Hello, my name is Helen Pool. I lived in the Cowichan Valley when I was in my 20s. I moved back to the Mill Bay area in 2020 after over 40 years in Victoria and just months into the pandemic. I was concerned that it would be difficult to start over, making new friends, and feeling part of a community again.

Volunteering with the MBMHS has enabled me to connect with my family’s Bamberton history and learn more about my community’s past through people and their stories.

My grandparents immigrated from England to Bamberton where my grandpa was the cement factory foreman in the 1920s. This was when the Bamberton Cement Co., which began in 1912 in competition with Robert Butchart’s Cement Co., reopened after WW1. My mother Agnes, and my grandparents lived in the little company village on the side of the hill above the plant.