Pacific Lodge of Hokitika

The Pacific Lodge of Hokitika 1229 was first to be consecrated on the West Coast, in 1865 and met in the now the Old Lodge Theatre building on Revell St, Hokitika. Over time as the port diminished in importance and members were lost due to age or transfers, the membership fell and was augmented by joining members from Christchurch. In 1978, with only a few resident members left in Hokitika, it was decided to shift the lodge to Amberley and rent the Amberley Lodge Rooms for meetings. The former lodge building was sold to the Hokitika Dramatic Society in the mid-1980s and the money derived was gifted largely to Westland High School.

When the Freemason's Centre of Canterbury in Latimer Square was opened in 1994, the lodge again shifted to meet there until the building was sold in 2002. Meetings then moved to the Lodge rooms in the Ferrymeed Historic Park and following the completion of the Shirley Freemason Centre in 2013 the Lodge shifted again to meet there. In 2024 the building was renamed the Canterbury Freemason Centre.

On 10th April 2021 the Lodge had its first meeting in the old Lodge Rooms in Hokitika in over 40 years and now has its April meeting on the Coast.

There is a large collection of the Lodges memorabilia in the Hokitika Museum.
Among the collection is old furniture, minute books and a large oil painting of John Lazar, a prominent Freemason and the Hokitika Borough Council’s first town clerk. Another notable member of the Hokitika lodge was former Premier Richard John Seddon. In 1898, 30 years after he had first joined masonry, Seddon, then premier, became the Most Worshipful Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge of New Zealand.

A book has also been written by W Bro Doug Stapleton on the history of the Lodge.