Twenty-six miles of fresh water teeming with fish and surrounded by old-growth forest: this was Cowichan Lake at the end of the nineteenth century. Home to trappers, hunters and a handful of remittance men, the lake was also the favorite holiday destination for dukes and duchesses, Hollywood actresses and New York tycoons. Soon the giant trees began to fall to the crosscut saws of immigrant loggers from Finland, Norway, Sweden, India, Japan and China.

As technology advanced in the logging industry and the woods became a killing ground for loggers, the camps around the lake became the testing ground for union organizers whose clandestine activities contrasted remarkably with those of rhododendron and alpine flower growers who have left their mark on gardens throughout the Pacific Northwest.