“...at one of the stops I jumped off and ran back up the tramline to tell the operator to get the car to the bottom fast.”

Born in 1944 and raised in Bevan and Courtenay; Dave Baker worked at a few hard rock mines in the North Island and took a turn at logging before choosing a career in heavy duty mechanics.

During his time in Zeballos, he and Dave Setso developed a lifelong friendship, working together at the mine there as well as Westmin, Utah Mines and MacMillan Bloedel at Menzies Bay.

Dave’s Story

“I was working in Vancouver when I first went up to Zeballos in 1964. I did not know that you could take a bus up to Gold River and then board a boat or fly in. I took a boat right out of Vancouver and went all the way around. It was so rough that when we went into Port Renfrew we could not even tie up at the dock.

We stopped at a lighthouse out by Estevan Point. It was so rough; then all of a sudden the engines went quiet, and I thought ‘what the heck, what now?’ It was late at night so I went up on deck and saw people coming toward us from the lighthouse in boats to get their groceries! This was a lesson on what shopping was like in Zeballos! That was a long trip, I’ll tell ya’.