'■audi; Qolu^iuj> HISTO RY Journal of the British Columbia Historical Federation | Vol.42 No. 2 I $5.00 This Issue: Lumber in Chile | Early Auto Travel | Newsletter | and more British Columbia History Journal of the British Columbia Historical Federation Published four times a year. ISSN: print 1710-7881 online 1710-792X British Columbia History welcomes stories, studies, and news items dealing with any aspect of the history of British Columbia, and British Columbians. Please submit manuscripts for publication to the Editor, British Columbia History, John Atkin, 921 Princess Avenue, Vancouver BC V6A 3E8 e-mail: bcheditor@bchistory.ca Submission guidelines are available at: bchistory.ca/journal/index.html Book reviews for British Columbia History, Frances Gundry, Book Review Editor, BC History, P.O. 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Phone 604-277-2627 email membership@bchistorv.ca "Any country worthy of a future should be interested in its past" W. Kaye Lamb, 1937 QxaJMv (^olu^niu^ HISTORY TheJournal- of -the British Columbia Historical Federal J ^lymg;^ Chile, Peru, and The Early Lumber Exports of British Columbia Fred Braches 2 An Artist's Legacy Janet Nicol 8 The Artful Dewdney CJ Cooney 11 An Education in Gumbo Mary Leah de Zwart 18 C.W.D. Clifford and His Mysterious Tokens Ron Greene 22 Archives and Archivists 25 Book Reviews 27 BC Folklore: Mixing Fact 8t Fiction 36 Joseph Genelle Affair Edward Affleck 37 Miscellany 40 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Chile, Peru, and The Early Lumber Exports of British Columbia By Fred Braches Fred Braches is the former editor of BC Historical News, he edits and maintains slumach.ca (see Miscellany, pg. 40), and compiles Whonnock Notes which can be found at whonnock.ca Unless otherwise noted, photographs supplied by the author. In his annual report for 1891 the Timber Inspector for British Columbia noted that Chile and Peru were "the best markets the exporting mills ever had." South America the best lumber markets of the early sawmill? Australia and China seem better candidates for that distinction. Why would there be such a demand for lumber in Chile and Peru that it put the two countries in the first place as importers of the lumber from British Columbia in the late 1800s? It seems an interesting question worth investigating. Today the coast of South America may be exotic and out of the way, but in the 19th century one of the major shipping routes ran along Chile and Peru. Chile in particular was familiar to an increasing number of people travelling via Cape Horn to reach the Pacific Northwest. Before the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 all ships entering the Pacific from the Atlantic had to round Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America. Chile's chief seaport, Valparaiso, was a stop where ships could refresh their victuals, where repairs could be made, and where passengers and crew went ashore for rest and recreation. The Hudson's Bay Company's annual supply ships, too, would have called at Valparaiso on every trip, and on the return voyage to England the ships would have carried some lumber—likely some masts and spars for sailing ships serviced at Valparaiso. The West Coast of South America was one of the markets the Hudson's Bay Company had in mind when it erected a sawmill on the Columbia River in 1827, starting the first mechanized lumber export production from the Pacific Northwest. In 1837 the British Admiralty established a Pacific Station at Valparaiso, and W. Kaye Lamb suggested that it would be "only logical" that the Pacific Squadron would acquire their masts and spars from British territory and in particular Vancouver Island. Even if that is true, the volumes would not have been great, restricted as they were to a few ships returning to England with other cargoes on board. Certainly these early shipments do not mark the beginning of a lumber trade with Chile. The earliest known export of lumber of any size from British Columbia was carried by the Chilean bark Aurelia, which left Sooke laden with spars for Valparaiso on the 13th of January 1853. Gold discovered in California in 1848 caused a prodigious growth of SanFrancisco. The overwhelming demand for construction lumber became the catalyst for the development of a mature industry in the Puget Sound. The building boom in San Francisco faltered in 1855, but the Fraser River Gold rush of 1858 created View of Moody, Dietz and Nelson's Sawmilll at Burrard Inlet ca 1885. BC Archives A-03318 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Waiting to take on lumber on Burrard Inlet. City of Vancouver Archives photo MiP43 a new market for the Puget Sound mills right at their doorstep in Victoria. For a short time the lumber exports from Puget Sound went almost exclusively to the British colony, but a few years later, because of a revival of the building activities in San Francisco and a rapidly expanding world lumber market, the mills in the Pacific Northwest reduced their supplies to Vancouver Island so significantly that at the end of 1862 some builders had to stop working on projects in Victoria for want of material. That void would soon be filled by such small local sawmills as the one at Sooke, but mainly by new mills on Vancouver Island at Cowichan and Alberni and by mills at Burrard Inlet on the Mainland. Of the Vancouver Island mills, only the Alberni mill, owned by Anderson & Co. of Great Britain, seems to have exported any significant quantities of lumber. This mill, the first sizeable mill in British Columbia, started operations in 1861 but was closed down permanently only a few years later. The sawmills established by Captain Stamp and Sewell Prescott Moody at Burrard Inlet were more successful, and for years Burrard Inlet was the only important lumber-exporting centre in British Columbia. By 1864 the Americans, now squeezed out of the British Columbia market by the domestic mills, were protecting their own mills with import tariffs. The British Columbia mills, lacking a large home market of their own and with limited access to the California markets, had to focus on countries around the Pacific for their exports: Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, China, and South America—all experiencing rapid growth, to the advantage of the early lumber industry. Export to all these overseas destinations was essential for the mills, but for a few years Chile and Peru took the lion's share of the Burrard Inlet lumber exports. It is no surprise that Chile and Peru had such a high demand of all lumber products. There are few trees on the arid coast, some of it the driest desert in the world. Both countries had hardly any access to their own lumber resources—the Andes chain presented an insurmountable obstacle to Peru's taking advantage of lumber from the Amazon basin, and the Chileans were kept from exploiting the rugged forested south of their country by the fierce and determined resistance of the Natives. Lacking any general construction timber, both countries depended to a large extent on outside supplies. Most of this supply originally came from Europe and the Atlantic Coast of North America, but the development of a lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia coincided with rapidly increasing demands for building materials in the two South American republics. Since independence from Spain, Chile and Peru had seen prolific growth. Opening their resources to European, British, and American capital, commerce and entrepreneurs created prosperity beyond belief for the higher levels of society. In Peru, guano (fossil bird manure) had been harvested by the indigenous BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY ■ Vol. 42 No, 2 Ships at anchor at the guano (Chincha) islands off the Peruvian coast. people from small offshore islands and had been used to fertilize their crops since time immemorial. Now guano started to be exported in massive quantities. In the 1850s it was Peru's leading export commodity and its largest source of revenue, with 300 shiploads of guano leaving Peru every year. Also Chile's prosperity had grown since independence. New technology boosted the production of copper, Chile's main export commodity. In 1850, Chile produced 15,000 tons of copper and in 1872 more than 50,000 tons. Soon the wealth generated by these resources would be surpassed by the gains from the export of nitrate strip-mined in the Atacama Desert. In 1830 the first shipment of nitrate, the chief source of nitrogen, used for the production of explosives, fertilizer, and for other purposes by the chemical industry, left for Europe. A fleet of fast sailing "Nitrate Clippers" carried the precious loads round the Horn to the Atlantic North. Huge fortunes were made with this "white gold." Initially Chile, Bolivia, and Peru profited from this newly found prosperity, but territorial disputes erupted and the nitrate in the desert triggered a war between the three countries (1879-1884), leaving part of coastal Peru and Bolivia (the latter now land-locked) and their mineral wealth in Chilean hands. That prosperity is still visible in many other Chilean and Peruvian cities. The building of stately townhouses and mansions, ornate buildings for government institutions, banks and trading houses, as well as shops, piers, and warehouses required shipment after shipment of building timber. The first principal railroads were built in Chile and Peru between 1855 and 1880, requiring railway ties and building materials for train stations. Valparaiso soon became the greatest commercial Ships at anchor in the harbour of Iquique, Chile. Mineral nitrate was loaded from barges ca 1894. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Humberstone, a ghost town in the Chilean desert, inland from Iquique. (left) Cien velas en la bahia, a hundred sails in the bay of Valparaiso during Chile's "golden age", (bottom) centre on the West coast of South America and a main destination for the lumber shipments. In 1870 more than 4,000 ships called at Chilean ports, some 1,700 under British flag. These figures include the calls of Pacific Steam Navigation Company, with headquarters in Valparaiso, operating coastal service with steam-powered vessels since 1840. From 1847 onward four of its vessels plied between Panama, Peru's main port Callao, and Valparaiso. In 1869 the company started a direct monthly service via Magellan Strait to Liverpool, and in 1872 the company operated 33 steamships. Of the 4,000 British subjects living in Chile in 1861, half lived in Valparaiso, where British trading houses with worldwide contacts were established. At that time Valparaiso was still the support base for the British navy in the Pacific, but an alternate station would be established at Esquimalt in 1865. England had a large share in the economies of Chile and Peru. In 1870 more than half of the total exports of Chile j went to England, jj increasing to j 65% in 1875, and f British imports I dominated In ^ Peru. It is possible that due to the ^ British presence in the two republics some of NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 The neoclassical Municipal Theatre in Iquique, Chile, was built in 1889, during the nitrate heydays. The structure of the building is made of Douglas-fir (pino Oregon) from British Columbia. the lumber would have been contracted directly by trading houses in South America and the Burrard Inlet mills, but more likely the lumber trade went through San Francisco. The British trading houses in Chile and Peru, often through their principals in London, had close ties with that Pacific city, and probably most if not all lumber shipments from Burrard Inlet would be contracted through San Francisco brokers. This would for instance explain Sewell Prescott Moody's frequent business trips to San Francisco, including his last ill-fated trip in 1875, when his ship was wrecked and he drowned. The statistics of a decade show the success of the Burrard Inlet mills: between 1861 and 1870 the total exports of British Columbia forest products to all destinations grew from a scant $3,500 to $128,000. British Columbia's contribution in supplying the massive quantities of lumber required by the exploding construction projects in Chile and Peru may not have been as large as that of the mills in the United States, but it was enough to make Chile and Peru the best markets for the mills on Burrard Inlet in its first years of operation. Specific information about the exports from British Columbia is scattered and fragmented, but what can be found illustrates their importance. The first ship that left Alberni in 1861 carried a load of lumber bound for Callao, Peru. A breakdown by destination of the exports of the Anderson mill is only available for its last year of operation. In that year, 1864, Chile and Peru received some 60% of the exports from Alberni compared to China and Australia with 20% each. Another known lumber export from Vancouver Island to South America are two ships that sailed from Sooke in 1867 with sawn lumber for Valparaiso. Historian Judge F.W. Howay signalled that at that time "South America was becoming an important and increasing market for Burrard Inlet lumber." Information from newspapers shows that of the 54 ships dispatched from Burrard Inlet between 1865 and 1869, 24 ships left for Peru or Chile, 20 for Australia, and 10 for China. For 1868 Howay lists the following ships bound for South America with lumber: the Mercara (Valparaiso), the Eastham (Callao), the Industry and the Spirit of the Age ("South America"), the Hudson's Bay Company's Princess Royal (Valparaiso), and the Guayaquil, Topgallant, Leonide, and Knowsley (Callao). In 1871, half of the 40 ships leaving Burrard Inlet were still heading for Chile and Peru, with no less than 60% percent or a value of $182,500 of the total export lumber. But the share of South America dwindled in the following decades. By 1896 the export numbers show that the two South American republics purchased only 21% of the overall lumber exports. In BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Main Sources mtiMA i thk 1913 Australia led with 10,000 mbft (thousand board feet) of a total of 28,000 mbft shipped to the Pacific countries. Exports to South America exports were at par with those to Japan, but far behind Australia. After the opening of the Panama Canal and the ending of the hostilities in Europe there was some speculation that the entire Pacific coast from Mexico to Chile would enjoy a huge commercial development, calling for a tremendous amount of construction timber, but that just did not happen. For one thing, the development of synthetic nitrates in the 1920s led to a collapse of the Chilean nitrate export, and where once bustling company towns had sprung up overnight, now only ghost towns are left in the desert, their wooden buildings well preserved in the arid climate. Today, only the words of that Timber Inspector back in 1891 remind us that at one time Chile and Peru were "the best markets the exporting mills ever had." • The port of Callao, Peru. Note that freight is being loaded on barges, lanchas, by what seems to be a steam- driven crane. Ships loaded at anchor. In the foreground freight is still moved with horse-drawn carts but notice the railway tracks on right side of the picture, (right) Carrothers, W.A., "The Forest Industries of British Columbia." In: The North American Assault on the Canadian Forest: A History of the Lumber Trade between Canada and the United States. Toronto: Reyerson Press, 1938. Cox, Thomas R., Mills and Markets: A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Industry to 1900. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974. Flynn, James R., "Early Lumbering on Burrard Inlet". Graduating Essay University of British Columbia, 1942. Howay, F.W., Early Settlement on Burrard Inlet. British Columbia Historical Quarterly, vol. I, April 1937. Early Shipping in Burrard Inlet, 1863-1870. British Columbia Historical Quarterly, vol. I, January, 1937. Lamb, W. Kaye. Early Lumbering on Vancouver Island., Part I.: 1844-1855. British Columbia Historical Quarterly, vol. I: 31- 53, January 1938. idem. Part II: 1855-1866. British Columbia Historical Quarterly, vol. I: 95-121, April 1938. Langevin, H.L., British Columbia: Report of the Hon. HI. Langevin, C.B., Minister of Public Works. Ottawa: I.B. Taylor, 1872. Lawrence, Joseph C, "Market and Capital: a History of the Lumber Industry of B.C. (1778-1952)." Master's thesis, University of British Columbia, 1957. ... and numerous publications on the economic, industrial, and political history of Chile and Peru. Complete bibliography will be send to anyone interested. E-mail braches@whonnock. bc.ca. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 An Artist's Legacy: Binning's West Vancouver Residence By Janet Nicol Janet Nicol has written about Vancouver's history for both popular and academic publications, including the Vancouver Courier Images this page: Approach to the front entrance of the house The Binning's living room Imperial Bank of Commerce mural on the east wall of the second floor of Granville and Dunsmuir Streets, the building now occupied by Shopper's Drug Mart West Coast modern was a new idea when Vancouver artist Bertram Charles (B.C.) Binning thoughtfully designed a flat-roofed bungalow on the forested slope of West Vancouver in 1941. And when this influential artist and educator died in 1976, aged 67, his canvases became his legacy and now so will his house. In 2000, the Binning home was declared a National Historic Site and two years ago, was bequeathed to the community by Binning's widow. Binning's wife Jessie lived at 2968 Mathers Avenue until the last day of her life, aged 101. And thaf s only one of the magical stories swirling about this timber and glass residence sheltering the unique and generous lives of kindred spirits, 'Bert' and Jessie. The couple did not have children, but were an active presence in the community throughout their 40 year marriage, significantly influencing a large circle of artistic and architectural friends in post-war Vancouver. The distant outline of Point Grey is visible from the home and its university campus was Binning's workplace for a number of years. Binning was the founder and department head of the Fine Arts Department of University of B.C. from 1955 to 1968. He then continued as an instructor-only until 1974. Binning left his mark on both the university and city art scene at a time when Vancouver was a smaller, more remote metropolis. The simplicity of Binning's two-bedroom house design and its integration with the north shore mountain side has since been imitated throughout the Pacific Northwest region. Binning's colorful abstract murals are painted directly on to the home's walls. One graces the home's exterior entrance and the other is located at the end of the long interior hallway. Half-way down this corridor, the house opens dramatically to the living room where floor to ceiling glass doors frame a view of the harbor and open on to a terrace with an extended trellis overhang. A large stone fireplace dominates the living room's side wall. The Binnings had carefully selected furniture to harmonize with the overall indoor-outdoor effect of this room. