David Wishart was born at 58 Nelson Street in Largs, Ayrshire on 21 August 1886. He was the fifth of nine children of John Wishart, a mason from Kennoway, and his wife, Marion Bruce Stewart. By 1891, when David was five, the family moved to 10 Haylie Blair Close and David’s first job after leaving school about 1900 was as a chemist’s apprentice. He eventually became a baker, and on 30 May 1910, he left from Glasgow on board the Cassandra for Canada where he arrived in Quebec on 11 May. David gave his destination as Peterboro’, Ontario however eventually he would find himself living much further west at Pachina Point on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

David enlisted in Victoria, BC on 25 September 1918 and joined the 2nd Depot Battalion (British Columbia) Regiment and was soon transferred to the 1st Depot Battalion, who were based in Vancouver. Less than two weeks after he signed up, David was discharged from duty so he could join the Royal Naval Canadian Volunteer Reserve. Unfortunately little else is know about David’s war and he eventually made his way back to Pachina where he worked as a telegraph lineman at the lighthouse though by 1924 he had returned to sea as the lineman for the SS Sol Duc, which was a steamship that connected ports on the Olympic Peninsula with Seattle.

On 2 October 1929, David married a teacher named Barbara Ethel Trwosdale in Victoria. He had returned to his pre-war career as a baker and settled wife his wife in Bamfield. In 1940 David’s occupation in the voter’s lists is recorded as ‘trapper’ and during the 1950s and 1960s he lived in Brentwood Bay and worked as a gardener.

David died from kidney disease aged 93 on 25 July 1980 at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria. Barbara, who was almost twenty years David’s junior, outlived him and died in 1996.

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