History

Freemason’s legends of the building of King Solomon’s temple describe the significance of the numbers three, five and seven to Masonic architecture, as well as the importance of orientating certain rooms and windows to the cardinal directions. And while no one can say for certain whether McIntyre intentionally worked Masonic principles into the Dwight Hall’s overall structure, to those who have been raised to Freemasonry’s third degree, the similarities appear more than coincidental. It is downstairs, however, on the Dwight Hall’s lower floor, where there can be no mistaking the influence of Freemasonry in early Powell River. There visitors will find a specially built “lodge room” that has served as the meeting place of Triune Lodge for nearly a century. And while several fraternal organizations have shared the Dwight Hall lodge room over the years, there can be no question that it was specifically designed to conform with Masonic architectural principals. If the Dwight Hall has explicit Masonic connections, other Powell River buildings reveal their affiliation to Freemasonry primarily through their namesakes. The old Westview post office (the MacGregor Building), for example, was named after Lt. Col. John MacGregor – the most decorated Canadian soldier of The First World War, and a member of Triune Lodge. Max Cameron school (and theatre) was likewise named after a prominent Powell River Freemason who as a professor at UBC wrote a report for the provincial government that literally transformed the way education was administered and delivered in British Columbia. Henderson Elementary School similarly was named after Dr. Andrew Henderson who served as field surgeon for Canadian troops during the Battle of Batoche against Louie Riel in 1885. He established Powell River’s first hospital, where he oversaw the delivery of Western Canada’s first universal employee medical program. Henderson was the first master of Triune Masonic Lodge. Other Powell River Freemasons played prominent roles in our city’s development even if their names have not been immortalized on buildings. Triune Lodge member Evan Sadler, for example, designed and built the original St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in the Townsite, and Freemason Robert Banham was Powell River’s postmaster as well as the city’s first government magistrate. During the Great War, Banham served on the home front with the second Canadian Dragoons. After the conflict, he helped numerous soldiers re-adjust to life back at home. Ernie Liebenschel, another of Triune Lodge’s charter members, operated Powell River’s earliest coal delivery service and founded City Transfer. Later he played a central role in the development of the village of Cranberry – indeed some old timers still fondly refer to Liebenschel as having been the unofficial mayor of Cranberry prior to malgamation with the Townsite and Westview. Not all of Powell River’s Freemasons, however, necessarily counted themselves among the community’s economic and political movers and shakers. From time immemorial, the Masonic brotherhood has promoted the philosophy that all men are equal and should be judged only according to the quality of their character. People from all walks of life, therefore, have had their names entered onto the rolls of Powell River’s Triune Lodge, regardless of their financial or social status outside the Lodge. Thus, in addition to such local luminaries as Sheldon Brooks (the son of Powell River’s Company’s cofounder), William McBain (the first Mill Manager), and Dr. Andrew Henderson, on the list of Powell River’s early Freemasons are found grocery clerks such as William Alexander, truck drivers, including Angus Matheson, plumbers such as William Loukes, loggers such as John Harper, and blacksmiths such as Charles Godfrey. Many of these men’s descendants live in Powell River today, where they benefit from the pioneering work of an earlier generation who helped to make our city what it is today.
Powell River’s freemasons have also worked to ensure that people within this community have been given a square deal. Up until the late 1920s when the city got its first independent newspaper, and the 1950s when it had its first municipal elections, Triune Masonic lodge was an important place for people with different perspectives who wanted to meet on the square and try to build respectful relationships across political and economic divisions. When the original papermakers in the mill organized into a union in 1912, and then in 1913 called a strike demanding that the Powell River Company recognize an eight-hour-day working shift, the town was divided into camps. Tensions were high. People were not speaking to one another and many worried that violence would break out between strikers and employers. Company and union leaders had few places where they could meet on the level and talk peaceably. Few places, that is, other than Triune Lodge. While few will be surprised to learn that Company superintendents were early members of the local Masonic lodge, many likely do not realize that in 1921 the president of the papermaker’s union, local 142, also became a member of Triune Lodge. There he joined a large group of tradesmen and labourers who twice per month attended meetings where they socialized with doctors, lawyers, and the Powell River Co. elite. Few other organizations at that time offered such opportunities for building relationships and understandings across class lines. Over the past 100 years of Triune Lodge’s history, Freemasonry has waxed and waned in popularity. In 1911 nearly two per cent of the total population of British Columbia were Freemasons. That number becomes more impressive when you consider that only men over the age of 21 could become Freemasons, that the Pope discouraged Catholic men from joining the fraternity, and that Chinese men of that era typically affiliated with a separate unrelated fraternity known as Chinese Freemasons. By 1931 roughly 10 per cent of the adult Protestant male population of the province counted themselves as Freemasons. And though diminishing membership numbers have recently inspired some critics to proclaim that Freemasonry has ceased to be vibrant, the ongoing use of ancient Masonic terminology among the general public reminds us of the historic influence and legacies of Freemasonry.