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 The Land Conservancy of British Columbia recently stepped in to fundraise with the goal of creating a $300,000 endowment so the house can be maintained for future generations. The site will open to the public with a focus on events for artists and architects, in appreciation of the creative fusion Binning had pursued in his own work. The conservancy has also aided in preserving the homes of writer Joy Kogawa and architect Arthur Erickson. Binning was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta and was four years old when his family moved to Vancouver in 1913. Both his maternal and paternal grandfathers had been architects but a childhood illness halted his ambition to follow their path. He nonetheless developed a talent for art and teaching, pursuing both careers vigorously. Binning attended the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (now Emily Carr School of Art) then stayed on to teach for three more years. He later enrolled in art schools in Oregon, New York and London, England. Meantime Binning married local girl, Jessie Isobel Wylie in 1936. The young couple's family backgrounds appear to have sheltered them from the worst of the depression. Jessie supported her husband's artistic and educational endeavors with a keen enthusiasm. Together they traveled for more than a year to England, Europe and New York, absorbing both classical and vanguard culture before returning to West Vancouver and sketching out their future home. As the world collapsed into war, Binning carried on his creative work in his newly-built home, his large studio approached from the end of the long corridor and up a few steps to the back of the house. He developed a distinct type of art, from his pen and ink sketches with their draughtsman-like skill to his abstract oil canvases and murals. Bright colors, geometric shapes and all things 'nautical' animated his work. Japanese art also came to influence Binning's style. Hie ferry linking travelers from the north shore to downtown Vancouver was replaced in 1938 by the Lion's Gate bridge, easing Binning's commute to the UBC campus in the post-war years. Besides his educational work, he launched the Fine Arts Gallery, Brock Hall Canadian art collection and was founder/ director of the Festival of Contemporary Arts. Binning also worked with architects to express his artistic vision in public buildings. This included the B.C. Electric Building at 970 Burrard Street in downtown Vancouver. Designed by Net Pratt and his team of architects, many original ideas went in to creating the lozenge-shaped tower in 1957. Binning designed the blue, green and grey mosaic tiles—rainy coastal colors— covering the buildings' exterior BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Donations to the B.C. Binning Residence endowment fund can be made by calling 1-877- 485-2422 or visiting www. conservancy.be.ca/binning Many thanks to Conservancy staffer and Binning house caretaker John Keller, for giving this writer a house tour and sharing stories. • Sources and Further Reading: B.C. Binning, by Abraham J. Rogatnick, Ian M. Thorn, Adele Weder, Douglas fit Mclntyre, Vancouver, 2005. Bertram Binning fonds, University of British Columbia Archives. Reconsidering the Binning House, Adele Weder, Thesis MAS.A., 2005, UBC School of Architecture. walls. He also suggested a curtain of glass for the adjacent substation wall facing the street. In this way pedestrians passing by could see in to the interior building design, including Binning's wall color scheme. Plastic panels, now yellowed with age, have since replaced the wall, following an explosion, but the main building's exterior is largely intact, despite the building's conversion to a condominium residence called The Electra. Binning's artistic abilities shine in another public display, his expressive mosaic of imported Venetian glass. The mural, commissioned by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce for a downtown Vancouver branch, portrays the many industries in B.C. in a joyful blend of abstract and realistic illustrations. Binning's art piece continues to endure on the east wall of the second floor of Granville and Dunsmuir Streets, the building now occupied by Shopper's Drug Mart. The contributions of Binning were appreciated in his life time. In 1971 he received the Order of Canada Medal of Service and in 1974 he received the degree of D.Litt from UBC. The preservation of his home marks further recognition. Maintaining this unique residence and the stories it contains, connect our city's cultural past to the present. The Binnings would undoubtedly approve. • "Colour: Selected after consultation with Knoll's International Limited and Mr. B.C. Binning, Associate professor of Art at U.B.C. The blue and green of the pattern mosaic tile and the soft grey of the curtain wall are colours which are natural to B.C. landscapes and are kept in low key, so they will remain in sympathy with the surroundings of the building, for years to come." From Information for tour guides, August, 1957 published by BC Electric BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 The Artful Dewdney: New Light on the Sketchy Character of the Honourable Edgar Dewdney By a cooney Life is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. — Crowfoot1 At the dawn of the twentieth century, the Honourable Edgar Dewdney entered his sunset years. Looking back over nearly five decades in Canada, he decided that the perfect antidote to looming obscurity was to get started on his autobiography.2 Not too far into the project, Dewdney decided to add a bit of romance to the work and copied—verbatim—several pages from W. Champness's To Cariboo and Back, an account of British Columbia's first gold rush serialized in the weekly British magazine The Leisure Hour in April 1865.3 Why this attempt at autobiographical fraud? It hardly seems necessary. For better and for worse, few men before or since have had a greater impact on Western Canada than Edgar Dewdney. In British Columbia, Dewdney was a pioneering surveyor, trailblazer and roadmaker, gold prospector, rancher, entrepreneur, surveyor general, and popular colonial politician supporting union with Canada. He is sometimes called the father of roadmaking in British Columbia. As the federal Member of Parliament for British Columbia's Yale-Kootenay district his efforts had a significant and positive impact on the fate of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the Northwest Territories, Prime Minister John A. MacDonald first appointed Dewdney Indian commissioner and then lieutenant governor. As lieutenant governor, Dewdney appeared to wield near-dictatorial powers that shaped the fate of the First Nations, Metis, settlers, the CPR, and the democratic development of the Northwest. He was a key figure in the Regina Land Scandal, the 1885 Northwest Rebellion, the hanging of Louis Riel, and the post-rebellion repression visited upon the First Nations. Dewdney went on to become the federal member for East Assiniboia in the Northwest and when Sir John A. Macdonald appointed him Interior Minister he became the first Western Canadian to serve in Cabinet. Finally, when Prime Minister John Abbott appointed Dewdney the lieutenant governor for British Columbia, he became the first and last Canadian to serve as lieutenant governor in two different jurisdictions. Dewdney had been friend or foe to many of nineteenth-century Canada's famous names. He had known: colonial governors James Douglas, Frederick Seymour and Anthony Musgrave; politicians and newspapermen Amor De Cosmos, John Robson, and Nicholas Flood Davin; the chiefs Crowfoot, Sitting Bull, Poundmaker, Piapot, and Big Bear; CPR men like Sanford Fleming and Marcus Smith; aristocratic governor generals Lord Dufferin, Lord Lome, and Lord Aberdeen; prime ministers Alexander Mackenzie, John Abbott, John Thompson, Charles Tupper, and Wilfrid Laurier. And, of course, Dewdney counted the great nation builder Sir John A. Macdonald among his closest personal and political friends. On top of all this, Dewdney was a serial entrepreneur; he died in 1916 with an estate valued at around $80,000, which does not sound like much, but it is the equivalent of 1.5 million today.4 Despite this strenuous, controversial, and privileged life—for some reason—Dewdney felt the CJ Cooney a freelance writer and researcher interested in the areas of communication, narrative, culture, and history. The Honorable Edgar Dewdney BC Archives photo A-01176 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY • Vol. 42 No. 2 Notes 1 Grant W. Baxter and Wendy J. Stuart. Death and the Adolescent. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), vii. Quotation modified by CJ Cooney. 2 Edgar Dewdney. "Reminiscences." 1-29: British Columbia Archives, BCA, E/E/D51, n.d. Dewdney's autobiographical efforts resulted in this document. 3 W. Champness. "To Cariboo and Back." In The Leisure Hour 1865: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation. (London: n.p., 1865) pp. 203-07, 15-19,31-34,46-50,57-60. Analyis of pages 19 to 29 of Dewdney's "Reminiscences" reveal them to be an almost verbatim copy of pages 257-260 of Champness's work. 4 Converting $80K from 1916 to current dollars is a rough calculation. Two sources were used to do this. First Source: 1a) It took one Canadian Dollar to buy one U.S. Dollar in 1916. Source for 1a: Lawrence H. Officer, "Exchange rate between the United States dollar and forty other countries, 1913-1999." Economic History Services, EH.Net, 2002, http://eh.net/ hmit/exchangerates (accessed 6 August 2006). 1b) In 2008, $80,000.00 from 1916 was worth between US$1,618,819.55 (using the GDP deflator) and US $1,131,773.45 (using the Consumer Price Index). Source for 1b: Samuel H. Williamson, "Six Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1790 to Present," MeasuringWorth, 2008, http:// www.measuringworth.com/ uscompare (accessed 25 March 2009). 1c) In March 2009, US$ 1,375,296.50 (the average of US$1,131,773.45 and US$ 1,618,819.55) was the equivalent of CAN$ 1,576,298.83 (based on a five-year average interbank exchange rate of 1.146152 for 2005-2009). Source for 1c: http://www.oanda.com/ convert/ fxhistory (accessed 25 March 2009). Second Source, for need to borrow stories from the life of someone else. Why? In Dewdney's lifetime, he appeared to many a member of the upper-class English elite—a terrible snob forever flaunting his wealth.5 To modern historians, he is a figure of disdain;6 he is the archetypical self-aggrandizing English adventurer;7 and, he hails from those better classes composed of well-bred, well-off, expensively educated gentlemen seeking to duplicate in Canada the British social structures that automatically afforded them high social rank, unearned respect, undeserved privilege, and special access to economic opportunity.8 It is written of Dewdney today that he "believed that the low-born were unfitted for the reins of power and that high office was best reserved for those habituated to it by birth and formation."9 This is wrong, of course. Dewdney believed no such thing. Documents in the United Kingdom's National Archives now prove that Dewdney was born into the spectacular nineteenth-century poverty that provided Charles Dickens and Karl Marx with grist for their writing. Dewdney was the son of a humble boatman. He grew up in a tenement with the children of dhimney sweeps and sailors for playmates. These documents provide new and unexpected information on Dewdney's origins in Great Britain and shed new light on Dewdney's complex personality: he was far more Artful Dodger than pedigreed English gentleman. The documents also make clear the true arc of Dewdney's life: he would defy the traditional fate of his working class origins; he would do it during a class-obsessed age when social origin almost always dictated destiny; he would rise from the depths of an English slum to the heights of Canadian society. To do this, Edgar Dewdney reinvented himself in British Columbia as surely as Archie Belaney had reinvented himself as Grey Owl in Temagami, Ontario. Of the two, Dewdney was the more successful pretender, for Dewdney's secret remained undiscovered for 150 years. There is no small gap between what we think we know about the life of Edgar Dewdney and what we actually know. This gap invites a search for the real Edgar Dewdney. How is it that the son of a Devon boatman came to play a large and deciding role in the fate of early Western Canada? How is it that Dewdney's deception fooled shrewd colonial governors, Canadian prime ministers, aristocratic governors general, and hostile newspapermen? The Cover Story Dewdney's life in Canada began with a fictional cover story. In it, he misidentified the names of both his father and mother. He falsified the place of his birth. He misrepresented the quality of his education and invented stories of having played cricket against the age's cricketing legends. He concocted a false resume to give the impression he possessed important social connections. He claimed acquaintance with famous politician and author Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton (who bequeathed to the world the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night"). He travelled to the new world as all working-class persons did—in third class steerage. To explain why he, supposedly a well-educated son from a family of means, had arrived penniless in Victoria, he made up a story about blowing a small fortune in old New York. By sticking to his cover story, Dewdney was able to spend fifty-seven years in Canada posing as a member of the better classes and keeping secret the truth of his lowly origins. Unfortunate Son Edgar Dewdney was born on November 5,1835, but not to Charles Dewdney and Fanny Hollingshead as Dewdney may have reported.10 In reality, he was born to John Dewdney and Elizabeth Parsons.11 His family was not one of means.12 His father was a boatman working the rivers, canals, and harbour waters of Devon and his mother was most likely a lace maker.13 By misidentifying them, Dewdney's friends would not be able to look up his parents during their visits to England. This was one important way he kept his secret safe during a very social and gossipy age. The Geographic Shuffle Dewdney would claim to be born in the bustling port city of Bideford.14 He would also claim to have been "born in a pretty little place near Exeter."15 He was not born in Bideford, nor was he born anywhere near Exeter. He was, in fact, born in the sleepy village of East Budleigh, famous as the birth place of Sir Walter Raleigh and known for its lace making.16 Not long after Dewdney's birth, his father moved the family a few miles west to the river city of Exmoufh. There the family lived in a South Street tenement with agricultural labourers, sailors, lace makers, and chimney sweeps for neighbours.17 Dewdney's earliest memories would consist of the sights and sounds of this city slum and it was in this slum, like some apocryphal Artful Dodger, that Dewdney developed his talent for sleight of hand and sundry acts of legerdemain.18 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 the calculation (in $US): "What cost $80,000 in 1916 would cost $1,506,601.27 in 2007." The Inflation Calculator, http://www. westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi (accessed 25 March 2009). 5 Canada, The Debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada, 4th Session 6th Parliament, 14 April 1890, 3351. Nicholas Flood Davin accuses Dewdney of flaunting his wealth. 6 Patrick A. Dunae. "Review of the Frontier World of Edgar Dewdney / Long Day's Journey: The Steamboat and Stagecoach Era in the Northern West." BC Studies, no. 99 (2001): 3. 7 Brian Titley. Frontier World of Edgar Dewdney. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999), ix. 8 Patrick A. Dunae, Gentlemen Emigrants: From the British Public Schools to the Canadian Frontier, (Vancouver: Douglas & Mcintrye, 1981), 3,5. 9 Titley, 142. 10 Madge Wolfenden. "Edgar Dewdney." 1-7: British Columbia Archives, BCA.M/D51,1938,1. The names of Dewdney's parents in this document cannot be confirmed through the UK's National Archives. 11 The National Archives (United Kingdom). "Family Group Record." FamilySearch.org, n.d., http://www.familysearch.org/ eng/search/AF/family_group_ record.asp?familyid=12259008 (accessed May 30, 2009). 12 The National Archive (United Kingdom). "1841 England Census." Class: H0107; Piece 255; Book: 15; Civil Parish: Tiverton; County: Devon; Enumeration District: 6; Folio: 11; Page: 16; Line: 7; GSU roll: 241325. Edgar Dewdney helped blaze trails through roadless British Columbia. Image from W. Champness's To Cariboo and Back, which was published In the April 1865 Issues of The Leisure Hour, a British weekly journal. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 13 13 The occupation, relationships, and abodes of the Dewdney family and their neighbours are recorded in U.K. census data for 1841,1851, 1861,1871, and 1881. The specific census documents are: 1. The National Archive (United Kingdom). "1841 England Census." 2. The National Archive (United Kingdom). "1851 England Census." Class: H0107; Piece: 1865; Folio: 215; Page: 36; GSU roll: 221013. 3. The National Archive (United Kingdom). "1861 England Census." Class: RG9; Piece: 1382; Folio: 25; Page: 26; GSU roll: 542804.4. The National Archive (United Kingdom). "1871 England Census." Class: RG10; Piece: 2047; Folio: 78; Page: 25; GSU roll: 831766.; and, 5. "1881 England Census." Class: RG11; Piece: 2138; Folio: 85; Page: 20; GSU roll: 1341516. 14 Susan Louisa Allison. "Edgar Dewdney: Information supplied by Mrs. Susan Louisa Allison, his sister, who has been a resident of Princeton, B.C., since about 1858." 1: British Columbia Archives, BCA, M/D51,1928,1. 15 Noel Robinson. "The Story of My Life: Edgar Dewdney." The Daily Colonist, July 20,1913,10. 16 The National Archives (United Kingdom)." Edgar DEWDNEY (AFN: 1X74-08V)." FamilySearch.org, n.d., http:// www.familysearch.org/ Eng/ search/AF/individual_record. asp?recid=47172608 (accessed March 25,2009). 17 The National Archive (United Kingdom). "1841 England Census." 18 William Wymond Walkem. Stories of Early British Columbia. (Vancouver: News-Advertiser, 1914), 259. Dewdney's talent for sleight-of-hand was well known to his Canadian contemporaries. 19 Allison, 1. 