Our story
It came here by sea, and it stayed.
Few houses have a biography. This one has a hundred years of them.
Our story
Few houses have a biography. This one has a hundred years of them.
It began in 1914 at a cannery on Naden Harbour, built by a Swedish carpenter as the finest house on the north coast — the home a cannery manager could be proud of. Then, in 1921, the cannery closed. Most houses would have been left to the weather. This one was floated.
The whole building was jacked onto a raft of logs and towed through Dixon Entrance and down Masset Sound — a house, adrift on the open coast. In 1933 Arthur Robinson had it hauled the last stretch to its corner of Masset by two oxen named Olaf and Buster, and there it has stood ever since, collecting owners, guests, books and stories the way its garden collects rain.
Today it belongs to the poet Susan Musgrave, who bought it in 2010 and keeps it the way its guests love it: dripping with character, stacked with art and books, and warm against the weather.
placeholder photo 1914 Built at George Point on Naden Harbour by a Swedish carpenter, as the finest house on the north coast — home of the cannery manager.
1921 The cannery closes. Rather than abandon it, the whole house is floated on a raft of logs through Dixon Entrance and down Masset Sound to the Watun River.
1932 Margery Fish arrives from England and plants a copper beech in the garden. It now towers over the harbour side of the house — and gives it its name.
1933 Arthur Robinson has the house hauled to its Masset corner by two oxen named Olaf and Buster.
1971 David Phillips arrives on the islands. In time he takes on the house from the Smith family, who had kept it for decades.
1986 Phillips opens Copper Beech Guest House and hosts a quarter-century of remarkable guests — Pierre Trudeau, Margaret Atwood, William Gibson and David Suzuki among them.
2010 The poet Susan Musgrave buys the house, keeping its cozy, eclectic soul while quietly modernizing the comforts.
A guest book worth reading
For twenty-five years David Phillips ran the house as Copper Beech Guest House, and word got around. The rooms still carry the names and habits of the people who filled them — the desk one novelist favoured, the room a prime minister claimed, the ending another writer finished upstairs.
Made the Harbour Master’s Keep their own during their stay.
Fond of the writing desk in the Retreat, looking out over the water.
Finished the ending of his novel Generation A up in Cloud 9.
Among the writers who passed through in the Phillips years.
One of many islanders and visitors drawn to the house’s table.
And, since 2010, the house of the poet who now keeps it — Susan Musgrave.
Guest names are drawn from the house’s own published history and room pages.
The tree & the garden
In 1932 Margery Fish arrived from England and planted a copper beech in the garden. It is the tree the house is named for, and it now towers over the harbour side of the building. The tangled English garden she planted around it still blooms every year — in early spring the whole yard becomes a wonderland of blossom and flowering trees.
Take your morning tea out under the wisteria, or a borrowed book from the shelf. There is nothing here you have to do.
The garden, breakfast & getting here
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placeholder photo “The possible’s slow fuse is lit by the imagination.” — Emily Dickinson, a line the house lives by