Neiland, Thomas (Sr.)

Person

Neiland, Thomas (Sr.)

• Neiland, Tom

September 25, 1869 - March 1, 1949

Thomas "Tom" Neiland Sr. was a soldier, train conductor, and logger in the Whistler area in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Quebec to Irish immigrant parents on September 25, 1869. The family moved to the United States, where Tom Sr. grew up, [possibly in Wisconsin]. He moved to Canada to join the Canadian Army [around 1914]. Thomas Neiland had been friends with John Alexander Jardine Sr. in World War I and both men were working on the Pacific Great Eastern railway line together back in British Columbia after the war when John was killed in a speeder car accident. After his friend's death, Tom Sr. offered John's widowed wife (with two children and a third on the way) work at his home in North Vancouver housekeeping. Although Tom worked for the PGE railway as a conductor, he had always had dreams of working for himself. He bought some land and, in May 1921, moved the whole family up to Alta Lake (known today as Whistler) to start his own logging camp. Lizzie and Tom were married on May 2, 1922. This marriage was of huge financial significance to the Jardine family, as Lizzie lost her widow’s pension of $35 a month - a significant sum at the time. At first, the family lived at the Alta Lake townsite, but in January 1922, they moved down to Thomas Neiland’s first venture at Alpha Lake, where he was harvesting cedar logs to be exported to Japan. In July 1922, the export log prices of cedar logs collapsed, and so did Thomas Neiland’s business; he had to file for bankruptcy. The family moved back to North Vancouver. Later that month, Lizzie gave birth to their son, Thomas Warren Neiland Jr., at the age of 40. For three months, Thomas Sr. looked for work in Vancouver. Eventually persuaded by both a lack of employment and his wife’s desire to return to Alta Lake, he gained financing under her name. The family returned to their Alpha Lake cabin, and in 1923 they moved into an old loggers cabin at 34½ mile (present day Function Junction area) that was being sold by the crown, and this became their home until Tom Sr.'s death on March 1, 1949 (at age 79) and Lizzie's subsequent move away from the valley a few years later.

Quebec
Wisconsin
North Vancouver
Alta Lake
Whistler
Alpha Lake
Function Junction
34 1/2 Mile

Logger
Soldier
Train conductor

Betts, Jenny Anderson (December 7, 1912 - August 1, 2003)

Jardine, Robert "Bob" Laidlaw (September 26, 1918 - March 27, 2008)

Jardine, Jack (July 27, 1914 - Spring 1999)

Neiland, Thomas Warren (Jr.) (July 29, 1922 - 1995)

Neiland, Lizzie (February 24, 1882 - December 9, 1984)

CA-QC-NT001

RAD, July 2008 version. Canadian Council of Archives.

Catalogued December 2022.

1) Archival material
2) First Tracks, by Florence Petersen
3) BC Births, Marriages, and Deaths Index
4) Email from Louise Smith, January 29, 2012
5) https://blog.whistlermuseum.org/tag/tom-neiland/
6) https://www.vancouvergunners.ca/1949.html
7) https://rca-arc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/LestWeForgetEnglish25Aug2022.pdf
8) https://rca-arc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/CemeteriesEnglish26Jun2022.pdf