20 Dunae, Gentlemen Emigrants, 4. A Rude Education When specifically asked about his education, it was Dewdney's habit to declare that he had been educated in Bideford, Tiverton, and Exeter—and leave it at that.19 He would leave it to his audience to assume he had attended good public schools. This is important. In nineteenth-century Britain, public schools were not in any way shape or form public.20 They were elite institutions, and remain so to this day. Tuition fees were affordable only for the upper and upper-middle classes. Of course, considering his origins, it was impossible for Dewdney to have ever actually attended a public school, and if he had, if s certain he would have trumpeted the fact. As it turned out, Dewdney had never lived in Bideford, let alone been educated there. He had, though, been schooled in Tiverton and Exeter, but the reality of his rude schooling would have horrified any true public school graduate. This was an essential element of his deception for Victorian society was riven by class prejudice—the wealthier classes often assumed the poor and lowborn came from intellectually frail and morally inferior stock.21 The difference between labourer and gentleman was the difference between being shamelessly and cruelly exploited and being treated fairly and respectfully.22 Dewdney could never reveal that at the tender age of six, he and his sisters were sent to Tiverton to live in the home of schoolmistress Eliza Turner—who probably tutored the Dewdney children in exchange for household labour and a modest stipend from their father.23 At fifteen, he was living in Exeter at the school of James and Emma Templeton.24 The Templeton school was independent but could hardly be considered a public school—enrolment included boys and girls of all ages and the entire number of students would comfortably fit into a small classroom. After completing this meagre schooling, Dewdney claimed to have left Devonshire to study civil engineering at Cardiff, a city in Wales famous for its coal and slowly developing a reputation for two other exports: engineers and geologists.25 In those days, civil engineering was not studied at universities or colleges, but learned by apprenticeship—exactly the kind of practical training class-conscious public- school boys looked on with scorn.26 Dewdney could have received this training almost anywhere, if he received it at all. Of course, Dewdney played the role of gentleman to perfection and for his entire life he benefited from the fact that those he met assumed he was from a wealthy family and been the recipient of a superior education. He played the part so well, these erroneous assumptions would last nearly a century after his death. Cricketing Legends Perhaps to add a dash of public school romance to his tale of training in Cardiff, Dewdney claimed to have played on the South Wales cricket team and that the highlight of his athletic career had been to play long-stop in a three-day match against All English, which involved no less than six of the greatest cricketers of the age: Clarke, Wisden, Wiltshire, Box, Stacey, and Lillywhite.27 This cricketing adventure added a wholesome air to Dewdney's story and, coupled with Dewdney's athleticism, undoubtedly gave his audiences the impression they were in the presence of a quintessential English gentleman- athlete. Upon completion of his training, young Dewdney headed for London where the demand for civil engineers was great. Resume Inflation Curiously, Dewdney never claimed to have plied the craft of the civil engineer in London. Instead, he claimed to be the private secretary to Sir John Lorry Rickards, a special consultant to the government of Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston on the bloodbaths of the 1857 Indian Mutiny.28 However, it seems unlikely that Dewdney would be either qualified or connected enough to secure the position; indeed, Dewdney's handwriting, unlike the elegant script of the well-educated gentleman, was always a bit on the crude side.29 When the young man immigrated to British Columbia, he did not have in his possession either a letter of recommendation or introduction from Sir John Lorry Rickards. In the absence of such documentary proof of employment—a critical thing in those days—or even a claim to have such documentary proof, it is likely Dewdney never served as private secretary to Rickards. However, by weaving Rickards into his origin story, Dewdney was able to add a bit of gentlemanly polish to his curriculum vitae. Famous Author In early 1858, Dewdney decided to immigrate to the Empire's newest colony, British Columbia, which—thanks to the Fraser River gold rush—had 14 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 become "as famous a point as there is on the earth's surface."30 Dewdney claimed to have interviewed with politician and author Colonial Secretary Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and received a letter introducing him to British Columbia's Governor James Douglas.31 The letter lent credence to the idea that Dewdney had access to the better parts of London society and vouched for his respectability and social standing. However, at the time, the Colonial Office's policy was to encourage immigration, especially to British Columbia, which many called Lytton's "child, his favorite colony."32 It is entirely likely that Dewdney's letter of introduction from Lytton was nothing more than a standard boilerplate introduction or what a letter to Colonial Office undersecretary Winston Churchill would one day refer to as the "usual soup plate" letter of introduction.33 Sir Edward's Colonial Office would hand out letters of introduction like candy over the next few years and Governor Douglas would fill a large drawer with letters of introduction presented to him by hordes of public school boys seeking comfortable government sinecures.34 Of course, the Colonial Office was not always so promiscuous with its recommendation of British Columbia and letters of introduction: Two years after Dewdney left for the new world, the Office of the Colonial Secretary—under new management— refused to recommend the undeveloped colony of British Columbia to "any particular class" of immigrant.35 A Humble Passage On March 5,1859, the boatman's son boarded the Borussia at Southampton—he was on his way to British Columbia. Had Dewdney been a gentleman from a well-off family, odds are he would have purchased one of the Borussia's £20 first-class tickets. * Had Dewdney travelled first class, he'd have been exempted from having his name, age, and occupation recorded in the ship's manifest.37 The ship's manifest for the voyage records Dewdney as being a 23 year old civil engineer sailing in the company of farmers, servants, clerks, and merchants. He had paid £8-8s for a ticket in third-class steerage.38 A few weeks later, on May 13,1859, Dewdney arrived in Victoria. He was almost broke. The Nest Egg Vanishes How does a boatman's son posing as a gentleman from the better classes explain arriving in a distant colony with only a few dollars to his name? Dewdney invented a rather ingenious tale. First, he declared that he had left England with a nest egg of £150.39 Thaf s the equivalent of $23,000 Canadian dollars. 40 Then, he said he'd blown almost all of it during two weeks of fun in old New York.41 Did Dewdney ever actually have £150? Likely not. Explaining how he had blown £150 in New York meant he did not have to explainhow a gentleman of his apparent social standing had arrived penniless in the new world. Of course, this was a rather cheeky story: then as now, New York was a "wild metropolis" with a sales pitch for every vice and diversion known to man.42 It would have amused Dewdney's contemporaries to imagine which vices and diversions he had blown his substantial nest egg on. When pressed for details, if s certain the gentleman Dewdney would have declined to elaborate. The Performance One of the major factors in Dewdney's successful deception was that he possessed the natural bearing and good looks of an English gentleman. He was tall, athletic, and possessed a quick mind. In time, he mastered the manners, wit, and snobberies of the gentleman. To complete the picture, Dewdney spent what little money he had on gentlemanly trappings, things such as a fashionable frock coat and a handkerchief embroidered with his initials; indeed, his tall hat was only the second Victoria's Victorian society had ever seen.43 Aside from looking the part, Dewdney did possess the skills of a surveyor; the colony did need qualified surveyors; he did interview well with both Governor Douglas and Colonel Moody and appeared to them to exemplify that "sound sterling English element" they would endeavour to cultivate (often at the expense of immigrants unable to claim the status of English gentleman).44 On his first full day ashore, Dewdney did win the last surveyor's position in British Columbia. Had Dewdney arrived a day later or failed to win that position, it is likely Douglas would have suggested he try his hand as a labourer on the mainland. Indeed, Douglas would devastate many a genuine gentleman with that suggestion over the next few years.45 Dewdney's performance that day won him entry into the warm embrace of British Columbia's insular English society.46 Failing to win entry or losing favour with British Columbia's ruling elites could prove problematic. The job Dewdney won had been lost by a man named Cochrane. Within a few months of losing the job, 21 Two examples of English upper-class contempt. Margaret A. Ormsby. British Columbia: A History. (Toronto: Macmillan, 1958), 266. James S.Donnelly, Jr., The Great Irish Potato Famine. (London: Sutton Publishing, 2001), 20, 31-32. 22 Dunae, Gentlemen Emigrants, 3 23 The National Archive (United Kingdom). "1841 England Census." 24 The National Archive (United Kingdom). "1851 England Census." 25 Robinson, "The Story of My Life: Edgar Dewdney", July 20, 1913,10. 26 Dunae, Gentlemen Emigrants, 228 27 Details of Dewdney's cricketing game are found in two sources. Noel Robinson. "The Story of My Life: Edgar Dewdney." The Daily Colonist, September 71913,11. S.W. Jackman. The Men at Cary Castle. (Victoria: Morriss Printing Company, 1972), 53-54. 28 Robinson, "The Story of My Life: Edgar Dewdney", July 20, 1913,10 29 Numerous examples of Dewdney's "crude" handwriting can be found here in the Glenbow Museum, Archives, particularly: Edgar Dewdney Fonds, Series 13, Diaries and Journals. - 1879- 1888, M 320. 30 Robert Michael Ballantyne, ed.. Handbook to the New Gold Fields: A Full Account of the Richness and Extent of the Fraser and Thompson River Gold Mines. (Edinburgh: A. Strahan, 1858), 12. 31 Robinson, "The Story of My Life: Edgar Dewdney", July 20, 1913,10 32 Ibid. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 15 33 Joseph Chamberlain. "Letter from Joseph Chamberlain (Imperial Hotel, Torquay [Devon]) to WSC [Winston Spenser Churchill]." Churchill College, Churchill Archives Centre, Reference code: CHAR 10/8/11, February 6,1906, http://www- archives.chu.cam.ac.uk/perl/ node?search_id=1946074;sort_ by=Dscore;index=0 (accessed 19 February 2008). 34 Dunae, Gentlemen Emigrants, 40. Governor Douglas's pattern for dealing with young English gentlemen seeking work is based upon the experience of Richard Byron Johnson. 35 Anonymous. Cariboo: the newly discovered gold fields of British Columbia by a Returned digger. (London: Darton fit Hodge, 1862), 79-80. This warning to potential emigrants appeared under the heading "THE COLONIAL SECRETARY'S INFORMATION" and was extracted from an 1861 pamphlet published during the tenure of Colonial Secretary Henry Pelham-Clinton. 36 "Steam to New York, from Southampton [Advertisement]," The Times, 15 February 1859, 2. 37 Dunae, Gentlemen Emigrants, 6 38 The National Archives (United Kingdom). "New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957." Year: 1859, Arrival: New York, United States, Microfilm serial: M237, Microfilm roll: M237190, Line: 11, List number: 170. 39 Dewdney, Reminiscences, 1. 40 The conversion of £150 in 1858 to 2009 Canadian dollars is a rough calculation. 1) US$ 20,099.92 is the average of $12,136.03 to $28,063.81, the range of 2007 US$ conversion values generated using the GDP deflator method. Source: Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, "Computing 'Real Value' Over Time With a Conversion Between U.K. Pounds and U.S. Dollars, 1830 - 2007", Measuringwbrth, 2008, http:// H? In 1860s British Columbia, it took many feats of derring-do just to get to the gold fields Image from W. Champness's To Cariboo and Back, which was published in the April 1865 issues of The Leisure Hour, a British weekly journal. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Cochrane would take his own life.47 The consequences of being excluded from respectable society and Htting bottom, whether as a result of class prejudice, ethnic favouritism, or self-destructive tendencies, were quick and cruel on the frontier. Dewdney's class jumping would have required an extraordinary acting ability; it is no simple thing for a boatman's son to pretend to be a gentleman. While Dewdney's great bluff hardly seems a mean feat today then, it would have been remarkably difficult. In the late nineteenth century, the term gentleman was not a polite, longer version of the word man, as it is today; to Victorians, the term gentleman referred to a distinct class of men who enjoyed superior social rank.48 The rewards of playing impostor were, however, worth the risk: liberation from a life of grinding poverty and hard labour. Indeed, the low-born son of a boatman had little to lose in the trying. Cracks in the Gentlemanly Facade Despite outward appearances, Dewdney was not quite the epitome of the English gentleman. His ability to blend in at the extremely civil and highly refined formal social functions of governors, lieutenant governors, governors general and prime ministers was only surpassed by his ability to trade jokes and stories around the campfire with Indians, miners and labourers in the most rugged and remote corners of nineteenth-century Canada. He differed from the stereotypical English gentleman in two other important ways. First, he did not exhibit the English gentlemen's sense of entitlement for the simple reason that, as a native of the underclass, he had never been bred to feel entitled. Second, Dewdney was not immune to the prejudices of his age, however, where true English gentlemen often exercised class prejudice and displayed disdain for Indians, lowly miners, and eastern-born Canadians, Dewdney sometimes proffered respect and friendship.49 Indeed, few of his adopted class could claim, as Dewdney could, to have picked up Chinook Jargon—a patois of native and European languages—in order to better communicate with the First Nations people of British Columbia.50 Conclusion New light on the origin of Edgar Dewdney makes clear his primary motivation in life was to escape poverty and attain two key things from which those of his low social station were excluded, namely, social recognition and economic opportunity. This new insight offers a new critical standpoint from which to reassess our understanding of the life and career of Edgar Dewdney. If all Dewdney had been was a successful class jumping impostor, this would be an interesting project. However, it is also an important project, for Edgar Dewdney was a key figure at the centre of many of the essential moments that shaped early Western Canada and as events played out—for better and, often, for worse—Dewdney's failures and achievements left Canada a changed place. It is a remarkable thing to consider that the fulcrum of Western Canadian history had, if ever so briefly, rested upon the ideas and actions of the son of a Devon boatman. Equally remarkable is the fact that when Edgar Dewdney sat down to record the events of his life, he felt the need to continue mixing fact with fiction. He had lived a spectacular rags-to-riches story. It must have been frustrating to be unable to boast of this accomplishment without blowing his cover story. Perhaps he was discouraged that his cover story lacked the romance and epic scope of his true secret story. This may be why Dewdney felt the need to borrow stories of gold rush derring-do from W. Champness's To Cariboo and Back. It is astonishing that Dewdney's life in Canada began with a fictional cover story. It is tragic that his life in Canada ended with an attempt at autobiographical sleight-of-hand. • www.measuringworth.com/ exchange (accessed 26 March 2009). 2) In AAarch 2009, US$ 18,307.55 was the equivalent of CAN$ 23,037.56 (based on a five-year average interbank exchange rate of 1.146152 for 2005-2009), http:// www.oanda.com/convert/ fxhistory (accessed 25 March 2009). 41 Dewdney, Reminiscences, 2. 42 Luc Sante. Low Life: The Lures and Snares of Old New York. (New York: Vintage Books, 1991). 43 Dewdney's sense of fashion can be gleaned from two sources, for frock coat and tall hat: Dewdney, Reminiscences, 7; for pesonalized handkerchief: Robinson, "The Story of My Life: Edgar Dewdney", July 20,1913, 10. 44 Ormsby, British Columbia: A History, 191. The governor and colonel were accused of promoting English gentlemen ahead of Canadians. 45 Dunae, Gentlemen Emigrants, 40. The English gentleman Richard Byron Johnson was told by Governor Douglas to seek work as a labourer on the mainland. 46 Margaret A. Ormsby, ed. A Pioneer Gentlewoman in British Columbia: The Recollections of Susan Allison, (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1976), xiv-xv. 47 Dewdney, Reminiscences, 8. 48 Dunae, Gentlemen Emigrants, 3, 5. 49 Two examples of Dewdney extending respect/friendship to persons outside his "adopted" class, Dewdney, Reminiscences, 14; Edgar Dewdney. "Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31st December, 1890" Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, 1891, Volume 15,1st session of the 7th Parliament, xxix-xxx. 50 Noel Robinson. "The Story of My Life: Edgar Dewdney." The Daily Colonist, August 10,1913,10. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 17 An Education in Gumbo A Road Trip in 1927 By Mary Leah de Zwart Mary Leah de Zwart's previous article for BC History was The Red Book Revealed: British Columbia's Home Economics Secret 1930 - 1975 in issue 40.2 I ven in 1927, car travellers thought automobile associations were important for route planning. Annie Cutler, a twenty-six year I old teacher from Burnaby, her two younger sisters Ada and Frank, and Olive Sutherland, a family friend, found time to stop in at the local auto club association in Kelowna on their 2400-mile return road trip from Vancouver to Telkwa. If you look at a map of B.C., you'll notice Kelowna is not exactly on the way to either Vancouver or Telkwa. Were they lost? No, they were just determined not to travel the Fraser Canyon on the way home. Annie's travel diary, preserved in the Provincial Archives of British Columbia, explains their trip on the wild interior roads of B.C. and their "education in gumbo". The four travellers left Vancouver at seven a.m. on June 30,1927, in a 1920 Chevrolet touring car with over 200,000 miles on it. The car had side steps piled so high with luggage that the women had to climb over the doors to get in the seats; its top was canvas with side curtains to be put on when it rained. The Fraser Canyon Road was the first challenge of the trip. "If one is not going up hill," Annie wrote, "one is going down, and all on what is pleasantly called 'side hill road'". The women asked at the butcher store in Lytton for information about the road through to Lillooet, and heard it was an enjoyable little two and a half hour drive with a few curves. What they didn't know was that the road went over the top of Pavilion Mountain. At one point Annie looked over the side of the car to the Fraser River, down a graveled cliff, "about one and three quarters degrees from the perpendicular and nothing between. Not even a fern". Annie's party found several auto-camps to stay at along the way. The best -equipped one was in Kamloops, complete with electric stoves. Not that they actually cooked; several meals consisted of soda biscuits and ox-tail soup with an occasional change to cheese and soda crackers. Jack Payne of the Pine Tree Auto Camp in Clinton regaled the women with stories; "He will tell you much of the old days, of the hen house built entirely of bottles, rum bottles, whiskey bottles of every known variety and plastered with mud and generally entertain you with lore of the Cariboo, to which country he is much attached". They spent evenings around the campfire singing songs and playing the ukulele. At Clinton they heard, much to their relief, that they did not have to retrace their steps through the Fraser Canyon but could return home via the Okanagan and Washington State. The presence of four young women on the road was a novelty; two young men from a road camp split wood for them one evening and sent over flapjacks and syrup for breakfast. The storekeeper at 100 Mile House wanted to keep Ada as a housekeeper for a week as his wife was away. About this, Annie wrote, "The poor man knew not what he asked, for Ada as a cook would make an excellent hair dresser; so as to save his digestion we dragged our small sister away". The ultimate challenge was mud. Annie described the road between Clinton and Prince George as "looking like a farm yard on a very wet day with ten sets of ruts". The women bought a set of chains in Quesnel for $7.50, an extravagance they thought useless until they hit the roads around Vanderhoof. Then Annie wrote, "Oh blessed chains, they certainly saved our lives." A family friend, RCMP Constable T.E.E. Greenfield (known as Ern) joined them in Prince George and accompanied them the rest of the way to his detachment in Telkwa. At Burns Lake they encountered voracious mosquitoes, "who had called all their clan to the banquet of fresh meat newly come from Vancouver". Ern slept in his sleeping bag and BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 the women occupied the tent; they made a smudge in a frying pan to chase the mosquitoes out. The week at Telkwa left them with warm memories; "We have never before had the pleasure of meeting more friendly folk from a more friendly town". Now to get home; mud, rain and mechanical problems continued. Between Vanderhoof and Prince George, Annie drove down Swede Creek Hill for the scariest ride of the whole trip. "The road was almost hub deep in mud. Before we knew it we were halfway down sliding along in second gear with both brakes on hard and one wheel in the inside ditch". They stopped, put on the chains, and Ern and the girls walked ahead with the flashlight while Annie manoeuvred the car through fog and mist. They said good bye to Ern at Prince George and continued on their way through Quesnel and Williams Lake, to the finest campsite they found, Lac La Hache Camp. Their favourite portion of the return trip was along Kalamalka Lake between Vernon and Kelowna; "It had not the grandeur of the Canyon Road, but the beautiful colourings of the Lake and the rounded hills on all sides not to mention the beauties of a wide road, easy turns and last but not least, the fence on the outside of the road". The Chev had developed a front end shbnmy within three blocks of the group's departure from Vancouver. This did not deter them; they simply called in at one of the many jgS garages on Kingsway in Vancou- ver and had one of the bolts in the steering I gear tightened. After all, Annie had been driving for a few years, and their father, a machinist, had taught them some mechanical details. Soon they started to refer to the sriimmy as "our old friend". The right front tire became known as the "Jonah tire": it picked up nails and had to be changed twice in two days, once at the top of Pavilion Mountain. In Salmon The first car on the "new" Cariboo road, near Boston Bar. BC Archives A-03076 Cariboo Highway between Spuzzum and Lytton. BC Archives A-04683 Reference: Greenfield, Annie. (1927). Reminiscences of a motor trip made in the summer of 1927 from Vancouver to Hazelton via the Fraser Canyon and Cariboo Highway, and of the return journey made via Kamloops, the Okanagan, and Washington state. MS-1066. Victoria, BC: Provincial Archives of British Columbia. Permission to use these memoirs and photographs was kindly obtained from David Greenfield of Milton, Ontario, son of Annie and Em Greenfield. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY ■ Vol. 42 No. 2 19 Cutler Camp, 1916 Arm they noticed a rumble in the rear end; in Vernon they took a garage man for a ride to try to diagnose the cause. "But could we hear that grind? Not a sound from it while he was with us. We almost ran away with him as a traveling garage man would have been a great help". After picking up maps in Kelowna they continued on to northern Washington State. Four miles from the small town of Cle Elum, Washington, the rear end of the Chev jammed. It was Saturday afternoon; no mechanic worked on Sunday, and the party had only six dollars among them. They wired home for money and waited over until Monday. "Someone suggested church, but we had no hats and not much ambition". They started on the last lap to Vancouver at 4 p.m. on Monday, July 29, "determined to go until we got home even if the car fell to pieces on the way". Ten hours and two hundred and forty miles later, Annie drove the Chev into the family garage at 32417th Avenue, Vancouver. The family soon appeared in pajamas to let the travellers in, and they had tea and talked until daylight. Annie concluded her diary with these words: "Here endeth the famous history of our motor trip through the ever changing scenery of interior British Columbia, surrounded by the glamour of the old Cariboo days and the beauties of that wonderful country, not to mention the mud". The secrets to successful road trips in 1927 were maps, chains and a good mechanic. • BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 British Columbia Historical Federation Newsletter NO. 26 June 2009 ISSN print online 1710-1433 1710-1441 YOU MAY COPY AND CIRCULATE TO YOUR MEMBERS website bchistory.ca From the President's Desk We have just returned from the Nelson conference. The event was notable and most enjoyable except for my hard drive dying and a 4 hour closure on the Hope-Princeton. We doubled back to Princeton, then up to Merritt, a road new to us and down the Coquihalla, an extra 280 kms and 3 hours. The Conference was highlighted on Thursday with the Lieutenant Governor In attendance and presenting the book prizes. Friday's bus tour had visits to New Denver, Sandon and Kaslo and trips through Slocan and Ainsworth. A lovely day with fascinating history of the area. The evening offered the first reading of a historical drama being developed about S.G. Blaylock and Ginger Goodwin. Saturday's AGM was well attended with interesting members' reports followed by Eric Jamieson's presentation on the collapse of the Second Narrows (Ironworkers Memorial) Bridge in Vancouver (Eric's book won the Lt-Governor's award) and a walking tour of downtown Nelson. The banquet finished off the day. Thanks to the Nelson crew that put on a very enjoyable conference. Your Council met on Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. A good amount of material was covered. Your President was authorized to sign the contract with Johnson Inc. to make travel and home insurance available through membership in the Federation and this has now been done. Both products are spoken highly of by those who have used them. Member societies will receive information in the coming months. Digitization of printed material, documents and maps was another topic discussed in detail and the Federation is prepared to enter into a program with UBC to digitize the back issues of the BC Historic Newsletter and BC History magazine. We have permission to digitize the BC Historical Quarterly produced jointly by the BCHA and BC Archives between 1937 and 1958. Proposed changes to the Bylaws and Regulations were adopted and revisions will be posted on the website and mailed to those without net access. A new Committee headed by Anne Edward is to encourage government to teach B.C. history and a committee headed by Tom Lymbery for the promotion, preservation and marking of historical sites, relics, natural features and other objects & places of historical interest. Welcome to new Council members Teedie Kagume and Mary Campone and thanks to retiring member Gord Miller. Other Committee heads have agreed to continue serve. A committee recommendation was the formation of the position of Federation Archivist. Teedie Kagume, who has been an archivsitforthe past 18 years, has assumed the position. Ron Greene, President Nelson Conference The Council for 2009-2010 elected at the AGM Honorary President President 1st Vice President 2nd Vice President Recording Secretary Secretary Treasurer Board of Directors Mary Campone Tony Cox Marie Elliott Jacqueline Gresko Barb Hynek Lorraine Irving Teedie Kagume Alice Marwood Brenda Smith Ex-Officio Patrica Roy John Atkin Ron Hyde Ron Welwood Ron Hyde(Richmond) Ron Greene (Victoria) Anne Edwards (Moyie) Tom Lymbery (Gray Creek) Jill Rowland (Vancouver) Janet Nichol (Vancouver) Ken Welwood (Parksville) (Kamloops) (Lions Bay) (Victoria) (Richmond) (Surrey) (Vancouver) (Powell River) (Surrey) (Maple Ridge) Past President (Victoria) Journal Editor (Vancouver) Newsletter Editor (Richmond) Website Editor (Nelson) 2008 Historical Writing Competition - 2008 Lieutenant-Governor's Medal Eric Jamieson, author of Tragedy at Second Narrows: The Story of the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge (Harbour Publishing) *M Second Prize - Margaret Horsfield for Voices from the Sound: Chronicles of Clayoquot Sound Eric Jamieson & The and Tofino 1899-1929 Honourable Steven Point (Salal Books) Lieutenant Governor BC Third Prize - StephenHume for Simon Fraser: In search of Modern British Columbia (Harbour Publishing) Honorable Mention - Eileen Truant Pedersen for Set in Stone: A History of Trail's Rock Walls (The Rock Wall Project Entusiastico Soc & Lookout Mountain Productions) 2008 Historical Writing Competition cont'd Honorable Mention - Douglas C. Harris iovLanding Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves & Fishing Rights in British Columbia 1849-1925 (UBC Press) Daphne Sleigh for The Man Who Saved Vancouver: Major James Skitt Matthews (Heritage House Publishing) These awards were presented at the Nelson Conference Reception May 14th The 2008 Recognition Winners were presented certificates at the Nelson Conference May 16, 2009 Certificates of Merit Vancouver Historical Society - City Reflections 1907 - 2009. This DVD is a resource for students and a model of Historic Film preservation. Vancouver Sun - For their 2008 series of articles of B.C. families covering all ethnic groups Certificates of Appreciation Melva Dwyer - for her many years of service on the BCHF Council and indexing the BC History magazine Eileen Mak - for Journal sales, website and many other service to the Federation David Obee - For his many contributions to BC History. He has researched, spoken, written campaigned, lobbied and published the Province's heritage. B.C. Library Association and the Public Services Branch of the Ministry of Education for "Read all over the Map". The summer reading club that had over 80,000 children celebrating B.C.'s 150th birthday and learning about B.C.'s history and the past. Certificates of Recognition Ms. Tracey Groot - To honor Ms. Groot for the preservation and communication of hockey in Smithers and the Bulkley Valley Marg Leffler -To honor the contribution Marg has made to activities and publication to the Parksville Historical Society and Region. Parker Williams - For long-time Community Services and the Nanaimo Historical Society This is the first year for the Certificates of Recognition which are specifically designed for Member Societies to nominate an outstanding member of their Society or a local resident who has made a significant effort or contribution for the preservation and/or promotion of British Columbia's exciting history. For information on these awards check www.bchistory.ca and Awards/Merit A note from Marg Leffler -1 am deeply appreciative of the honor you are bestowing on me with this Certificate of Recognition and am grateful to the members of the Parksville and District Historical Society for nominating me. Thank you all so much! Anne & Philip Yandle Best Article Award Bill Laux (in memorium) for A Kootenay Saga published in Volume 41 No. 4. The $250 award is being presented to the Fauquier Reading Club of which Bill was a member Rosemarie Parent accepting Bill President Ron Greene Laux award from BC Editorial Cartoons at SFU's Special Collections The following editorial cartoonists are included in this digitized collection - Robert Bierman, Graham Harrop, Robert Krieger, Dan Murphy, Len Norn's, Roy Peterson, Ingrid Rice, Jim Rinner as well as two cartoonists with Alberta connections - John Larter and Edd Uluschak. Other cartoon collections held atSFU Special Collections include Mike Apsey's collection of over 70 editorial cartoons on the 'softwood lumber wars' and the Charles Hou collection. Mr. j Hou, now retired, was an award j winning Burnaby high school j teacher and a tireless promoter j of editorial cartoons - he also collection them. A rough i estimate of Hou's collecting are over 70 volumes, each volume holding 250 to 300 cartoons. To view over 6,000 digitized editorial cartoons, go to http://edocs.lib.sfu.ca/proiects/Cartoons/ The site also has information on teaching resources and technical notes. SFU Library has recently received monies from the British Columbia History Digitization Program to digitize and additional 800 editorial cartoons, all of which will feature British Columba. Langley Heritage Society and Genealogy The Fraser Valley Regional Library now offers access to Ancestry, a free searchable database of genealogical resources including US, UK and Canadian census returns, vital statistics, parish records, military records, court records, ship passenger lists, city directories, family trees, periodicals, local histories and maps. This is a library edition of a popular commercial database and is available on the library computers. The Bill Silver Digital Newspaper Archive The project was named in recognition J of the late Bill Silver who was a long time resident of Vanderhoof and an avid historian. Mr. Silver had a keen I interest in the development of the area I which inspired him to collect issues of ■ ___jl ? jta the weekly newspaper. This collection became an invaluable resource for the community. The papers also became the basis of a weekly column in the Omineca Express entitled "A Look at the Past" by Bill Silver. Now that the collection has been preserved, the Silver's work will be appreciated for generations to come. The creation of the Bill Silver Digital l^^^^^W Newspaper Archives has been J_l§ilS iS* undertaken in partnership with the ^Spi t;-Jte Nechako Valley Historical Society. ,L JaP ^ne 9oa' °^ t'1e Proiect 's to digitize ~^r the weekly newspaper, Nechako Chronicle, and make it available worldwide in a searchable online database. The digitized issues range from 1930 -1983. The digitization and publication of the material will be of great benefit to local historians, teachers, genealogists and students from elementary school through university The official opening of the Bill Silver Digital Newspaper Archive took place March 21st, 2009 at the Vanderhoof Public Library. Search http://209.121.66.68/NCSearch_form.html A great reminder to share your history, collectibles, photographs, etc. with your local historical society, museum, archives, etc. Bamberton Historical Society invites you to celebrate Bamberton's 98th Anniversary family entertainment with Live Theatre, Bus and Walking Tours of the Historic Site, Guided Museum Tours, Documentary "Movie "Bamberton, Gone but not Forgotten" every Sunday 11:00 - 5:00 from June 28 til Sept. 27 Visit the historic site of the old company town and cement plant; the largest private remediation project and soil storage facility in B.C. and the quarry extending over 1000 feet into the mountainside. Enjoy the magnificent ocean and mountain views that are part of this tour For more information contact Maureen Alexander at dalexander2@shaw.ca or 250-743-9196 Enjoy a whole day of Bella Coola Valley Museum's new Digital Heritage site LOGGING IN THE BELLA COOLA VALLEY: The website now includes over 600 new photos and a new History of Logging Page. The logging history of the Bella Coola Valley is an enticing story that continues to resonate in our community. It begins with the ingenious techniques of the local Nuxalk peoples to harvest trees for personal subsistence. Significant First Nations participation in logging also extended into commercial logging in later years. Some started their own logging company prior to the arrival of multi-national companies. The history of the commercial logging industry begins in 1898 and traverses the development of local logging ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ cooperatives ■ to the moving in of the corporations. Its history, which is still being made, has come full circle with the development of the Bella Coola Valley Resource Society, which has recently obtained a community forest license. The Nuxalk Nation has also received tenure for a community forest license. Click on the link to enter the Digital Heritage Project http://www.bellacoolamuseum.ca/en/digital_heritage/logg ing/index.php SFU Downtown Memory Project The Writing and Publishing Program at SFU launched the Downtown Memory Project with the boundaries of Burrard Street to Main Street and from False Creek to Burrard Inlet with stories of no more than 300 words. 65 stories were received and were heartfelt and passionate ones about experiences - many from childhood - that characterized downtown Vancouver for the writer. Segments such as: "Hastings Street was alive with buskers plying their trades outside Woodwards: the man playing the saw, the pencil seller and of course, Foncies Fotos" (Ron Hyde) created strong visual images and it seemed fitting to treat the text visually. A graphic artist at SFU, Jennifer Conolly, offered her skills to turn the stories into a visual display and the outcome was superb. The text as art worked and the stories were displayed in a corridor in Harbor Centre. A two day group of workshops and talks around capturing community history titled "Collective Memory" will take place November 13th and 14th. Check www.sfu.ca Historic Ymir Hotel After the Nelson Conference, a group of 8 participants visited the historic Ymir Hotel in the town of Ymir just north of Salmo and 28 km south of Nelson. The 1886 hotel was restored and expanded by owner Hans Wilking who has , given new life to one of the oldest remaining buildings in the region and has the distinction of being the longest continuous operating hotel/inn in the region. Wilking, originally from Germany, wanted a heritage I collection of the country he came to and starting with ■ sketches, his collection grew to ^ include west coast native art and paintings B.C., Canadian and American artists and has carvings from Papua New ' Guinea with a considerable amount of art work from Hawaii. The j Hotel's dining room is named Pua Hana j and the lounge/bar the Cowichan. On entering the Ymir Hotel, we were greeted with music played by a harpist I and a invitation to musical patrons to use one of the musical instruments on display to entertain the patrons. The restaurant and lounge serve excellent food with friendly staff. Hans gave us a tour of the Hotel, the 16 bedrooms and two large suites where the walls of the rooms are covered with painting and artwork. Every wall is covered including the ladies washroom (34 pieces) and the men's washroom (10 pieces) with over 500 artworks, 200 carvings, collectibles and books. The jewel of the Kootenays is a "must see" for anyone travelling to the Kootenays. The Historic Hotel Ymir is an Associate Member of the BC Historical Federation. Check out the Hotel's history, services and rooms/suites on their website www.hotelymir.ca $8.1 million for Provincial Heritage Sites The Honourable Bill Bennett, Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts, announced $8.1 million in new funding over the next three years for the dozen provincial heritage properties which include Barkerville, Fort Steele, Hat Creek Ranch, Cottonwood House, Yale Historic Site, Kilby Store and Farm, Keremeos Grist Mill and several historic houses in Victoria. These sites are operated by independent managers and a 2007 study recommended an infusion of cash for deferred maintenance and increase operating subsidies. It will also give site managers better ability to plan beyond the coming operating season. Trail Mysteries Revealed in new book "The Semiahmoo Trail: Myths, Makers, Memories" pulls back the curtain on a little-known piece of Surrey history. The Semiahmoo Trail was built 1873-74 and crossed Surrey from the Fraser River to the Canada-U.S. border. Local author Ron Dowle has written a highly readable first ever history of the Trail and was ppublished by the Surrey Historical Society. Much intrigue surrounds the origins of the Trail. Was it built by the renowned Royal Engineers? What was the catalyst for its construction? For a time, horse-drawn wagons and stagecoach service ran along its bone-jarring surface, transporting I settlers, intrepid visitors, government ' officials and fortune seekers, but within just 30 years it fell into disuse. Today, only a part of the original Trail remains. The 68 page book includes previously unpublished material from pioneer writings, surveyor field books and historical plans and maps held in the collections of the B.C. Archives and the archives of Surrey, White Rock, New Westminster and various sources in Whatcom County in Wahington State. It also includes a complete recreation of the original route superimposed on a current map of Surrey. The book is available at Black Bond Books, Chapters, Save-on-Foods, Whitby Books or from the Surrey Historical Society 778-294-1515 email ihwb@shaw.ca Nanaimo Museum website shows the life and times of Snuneymuxw First Nation Learning about the history of the Snuneymuxw First Nation is now fun and intereactive, thanks to a new website the Nanaimo District Museum is encouraging students to visit. Bobbi Williamson, the museum's program co-ordinator, said the "Voices of the Snuneymuxw First Nation website, created by the Virtual Museum of Canada, brings together a number of Snuneymuxw cultural objects that are in museums around the world and features them in colorful, interactive ways. Each object (such as fish hooks, looms and spindle whorls uncovered in archeological digs) form the centre of a class discussion, including their history and stories from elders of the Snuneymuxw, whose traditional territory surrounds the Nanaimo River estuary. The site also includes information about their language (Hul'q'umin'um), the environment they lived in and the band today. The new way of studying the history of the people who populated the area before the Europeans came, is a hit and using the Internet as a means to present the history of the Snuneymuxw and other subjects is becoming increasingly popular and useful to educators. 