Woods' Dairy/Highway Dairy of Sandwick, B.C.

by Ron Greene 

(from Numismatica Canada , June 2006. Used with permission)

 

B.C. Database:

S3120 Aluminum, Round, 24½mm diam. S3040a Green plastic, square, 23mm

 

Some forty years ago when I travelled up Vancouver Island on a fairly regular basis on business, I took time to talk to various dairymen and others who might have issued tokens. One of the people that I spoke to in 1964 was Mrs. Lillian Woods, the widow of Thomas "Bob" Woods and learned about the Woods' Dairy, later known as the Highway Dairy. I didn't write up the story at the time, as I was waiting for Mrs. Woods to find an example of their quart plastic token, which never happened, and I forgot about the story until recently.

Sandwick is an area about 3 miles (5 kilometers) northeast of Courtenay on the highway north to Campbell River . The area in the triangle formed by Courtenay, Sandwick and Comox was good dairy land. Bob and his brother Charles were sons of Thomas Charles Woods, a pioneer Comox District farmer. Bob was born in Comox in June 1890, and his brother was born in August 1889 in Grantham, which is a settlement just a little north of Sandwick. The Woods Bros. were listed as dairy farmers by 1925. The last listing for Woods Bros. was 1934 - Charles appears to have gone logging. There were three other brothers but they don't appear to have been involved in the dairy.

Bob continued in the dairy until his death in April 1954 after a short illness. His wife, Lillian, carried on for another 18 months, and then sold the cows and milk quota to Smith's Dairy, which was located near the Comox Airport . At the time Mr. Woods died he was president of the Comox Creamery Association and had a herd of about four dozen cows, including twelve heifers (young cows who have not yet had a calf).

Mrs. Woods recalled that they had used aluminum tokens earlier, and in later years, square green pint, and round red quart plastic tokens. They also used the W.A. Urquhart tokens after he stopped delivering milk -- see C6860b (Courtenay). I obtained one of the green plastic tokens from Mrs. Woods, the only one she could find as she had given the tokens to her grandchildren some time before.

The aluminum token is an early style and possibly dates to the 1920's. It is an error token as it reads Wood's rather than Woods'. It is not known when Mr. Woods changed the dairy name to Highway Dairy. The plastic tokens were probably introduced about 1948. The rubbings are courtesy of Leslie C. Hill.

Wayne Jacobs is numismatic expert. He is the award winning author of numerous articles. He is the secretary and editor of the "Mid-Island Coin Club Numismatic Journal"of Nanaimo, Vancouver Island , British Columbia. The MICC journal are hosted here: MICC webpages Copyright 2006 Wayne Jacobs. This article may be reprinted freely for non commercial purpose only if the resource box is left intact, linking back to us.