Fernie is named after William Fernie who, alongside Colonel James Baker, was the driving force behind the coal mines located here.
Starting in 1887, for ten long years they struggled to raise the money necessary to build not only the mines but also the railway needed to transport the coal to outside world. Finally in 1897 they achieved their goals, though effectively losing control of the company to eastern interests.
With the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in Fernie in 1898, the production of coal in the Elk Valley began in earnest and the new town of Fernie took shape opposite the CPR tracks, to the north of the original settlement.
People built more substantial houses, while the business community hired contractors to build estates, retail stores and office buildings. The construction of Fernie generated the development of sawmills, hardware stores, blacksmith shops and other suppliers.
This first Fernie, however, did not last as in April 1904 a fire destroyed Fernie’s commercial district. Later that year, Fernie was incorporated as a municipality. Four year laters, on August 1, 1908, a second firestorm visited the City and in less than ninety minutes the town was once again reduced to smouldering ashes.
The resulting reconstruction dramatically transformed the city’s landscape. By 1910, Fernie’s businesses and their buildings were firmly established. They had expanded their stores and offices to serve a more diverse community of 6,000 people.
The Great Depression brought Fernie to its knees, reducing both population and prosperity. Only government subsidies kept the stagnant coal industry alive until the 1960’s when Japanese markets revitalized mining, and coal became once more, as it remains today, a pillar in Fernie’s economy.
Tourism has also played its part its Fernie past. Fuelled by enthusiastic residents, Snow Valley Ski Development - a locally owned company - opened the ski hill at its present site in January 1963 and Fernie’s bid for the 1968 Winter Olympics helped lay the foundation for today’s Fernie Alpine Resort.
Over one hundred years after the settlement began, the factors influencing Fernie's early growth are still at work. Local businesses still depend greatly on mine workers’ incomes and their families’ demands for their continued existence, alongside which the ongoing development of tourism influences both the location and character of businesses in the town.
Building contractors, suppliers and tradespeople have once again come to Fernie – this time to build tourist accommodations. As Fernie moves into the future, local and tourist trade alike remain the key to its success. by Mike Pennock - Fernie and District Historical Society
The City of Fernie Coat of Arms, along with our Flag and Badge, were presented to the City by the Honourable Iona Campagnolo, Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia and Robert D Watt, the Chief Herald of Canada, Robert D. Watt on February 12th, 2004 - our Centennnial year.
Arms: A horizontal band of gold with a saw-toothed upper edge appears upon a blue field. Beneath each point of the gold band is a black diamond.
The gold represents both the wealth historically generated by the coal and forestry industries in the area and the sunshine which now makes Fernie an important recreational resort destination. The three “peaks” in the upper part of the shield represent the Three Sisters, the most famous of the dramatic Rocky Mountain formations visible from the town. The blue below the gold band symbolizes the Elk River on which Fernie is situated. The blue above the band represents the sky. Black diamonds are the traditional heraldic representation of coal and thus represent the great coal mines which led to the City’s initial prosperity.
Crest: A blue coal car, modeled on those used in the mines near the City, is filled with coal. A white miner’s pick rests on this. This is placed on a steel helmet draped in blue and gold cloth mantling held in place by a wreath of twisted cloth in these colours.
The historic and ongoing importance of the coal industry to the City is symbolized by the coal car. The pick represents both traditional methods of coal mining and the pioneer miners.
Motto: IN MONTIBUS AD FLUMEN, meaning “In the Mountains by the River”, captures the enviable location of the City, so crucial to its history and economy.
Supporters: To the left of the crest is a gold grizzly bear wearing a collar of green cedar. It hold in its right forepaw a white trout (modeled on a Westslope Cutthroat Trout). To the right of the crest is a gold elk with a similar collar, its left foreleg resting on a crosscut saw. The bear and elk both stand on a compartment of green grass set with white snowflakes and white dogwood flowers.
The elk and the grizzly are common large mammals in the region, the elk also giving its name to the valley where the City is located. The two animals thus represent Fernie's rich natural heritage. The collars of cedar represent the cedar forests, the largest such trees in the province outside the Pacific coast. The trout represents the importance of the local recreational fishery, and the saw, the increasing importance of forestry.
