Here now is an image and quote from the museum’s award-winning book Watershed Moments – A Pictorial History of Courtenay and District. Enjoy!
Photo credit: The wedding between adventurer, businessman and trader Adam Grant Horne and Elizabeth Bate took place on February 22, 1859. George Robinson photograph. CDM 978.36.1. Page 31.
Photo caption: “Adam Grant Horne was an Orkney Islander recruited by the Hudson’s Bay Company to work on Vancouver Island. He was a giant of a man, well suited to the challenges of trading…
He opened the post in Comox in the summer of 1868, setting up the store close to the bottom of Comox Hill in several rundown buildings. The company rented the land from the K’ómoks people and paid in rolls of tobacco. The site the HBC chose was less than ideal. All freight arrived at Comox Landing (Robb’s townsite), and K’ómoks paddlers then transferred it a mile and a half by canoe at high tide for a dollar per ton.’ Page 31.
