Persona

Neiland, Thomas Warren (Jr.)

• Neiland, Tom

July 29, 1922 - 1995

Thomas "Tom" Warren Neiland Jr. was. He was born on July 29, 1922 to Thomas and Lizzie Neiland. Before his birth, fis father, Tom Sr., worked for the Pacific Great Eastern (PGE) railway as a conductor, but had always had dreams of working for himself. He bought some land and, in May 1921, moved up to Alta Lake (known today as Whistler) to start his won logging camp along with his housekeeper (the widow of his friend John Alexander Jardine), Lizzie Jardine, and her three children, which would become Tom Jr.'s half-siblings. Lizzie and Tom Sr. 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 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 the family's home for the next 20 or so years. Tom Jr. was one of the students of the first school at Alta Lake, when it opened in 1932, and was editor of their school newspaper there, called the Alta Lake School Gazette. Tom Jr. left Alta Lake to join the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) during World War II. He spent most of his career in the RCAF. He married a British woman named Eileen, and the couple had two children. He lived in Kamloops, BC for a time, but the couple eventually retired in Calgary, AB.

Whistler
Alpha Lake
Function Junction
34 1/2 Mile
Kamloops, BC
Calgary, AB

Neiland, Thomas (Sr.) (September 25, 1869 - March 1, 1949)

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

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

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

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

CA-BC-NTW001

RAD, July 2008 version. Canadian Council of Archives.

Catalogued December 2022.

1) Archival material
2) Family tree by Louise Smith
3) First Tracks, by Florence Petersen
4) Email from Louise Smith, January 25, 2012
5) https://blog.whistlermuseum.org/tag/tom-neiland/
6) https://www.vancouvergunners.ca/1949.html