Arnet Island / Dream Island
To continue this tour, head up Third Street to the Village Green .
Dream (Arnet) Isle
If you look across the harbour from Anchor Park, the third small island to your left is called Arnet Island – according to a nautical chart. Locally it is still referred to as Castle Tibbs or “Dream Isle”.
Frederick Gerald Tibbs originally pre-empted land at Long Bay (Long Beach) in 1908. Here, the 22-year-old English immigrant had visions of creating a ranch. Tibbs never did get his Tidal Ranch off the ground and in 1912 exchanged that west coast dream for another one. He bought an island just off Tofino and, after clearing it of every tree but one, began to build a home.
But this was a home like no other. It was as close to a castle as you could get on the west coast in the early 1900s. From behind the main structure rose a tower, apparently with princesses painted on the shutters. The grounds included a garden with trellises, roses, and a love seat. He also had plans for a bicycle path around the rim of the island.
Tibbs removed every limb off the single spruce he had left on the island and built scaffolding up its side. From a platform on the top, about 30 metres (100 feet) off the ground, he would sit with his cornet, serenading the town of Tofino with tunes such as, “Come to the Cookhouse Door, Boys”. He also carefully painted the words “Dream Isle” on the face of a rock on the island’s shore.
In 1917, before Tibbs went to fight int he First World War, he made out a will. In it, he bequeathed the island and everything except the house and 3 metres (10 feet) offend around it to Alma Arnet, adding “because she’s the nicest girl I ever met and another reason she knows”. The house and its contents were to go Olive Garrard, another young woman from Tofino. Tibbs noted that Olive got the house “because it was built for her”. Both bequests were only valid if the women were single.
Tibbs survived the war, but died tragically in 1921 after a near-drowning in the harbour. While tending a harbour buoy, his boat slipped away. Tibbs carefully removed his clothes before diving in and swimming for his boat. He never reached it and ended up exhausted and close to death on the shores of Stubbs Island. Attempts to revive him failed.
Alma and Olive were both single when Tibbs died, so the will was valid. Alma kept the island for a few years before selling it. She never divulged what Tibbs referred to as “another reason she knows”.
On a nautical chart the island is called Arnet Island, but locally is still referred to as Castle Tibbs or Dream Isle.
The Arnet family have had a long history here in Clayoquot Sound. Alma Arnet, to whom the island was left by Frederick Tibbs, was the oldest child of Jacob and Johanna Arnet. She was born at the family’s original homestead at Mud or Grice Bay in 1897 and lived through the creation and growth of Tofino over her more than nine decades of life. Jacob Arnet was one of the earliest European settlers here in 1894.
Oral history interview:
Alma Arnet was the great aunt of Roland Arnet, the son of her brother Walter and his wife Clara. He would become an accomplished teacher and later, a councillor for the District of Tofino.
In his interview with Sean McLorie for the “Tofino through Time” series, Roland Arnet recalls his grandfather, Jacob Arnet’s contribution to Tofino.
