Wingen Lane
To continue this tour, keep walking east along Main Street.
Wingen Lane
For decades, the Wingen family lived and worked in this part of town, which served for years as the “town centre”. But there were Wingens on the coast before the village of Tofino existed.
Tom Wingen came to Canada from Norway in 1891 and, by the late 1890s, was running a sawmill at Mud (now Grice) Bay. A small creek provided power for the mill. In 1894, he married Julie Hansen, also from Norway. (Her brothers were Anton and John). When they eventually moved to Tofino, the couple built the house at 346 Main Street. (You can see it beside the inn, set close to the water).
Tom Wingen and Mike Hogan began building boats at a shipyard where the condominium at the base of the hill is located today. This was the beginning of a successful business that provided local employment. For years, it seemed as if the town revolved around the activity at ”Wingen’s”. Eventually, the Wingens built a few other homes on Main Street that were rented out to employees.
Around 1917, Tom and Julie’s son, Hilmar, and his business partner, Mike Hamilton, opened Tofino Machine Shop next to the boat shop. They had marine ways for hauling boats out of the water and did engine repairs and whatever needed doing to keep the boats running. Tom Wingen passed his boat-building trade to Hilmar who eventually ran both businesses. (Hamilton moved to Port Alberni in 1927). Hilmar and his wife, Vera, were active in the community and Hilmar served as Tofino’s second mayor from 1936 to 1941.
Eventually, Hilmar and Vera’s son, Bob, took over the operations from the mid-1950s until the early 1960s. Bob saw the need for a fish buying and processing plant and he built a plant, Tofino Fisheries, to process salmon and shrimp. The plant employed many community members until 1974 when it was bought first by the Canadian Fishing Company and then by BC Packers. Eventually, like many fish plants on the west coast, it shut down due to lack of fish. BC Packer’s last year of operation was 1995, when it opened for six weeks of salmon processing.
