Devine is a rural locality located in the

Gates Valley The Gates Valley is a valley and group of communities in the Lillooet Country of the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada, located between the summit of Pemberton Pass and the head of Anderson Lake at the community of D'Arcy. Though the ...

of the

Lillooet Country The Lillooet Country, also referred to as the Lillooet District, is a region spanning from the central Fraser Canyon town of Lillooet, British Columbia, Lillooet west to the valley of the Lillooet River, and including the valleys in between, in the ...

in the southwestern Interior of

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, about 3 km (2 mi) from D'Arcy, at the head of Anderson Lake. Devine gets its name from being the location of a

lumber mill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...

run by Andy Devine which employed

Japanese-Canadians are Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Canadians are mostly concentrated in Western Canada, especially in the province of British Columbia, which hosts the largest Japanese community in the country with the majority of them living ...

who had been

Japanese Canadian internment From 1942 to 1949, Canada forcibly relocated and incarcerated over 22,000 Japanese Canadians—comprising over 90% of the total Japanese Canadian population—from British Columbia in the name of "national security". The majority were Canadian ...

relocated to

McGillivray Falls McGillivray may refer to: People * McGillivray (surname) Places * McGillivray Creek (British Columbia), a creek in the Lillooet Country of British Columbia ** McGillivray, British Columbia (formerly McGillivray Falls) in the Lillooet Country of B ...

(now McGillivray) which was just inside the 100-mile "quarantine zone" from the

British Columbia Coast , settlement_type = Region of British Columbia , image_skyline = , nickname = "The Coast" , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Canada , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 = British ...

. Devine was able to hire the Japanese, who were experienced loggers and millworkers from the Coast, as the area was inaccessible from the Coast, other than by the rail line as no road to the Coast was open until the 1960s. The post office at Devine opened in 1951 and closed in 1964. Remains of the old mill can still be found in the woods around Devine and until recently the old burner from Andy Devine's mill was the tallest man made structure around. Devine today is a recreational community with a few year round residents. The nearest services are at D'Arcy, a few miles north and Birken, a few miles farther southwest along the road and rail line to Mount Currie and Pemberton.

References

BCGNIS listing "Devine (locality)"
{Dead link, date=July 2019 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes *''My Sixty Years in Canada,

Masajiro Miyazaki Masajiro Miyazaki, CM (November 24, 1899 – July 23, 1984) was a Canadian osteopathic physician who practised in Vancouver prior to World War II. During World War II, he was appointed as a coroner by the British Columbia Provincial Police in th ...

Designated places in British Columbia Unincorporated settlements in British Columbia Lillooet Country Populated places in the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District