In the context of Powell River, Freemasonry has additionally been an important forum for nurturing democracy and building community. Freemasonry emerged as a fraternity in Scotland during the sixteenth century Reformation. To give structure to the brotherhood, the early Freemasons organized themselves into a progressive three-stage (degree) system that emphasized each individual member’s role as a rational human being. In sixteenth and seventeenth-century Britain, Freemason’s lodges became havens for men seeking a climate of religious tolerance and intellectual freedom. At the time, Britain was still only marginally democratic; the Church and landed aristocracy wielded enormous power. Masonic lodges provided safe spaces for those who wanted to think and speak freely, in confidence, in the company of like-minded men. Modern Freemasonry may have been born out of debates over religious freedom during the Reformation, but it came of age in the intellectual climate of the Enlightenment. Central to eighteenth-century philosophy was the belief that reason was a curative for superstition and blind faith. In Enlightenment Britain and its North American colonies, people increasingly believed that the existence of God could only be demonstrated through rational thinking, and that the world could only be understood through careful scientific observation. Knowledge, according to freemasons, could only be attained and advanced through careful, reasoned exploration and observation of the natural world. Enlightenment philosophy is also prominently reflected in the masonic requirement that all members must profess a faith in a non-denominational Supreme Being, referred to in masonic ritual as the Great Architect of the Universe. In masonic tradition, God created and set the natural world in motion, but thereafter seldom, if ever, intervened other than to provide humankind with the tools of reason. It is no coincidence that many of the early members of the British Royal Society of London (a learned society dedicated to the advancement of scientific reason) were Freemasons— men such as William Beckett, and Sirs Christopher Wren and Isaac Newton. By the early 1700s, Freemasons had established lodges throughout all of Britain, and while the content of their degree work and meetings remained secret, members no longer felt the need to keep the places and timing of their meetings so. And the Enlightenment ideal of equality between men (which so profoundly influenced British political reformers and the American founding fathers) found support in masonic ritual where men, regardless of rank, privilege, or creed “meet on the level and part on the square.”
Enlightenment-era Freemasonry was also predicated on the then still radical idea that no one institution, one faith, or one nation, had a monopoly on the answers needed to ensure humankind’s betterment in an increasingly complex world. The Enlightenment was followed by the Industrial Revolution, which witnessed such marvels as the advent of steam engines and transcontinental railways, the electrification of cities, the expansion of public education, and the introduction of telegraph and telephone technologies. But the Industrial Revolution also ushered in urban diseases such as cholera and typhus, the horrors of child industrial labour, and the anxieties that accompanied increasingly unstable international political and military relations. Through the legendary masonic story of King Solomon, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century initiates in Freemasonry could hope to acquire intellectual and ethical tools to help them better engage a quickly, and sometimes frighteningly, changing world. And through acts of charity, Freemasonry was able to help make the world a better place. This is the masonic legacy and tradition that was drawn upon by the men who gathered in Powell River in 1915 to form Triune Lodge. They lived in an era of rapid economic and technological developments as well as cultural change. It was a time when a new middle class had the leisure time, and the intellectual curiosity, to pursue the goals and objectives of Freemasonry and to contribute to civic improvements and charities. Powell River also consisted of a large working class who likewise aspired to join the middle class and all that that entailed. The 1921 Canadian Census reveals that within six years of its founding, sixty-six percent of Powell River’s Freemasons were tradesmen, ten percent were general labourers, ten percent worked in professional positions, eight percent worked in the service industry, and six percent (four men) were Powell River Company senior managers. Sixty-three percent of these Masons worked for the Powell River Company and “papermaker” was the second most commonly listed occupation at Triune Lodge (carpenter was the most common). The doors of Triune Lodge were open to all of these men. In Triune Lodge, professional men, businessmen, and labourers came together to help create a new community, one that they hoped would reflect the masonic principles they regarded as holding a key to a brighter future for all.

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