Cedar Point is nestled in the quaint crook of Kingfisher
Bay, to the south of White Rock B.C. Canada, just before the American border.
The sea side town began in 1874 as a haven for fishermen. The gathering of
fishermen and their families were a diverse group. There were Japanese,
Chinese, First Nations and Europeans in the town as it began to develop. It was
unofficially called Cedar Point for the Cedar trees on the cliff tops where the
lighthouse now resides among them. The name eventually just stuck and became
the real name.
During the 1890s there was an industrial expansion of salmon
canneries in B.C. and Cedar Point grew again in size when the Kingfisher
Cannery opened in 1892. It’s one of the smallest canneries but still in
operation today. The Kingfisher cannery was originally commissioned and owned
by Arthur Edmund Beal from Cornwall, England.
Mr. Beal had a Victorian style home built for him and his family that
still stands as the Lavender Dreams Bed and Breakfast.
The town officially had 5 founders who made up the first
town council. Thomas William Beal (brother of Arthur Edmund Beal) became the
town's first mayor. The other council members represented various aspects of
the community and were Captain Benjamin Wright, Ning Hai Chen, Chief Robert
Douglas and Makota Yamada.
Aside from salmon, the town's main industry has been
tourism. At one point, a significant repository of zinc was discovered and
Cedar Point attempted to start mining it. The mine caved in with the worst
earthquake in the town's history and was forced to close. Earthquakes are a
most peculiar environmental anomaly in their magnitude relative to the
geography of Kingfisher Bay.
Teams of seismologists have been monitoring Kingfisher Bay
for a long time because the intensity and affects of earthquakes from the
surrounding fault lines seem more significant than they should be. Architects
and engineers have begun to build strategically in Cedar Point to minimize
damage experienced by buildings from prior quakes. There are only five original
buildings left in the town after the big quake that shut down the zinc mine and
those have been repeatedly reinforced to preserve them. Those five are the
Lavender Dreams B&B, the mayor’s manor, the fire hall, the Kingfisher
Cannery and the Lighthouse.
Cedar Point is still home to a proud diversity of cultural
heritage. It offers kitsch tourists attractions, whale watching and wonderful
scenery, food and accommodations. It is described as a place of beauty and
mystery.
Some town residents say there are spirits at work or
unexplained forces. In the 1970s a small cult like group formed called the
Quake Takers to speculate about the potential paranormal disappearances of some
victims who were never found after earthquakes. Missing people have been unaccounted
for since the big quake that closed the zinc mine. The cult was short lived but
there are some people who are still influenced by those wild ideas. Hysteria created
by the cult, and its viewpoints, has led to reports, fed by hallucinations, of
victims vanishing right before people's eyes. The mental health of the
hallucinators has been of the utmost importance to the medical community and
the town council. Appropriate psychotherapy has always been administered in
such cases. The more commonly held belief is the rational deduction that some
victims simply were not found, or even that the timing of earthquakes has been
used by certain criminals to cover for their violent acts.
Amenities in Cedar Point include a credit union, groceries,
restaurants, a service station, a local community police station, a somewhat
antiquated fire hall, a walk in family medical clinic and pharmacy, shops, a
small K-12 school, a community centre and multi-faith gathering space, a cemetery,
a museum, a small harbour and two beaches, a hotel and a B&B, a local pub
and a nightclub and a small bus station.
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