1934 Bedaux Expedition - 75 anniversary The Hudson's Hope Historical Society is celebrating the role the Hudson's Hope Cowboys played in Bedaux's adventures with a special summer exhibit "Our Hudson's Hope Cowboys: Packers on the Rail - a 75th anniversary celebration of the 1934 Bedaux Expedition". The Hudson's Hope cowboys were part of the advance freight outfit and others from the region that accompanied the Bedaux outfit as packers and wranglers. Heritage Legacy Fund museum's web site The summer exhibit Funding through the BC150 enabled the Society to procure previously unpublished photographs and correspondence from the cowboys' families and Library & Archives Canada. An online education component funded by the History Education Network (THEN) through UBC will be developed on the wwwhudsonhopemuseum.com officially opened on Sunday May 24th. Bob White, one of the Hudson's Hope cowboys, participated in the expedition and wrote about his adventures in his book Bannock & Beans. With the generous permission of his family, BC author Jay Sherwood has edited the manuscript and added more photographs and anecdotes. The new edition, published by the Royal BC Museum, will be launched at the Hudson's Hope Museum Friday July 10th along with the Paddle for the Peace event and a cowboy family reunion. For information contact Rosaleen at 250-783-5735 or email hhmuseum@pris.ca What's happening at BC heritage sites Maple Ridge Historical Society Music on the Wharf Since 1997, this free (by donation) concert series has taken place on the historic Port Haney wharf (on River Road just east of the Port Haney West Coast Express station). Twice in July and twice in August at 7:30 pm Monday nights, the concert series features local and regional bands with a variety of musical styles including jazz, blues, bluegrass, brass band and western. No seating is provided so bring your folding chair and sun hat and enjoy a lovely evening breeze off the Fraser River. July 13 - Golden Ears Jazz Band July 24 - Lavalights Aug 10 - Newhouse (formerly Roca) Aug 24 - John Hough & Jim Woodward for more information 604-463-5311 or check the website www.mapleridgemuseum .org What's happening cont'd Vancouver Maritime Museum celebrates 50 years and has plans to celebrate its 50th year with a spectacular August 8 - 9 weekend of maritime events with entertainment that everyone can enjoy. Heritage Harbour will be brimming with boats and the museum will feature many activities scheduled into the two days at the museum. Everyone is invited to celebrate and all events will be free to Museum members. The New Westminster Museum & Archives came across a donation offer on file that was received sometime between 1950 and 2005, reading verbatim "The two large Giant axes on handles were found under a large fir stump when the land was being cleared sometime in the 1920's by E.M. Norman, W.E.N. These axes were used by the Sasquatch who were the off spring of a Giant Father + human mother. There are two axes who were used by the Giants themselves but are too heavy to move" U.S. President Ronald Regan made famous the old Russian phrase "Trust but verify". Museum workers should take it to heart! A hearty welcome to our new members SOCIETY MEMBERS Castlegar Arts Council Chase & District Museum & Archives Society Cherryville & Area Historical Society Greenwood Heritage Society Golden & District Historical Society Lumby & District Historical Society Native Daughters of British Columbia (Hastings Mill) Sooke Region Historical Society South Cariboo Historical Museum Society The Riondel & Area Historical Society AFFILIATE MEMBERS Allen County Public Library (Michigan) Bamberton Historical Society Hotel Ymir John Oliver Historical Society Parks Canada - Fort Langley NHS Revelstoke Nickelodeon Museum UBC Faculty Women's Club - Heritage Group ASSOCIATE MEMBERS Alex Ash - Vancouver Bill McNullty- Richmond Check our website www.bchistory.ca - membership - present ones for members' web sites and review their activities, sites, events, etc. The Federation has 150 memberships representing over 13,000 members. Stop of Interest Signs - New Virtual History Tour Heritage BC has received a $20,000 grant to create a virtual history tour of the province based on the Stop of Interest (SOI) sign program first developed for the 1958 provincial centennial. Many British Columbians recall the signs fondly from The SOI program past auto trips and vacations, highlights and celebrates our historic milestones and increases British Columbians' knowledge and appreciation of their own history. It also promotes heritage tourism by encouraging B.C. residents to vacation at home and explore their province. Through the BC Stops of j Interest website, adults and children will travel the province via the internet using innovative Google Map technology, exploring heritage sites and places of historic significance along the way. In years past, travellers would pull in at the SOI signs to learn something about the rich history of the province. Now they will be able to do this from their laptops. The website, designed by Lis Bailly of Portfolio Art Services, will be informative, entertaining and visually stimulating. At each "Stop" you will find a story supported by archival images, contemporary photos, graphics, and artifacts. Enlivened by simple animation and rich media, visitors will be able to interact through games and quizzes. Each of nine virtual history tours will have a Web 2.0 community 'zone' for visitors to share their stories, post comments and upload photos or drawings. The site will include lesson plans and support materials for teachers and parents and function as a portal to other relevant resources, http://www.heritagebcstops.com/ Reflections from a first time Conference participant As a contact person for the BC History of Nursing Society, I traveled to Nelson and experienced my first Conference and it made the BCHF come alive for me. From start to finish, I enjoyed every minute of it meeting so many interesting and enthusiastic people. The Registration desk was filled with useful information and the hospitality suite, with book sales, offered a restful haven. The workshops on Thursday were both relevant and practical to member societies. The Opening Reception was special with the piper in full kilt regalia, piping in the honored guests including the Lieutenant Governor, the Honorable Steven L. Point, his wife and representatives from both local aboriginal tribes. The venue in Touchstones was incredible. The Silvery Slocan Heritage Tour showcased the wonderful scenery around Nelson and our guide enhanced the tour with hi intimate knowledge of the area making it an educational, interesting and fun day. The workshop production of Blay and Ginger at the Anglican Church Hall provided more history about Kootenay characters. The AGM was conducted efficiently with tact and diplomacy. I attended Eric Jamieson's talk and book signing in the afternoon and found it fascinating. The cemetery tour completed my afternoon. The banquet was lovely with great food, a surprise musician, the presentation of awards and certificates and a wonder story teller who wowed us with her story anof the Reckless Life of Henry Rose - the last man hanged at the Nelson Goal. Congratulations to the organizers of BCHF's Nelson Conference. Nan Martin - BC History of Nursing Society. New Westminster celebrates 150 years As the oldest city in Western Canada, New Westminster has a proud and rich history. In 1859, Royal Engineers arrived from England to establish the first capital of the colony of British Columbia and Governor James Douglas proclaimed that the new city I would be officially names "New i Westminster" - a name chosen by Queen Victoria herself which gave residents, both then and now, the honor of referring to their home as the "Royal City". Saturday - June 20th Heritage Neighbourhood Trolley Tour will showcase special pockets of the Royal City as neighbourhoods and organizations present entertainment and historical highlights unique to their part of the city includes a trip by boat across the Fraser River to visit the Queensborough neighbourhood. Saturday - June 27th Fashion Show "Fashion throughout the ages - Waisted efforts". A light-hearted look at the history of women's fashions during the 20th century. Wednesday - July 1st Canada Day festivities in Queen's Park and a spectacular display of fireworks along the Fraser River. Sataurday - August 22nd. A special fundraising event for the New Westminster Museum and Archives. Entertainment by a string quartet, a guided tour through Irving House and a fabulous dinner. For more information www.newwest150.ca NB#WESlMINSTEit The BCHF Newsletter is published quarterly. Editor Ron Hyde newsletter(a)JDchistorv. ca To get your own copy of the Newsletter mailed to you for 4 issues, send $5 cheque payable to BCHF and mail to: B.C.H.F Newsletter Steveston PO Box 63006 - Richmond, B.C. V7E 6K4 Piper Alistair Fraser Anne Edward & Jacqueline Gresko Tony Cox, Rosemary Parent, Lorraine Irving Don Wilson & Ron Welwood Flyndi the Magician Banquet guests Alistair Fraser, Lietenant Governor Steven Point and Mrs. Point Susan Holland Storyteller Jacqueline Gresko, Ron Hyde and Ron Welwood Photos courtesy of Alistair Fraser, Ken Welwood, Tony Cox, Ron Welwood and the office of the Lieutenant Governor. Check out more Conference pictures Http://bchistory.ca/conferences/2009/index.html The S.S. Moyie Tour- Kaslo Mm t_ii_3i SHU The Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre Silversmith Powerhouse - Sandon Heritage Machinery Park - Silverton Tour Guide Terry Turner Tour Guide Bill Sloan Sandon Grave Markers Silversmith Powerhouse - Sandon Photos courtesy of Alistair Fraser, Ken Welwood, Tony Cox and Ron Hyde Authors Please Take Note New and Updated BC History Submission Guidelines The submission guidelines for BC History have recently been updated. Please take the time to read them and acquaint yourself with the changes that have been made. Two major changes have been made. 1) no embedded images in the text file. While the majority of articles arrive in good order with separate text and image files a few have had embedded photos and lots of formatting, something that can consume a lot of time to undo. 2) digital files please. Digital files are now the order of the day, however in the rare circumstance where a computer does not exist as part of an author's set of tools BC History may accept a paper manuscript. The rest of the changes are clarifications and housekeeping. BC HISTORY MAGAZINE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES British Columbia History publishes feature-length articles as well as documentary selections, essays, pictorial essays, memoirs, and reviews relating to the social, economic, political, intellectual, and cultural history of British Columbia. The Publications Committee and the editor of BC HISTORYMagazine invite submission. Enquiries are directed to: The Editor 912 Princess Avenue Vancouver, BC V6B 3E8 bcheditor@bchistory.ca Manuscripts which have been published elsewhere, or are under review for publication elsewhere, will be considered at the editor's discretion. Illustrations provided with article submissions are welcomed. Scanned images must be: • of sufficient resolution for high-quality reproduction • no less than 300 dpi, preferably in jpg format • not embedded in text Permission to publish photographs and artwork from archives and other repositories is the responsibility of the contributor, and citations and copies of permissions (or assurance of permission) must be included with the submission. A two-three sentence biographical note about the author. The British Columbia Historical Federation assumes no responsibility for statements made by contributors. To submit an article: Format: Word Count 3000 to 5000 Electronic version, with file extension (either .doc or .rtf), will be required should the article be accepted for publication. All manuscripts must be typewritten, double- spaced, with footnotes (also double-spaced) at the end of the paper. Endnotes must follow Chicago Manual of Style, do not insert notes in text. Copyright policy: The BCHF maintains copyright in author's articles for onetime use only, after which the rights revert to the authors. However, the BCHF reserves the right to digitize the article as it appears in British Columbia History, and to reprint it in a future publication. The author may receive one complimentary copy. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 C.W.D. Clifford and His Mysterious Tokens Token History By Ronald Greene Ron Greene is the president of the BC Historical Federation Q Coast.' ne of the more unusually-denominated | tokens from Canada is a 17 cent trade f token bearing the name C.W.D. Clifford & Co., L.L. and the location "North West Another token is good for 35 cents, which is also an uncommon denomination. In the 1890's the region of British Columbia known as the North-West Coast extended from Alert Bay to Alaska. Charles William Digby Clifford was the only son of the Rev. Richard S. Clifford of Kent, England and Harriet Young Clifford. He was born at Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim, Ireland on October 14, 1842.: According to his obituary Clifford, "came to British Columbia attracted by [the] gold rush of the spring of 1862 and went into the Cariboo district. Among those who knew him best the lure of the mountains and their hidden treasures were always known to exercise strong fascination for him, and kept him constantly in strong touch with mining men and matters."2 The year of 1862 is confirmed in letters written in that year to William Wilson by his brother, Joseph Wilson, a friend of Clifford's from England who also came out about the same time.3 The earliest British Columbia Directory in which Clifford's name appears is the 1877 edition, in which he was listed at Germansen Creek. In the next two directories, 1882 and 1885, he was listed at Vital Creek, Omineca. In 1885 Clifford started working for the Hudson's Bay Company at Hazelton, Forks- of-Skeena, where he was a clerk and postmaster. He remained at this post as agent until 1891 when he was succeeded by J.H. Lyons. It was while here that he married Lucy Margaret McNeill on May 24, 1888. 4 She was a grand-daughter of the pioneer captain of the S.S. Beaver, William Henry McNeill. The Clifford's only child, Harriet Mary (Hattie), was born in Victoria on January 10,1890. However, there is strong evidence that Clifford had a family by a native woman prior to this marriage. A Chief, Charles Clifford, who died in 1954, was reported to have been born to a HBCo factor in Hazelton about 1880. From Hazelton Clifford moved to the Hudson's Bay Company post at Port Simpson. He served at this post until January 12,1897 when he resigned to engage in the active development of several claims on the Skeena. Clifford was the first locator at Kitselas Canyon, locating three claims, Emma, I.X.L. and Bootjack in 1893.5 He also had interests in property on the Queen Charlotte Islands and a 1904 newspaper article6 quotes Robert Cunningham as saying, 'that he and Clifford each own half of Hazelton.' C.W.D. Clifford BC Archives photo 5296 The C.W.D. Clifford and Company, Limited Liability, was incorporated on March 10,18977 The principal place of business was listed as being in the electoral district of Cassiar. The first directors were Clifford, Charles Lockhardt Ross., Bart., of Rossland and John Irving of Victoria, Master Mariner. These two partners of Clifford's supplied him with contacts and financial backing. Irving was the sitting member of the provincial legislature for Cassiar (the 7th Parliament, elected 1894) and in the eighth Parliament, (1898) he was one of the two members for Cassiar. living's father, Captain William Irving, had started a shipping company which Captain John built up. In 1883 he formed the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company which was purchased in 1901 by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company and became the nucleus of the C.P.R/s British Columbia Coast Service. Charles Lockhardt Ross was - at somewhat greater length - Sir BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Charles Henry Augustus Frederick Lockhardt Ross, 9th Baronet Ross. Ross not only possessed an estate in Ross-shire of over 350,000 acres but also was the founder of the Ross Rifle Company of Canada and inventor of the rifle that bears his name. He designed and built the power plant of the West Kootenay Power & Light Company at Bonnington Falls, B.C. and was a consultant to the Canadian Government on small arms, ammunition and ballistics. The Clifford company must have ceased activities by 1909 for an October 9,1911 letter from the Registrar of Companies stated that as no returns had been received for two years the company would be removed from the Register. Clifford's reply was that the company was not carrying on business nor was it in operation. Clifford entered politics in 1898 and was elected as the other member for Cassiar along with his partner, Captain John Irving. Clifford was re-elected in Cassiar in 1900, and following redistribution in 1903 in the Skeena seat. He did not seek reelection in 1907. In 1900 John Irving, J.A. Mara, and F.S. Barnard petitioned the Government for a