The grass in the compartment symbolizes the lands of the City itself. Fernie’s status as a city of British Columbia is expresses through the use of the dogwood flowers. The increasing importance of winter recreation is dramatized by the snowflakes.
Badge: A black diamond on which is the head of an elk turned slightly to the left.
The badge repeats some of the colours and themes of the arms through the use of the reference to coal and to the Elk Valley and River. The elk’s head is featured on the City’s current seal.
Flags: The first flag is gold, with a square version of the shield of arms placed in the upper left corner. In the lower right or “fly” is the City’s badge. The ensign-style banner repeats the ideas of the Elk River and Valley, coal and the wealth derived from the mines and the landscape. The second flag is the classic banner of heraldry with the shield redrawn to fit a rectangular shape.
The Fernie and District Historical Society's Heritage Walking Tour Guidebook was launched in May of 2001 to much acclaim. Truly a community tour, it takes visitors through the heritage buildings of Fernie as well as introducing them to the eleven community satellite exhibits throughout the community. The Heritage Walking Tour can be picked up at the Downtown Visitor Information Centre on Second Avenue.
While the slopes of the mountains are presently the focus of economic activity, until comparatively recently residents of the area were more interested with the mountains' innards. The vast Crowsnest Coal Field lies just to east of the city, and Fernie owes its origins to nineteenth-century prospector William Fernie, who established the coal industry that continues to exist to this day. Acting on pioneer Michael Phillipps's twin discoveries of coal and the Crowsnest Pass a few years earlier, Fernie founded the Crows Nest Pass Coal Company in 1897 and set to work at once. A townsite was laid out at a broad bend in the valley where the Elk River is intersected by its tributaries Coal, Lizard and Fairy Creeks; the Canadian Pacific Railway was built through the valley shortly thereafter and a downtown core emerged parallel to it. Underground coal mines were dug 10 km away from the townsite in the narrow Coal Creek valley and until 1960 a small satellite community known as Coal Creek stood adjacent to them. A variety of other mines were sunk into the coal fields in a fifty kilometer radius in the following two decades. No mining was ever carried out in Fernie proper; coking of Coal Creek coal was carried out at the townsite, but otherwise the town developed into an administrative and commercial centre for the burgeoning industry. Forestry played a smaller role in the local economy and a local brewery produced Fernie Beer from mountain spring water. Like most single-industry towns, Fernie endured several boom-and-bust cycles throughout the twentieth century, generally tied to the global price of coal. The mines at Coal Creek closed permanently by 1960 and the focus of mining activity shifted to Michel and Natal about twenty-five kilometres upriver, which sat on a more productive portion of the Crowsnest Coal Field. Kaiser Resources opened immense open-pit mines there in the 1970s to meet new thermal coal contracts for the Asian industrial market, predominantly for use in blast furnaces. Fernie would remain an important residential base for mine labour, along with the new communities of Sparwood and Elkford that sprung up much closer to these new mines. Today, Fording Canadian Coal Trust operates all five open-pit mines, shipping out unit trains (often with more than 100 cars) along the Canadian Pacific Railway through Fernie to the Pacific Coast, where the coal is loaded onto freighters at Robert's Bank in Delta.
After a disastrous fire leveled much of the downtown core in 1904, the fledgling municipal government passed an ordinance requiring all buildings in the area to be built of 'fireproof' materials like brick and stone. Consequently, a new city centre rose from the ashes sporting brick buildings along broad avenues that would have looked more at home in a sedate and refined Victorian city rather than a rough-and-tumble frontier coal town. They were short-lived, however, as a second, larger inferno swept through the city on August 1, 1908. Whipped up by sudden winds, a nearby forest fire burnt its way into a lumber yard on the edge of the community and sparked a Dresden-style firestorm that melted brick and mortar and essentially erased the entire city in an afternoon. There were few casualties, however, and for a second time a stately brick downtown core rose from the ashes. Today, these historic buildings, most of which still stand, are a treasured and distinctive feature of the community.