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Tofino, BC The Tree Play

1958, and what has happened since

The house

Built for a planting crew, run as a house since 1984, and altered in every decade in between.

The first building on this plot went up in 1954 and burned in 1957. What stands now was put up the following year by the same contractor, in the same place, with thicker walls and the stone chimney that is still the only masonry in the structure apart from the mess wall.

Section through the house: attic rooms under the ridge, ground floor below, the old freight room at the back. attic rooms hall and rooms ground floor freight room ridge runs east to west
Section looking north. The freight room sits at the back of the ground floor, under the same roof as everything else.

The floatplane years

From 1961 the inlet below the house had a floatplane dock, and the freight that came off it was weighed and logged in the back room on the ground floor. That room had its own outside door, a long counter, and a concrete floor with a shallow channel cut across it for runoff. The dock moved down the inlet in 1979. The room kept the counter and the channel, and you can see both.

What changed and when

  • 1962: roof boards whitewashed, drying rails hung in the gables
  • 1979: floatplane dock moved, the freight office goes quiet
  • 1984: first paying guests, eleven rooms laid out as they are now
  • 1991: roof boards painted again, badly, and left that way
  • 1996: the drying room becomes the covered pool
  • 2014: the stone wall behind the counter uncovered and left bare
Ground floor plan: entrance, hall and desk, corridor past the drying room, gaming room at the back. hall dining kitchen desk drying room gaming room front door
Ground floor. The desk is by the hall, the corridor runs east past the drying room, and the gaming room is the back block.

What we have not done

There is no lift and the stair to the attic rooms is the original one, which is steep and turns twice. Putting a lift in would mean losing two rooms and the shape of the hall. We have decided against it three times and will probably decide against it again.

Play happens in one room of this building and nowhere else. No bets are taken online, no accounts are held, and no money moves through this site.