charter to build a railway from Kitimat to the Skeena River. As Clifford was then in the Legislature his name does not appear but it is believed that he was the leading light in the syndicate that applied for the charter. The Charter was granted to the "Pacific, Northern & Omineca Railroad Company" in August 1900.8 According to Dr. R.G. Large,9 Prince Rupert historian, a subsidy was provided at $5,000 per mile provided that the sum of $100,000 was spent in construction before 1907. The scheme may have been merely a promotion, for actual construction was not commenced and the charter was sold to the Grand Trunk Pacific in 1905, although Wiggs O'Neil wrote that Clifford tried to get the Grand Trunk Pacific to make Kitimaat their ocean port instead of building at Prince Rupert. However, extensive surveys by the railway could not find the stringent grades that the railway required.10 The origin of the name Kitimaat has been explained by the following First Nations legend11 One winter of exceptionally deep snows the Haisla people who inhabited the village dug paths through the snows parallel to the shoreline and thus not visible from the sea. A group of Tsimpsians passing by in their canoes could only see a mass of human heads bobbing up and down along the top of the shoulder- deep snows. An imaginative Tsimpsian called out, "Look, they are walking right through the snow, they are Git-a-maat, people of snow." In time this name was corrupted to Kitamaat, sometimes Kitimaat. In the early 1950's when the smelter town arose on the inlet it was named Kitimat. At enquiries into the Land Grants in the Kitamaat area in 1905 Clifford gave evidence that he had made applications for land in the area as early as 1896. A note in The Sun of Port Essington on December 28,1907 states, "C.W.D. Clifford, the ex-member and the ex-licence commissioner for the Skeena district is in Kitimaat looking over his large interests at that point. Mr. Clifford is a large holder in the Kitamaat townsite, has a store, wharf and warehouse there, and it is stated that his present visit is in connection with the erection of an hotel at that place." Speculation that the railway would pick Kitamaat as the Pacific Terminal created a short-lived boom in Kitamaat. Settlers and speculators poured in. Land and right- Sketch map by the author BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 23 1 Canadian Parliamentary Guide, 1901 2 Vancouver Province, May 12, 1916, p. 23 3 Joseph Wilson, London to William Wilson, September 24,1862, Ross Wilson collection, box 1,1862, Victoria City Archives 99003-06 4 GR2962 Marriage registrations, Division of Vital Statistics Registration No. 1888-09-173026, microfilm B11387 5 1898 Report to the Minister of Mines, p. 1153 Details of the claims are given in the 1902 Report to the Minister of Mines, p. 998 6 The Skeena District News, January 9,1904, p. 1 7 GR1438 Attorney General, Registrar General, Q.D712, microfilm B04414 8 Statutes of the Province of British Columbia, 1st Session, 9th Parliament, 1900, Queen's Printer, Chapter 50, pp 247-253 9 Dr. R.G. Large, The Skeena, River of Destiny, Vancouver, 1957 p. 68 10 Wiggs O'Neil to C.W. Beck, private correspondence, March 3,1961. 11 Gordon Robinson, Kitamaat, Northwest Diyest, May-June 1958, pp 11,28-30 12 Henderson's British Columbia Gazetteer and Directory for 1910, Henderson Publishing Company, Ltd., Lby., Vancouver, B.C. pp 460-462 13 GR2951, British Columbia Vital Events, Charles Clifford, 1917-09-095364, microfilm B13377, Lucy Margaret Clifford, 1956-09-007331, microfilm B13228 and Hattie Clifford, 1962- 09-008810, microfilm B13257 14 Cicely Lyons, Salmon: Our Heritage: The story of a Province and an Industry, Vancouver, 1969 of-way prices soared. The bubble burst with the selection of Kaien Island as the terminal of the Grand Trunk Pacific, later to be named Prince Rupert. The high cost to the railway of coming through to Kitamaat played a part in its decision. Within a few years very few of the settlers remained in Kitamaat. Eventually the wharf and hotel were abandoned, the wharf to collapse under a winter load of snow and the hotel to be torn down. In 1910 Clifford was listed in the directory at Kitimat, as a contractor and William Ross was listed as the proprietor of the Kitamat Hotel.12 Clifford was also listed as a Justice of the Peace and the Townsite Owner at Kitselas, B.C. Clifford was the leading spirit in the building of a community next to the First Nations village of Kitselas. He built a hotel there in 1907 and a store. When the railway was being built through the Kitselas Canyon the hotel was the only licensed liquor i outlet available to the | construction gang. The railway, however, came through the canyon on the other side of the river and following its completion the townsite was abandoned. From then most of Clifford's time appears to have been spent in Kitselas pursuing his nuriing interests or in Vancouver. He died in Vancouver after a short illness on May 10,1916, aged 73. His wife died at the age of 91, in 1956 and Hattie, who never married, in 1962. All three are buried in the family plot at Mountain View Cemetery in Vancouver, B.C.13 In digging into the raison-d'etre of the token we note that the company was incorporated in 1897 and was no longer in operation, probably by 1909. We know of Clifford's extensive interests in railways, mining, two hotels and two stores. However, the odd value of 17<t seems to suggest something rather different. Perhaps the answer is to be found in the following notes in the Port Essington newspapers. The Skeena District News and The Sun. During 1904 the fishermen wanted an increase in the price paid for sockeye salmon from 7(t to 10<t. The News noted on July 11, 1904 that quietude had been restored with an increase to 8%d: for sockeye. The Sun of May 25,1907 noted that, "the schedule for 1907 was to be 10d: for sockeye, 30(t for springs, cannery gear; 14d: for sockeye and 40d: for ■W^ springs, private gear, steelhead and cohoe to be taken as sockeye during the entire season." Thus between July 1904 and May 1907 sockeye were paid for at the rate of 8%$ each. As shown above, Clifford's interests in Kitamaat covered this period. Were tokens issued for 17$ then only half as many tokens would be required. ; Unfortunately it has not been possible to discover if Clifford ever was associated with a cannery. Cicely Lyons does not mention a cannery at Kitamaat.14 Indeed, nothing has been discovered that can show the existence of a cannery in Kitamaat during this period. Each season many of the local Natives left to go fishing or working at canneries along the coast. There is also a 35(t token which is not as easily explained. It is a denomination that is usually found only in a series such as 15 -20-25-30-35, etc and associated with restaurants or clubs. One final comment on the tokens. Only one of each denomination is known and both pieces came out of the east. They may have been trial strikings for an issue that did not proceed into production. • 24 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Archives and Archivists Submitted by Jillian Povarchook, the Archives Assistant at the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia. Edited by Sylvia Stopforth, Librarian and Archivist, Norma Marian Alloway Library, Trinity Western University Otto Landauer of Leonard Frank Photo Studio at the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia Like the bridges whose construction he was renowned for documenting, Otto Landauer's career as a photographer in British Columbia spanned decades. In 1985, the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia (JHSBC) was fortunate to acquire, from Landauer's wife Barbara, a collection of approximately 30,000 photographs that Landauer had both taken and acquired since he became proprietor and principal photographer of Leonard Frank Photo Studios in 1946. Today, the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia (JMABC), governed by the JHSBC, considers this collection, part of the Leonard Frank Photo Studio/onds, to be one of its most significant. Extensive research on Landauer and Leonard Frank Photo Studio has been conducted by Founding President and Historian Emeritus of the JHSBC, Cyril E. Leonoff, for his book Bridges of Light, which was published by Talon Books in 1997. The majority of the Landauer collection is represented by photographs that document post-war construction in Vancouver. It may, therefore, seem an odd collection to be held by an institution whose mandate is to collect, preserve, and make available for research the history of the Jewish people of British Columbia. Landauer was, however, of German Jewish origin, as was Leonard Frank, his predecessor who registered the eponymous studio as a corporate entity in 1928. Born to a Jewish merchant family in October of 1903, Landauer spent most of his youth working for his father's Munich firm, Gebruder Landauer, and skiing in the mountains surrounding Bavaria. His alpinist skills proved life-saving when in 1937, after the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws, he fled through the mountains to Liechtenstein and from there to Switzerland. In 1941, his sister Hansi was able to send money for Landauer to make the passage to North America. Hansi had immigrated Otto F. Landauer in the office of Leonard Frank Photo Studio, Vancouver, BC Photographer: Albert Urquhart, Leonard Frank Photos; Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia; LE03837 to Vancouver with her husband two years prior, but restrictions on immigration made it difficult for Landauer to join them there. He instead settled in Portland, Oregon until he was able to cross the Canadian border permanently in 1947. When Leonard Frank died in 1944, his dark room assistant was able to temporarily maintain the studio. In ailing health, however, Leonard's brother Bernard, a friend of Hansi and her husband, felt he needed to sell the business. He suggested that Landauer, who was completing a program at the North Western School of Photography in Portland, buy the studio. With a $1,500 loan from his brother-in-law, Landauer was able to do so. Being a registered business owner in Canada made securing Canadian citizenship much easier. Landauer took over Frank's existing contracts and with his professional reputation and Vancouver's steady growth, added an impressive list of architecture, engineering and construction companies to the studio's already extensive clientele. This prolific collection chronicles the construction of such Vancouver landmarks as the stalwart example of Modernist architecture, the Main Post Office building at 349 West Georgia Street; the Queen Elizabeth Theatre at Dunsmuir and Hamilton streets; and many 1960s concrete high rises in the West End. One of the most significant photographic series of this collection, however, was born of tragedy. Landauer was contracted in November 1957 to document the progress of construction on the new Second Narrows Bridge. On 17 June, 1958, while Landauer was photographing BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Vancouver's Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, placement of connecting beam, June 7, 1960 Photographer: Otto F. Landauer, Leonard Frank Photos; Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia; LF.01024 High-steel men working on the Port Mann Bridge above the Fraser River, February 23, 1962 Photographer: Otto F. Landauer, Leonard Frank Photos; Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia; LF.02058 the north end bridge approach, falsework supports gave way, causing spans four and five of the bridge to collapse. Landauer was the first photographer on the scene, documenting the initial damage to the bridge and later, by Royal Commission, the wreckage of the bridge that eventually claimed twenty-five lives. In 1994 the bridge was renamed the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing. Images from this collection have been used in two recent publications: Falsework, by Gary Geddes and Tragedy at Second Narrows: The Story of the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, by Eric Jamieson. The recent release of these two publications coincides with the JMABC's upcoming exhibit Vancouver: Bridging its History, 1895-1980, which will open in May 2009. The exhibit will use bridge construction photographs from the Landauer collection that have been digitized as part of the Otto Landauer - Leonard Frank Photo Studio fonds Digitization Project. This project was made possible by grants from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre's BC History Digitization Program and the Young Canada Works in Heritage Institutions Program sponsored by the Canadian Heritage Information Network. Many of these images have never been made available to the public and the JMABC is very pleased to share them through Artefacts Canada's Virtual Museum of Canada Image Gallery, and through the Jewish Museum and Archives' flickr site. To preview these photographs, visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iewishmuseum/ sets/. • For more information on the Leonard Frank Photo Studio fonds, or on the JMABC's collections, telephone (604) 257-5199 or e-mail: archives@jewishmuseum. ca. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 rf*\X Book Reviews A Discovery Journal: George Vancouver's First Survey Season -1792 John E. Roberts. Victoria, Trafford Publishins, 2005. 353 p., maps, illus. Paperback, $40.75. Available from Trafford Publishins, 1-888232 4444. In 1991 Captain George Vancouver's most diligent champion, Ted Roberts of Victoria, self published the first edition of the current work. In 2005, not long before his death, this edition appeared from the Print on Demand specialists Trafford. This handsome publication, the work of energy and dedication emblematic of its subject, joins the bibliography on one of the great mariners of all time and certainly one of the greatest marine surveyors of history. Vancouver has not been overlooked by historians, though many are the claims that he has been. George Godwin, his first serious biographer, produced a life of the hero in 1930. Admiral Bern Anderson, USN, followed, with a sailor's biography in 1960, the first work based on academic research. The dean of Vancouver scholars, W. Kaye Lamb, edited the Hakluyt Society edition in 1984. Brenda Gillespie wrote her delightful, insightful On Stormy Seas in 1992. Other work has been done, too: on Valdes and Galiano, on Bodega y Quadra, and on the botanist/surgeon who sailed with Vancouver in uneasy association, Archibald Menzies. There are books on Peter Puget, Joseph Baker and Thomas Pitt. No, we have not been starved of material on George Vancouver, but what Ted Roberts Books for review and book reviews should be sent to: Frances Gundry, Book Review Editor, BC History, P.O. Box 5254, Station B., Victoria, BC V8R 6N4 accomplished was to provide a living presence as it were of Vancouver moving through the watery world of Northwest America, coming north along the coast of Washington entering Juan de Fuca Strait, no longer fabled, for the British fur traders had spied it out, encountering Robert Gray out of Boston in the ship Columbia, examining Puget Sound, moving north to places such as Bellingham and Birch Bay, and then encountering the Spanish explorers who had been sent on a somewhat similar mission - to disprove the claims of the closet geographers that a North West Passage existed somewhere in these latitudes. It is, in all, a marvelous subject, focusing only on one year. Although Roberts seeks gallantly to portray this real time presence, the reader will find it a difficult task. For sorting through journal extracts and reconstituted statements is no easy job. Fortunately the work is done in the form of a journal or a chronology of day by day occurrences. Thus, if you wanted to know what happened on a particular day you might find a cross reference to something Menzies, Lieutenant Puget or Lieutenant Broughton had said. The story is followed, so to speak, from the quarterdeck and cabin of Captain Vancouver's Discovery. The work is sprinkled with draft charts. Cross references are given to current printed charts. In a work such as this it is not unusual to find a segment of original journals reproduced, and thus we have one from Puget. There's an appendix on ship musters and yet another on music of the times. The work is enriched by fulsome notes, a rich bibliography and a serviceable index. Roberts laboured long and mightily to see that his hero got the attention he deserved. He prepared the drawings for the Discovery display in the Royal British Columbia Museum and he arranged a special Vancouver Sunday held at Christ Church Cathedral Victoria 18 May 1990 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Vancouver's internment in St Peter's Church, Petersham, Surrey. In 1999 he prevailed upon the Government of British Columbia to proclaim 12 May in perpetuity as Captain George Vancouver Day. This book is highly recommended for those who collect books on George Vancouver. Barry Gough of Victoria, B.C., professor emeritus of History, Wilfred Laurier University, is the author of several books on the Royal Navy on the British Columbia coast. Beyond the Chilcotin, On the Home Ranch with Pan Phillips. Diana Phillips. Madeira Park, B.C., Harbour Publishins, 2008. 286p., illus., $34.95 hardback. Pan Phillips is certainly a pervasive personality in the west Chilcotin. On a week-long trail ride through the Ugachuz Mountains a few years ago, guided by Wanda Williams of Anahim Lake, we forded Pan Creek, camped in Pan Valley, and added our names to the graffiti on the walls of his hunting cabin. During pleasant evenings around the campfire, the topic of conversation often drifted to Pan, his wife Betty and their Home Ranch, which was located thirty miles to the northeast. Pan's ingenuity had already manifested itself one morning when I unearthed a large spoon, roughly crafted from thin sheet metal, while tidying up our campsite. When I learned that it was "one of Pan's", I brought it home as a souvenir. Although we explored about 100 miles of trails, we met no one and saw only BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY • Vol. 42 No. 2 27 the occasional float plane taking fishermen to remote lodges. Riding through this splendid isolation you just had to wonder what it took to live beyond the Chilcotin, to the north of the magnificent shield volcanos that form the Hgachuz and Itcha Ranges. Over the years several of Pan Phillips' friends have written popular books about his exploits but, now, for the first time a member of the family, his daughter Diana, has ventured to record her memories of the Home Ranch. In preparation for writing she researched the published material, but relied primarily on her personal experiences, her diaries and those of her mother. Initially we learn why Pan left Wyoming for the Chilcotin, how Betty came on the scene, and of Diana's triumphant arrival, snuggled into a Pacific milk box on a horse-drawn wagon. The well-written chapters, often humorous and sad at the same time, were obviously meant to be inclusive of all family members, but it is Betty's story that carries the most impact. Pan readily admitted that ranch life was hard on women, and it was. By the young age of fifty Betty's health was failing and she had arthritis in her hands. Pan could meet up with his cronies on frequent trips to Anahim Lake, but the women and children remained isolated on the ranch. Betty's closest female neighbour and good friend, Mary Cassam, resided twenty miles away at Kluskus. The local Carrier families were extremely helpful with ranching chores and keeping an eye on the ranch when Pan was absent. Diana describes how other friendships with distant ranching families were cemented at the annual Aiiahim Lake stampede in July, and the fall cattle sale at Quesnel. We also learn how she and her brothers, Ken and Robert, grew up and received their education in that challenging environment of mosquitoes, muskeg, long, cold winters and grizzly bears. With Diana's vivid descriptions it is not difficult to visualize ranch life and the annual 180 mile cattle drive to Quesnel. But Richard Harrington's professional photographs, taken on two separate visits to the Home Ranch, and others from the Phillips' personal collection contribute immensely to the overall enjoyment of the book. After more than three decades Pan sold the Home Ranch in 1969 and developed a fishing and hunting resort nearby. Diana ranched in the area until 2005. In the final chapter she hints that a sequel is planned and that is good news. We look forward to learning what the next three decades held in store for this remarkable family. Marie Elliott enjoys researches and writins about the history of the central interior of B. C. Her forthcomins book is titled, Fort St. James and New Caledonia, Where British Columbia Besan. J4ouum Hollyburn: the mountain and the city. Francis Mansbridse Vancouver, Ronsdale Press, 2008. 