The Westholme School Society has handed the historic Westholme School property back to the Municipality of North Cowichan, ending more than two decades of volunteer stewardship. The keys were returned on July 1, 2025, the municipality confirmed.
“The building is currently vacant. Staff are developing a report with options for council’s consideration,” North Cowichan said in an email.
No upgrade plans or budgets have been approved, and staff will seek council direction on how they wish to engage the community about the site’s future.
When the Westholme School building was headed for demolition in 2000, a group of residents stepped in to save it. That group became the Westholme School Society, which officially formed in 2001 and took possession of the property in 2002.
“The gist of it was that the building was going to be tendered out for demolition in 2000,” said Dale Jensen, president of the Westholme School Society. “A society was formed — the Westholme School Society — and they presented a case to North Cowichan that they would take it over, keep it and restore it.”
North Cowichan agreed, and the licence made the society fully responsible for maintaining the property.
“There was a licence of occupation drawn up, and it was worded in such a way that the society was responsible for everything,” said Jensen, who served as president for the past 12 years. “North Cowichan did not want to have any liens put against it. We had to keep it debt-free and yet raise funds to improve it.”
In 2001, North Cowichan designated the structure as a heritage building, which limited how repairs could be carried out and increased costs.
“They had to keep it in the format of how the school was and improve it,” said Jensen. “You can’t do anything but use the same profile of wood and all that.”
“Over 23 years we put in over $275,000 — not counting labour — to improve it,” he said.
Jensen himself was often on-site doing hands-on labour.
“I was up on the scaffold, 40 feet high, working on the top of the peak of the roof, sanding and scraping, re-nailing a lot of the wood,” he said.
The schoolhouse was rented out over the years for various activities. But community engagement gradually declined, and mounting operational hurdles made it difficult to keep the building in active use. One of the biggest barriers, Jensen said, was the requirement that renters carry event insurance.
“Anybody who's renting it has to have insurance,” he said. “And so a lot of people go, ‘No, I'm not doing that.’”
Because the society didn’t own the property, they also couldn’t use it as collateral to secure funding.
“So we had to do little events to try to get funding, and there were some fair donations over the years, just to help us get by,” Jensen said.
When Island Health flagged the building’s water system as needing a $20,000 upgrade, Jensen says the society asked North Cowichan for help, but the request was turned down.
According to Jensen, Westholme’s school history dates back to 1880. Earlier buildings were relocated from elsewhere in the area as the community grew and railway development reshaped the landscape. The current schoolhouse was built in 1923, after an earlier structure on the site burned down in 1918.
Jensen feels the school had become a rare remaining symbol of Westholme’s identity.
“All the other stuff is gone,” he said. “There was a church. That’s gone. There was a post office. That’s gone. There was a hall. That’s gone. The general store is gone. So basically the only remaining building to really identify Westholme would be the school.”
North Cowichan has not made any decisions about the future of the building, and Jensen says repurposing it won’t be easy.
“If they're going to rent it out, they would have to put some major money into it like the water and fire suppression systems,” he said. “Then who are they going to rent it out to? Are they going to be using it as a community drop-in centre? Who’s going to look after that?”
Despite the challenges, he hopes the building won’t be shuttered permanently.
“It would be nice to see a private school in there,” he said. “It’s designed for that.”
After more than two decades of volunteerism, fundraising and hands-on repairs, the Westholme School Society has stepped aside. For now, the volunteers are taking a well-deserved rest after decades of historical stewardship and the keys are back in municipal hands.
“We’ll probably get together and have a final party of some sort,” Jensen said.
That’s still up in the air — as is the future of this historic building.
