I.O.C.O.

We biked 3km from Sperling to Deer Lake yesterday, realized it was not a swimming lake, and after an unsuccessful attempt at theft of a paddle boat, returned to the train and rode it to Production Way. Then we decided to ride 20 km from Burnaby to Buntzen Lake. Which would have been fine except it was all uphill and my compatriots & I can hardly be described as fit. Actually, they are a lot more fit than the sabutamol-puffing, socially-and-sometimes-at-work cigarette smoking pile of waste that I call myself.

We biked through the townsite of Ioco, between Port Moody & Anmore. Ioco is named from an acronym for Imperial Oil Company, the corporation who bought the original 86 acres of land for $179,ooo in1914. It started the oil workers squatting around, until eventually the company built a bunch of permanent housing, including a school, that was inhabited until the mid-90s when everything went to pot and 165 jobs were lost, mostly due to less demand for petroleum products and pesky environmentalists. The school was used as an alternative school in SD43 until the mid-2000s and is now boarded up like the rest of the can't-knock-down-because-of-the-heritage-bylaw buildings.

I know, I know, this has nothing to do with my regular postings of shows and punk-goings-on. But I like local history, can you dig it?

Vancouver Sun Article about Ioco
Map of Ioco
More Ioco history resources