How great it was to come across this photo, taken about 1977 on Cowichan Indian Reserve No. 1. Seated in front is Ida Lazzar Planes, first daughter of Andrew Lazzar, Chief of the T’Sou-kes, and his wife Annie Jones of the Pacheedaht in the San Juan River Valley.
Ida Planes had a large family. Her youngest daughter Germaine is seen standing directly behind her. As the Planes family lived right next to what is now Glenidle Road, and my family lived on Parklands Road, Germaine and I would walk home from Sooke School together in the afternoons in our early grades.
Germaine married Larry Sutherland and the couple also raised a large family; their youngest daughter, Cherie is seen here next to her mother. At left in this photo is Susan Johnson, who in later years became a cherished fixture at the Sooke Region Museum as “Grandma Sue”. On summer Sundays she would join us to enthrall visitors as she demonstrated the weaving of her swamp grass baskets.
Susan Lazzar’s first son, Jimmie, sat behind me in school and chuckled as he dipped my blond braids into the inkwell on his desk. Much later, he became well known as T’Sou-ke Chief James Cooper, for periods in the 1960s, '70s and again in the '90s. Nowadays, we see one of Susan’s younger sons, Gerald Lazzzar, going about his business as one of the community’s respected Elders.
The stalwart gentleman on the right is Eddy George, who married one of Ida Planes’ elder daughters, Daisy, and served as Chief from 1957-1962. Eddy George was born in 1895 to Mary George and her husband Harry. Sadly, he was brought up without a father as his dad was lost at sea when the sealing schooner Walter Earl went down in a storm in the Bering Sea in 1895.
Among the children of Eddy and Daisy George was daughter Jean, who had the distinction of seeing two of her children, Larry Underwood and Rose Dumont, each grow up to become elected as Chief of the T’Sou-ke Nation. Chief Larry Underwood has this role today as the band prepares to move into their new headquarters on Edward Milne Road.
Elida Peers is a historian at Sooke Region Museum.
