Bowser is a community on the eastern coast of Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island is a large island in British Columbia, Canada. It is one of several North American locations named after George Vancouver, the British Royal Navy officer who explored the Pacific Northwest coast of North America between 1791 and 1794...

, located approximately 66 km north of Nanaimo. It is situated in a region which was informally known as Lighthouse Country, which is a stretch of highway that extends from Qualicum Beach in the South to Horne Lake

Horne Lake

Horne Lake is located west of Qualicum Beach. Named after Adam Grant Horne, Hudson's Bay Company storekeeper at Nanaimo, who 'discovered' this lake in 1856....

 to the west to Fanny Bay in the North and across to Denman and Hornby Islands.

Bowser's local hotel was famous in the 1930s for a dog trained by his owners to deliver beer bottles to tables, receive the payment, and deliver change. This was cited in, "Ripley's Believe It Or Not."

A regular customer of the Bowser Hotel was Jack Holt, a veteran of the Boer War who was Bowser's postmaster from the period during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 until the late 1950s.http://www.tomwhitfield.ca/bowser.html

The community was named after William J. Bowser

William John Bowser

William John Bowser was a politician in British Columbia, Canada. He served as Premier of British Columbia from 1915 to 1916....

, Premier of British Columbia from 1915 to 1916.

Sources

• "Bowser."Encyclopedia of British Columbia.2000
• Bowser, British Columbia, Canada. Accessed Friday, March 17, 2006