Building the Savary Road

Wharf Hill circa 1926

Unbelievable as it sounds, Vancouver Boulevard, Savary’s illustrious and maligned “highway”, was the result of a murder at Mace Point.  

In February 1910, Vancouver Province crime reporter George Ashworth arrived at Savary to visit the site where trading post owner Jack Green and his partner Tom Taylor had been murdered back in 1893. For his story, Ashworth and his photographer explored the island from end to end, resulting in a glowing article about Savary in the February 12,1910 edition. 

Ashworth was impressed by Savary’s white sand beaches and warm swimming waters and could foresee the island’s vacation potential. He didn’t forget.

Most of the island had been subdivided in 1910 into 1,500 50-foot lots by the H.H. Roberts surveying company, using a city-type grid formation that gave no consideration to topography. 

Large brochure with colour plate promoting the Savary Island Park Association

Lots at the east end of the island sold well, but by 1914 the Savary Island Park Association, which had been formed to sell the subdivided lots, was defunct and in 1926 its assets sat in safe, low-interest bonds controlled by the estate of lumber baron Harry Jenkins, who had purchased the entire island for logging around 1902. The 1,000 unsold lots were running up interest charges on land taxes, which concerned John Weeden, the secretary of the Jenkins estate, as the profit for the Jenkins children was diminishing. 

In 1926 Ashworth began sowing the seeds for his plan for a Savary resort at Indian Point. He needed money.  He told Weeden about his idea for the resort, which he was sure would be profitable and whose guests would fall in love with Savary, as he himself had done, and would purchase those unsold lots. This would reduce the burden for the Jenkins family. Weeden was interested, but before he agreed to invest any Jenkins money, Ashworth would need to build a road from the wharf to his dream site, which was 4.78 miles away. And those miles were comprised of many hills, rugged forests and thick undergrowth, all resting on sand. At $1,000 per mile, the cost would be $4,780. 

Ashworth then approached B.C. Premier John Oliver and received an oral agreement to the effect that if the developers would pay for the road themselves, the government would reimburse them $4,500. The government’s thinking was that it would recoup the money and more from future sales taxes on the already subdivided lots, as well as property taxes from homes that would be built on those lots. Since it was just an oral agreement, Ashworth worried that the upcoming election might result in the fall of the government, so he convinced Weeden to take advantage of the offer immediately. Weeden agreed to finance the road up to $4,500.

 Ashworth could now begin to bring his dream to fruition. He contracted with Savary residents Ashton Spilsbury and his son Jim to build the road. Ashton subsequently hired three sons of Louis Anderson, the first permanent resident after Jack Green.

To help with construction, Ashton purchased Savary’s first vehicle, a Model T Ford truck with a special axle needed for hauling heavy loads up the steep, sandy grades. Jim already owned a 2.5 hp winch to pull out stumps and move small deadfall logs. Using a chain, and according to George’s son Bill Ashworth in his private writings, “…they plotted the road as they went along. There was not money to spare for a preliminary survey. The lads just started working in a general westerly direction and followed the path of least resistance. It would be too expensive to follow the ruler-straight line drawn on the Roberts subdivision plan of 1910. This was not going to be the kind of road the Romans built with unlimited slave labour driven by soldiers. After all, there were (several hundred) lots. So what if the road went across the middle of a few of them?”  We know today the results of that! 

It was gruelling work, and according to Bill Ashworth, “like one of the ten fabled labours of Hercules”. They started at the foot of Blair Road near the wharf, their only equipment besides the winch being shovels, wheelbarrows, axes and saws. They cut down trees with hand saws, pulled stumps and filled the holes with gravel. Ashton was paid $4.50 a day as surveyor and foreman, with Jim and the Anderson boys making $3.20. Ashton also made $4.00 a day by renting his truck. The last one-quarter mile, according to Jim Spilsbury, was the hardest. “We had to skimp…we were running out of money and had no means of getting more…the truck wouldn’t run on it ’cause it was so sandy, tires sank in. It would just spin its wheels; we had to put cedar bark and moss and grass and stuff down to make it run.”

The road was built in the winter and spring of 1926-27, in six months. It was completed on time and on budget. And it passed the District Road Foreman’s test, which was to enable a Model T Ford to be driven the entire length. It was a bit of a struggle because the car’s hard, narrow tires would frequently get stuck in the sand. But one car was all that was needed to ace the test….

And it was everywhere passable, in dry weather, for the Ford truck….the Savary Island criterion of excellence in 1927.

Premier Oliver’s government paid the $4,500 then promptly lost the next election. George Ashworth’s instincts were spot on. 

Ashworth went on to build his dream resort, the Royal Savary Hotel, which opened in 1928. 

But that’s another story….

References: Sunny Sandy Savary by Ian Kennedy, Magnetic Isle by Gladys Bloomfield, Spilsbury’s Coast by Jim Spilsbury and the private writings of Bill Ashworth. 

First published in Savary Island News, 2025