Old Home Oil Hiking Brochures

Last year, I spent some time cleaning out my grandparent’s house and I came across a time capsule of things, including some hiking trail brochures from Home Oil called the Happy Trails Collection. Being that I’m too young to remember and Google didn’t have much information, I found out from relatives that Home Oil was a gas station with multiple locations in the Vancouver area through the 70’s and 80’s. They would give out these free maps when you filled your car with gas. Apparently the maps were not just hiking trails but also maps of other BC towns and city maps for tourists.

What’s interesting is to see some of the maps in these brochures and the names and routes the trails took. Many of the trails today are part of larger trails that have been connected including Trans Canada Trail and the Galloping Goose Trail on Vancouver Island.

The original articles were written by Liz Bryan and published in Western Living Magazine and the brochures were adapted from these articles. The collection contained 10 brochures in total but, unfortunately, I was only able to find the first seven.

The 7 brochures have been scanned, converted into PDF, and can be viewed below (NOTE: These are old hiking brochures from the 1970’s or 80’s and the information may not be reliable as the trails may have changed. These PDFs are for historical purposes only):

1. The Tulameen Ghost Town Trail
2. The Chilliwack Valley River Trail
3. The Sannich Peninsula Trail
4. The Lillooet Lake Trail
5. The Pavilion Lake Sagebrush Trail
6. The Pitt Polder Wildlife Trail
7. The Douglas Lake Trail

If anyone has the rest of the missing collection, contact us as we’d love to see them.

Brochure Covers