240 p., illus. For anyone living in the Lower Mainland, the North Shore mountains are the backdrop to everyday life. This is the story of one of those mountains, Hollyburn, which parallels the history of British Columbia itself. Common elements include early logging, attempts at protection of the ecology, recreational uses and more recent battles between developers and conservationists. The story of the area is told in a familiar manner aimed at local residents. The work is up to the usual high standards of Ronsdale Press and the inclusion of many well reproduced historical photographs adds to the appearance of the book. The introduction is a brief geological and natural history of the area, followed by the story of early logging on the mountain which leads into the main portion of the book. The next chapters focus on the various recreational activities that have taken place in Hollyburn's history, tying them in to the cabins and lodges that have been built on the mountain over the years. The order of these stories is a bit confusing and since they are not chronological, there is a good deal of jumping back and forth resulting in subjects being somewhat fragmented. This is countered by the photographs which serve to tie the stories together and give a good flavour of the atmosphere on the mountain from earlier times to the more recent protests ofthel980's. It is striking to read how close the area came to having a huge residential development and how fortunate it was that a provincial park was established to preserve public access. The compromises of having a private ski development in a park are well documented. While the book includes a couple of hand drawn historical maps illustrating trails and road access, it would have benefitted from the inclusion of a more detailed overview of the mountain and how it relates to the neighbouring topography of the North Shore. This is particularly important since Olympic marketing has rebranded the area as "Cypress Mountain", a geographical feature that doesn't exist. This has the potential to relegate to history the use of Hollyburn as a description of the area. The author looks forward to the 2010 Olympics with anticipation but details on the permanent consequences for the park are somewhat glossed over, particularly for the hiking trails and flora on the north slope of Black Mountain. . The book is well indexed and there is a comprehensive bibliography. Two appendices seem like an afterthought and would have been better included in the main 28 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 body of the book. The final chapter is a positive look at the future including speculation by a number of key players on where the mountain will be in 20 years. Given the effect of the Olympic developments, Hollyburn's proximity to a large urban population and the pressures it has faced for the past century, it is remarkable that so much of the area remains undeveloped and accessible to the public for recreation. This book does a good job of documenting this history and giving credit to the people who made it possible. Ron Clancy of Vancouver is hiker and a retired librarian Legacy in Wood - The Wahl Family Boat Builders. Ryan Wahl. Madeira Park, B.C., Harbour Publishins Co, 2008. 222p., illus. $32.95 hardcover. Ryan Wahl dedicates Legacy in Wood, to the late Iver Wahl, his grandfather. Iver Wahl, a master shipwright, told his grandson many stories about the Wahl family's wooden boat-building business that is the subject of the book, at times surprising him, as well. "He delivered some of the stories with so much passion that he caught me off guard -1 had never seen that side of him before," the younger Wahl says in the dedication. It soon becomes clear that this passion was part of the Wahl family's success. If s evident in the way patriarch Ed Wahl, a young Norwegian immigrant, built the business, starting with one boat a year in the mid-1920s and ending up with two boatyards in the Prince Rupert area. And if s apparent in the way his six shipwright sons, who Ed had trained to cut wood for the boats by eye, continued to push the limits of wooden boat building. Just one example: in 1963, eldest son Henry extended a 72-foot herring seiner, the Sunnfjord, by 11 feet - risky work, as some experts thought the altered boat would sink when fully loaded. Importantly, the Wahls were also fishermen. Founder Ed Wahl had initially moved to the Prince Rupert area to fish the Skeena River. For the first few years he fished during the summer in boats he'd built during the winter. His sons worked on the water, too, and this shaped their boat designs - the Wahls knew firsthand what fishermen needed and just what the coastal waters could throw at a boat. With a reserved respect, Ryan Wahl tells the story of family members who set up and ran the business, as well as those who worked at the boatyards and the wooden boats themselves. Roughly 130 black and white photos add significantly to this book, allowing the reader to see the evolution of the Wahls' boat designs and to put faces to the names of those who built them. They are laid out elegantly within the text. In addition, several sidebars in each chapter highlight significant events and people. The author also uses sidebars to document the Wahls' innovations, such as changes to stem design and the construction in 1960 of the "largest boat built on the BC coast solely for trolling," the 48-foot Escapade. The sidebars for the most part add detail and sometimes charm to the book. The last large wooden boats were built in the early 1990s and represent "the last of their kind on the BC coast," Ryan Wahl writes in the final chapter. Building with wood has simply become too expensive, compared with fiberglass and steel. It is in this last chapter that the author's voice comes out most strongly. While staying firmly in the background in the previous chapters, it is here that some of the grandfather's passion can be heard in the voice of the grandson. He analyzes the decline of the commercial fishing industry and reflects on the loss of commercial wooden boat-building - and the creative and physical skills it demanded. Within that somberness, however, Wahl writes of his hope that the tradition will live on through those who love the art. His handsome book offers a unique view and record of that tradition. Connie Kretz is a freelance writer based in Campbell River. Resurrecting Dr. Moss: the life and letters of a Royal Navy Surgeon, Edward Lawton Moss MD, RN, 1843-1880. Paul C. Appleton, ed. William Barr. Canary, the University of Canary and the Arctic Institute of North America (Northern Lishts Series, no. 10), 2008. 252 p., photos., illus. $42.95softcover. In Resurrecting Dr. Moss: The Life and Letters of a Royal Navy Surgeon, Edward Lawton Moss MD, RN, 1843-1880, author Paul Appleton and editor William Barr bring together Moss's achievements as a medical doctor and his endeavors as an artist and a scientist. Moss produced a host of documents (letters, journals, and paintings, to name a few) that are interwoven within the text. The nature of the material selected for the book captures Moss's voice and augments BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Appleton's interpretation of the era. Of special note, the reader is informed how a single letter led Appleton to archival and research material—the ultimate gem for a researcher. Background information on Moss's life and events from his career are captured in 21 chapters. Expeditions that Moss took as a Royal Naval Surgeon are outlined with accounts of how governments, the Royal Navy, and the public reacted to these adventures. Chronicled are the times he spent on Vancouver Island, in the Arctic, and in the West Indies. Moss "may not have been a major figure in the fields of nineteenth-century medicine, art, or polar explorations, but his life and career exemplified the best traditions of the Royal Navy Medical Branch during the Victorian Era." Whatever Moss did, he did well and within the confines of the naval command. The reader quickly comes to appreciate Moss as a man of principle and tact. This becomes evident in the years he spent in British Columbia as he applied his talent and skills, using limited resources, in renovating the Royal Naval Hospital in Esquimalt. For the reader interested in British Columbian history, Appleton provides four substantive chapters on Vancouver Island. Included is Moss's role in making Esquimalt's navy hospital functional. This appointment was an acknowledgement of the young man's ability to carry out a duty as significant as operating the only hospital for the vast Pacific fleet. The reader is further provided with Moss's appreciation and understanding of the Canadian outdoors; some of what he learned proved valuable on future Arctic expeditions. During his 3-year stay in Esquimalt, Moss married his Irish wife, Thomasina. Something occurred that drew him to Vancouver Island, but evidence to this link is not immediately obvious until the end of the book where Moss states in a letter to his wife, who was living in southern England, "How would you like to go back there [Vancouver Island] for the last two years service and stay out there afterwards? I often flunk as I am tumbling about at night that it might be better than idleness in England." Unfortunately, they never returned because, at the age of 37, while voyaging home from the West Indies, Moss and the ship he was serving on disappeared. Not only is the book cover striking and the text lucid, but the content is enhanced through the inclusion of photos and Moss's paintings. This book highlights a pioneer and an explorer who has had limited recognition for his contribution to British and British Columbian history. Dr. Kirk Salloum is an educational consultant livins in Vancouver, BC. Shoot! Georse Bowerins. Vancouver, B.C., New Star Books, 2008. 272 p. $19.00 softcover. Originally published in 1994 by Key Porter Books, this 2008 New Star Books Edition has a new cover and an insightful six and one-half page end-of-book essay, "Stories that Never End: Listening to Shoot," by UBC's Professor Sherill Grace. The story itself, however, remains as vibrant and exciting as ever and is still deserving of praise for the uniqueness of its telling as a piece of creative fiction built around a foundation of historical facts. The facts that support Bowering's story are outlined in Professor Grace's essay with its abbreviated bibliography of sources she has drawn upon for her theme positing Shoot! as a unique answer for all Canadians to the Gitskan Elder's question, "If this is your land, where are your stories?" in Edward Chamberlin's book of the same name. Although it is a story not as well known as that of the popularizing of Billy Miner's and omitted from two official histories of BC, the McLeans' saga is equally deserving of a prominent place in western Canadian folklore, especially in the canon of literary fiction in the stories of luminaries such as Fred Stenson and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Set in and around Kamloops in the late 1800s, the story centres on the escapades, sober and drunk, of four young half-breed men, three McLean brothers, Allan, Archie and Charlie, and a tagalong friend Alex Hare, enamoured of a McLean sister, Annie. In a drunken rage over slights real and imagined they kill two men, raid neighbouring ranchers and farmers for their firearms "for a good cause," threaten additional murders and engage in a prolonged standoff with successive posses intent on restoring the area to its former status of white man's rule. Between the episodes of mayhem, Bowering adeptly layers in other stories of icons like "hanging judge" Matthew Begbie and the family background for the McLean family with patriarch Donald McLean, a Hudson's Bay Company Chief Trader and avowed Indian hater and killer, his two wives and extended family of eleven children, some wild, others not, and even a grandson who "would one day become the greatest warrior ever born in British Columbia." There are stories too of Alex Hare's love for Annie and his jealous rages when she is seduced as a child by Kamloops businessman J.A. Mara who claimed Kamloopsians "didn't need any outlaw racial degenerates riding around destabilizing the territory" and upon whom Hare repeatedly vowed vengeance. There are the stories of the development of the region with the coming of the railroad, the influx of settlers into territories Indian bands regarded as their own, and the McLeans' attempts to foment an uprising. And there are the stories of racism and intolerance and 30 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 of the treatment of the boys when they are captured, trussed up and trundled to New Westminster, tried twice, and jailed to await their ultimate fate on the gallows. And all of the stories blend beautifully into a complete novel of artistic integrity and frontier justice worthy of repeated reading for the humanity and credibility of its characters, guilty and innocent, and the believability of the hopes, thoughts and dreams with which Bowering - Canada's first Poet Laureate - has imbued them. Shoot! as professor Grace surmises and a reading of it substantiates is truly a definitive story "about belonging here." M. Wayne Cunningham reviews from Kamloops, B.C. The Death of Captain Cook; a Hero Made and Unmade. Glyn Williams. Cambridse, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2008. 197p., map, illus. $19.95 hardcover. After Captain Cook left Nookta Sound in April, 1778, he headed north, where he failed to find a North West Passage, and then south again to Hawaii, receiving a "rapturous reception" at Kealukekua Bay on January 17, 1779. After two weeks of repairing ships and men, replenishing food supplies, and interacting socially and ceremonially with the islanders, he set sail. Storm damage forced him to return within a few days, but the rapture had disappeared. He was killed on February 14, 1779. I write on Valentine's Day, 230 years later, and British Columbians have long made Captain Cook our explorer-valentine. We love Captain Cook. Yet a conference in Vancouver, commemorating the bicentenary of Cook's third voyage, signalled the "unmaking" of our hero. The historians in attendance did not belittle his achievements, although some asked hard questions, but presented them as the collective achievements of a team of navigators and scientists. And the Nuu-chahnulth Tribal Council dramatically reminded them of another viewpoint when the predominantly "first world" scholars turned tourist and tried to land at Nootka Sound without permission. The Vancouver conference need not shoulder the entire blame for the iconoclasm. There had never been agreement on what exactly happened at Kealakekua Bay. The stark facts were clear enough; the details and nuances were not. Glyn Williams, Emeritus Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London, argues that the circumstances and reporting "of Cook's death are "the key to his reputation." In the process, he demonstrates the elusiveness of historical consensus. The book's first section, "A Distant Death" examines the early reports and the lack of a definitive narrative, due to the distances and time lapses between the events and their publication, the confusion on the scene, and the number of writers and semi-witnesses with differing views and agenda. John Douglas, who compiled the official account, had not been on the voyage, and took as his mandate the presentation of James Cook as a quintessential Enlightenment Hero. The evidence emerging from the various sources at his disposal suggested something different. Physically and mentally exhausted from the two previous voyages, Cook exhibited extreme stress and impatience, made errors in judgment, took risks and increasingly resorted to violence. Most difficult for his biographers was the ambiguity of his relationship with the people of Hawaii. Not only did they greet him as a great chief, possibly as a god, but he accepted the honours and encouraged the "worship." Why did they kill him? Did he by returning reveal his mortality? Did he cause his own death? By excessive anger? Or excessive humanity? Did he, on the beach at Kealakekua, descend into his own heart of darkness until Captain Cook became Colonel Kurtz? Douglas amended the journal to achieve the style befitting a heroic figure who dedicated his genius to the extension of knowledge rather than empire. In his second chapter "An Enlightenment Hero", Williams shows all Europe enthusiastically celebrating the legend Douglas had published. But if the concept of hero as pagan god offended the rationalism of Cook's own time, it suited less the missionary and "civilizing" sensibilities of the nineteenth century. In "Cook in the Colonial Age", we see how the "official" story continued to serve its purpose, even as the more warlike figure of Nelson captured the public imagination. Meanwhile the Cook myth in the British Pacific (including British Columbia) developed in a mode startlingly different from that in Hawaii. Williams brings us to date with "Cook in a Postcolonial World", initiated by J. C Beaglehole's magisterial edition of Cook's journals (1955-74) From Beaglehole's works and Alan Moorehead's Fatal Impact to the "bad tempered wrestling match between the two anthropologists" Marshall Sahlins and Gananath Obeyesekere ,Williams reviews his contemporaries, and finds today's perceptions, like yesterday's, clouded by presentism. Having crammed more than two hundred years of historical speculation into fewer than two hundred compelling pages, he leaves us with a question, "How far should an explorer following official instructions be held responsible for the long-term consequences of his actions?" - and a comprehensive thirteen-page finale of "Further Reading". The debate continues. Phyllis Reeve reviews from Gabriola Island BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 31 The Remarkable World of Frances Barkley 1769-1845. Beth Hill and Cathy Converse. Victoria, B.C., TouchWood Editions, 2008. 