Sechelt’s first archivist

Helen Isabel Dawe, 1914-83, was born in Vancouver. She was the daughter of Captain Samuel Dawe and Sechelt pioneer resident Ada Dawe whose parents, Thomas John and Sarah Belle Cook, were among the first non-Indigenous settlers in Sechelt, taking up permanent residence in 1894.

Helen was brought up in Vancouver, and during school summer holidays she and her mother would visit her grandparents in Sechelt. She loved her time in Sechelt playing with her sister Billie, her aunt Jean and her best friend, Betty Youngson. They had picnics and bonfires on Trail Bay beach, fished off the rocks and explored the trails on the west and east sides of Sechelt Inlet. She grew up when many of the original non-Indigenous settlers in the area were still living and she enjoyed listening to their accounts of life in the early Village of Sechelt, especially the tales her grandfather and mother told.

Helen went to the University of British Columbia in 1931 and obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1935 and her Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1937. Moving to Ottawa she worked for the Post Office and when WWII broke out she joined the Royal Canadian Navy and served in London, England as a coder.

After the war she attended the University of Toronto where she earned a Bachelor of Library Science degree. Returning to Vancouver in 1947 she went back to UBC and received a Diploma in Occupational Agriculture two years later. Being a very independent woman she was determined to be “self-sufficient” at a time when it was not easy for a young single female to follow her own path, but Helen did!

When the Korean War started in 1950 Helen joined the U.S. Air Force hoping to be sent to Korea, but as she was not a U.S. citizen she was unable to go. She spent the next year as a librarian at George Air Force base in California followed by a variety of jobs including librarian in the Provincial Library in Victoria and as head of acquisitions in the Vancouver Public Library. Retiring from the library in
1965 she moved permanently to Sechelt where for the next seven years she worked in the Sechelt Medical Clinic.

All her life Helen had been interested in the history of Sechelt and the Sunshine Coast and now living in Sechelt she spent her time collecting a variety of documents, maps, photographs and newspaper clippings and writing to, or interviewing, local residents. Her house was full of treasures from the past all carefully catalogued. She attended Sechelt council meetings regularly, took notes and did not hesitate to correct the councillors of the day; she was a stickler for historical accuracy and often wrote to the local newspapers pointing out errors. She was on committees for the Shorncliffe Intermediate Care Centre, Kinnikinnick Park, the Sechelt Marsh Society, Saint Mary’s Hospital Auxiliary, Sechelt Branch, and helped raise funds for the Rockwood Centre.

The records Helen Dawe left to the District of Sechelt laid the foundations of the Sechelt Community Archives where a continuing and priceless history of the people of Sechelt and the Sunshine Coast can be found.