ADVENTURES IN COOKING 115

restrictions not too strict. Succeeding officers were Fraser Yale (born at
Yale, the first white child born in Lower Mainland) and W. L. Blatchford,
a Naval Officer of the “Conway.”

Two Americans, leaving their homes after the Civil War, came to
East Chilliwack as settlers in 1870. Then this area was heavily forested
and swampy, there was no market for produce except barter at the two
stores then serving the Valley. Pork sold at the New Westminster market
provided the only cash for necessities. An influx of settlement struck Pine
Grove-Peardonville in 1886 when five men, including Richard Peardon for
whom the settlement was named, walked in over the snow, to establish
homes for themselves. Peardonville Post Office in the Peardon home served
the community for 24 years. In later years when the Women’s Institute
was organized in this area the name was changed to Pine Grove.

The awesome floods of the Fraser, occurring periodically over the
years, drove settlers from the meadows to the bench-land on the mountain
side, where they started anew to carve out homes and farms. Typical of
these settlements is Ryder Lake, situated eleven hundred feet above the
valley ten miles south-east of Chilliwack. Rosedale’s reminiscences are of
the great flood of 1894 when bridges, buildings and stock went down the
river. In spite of all their hardships the early pioneers persevered, holding,
as best they could, the land they had wrested from the forest and river.
Roads were finally built so that markets were available, the building of
the Canadian Pacific Railway and its extension to Bellingham, the com-
ing of the Great Northern Railway from south of the border, all brought
more settlement. The B.C. Electric tram lines and their “milk train” from
Chilliwack to Vancouver gave impetus to dairying. The building of the
Canadian National Railway along the south bank, the establishment of
the creameries at Sardis and Chilliwack and co-operative effort of the
Fraser Valley Milk Producers Association all combined to bring prosperity
to the farmers. |

The border towns noticed the increased traffic through the ports of
entry and little communities along the line of travel soon found they
could cater to this new “tourist” business coming to them over the century-
old trails followed by the men of 1858. Huntingdon found the influx
almost too exhilarating when at the close of the First World War prohi-
bition came to the States and a livery stable on the border went into
business as a saloon, hoisting two signs, “First Chance” and “Last Chance.”

The greatest set-back was yet to come, the Great Flood of 1948, when —
the river struck with all its might, seriously disrupting the prosperity of
the Valley. Such a flood had never been seen before. ‘The Fraser, a swollen,
swirling, brown instrument of destruction, swept over all but the higher
levels of the Valley, taking soil, crops, stock, and many buildings out to
sea and, as if flouting man’s puny efforts upon the land it had laid down,
tossed up the debris on the eastern shores of Vancouver Island. This was
a national calamity and both Federal and Provincial governments joined
forces in a vast scheme of reclamation and rehabilitation. Dispossessed and
impoverished as they were, the people of the Valley rallied to such an