No one could fail to notice as they drive through Sooke, the excavation and construction work taking place on the harbour side of the highway just west of Sooke Elementary School.
A century ago, the scene would have shown this view of the home of Jonas and Rebecca Norton Throup and their nine children. In the background of this 1912 photo, you see Sooke Harbour and East Sooke; in the foreground you see a gravel roadway and a fenced farmyard with a picket gate, also part of the Throup property. The reason for the fence would be that foraging milk cows might be roaming about, as there were no pound laws back then. The Throup family is remembered by Throup Road further upland, and by Norton Road a bit further east.
It was in 1868 that Jonas Throup, a stonemason from Yorkshire, arrived in Sooke. The family’s first primitive cottage was near the beach; through the years they built homes further up the hillside. Florence Muir Acreman, whose mother was Eliza Throup, told us that the pictured house was built in the 1890s. One of the Jonas Throup sons, George Throup, farmed further upland, just about where Ecole Poirier and Journey Middle School stand today.
George Throup married Caroline Sanderson, who took over the ownership of the store on the northwest corner of Sooke and Otter Point roads, that had been built by Eustace Arden in 1909. George Throup also drove a motor stage to Victoria; it was actually on his stage that my parents, Michael and Karen Wickheim, newly arrived from Norway, reached their small Saseenos acreage in 1922. When I was walking to Sooke from Saseenos in the 1940s, I would notice the large barn on the Throup land, just east of the pictured cottage, which had housed the oxen used in their early farming. I also enjoyed meeting with one of their granddaughters, Mary-Ann Throup Peters, who used to ride her horse about the village.
After the Throup time in this house, it was home to Lyall Sheilds, Sooke’s beloved blacksmith, and his wife Lizzie. Their son Will and daughters Helen and Elaine were brought up in this cottage. Subsequent owners have included George Duncan Sr., George Duncan Jr. and Captain P.W. deP and Mrs Taylor. This was the home where, during the 1970s, the retired Captain Taylor painted many watercolour scenes that recorded an earlier Sooke for us all.
Elida Peers is the historian with Sooke Region Museum.
