Capital Iron & Metals was a marine Mecca

Ah, the good old days when I had my first–my only–real job in the editorial room of what was then The Daily Colonist. God, how I hated it. But that’s another story for another time…

Several years ago, I attended the film, The Shipsinkers, a just-released documentary that followed a team of Canadians who contract to sanitize and sink ships as artificial reefs. (We have evidence of their work in Nanaimo waters.) Much of the film dealt with their stripping-down of the decommissioned New Zealand frigate Wellington alongside a shipbreakers’ dock prior to giving it a Viking’s funeral.

What memories that brought back to me of Capital Iron & Metals on Store Street beside Victoria’s Inner Harbour

As coincidence would have it, the very next day I found myself sitting beside Ron Greene, Capital Iron’s former owner, in the B.C. Archives. I hadn’t seen him for years.

The following Saturday brought another happy coincidence when I stood at the foot of Johnson Street and within view of Capital Iron’s docks where some great ships were cut into razor blades in the late ‘40s through the mid-‘60s,

It was during the latter period that I laboured at the Colonist at a job that was, as presided over by the managing editor of the day, mind-numbing and demeaning. But there was one part of my daily routine that spelled relief and, by my youthful measure, a diversion of the highest order.

Each afternoon, my duties took me downtown to pick up the stock exchange reports ( this was, need I say it, in the pre-computer age).

I had 90 minutes or so to get back to the office and, with practice, without using the bus, I almost halved that. This allowed me at least half an hour to swing along the waterfront, more specifically Capital Iron, whose basement was a treasure house of war surplus and marine artifacts.

Even better was its dock

There, time and time again, old freighters, tugboats, warships and coastal passenger ships waited to meet their fates at the hands of the cutting torches.

Through getting to know Ron Greene, son of the owner, Morris Greene, I was allowed to clamber over them, unsupervised. With my father’s 1948 folding Kodak, then my first 35mm, I shot rolls of film of these dying ships.

I remember the self-propelled railway barge S.S. Canora, Union Steamships’ pocket passenger liner Cardena, the sailing ship Star of England, the First World War steam tug Canadian National No. 2, the newer tugs Salvor and Salvage Queen, and a host of RCN warships.

The most famous of these had to be the former HMCS Sudbury

This former corvette made maritime history as the deepsea tugboat Sudbury in November 1955 when she towed the stricken Greek freighter Macedonia thousands of miles to safety.

There was another Greek freighter, the Glafkos, which came to grief off Vancouver Island’s deadly west coast even while I was at the Colonist. I followed her story almost firsthand, and spellbound, as it was I who cleared the teletype machines as they delivered exciting descriptions of the unfolding drama.

Weeks later, I stood in awe as I gazed up at her rusting bulk, beside the scrapper’s dock.

They didn’t sink ships for artificial reefs in those days but they did use them as floating breakwaters, at Royston, Oyster and Kelsey Bay. (The Royston Breakwater brings back more great memories of clambering over its ghostly fleet of sailing ships, tugboats, Second World War naval ships–and getting paid to do it by the owners, Crown Zellerbach, for writing their histories for the company newsletter.

But back to Capital Iron

I said that their basement was a treasure house of war surplus and marine artifacts.
I remember the pervasive and heady, almost exotic, smells of tarpaulin and rope and a score of other things unseen and unknown, that suggested far-off places and adventure. The military oddities such as disarmed artillery and naval shells of different shapes and sizes that one could buy for doorstops or conversation pieces (I still have two), and the long, deadly First World War bayonets we used as machetes.

Then, of course, there were the more practical articles that Capital had acquired from Crown Assets or salvaged from the ships it scrapped. For us kids, Capital Iron’s basement, and Spencer’s War Surplus on Government Street, were nothing less than awe-inspiring.

I see by the Times-Colonist that Capital Iron recently won a national business award. What Morris Greene began as a small scrap metal business is now described as a three-storey general store selling home decor along with the hardware, camping gear and gardening supplies. They’ve also opened stores in Langford and Sidney.

As for me, I’ll treasure my memories of poking about their downstairs warehouse as it was when I was a kid. And, as an aspiring journalist, examining and photographing many of the ships that ended their careers, often romantic careers, at Capital Iron & Metals’ scrapping wharf.