langley as it was. The
entrance is to the left of the mural. The fort itself sits behind the
Visitor Centre, just about where the break in the trees is.
 In
the visitor center you will find a gift shop and an exhibit of glass cases and dioramas,
showing artifacts, documents, and photographs -- like this one, on the left, of
the ruins of Fort Langley when they were purchased by the Mavis Family, the same
folks that Mavis Avenue was named after.
 Once through the
Visitor Centre, there's a park-like gravel path that takes
you to the fort's main gate. The person you see in the
picture on the right, up under the trees, is my sister-in-law
Janis Peppan.
 On the left is what we
saw as we walked through the gate. If I remember
correctly, the fellow wearing black and red is one of the
interpretive guides who portrays Mr. James Murray Yale, Clerk
in Charge of Fort Langley from 1834 through 1844, and Chief
Trader from 1844 through 1859. The building on the left
is the cooperage. The white building is the Store
House, and the one on the right is the Theater.
On the right is what
you'll see if you look to your right a few steps the gate.
The building on the left is the Operations building,
built in 1997. The white building is the Big House,
built in 1958, and it contains the front office, and two
suites, one for the chief trader Mr. Yale, the other for the
clerk Mr. Newton. In the centre is the gentlemen's mess
hall. The building partially obscured by the big tree
is the Servant's Quarters, also built in 1958. And the
four post structure near the top of the hill is a pit saw
frame. A log or plank was layed across the top and one
guy sorta kinda straddled the wood and worked one end of the
saw, while a second man stood down in the pit and worked the
other end of the saw. Pit saws were tricky to work, not
everyone could do it well, but, according to the Fort Langley
Journals, there were two Kanakas --Hudson's Bay Company
employees from the Hawaiian Islands-- named Peopeoh and Como
who were exceptionally skilled at it.
 On the left is the
laundry area (that light colored peak over the wall behind it
is the Visitor Centre). The laundry area is located up
in what would be the right hand corner of the above picture,
back between the Big House and the Servant's Quarters.
 To the right is the
Operations Building, which houses artifacts found at the
site, photographs dating from circa 1860 through 1932, and
the administrative offices for the Fort Langley staff.
This was the building in which I confirmed my personal
link to Fort Langley.
 Here we have one of
two plaques identifying the pictures that decorate the walls
of the ground floor of the Operations Building. The
second of these two plaques says the very same thing this one
does, but in French. In the larger version of this
picture -- which you can see by clicking on this one -- the
words are readable.
On the large version,
you'll see that next to each of the twenty picture
descriptions are numbers in brackets.  These numbers are catalog numbers from the British Columbia Archives and Record
Service, from whom I do believe you could order copies of any
of these pictures for a small fee. On the right, one of the display
cases, showing assorted implements that were used around the fort.
 Down the hill a bit,
next to the Operations Building, is the Theater, built in
1999. Within you can see a short movie about Fort
Langley. To the left of it, looking a bit like an old
fashioned well, is a fur press. To make the furs easier to transport, they'd stack the furs up, and then insert
wooden wedges that would move the press down, compressing the
furs into nice tight 90 pound bundles.
The building next door
-- shown on the left here -- is the Store House and the one
building that is original. It was built by the men who
were at Fort Langley in 1840. With the exception of
this one building, all the rest are re-construction. Inside there's an
exhibit of the assorted trade goods that went in and out
of Fort Langley.
 The picture to the right shows how this and the two
preceding buildings are spaced. The fellow with the tripod and camera is my
brother, Don Peppan. The
new Exhibits Building now occupies the space between the
Theatre and the Operations Building.
 The
Exhibits building was first used in August of 2001 by the descendants of the
Hudson's Bay Company employees for their Home Coming
2001 reunion.
Which
brings us to the Blacksmith Shop, built around 1970. The peaked roof behind
the it is one of the bastions.
 The Blacksmith Shop was of particular interest to
my brother and I because our great great grandfather, Etienne Pépin,
was one of Fort Langley's blacksmiths. According to Jamie Morton,
Etinne made really great nails.
 
The picture to the right is Don
setting up to take the picture on the left.
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| Inside the Blacksmith shop |
 
Then we round the
corner to the barrel making shop-the cooperage-and the
carpentry shop, built in 1993.
 
Here interpretive
guide Merl, left, makes barrel stave shaving look easy. The
light coloured litter underneath him is the paper-thin wood
shavings he's pulling off the barrel-stave-under-construction
with a draw knife.
 If you climb the
stairs of the first bastion, you can get a peek-a-boo view of
the church on McMillan Island from the catwalk atop the wall
directly behind the cooperage. McMillan Island is home
to the Kwantlen, First Nations people who developed an early
working relation with the men of Fort Langley. Many of
the men's wives were Kwantlen, including our Great Great
Grandmother Isabelle.
 And to the immediate right of the
cooperage is
a bateaux. What's a "bateaux" . . . ? Think about the
biggest rowboat you can imagine, and then make it big enough to carry upwards of a ton of merchandise and men. I
stand 4 foot 11 inches tall and could barely see over the sides standing on
tip-toe. This one is painted brick red, and can be seen in the below
picture of my brother and his camera equipment, with the
 front
gate behind him. Yeah, yeah, I know. [insert a lopsided grin here] I can say this because I
know it's there, but it is
easier to see in the larger version.
"Bateaux" is pronounced "baa (like the
sound a sheep makes) -TOE (like the little flappy things at
the opposite end of your foot from the heel)".
Now, two posts to the
right of the gate, is a Native built canoe. If I
remember correctly, whereas the bateaux is of fairly new
construction, the canoe is like the Store House -- it's old
and original. Though I don't know this particular
canoe's history, I do know that like most other west canoes,
it was made from a single log, which was hollowed out until
the walls were of the proper thinness, then filled with water
and then hot rocks. The hot-rock-heated water softened
the wood and slats of wood were placed at the correct
intervals to stretch the sides out. This one appears to
have had a nose piece added on, as was done by some coastal
canoe builders. I bet if this canoe and the Store House
could talk, we'd hear
some stories, by Gar, we would. Since the above pictures were taken,
the canoe has been moved inside for conservation purposes.
 The last stop in our tour is a building we sort of
 saw
on the way in -- Servant's Quarters -- "servant" meaning the blue-collar-type,
did-a-little-of-everything Hudson Bay Company employee.
Here
interpretive guide Erin talks about the basic Servant's Quarter's
set up. This one room was home for a servant, his wife, and
any children they had. Cramped quarters for sure, but it
was snug and dry.
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And with a final
look left and right along the outer walls, we reluctantly
leave the Fort Langley National Historic Site of Canada. |
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When you come to visit, be
sure to call or email ahead for the most recent hours and admission fees.
(604) 513-4777 or
fort.langley@pc.gc.ca
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