The carving their dad left at the lake.
Peter Martineau carved the Thetis Lake sign on site in 1984. Three years after the CRD nearly swapped it for sheet metal, his four children stood beside it, restored.
On Tuesday, four siblings stood at the entrance to Thetis Lake Regional Park beside a log their father carved by hand, on that same spot, in 1984.
Craig Roberts, Chandra Crowe, Lia Crowe and Tia Hall are Peter Martineau’s children. The Capital Regional District invited them to a small unveiling on Nov. 10 to mark the end of months of repair work on the carved sign at the park’s entrance.
“We would like to express our deep gratitude to the CRD for their huge efforts to restore this local landmark that was hand-carved on site in the 1980s by our late father,” the family said in a statement. “We were touched by the outpouring of community sentiment and support to keep the Thetis Lake sign and we’re so happy this iconic piece will live on.”
In January 2023, the CRD announced new entrance signs for Thetis Lake and Elk/Beaver Lake regional parks, the first step in a project to bring park entrances in line with its corporate signage strategy. Elk/Beaver had already received its new sign. The CRD said the Thetis log would be removed that week.
The replacement was a sheet metal design, and the reaction online was immediate and mostly unprintable. People said it looked like construction-site signage. Others argued that matching signs at every park would erase what made each one feel like itself.
Within a day, the CRD paused. Colin Plant, then chair of the CRD board, told the Times Colonist he had called staff around noon that Thursday and directed them to put the replacement on hold, and asked for a report to the board. Lia Crowe told the paper she thought the pause was the right decision.
The replacement plan was not a whim. Many park signs were getting old, Plant said at the time, and the aim was signage that would stand up to weather and graffiti. A carved log does neither forever. As the CRD put it this summer, wood signs decay over time and need maintenance to stay legible, functional and safe.
In August, the CRD confirmed it would keep the log and restore it in place. Fencing and scaffolding went up that month.
The log was never moved. The CRD’s announcements do not say what the work cost.
The CRD expects the work to extend the log’s life by at least another 10 years, “likely more.”
It is also clear that this is not permanent. The log is still an aging wooden structure sitting in year-round West Coast weather, and the CRD says ongoing maintenance will be needed to keep it standing as long as possible. The question of what eventually replaces it has been put off, not settled.
When Martineau carved the sign, Thetis Lake was owned and run by the City of Victoria. The CRD acquired the park in 1993, and the sign came with it.
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