Lund, B.C.

Lund, B.C. is the small picturesque seaside village on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast on the northern terminus of Highway 101, 22 km north of Powell River. It was founded in 1889 by two brothers from the Valdemarsvik area, Charles and Fred Thulin.

Charles Thulin (1863-1932), born Carl August Andersson and Fred Thulin, Fredrik Gottfrid Andersson (1873-1935) grew up in a crofter’s holding in Tryserum parish, Östergötland County, but Charles’ adventurous spirit took him to Vancouver. His younger brother Fred followed three years later. They changed their name to Charles and Fred Thulin and finally settled on the Malaspina Peninsula where they founded the settlement of Lund.

In 1889, with money from his work on the Canadian Pacific railway and as a logger, Charles was able to buy a piece of land north of Vancouver. With hard work more or less day and night the Thulin brothers created the site they called Lund after the southern Swedish city. It was in 1890 that the name was chosen because it was easy to remember and easy to spell.

The entrepreneurial brothers had the foresight for the need for services to the logging and fishing industries so they built a wharf, tugboats, large and smaller scows, a hotel in the centre of Lund that contained a store and a Post Office. They cleared and drained the meadows for farmland. Fred became the Post Master and Justice of the Peace in the community. Fred’s reason for coming to Canada was that he had heard they did not work in the rain there. He was known among the Scandinavians as ‘‘Poppa Thulin’’ for his willingness to aid the community and to assist people in financial difficulty.

The following is a story from John Kalervo Gröhn’s memories from the 1930s courtesy of Dianne Kilback:
‘’One of the Thulin brothers supplied the loggers with drinks from the bar and marked the cost against their pay cheques. When their credit ran out they were told to go back to logging. Many of the loggers complained that they were being taken but to no avail as Thulin was the law in Lund. One day the loggers got together and planned to play a trick on Thulin. The plan was to coil the fire hose on top of the bar in the hotel and one of the loggers was to turn on the water when Thulin came in the door. When this happened Thulin and the whole bar was a dripping shambles. Thulin did not take this lightly and he had the loggers thrown in the clink. The jail was underneath the hotel floor on the rocks next to the high tide line. As the loggers got used to the dim light there they noticed that Thulin’s liquor cellar was right next to the jail. They managed to get into the cellar without too much digging and consumed a large quantity of liquor before the break in was discovered. They had to go back to logging to pay the bill.’’

Fred Thulin remained in Lund for the rest of his life. Charles Thulin moved to Campbell River for more entrepreneurial projects.

Astrid Switzer