Ernst Larsson – Fisherman

Ernst Harald Larsson was born in Flädie, located between Malmö and Lund, on October 15,1881. His parents bought a house and a general store in Lunnarp, and that is where he grew up and went to school. Lunnarp is a village just north of Ystad on the south coast of Sweden. Ernst was strongheaded and artistic. He ran away to sea and took hire on sailing ships as a teenager. The ships were trading ships that went across the North Sea to England. In early 1900’s he met a girl in Hull, Florence Hawkins and married her in 1904.

Ernst’s parents were not exactly thrilled to hear about his marriage. They had hoped that he would come back to Sweden and settle down and take over their flourishing business in Lunnarp. He did bring his bride to Sweden for a while and did his military service in the Swedish navy. Florence didn’t like Sweden, she didn’t speak the language and didn’t like living with her in-laws.They went back to England where she had a baby every year. Stanley born in 1905,Ernst in 1906, Lilian in 1907, George in 1908 and Ronald in 1909!

Ernst worked for a while in factories in Middlesbrough and hated it.They went back to Sweden in 1910 and there it was decided that they would emigrate to Canada. Ernst’s parents would pay for their passage. Ernst went first to get established. He travelled to Liverpool and went to Canada by ship from there. He went to a place called Heather Downs,near Edmonton, where he was given land to clear by the government.

Florence in the meantime had five children under five and it was decided that she could leave the three older children with the grandparents in Lunnarp and take the two younger ones with her.The older children were to travel later with a relative once the family was settled in their new life Canada. It later turned out that this plan never happened and the children never saw their parents again. The relative married and the first world war came and put a stop to travel, so they staid in Sweden.

Ernst cleared his land in Alberta and got title to it after the prescribed time, but he was not a farmer and took his family to Victoria during the first world war and joined the Canadian Navy. After the war they went back to Edmonton and sold their land and went back to the coast. Ernst had heard about Lund, B.C. So he bought a boat and took his family up to Lund in order to become a fisherman. They lived in a float house to start with, but eventually Ernst bought some land in Okeover arm and built a house and a boat shed and started his new life as a fisherman. Florence had five more children in Canada.

The property in Okeover Arm is now called Larson’s Landing. It is situated across the water from the government dock in Okeover Arm across from the Laughing Oyster Restaurant.It was only accessible by boat and the children had to row across to go to school in Lund. The result was that the schooling was patchy as they were dependant on the weather conditions especially in winter. Ernst was a successful fisherman and fished on the coast for many years. He would take his boys as crew and go up to Rivers inlet and fish during the the summers Florence tended their orchard and grew all their vegetables. She also grew melons that were sold to the hotels in Powell River. She got sacks of flour and sugar and some tea and coffee in the fall and that was the extent of her grocery shopping. The rest they got through their garden and fishing and hunting. She made her own bread and preserved all the berries and fruit and vegetables.

The 4 boys started hunting at an early age and they all started as whistle boys in logging camps at 12 years old. Ernst and Florence never went back to their home countries but they always wrote letters to their Swedish children.

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