224 p. $19.95 softcover. A little gem of B.C. history has recently been re-published after 25 years by TouchWood Editions and Cathy Converse. Many readers will remember when this book came out in 1978 edited by the noted author the late Beth Hill. This is the rousing tale of the first European woman to reach these shores in 1787 only 9 years after the arrival of Captain Cook. Seventeen year old Frances Hornby Barkley (nee Trevor) married the 26 year old Captain Charles William Barkley at Ostend in October of 1786. Frances had been born in Somerset, one of five children, however, her mother and twin sister died. Her father, a Protestant minister, moved to Hamburg then to Ostend, remarried and subsequently had four more children. Frances was sent off and was educated at a convent. It was in Ostend her fate was entwined with Captain Barkley who sailed into that port in the ship, the Loudoun. Frances was described a having red gold hair and Charles William as a man of exuberant spirits, fond of company and show. Charles already had 15 years at the mast and had been persuaded to leave the employ of the East India Company for a new venture, the Bengal Fur Company to exploit the new lucrative sea otter trade in the North Pacific. To evade high fees the Loudoun was outfitted in Ostend, re-named the Imperial Eagle, flying under the Austrian flag. After a 6 week courtship the two newly married embarked on their first voyage together. The conditions of life at sea at that time are described fully in the account so the reader will have some context as to the situation young Frances found herself experiencing. After a brief stop in Brazil where Frances nursed her new husband back to health, the Imperial Eagle was the first European ship and the largest at 400 tons to sail into Nootka Sound that season, arriving in June, 1787. The Barkleys were at the beginning of the sea otter trade when fortunes were made. While at Nootka, Frances noted in her diary observations on landscape, flora, climate, trade with the first nation's people including their chiefs Maquinna and Wickaninnish. The ship explored south into what is now Barkley Sound, another region that proved rich in furs. Names were given to islands and bays when they anchored near Village Island (now Effingham). When 6 of the crew were murdered while exploring near the mouth of Juan De Fuca, the Imperial Eagle set sail for Canton to sell the furs. After the first voyage, the Barkleys settled in Mauritius where Frances gave birth to their son William in 1788. However, the tale then takes many twists with the sale of the Imperial Eagle, being defrauded by Captain Meares, surviving a ship-wreck, birth of a daughter at sea, plus five other voyages to China, India, Russia and Alaska. Frances returned to England in 1794 and 2 more children were born. Letters survive from this period rounding out the details of personalities and events. Her beloved Charles died in 1833 and Frances in 1845. In 1836, when she was 66, Frances began to write her reminiscences, and it is this slight notebook at the Provincial Archives that piqued the interest of Beth Hill and formed the basis of this book. Captain Barkley's journal disappeared as well but we know Frances's diary existed when Captain John Walbran used it in 1901 for his article on the trading voyage of the Imperial Eagle. Walbran also extensively quoted from the diary for his British Columbia Coast Names. By a quirk of fate, a descendent, Captain Edward Barkley lived at Westholme on Vancouver Island in 1909 but he died in a fire that destroyed the house. The quest for the diary was again taken up in 1942 by W. Kaye Lamb in his article "The Mystery of Mrs. Barkley's Diary" in the British Columbia, Historical Quarterly. The tantalizing fact remains the diary, thought to have been burned in 1909 at Westholme, may not have been destroyed. Alas, the diary remains lost. The pleasure of this book is marred by lack of care in the final proof reading with paragraphs and sentences being repeated. One is excusable but three are just plain annoying. If this book is re-printed these mistakes need to be corrected. There is also another odd relic of the Barkleys - a Malacca cane chair, likely obtained during their visit to Canton that now resides in the Vancouver Museum. It was presented in 1955 by Major V.A.H. Denne, a great great grandson to Major Matthews, City Archivist of Vancouver. Matthews then collected an extensive family genealogy. Kudos to Cathy Converse for once more bringing this robust account of the truly remarkable Frances Barkley remembered today by present day travellers to Barkley Sound who board the MV Frances Barkley for their own adventure. Sue Baptie of Victoria, the retired City Archivist for the City of Vancouver, has spent many summers sailins on the B.C. coast. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 Tracing Our Past Tracing Our Past: A Heritage Guide to Boundary Bay. Anne Murray with photosraphs by David Blevins. Delta, B.C., Nature Guides, B.C., 2008. 236 p., illus, maps. $27.95 paperback. After reading Tracing Our Past: A Heritage Guide to Boundary Bay, I could not help but think how much the late Dr. Barry A. Leach would have enjoyed Anne Murray's text and David Blevin's photographs. Dr. Leach, a European historian and college administrator, was also an environmental advocate. From 1970 to 1986 as Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at Douglas and Kwantlen Colleges he worked on courses, conferences, research, and an information centre. His concern for waterfowl conservation led him to contribute to field studies at Reifel Island, Serpentine Fen and Boundary Bay. Murray cites Leach's 1982 provincial government publication, Waterfowl on a Pacific Estuary. In Tracing Our Past Anne Murray combines interest in history with interest in the environment. She aims to tell "the story of a landscape and the people who transformed it.... from the last Ice Age to... the modern day," and to cover "the whole watershed of Boundary Bay, including ... Delta, Surrey, White Rock, Langley and Richmond, in British Columbia to Point Roberts, Blaine and Birch Bay in Washington State." (p.l) She draws on her experience writing a Nature Guide to Boundary Bay to outline its natural history. She then moves into "The Hidden Story of Middens," the archaeological record of the region. "Only the Coast Salish themselves can truly speak for their history," so Murray bases her chapter on them "on published literature and conversations." (p.43) She describes Salishan peoples' lives both before and after the arrival of Europeans, particularly traders in the late 1700s and early 1800s. She constructs her survey of Fort Langley traders, gold rush and farming settlers, and the impact of roads and railways from published histories. Murray draws on Derek Hayes' historical atlas to explain how "Boundary Bay was put firmly on global maps in the 1850s," by the British and American Boundary Commissions, (p.83) Murray's tracing of Boundary Bay's heritage is not a simplistic study. She acknowledges that Coast Salish were "by no means only hunter gatherers." They "actively maintained certain crops, digging and nurturing wapato marshes and camas prairies, clearing clam beds of stones and broken shells, and setting regular fires to limit forest growth and foster berry plants." Murray details the changing watershed in the era after the gold rush and agricultural settlement: the disappearance of sea shore, the impact of resource exploitation, and of ditches, drainage and new species. Yet she acknowledges that the "ditches [created] wildlife habitat similar to natural sloughs" for "great blue herons, mallards and red- winged blackbirds." (p. 107) In chapters on "Harvesting River and Sea" of salmon and on reaping "Riches of the Land" she underlines the complexity of changes in landscape and environment. Farm fields have served as flood plains absorbing rains and also as food sources for migratory birds, (p.143) "Channelisation of the Fraser River made changes on both Roberts and Sturgeon Banks.... good for some birds like waterfowl but detrimental to migrant flocks of shorebirds." (p.166) Today agriculture and waterfowl are both increasingly threatened by suburban development. Anne Murray concludes her survey of the heritage of Boundary Bay with discussion of current concerns about the "ecosystem, in the wider context of accelerated habitat loss, biodiversity declines and global climate change." (p.163) She then leads us beyond her book. She directs us to "Heritage Destinations" where "the long history of Boundary Bay can be appreciated and enjoyed." British Columbia historians should applaud Anne Murray's survey of Boundary Bay heritage and her promotion of heritage sites. She raises questions for students to explore and her notes and bibliography provide some references for their research. One suggestion for improving the book and assisting research would be for Murray to direct readers to more historical primary sources for probing development of the Boundary Bay watershed. The Fraser River Harbour Commission records, available on miaofilm at Douglas College Library, would aid understanding of the channelisation of the Fraser River, as would Dr. Barry Leach's files from the Douglas College Institute of Environmental Studies, available at the Surrey Archives. Jacqueline Gresko, of Richmond, B.C., Faculty Emeritus ofDouslas Collese, is a former President of the British Columbia Historical Federation, and now teaches at Corpus Christi Collese, University of British Columbia. Where the Grass Is Always Browner on the Other Side of the Fence: A History of the Okanagan Commonage. Dr. D. John Price. Vernon, B.C., Kettle Valley Publishins Inc., 2008. 213 p., maps, illus. (Available from the Greater Vernon Museum and Archives (250) 542-3142; e-mail mail@vernonmuseum.ca; mailins address: 3009 32ndAve., Vernon, V1T2L8.) $40.00 (plus shippins and handlins) softcover. In May 1876 the Joint Federal- Provincial Indian Reserve Commission designated a long narrow ridge of land between Okanagan Lake to the west and Kalamalka (formerly Long Lake) and Wood Lakes to the east as common pasture for the cattle and horses of both the Okanagan people and non-Aboriginal settlers. If the BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 arrangement for this Okanagan Commonage failed, the commissioners intended that it would "become another reserve." (Cole Harris, Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia, Vancouver, UBC Press, 2002, p.127). Several Okanagan women and male newcomers created families and used this area but when settlers pressed for more land, a new reserve commissioner Peter O'Reilly terminated the Commonage in 1889. In exchange for losing access to the 25,114 acres of Commonage, the Okanagan people were allotted 3,238 acres as a reserve on the west side of Okanagan Lake. In 1893, the province offered former Commonage lots for sale by auction, then as pre-emptions. The Commonage lost its purpose as a commons, but kept its name. Veterinarian and Commonage resident D. John Price's book, Where the Grass Is Always Browner on the Other Side of the Fence: A History of the Okanagan Commonage, is a popular history of Commonage families and land use. It is carefully footnoted and based on extensive research into sources such as newspapers, reports of the Okanagan Historical Society, correspondence, local, institutional and family histories, and a few academic studies. Price's research into land title and transfer results in detailed information about the legal history of Commonage properties. Dozens of historical photos of families, structures, landscapes and ranch labour complement the text. Lovely colour photographs by Shirley and John Smith of Vernon offer intimate glimpses of the variety of local wild flora and fauna. After explaining the origin and subsequent privatization of the Commonage, Price follows with a chapter describing its geography, landscape, and plant and animal life. Thematic chapters explore topics such as the history of lake traffic, education, recreational land use, quarries, and urbanization, and provide context for tihirteen chapters organized alphabetically by family or farm. These family histories provide mtriguing glimpses into the challenges and strategies of living there. Chapter 19, on the Tronson family, for example, points to racist land laws and the gendered nature of the Indian Act. Married couple George Tronson and Louisa Vernon, both children of First Nations mothers and immigrant fathers, required permission to live on the reserve to care for Louisa's ailing mother. Following her death, the RCMP removed the couple from the reserve. George had lost his status as an "Indian" because, thanks to his non- Aboriginal father, he was listed as a voter and had pre-empted land, rights not available to Aboriginal people at the time. Although Price's language is unfortunately dated ("how an unsuspecting half-breed became a victim of the bureaucracy of the time"), this story is valuable for exploring the complex land laws and their consequences for families "in between" (141-142). Chapter 18 tells the story of the Thorlaksons who traveled from Winnipeg to Peachland to work for a mine in which Mrs. Thorlakson was a shareholder. After the mine closed, the family bought a ranch. This chapter illustrates the flexible gender roles of men and women on family farms: grand-daughter Norma-Jean learned to knit from her grandfather, and logged with her father. It also demonstrates the importance of education to rural families, as two generations of the family relocated three times so their children could have access to schools. Occasional repetition suggests that this book could have been better edited and organized. I would have liked to read more about Aboriginal land use and the operation of the Commonage as a commons between 1876 and 1889. Nevertheless, by integrating a wide variety of sources and images and bringing to light previously unpublished stories and photographs about Commonage residents, A History of the Okanagan Commonage offers valuable information about the settler history of the Okanagan, and is a useful starting point for studying why some agricultural pursuits failed and others succeeded on a particular landscape. Jenny Clayton, a student at the University of Victoria, is writins a doctoral dissertation on recreational land use in twentieth century British Columbia. jfSIT' Set in Stone: A History of Trail's Rock Walls Eileen Truant Pedersen. Trail, Friesens, 2008, 258p., illus, $75 hardcover This title received an honourable mention in the 2008 Lieutenant Governor's historical writing competition and is one of the most lavish local history books ever published. Five years in the making, it is a beautifully-designed, full-colour, hardcover tribute to a unique attribute that might still be languishing in obscurity if not for author Eileen Pedersen and the Rock Wall Entusiastico Society. The rock walls in Trail are ubiquitous, yet somehow disappeared into the city's background until one day a friend of Pederson's suggested they would be a good subject for a photo essay. Over the next few years, the society measured and mapped every wall, conducted interviews, published a walking tour, and held a celebration in honour of the builders. The book, however, is the pinnacle of their efforts. Split into three main sections, it begins with a history of the walls, which were constructed between the 1920s and '60s, often as part of government relief programs. While they served a practical purpose of retaining the steep hillsides, they were also undeniably beautiful. A short subsection details the basic principles and different methods used to build them: the earliest walls were rough rock, set flush in mortar, or dry-stacked without mortar, and created using only hand tools. Later walls incorporated large boulders and were erected with the aid of BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 steel bars, cranes, and much drilling. Either way, it required a discerning eye, geological and engineering know-how, and a huge amount of physical labour. The second main section features often-touching tributes to 15 stonemasons who toiled on the walls, including a couple who are still alive. Without exception, they were immigrants, most from Italy and a few from Baltic republics. Some learned their trade at home, others apprenticed on the job. Long after the fact, they are finally being recognized and appreciated for their backbreaking efforts. The final section, which accounts for over half the book, is a neighbourhood- by:neighborhood inventory of the walls, portrayed in stunning photos, both recent and historical. It's impressive to so fully document a heritage asset that until recently was not even recognized, and doubly impressive given that so little information was readily available: the society drew on newspaper accounts, original interviews, and field notes to piece together the story of the walls and their creators. Due to its lavishness, this is an expensive book, but that didn't stop the first printing from quickly selling out. A second printing has since arrived. The book's primary font choice is also appropriate, for it is literally set in Stone. Greg Nesteroff is a radio news reporter and historian. He lives in Castlesar. The May 19th edition of the Williams Lake Tribune announced the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts grant of $2million to the New Pathways to Gold Society. One of the projects is for approximately $300,000 for the Brigade Trail-First Nations route from the Anderson River to the Coldwater River. "Part of this trail starting at Alexandra Lodge has been the focus of preliminary work by local First Nations." Another $300,000 is for the Douglas Portage-Spirit Trail from the top of Lake Harrison through to the Pemberton Valley and the balance of the funds will go to mapping, cataloguing and restoring the Cariboo Wagon Road from Hope to Barkerville. • Historic Trails and Markers report 2006-2007 Charles. Hou, Chair, Historic Trails and Markers Committee In May 2006 the BCHF passed a resolution asking the provincial government to add about 700 hectares of land in the Fraser Canyon to the provincial park at Alexandra Bridge. The extension would preserve the Hudson's Bay Company's First Brigade Trail (Anderson's Brigade Trail) and the viewscape of the Fraser Canyon from the trail. On April 18, 2007, the provincial government announced that it would establish 41 new conservancies and three class A parks in BC, and add territory to sixteen existing parks and three conservancies. The addition of over 165,000 hectares of land will increase the total of BC's protected land base from 12 per cent to nearly 14 per cent. My correspondence with the government had previously indicated that the government considered the 12% figure to be set in stone. The recent announcement indicates that they are in fact willing to expand the parkland base of the province. However, our proposed addition was not included. Quite a few schools make use of field trips to help interest students in our history. Some teachers and students like to go beyond visits to museums, and take students to historic places that allow them to experience some of the physical hardships of the past. Two historic trails near Vancouver are heavily used - Anderson's Brigade Trail and the Harrison-Lillooet Gold Rush Trail. The schools and students who use them have adopted these trails, and when students hike the trails each spring they help to clear them for use by the general public. In addition, this spring a group of eight teachers and volunteer leaders spent three days in April working on the Harrison- Lillooet Gold Rush Heritage Trail and two days working on Anderson's Brigade Trail in order to clear the many trees brought down by the winter wind storms. The Chilliwack District Recreation Site and Trails section of the provincial government had already cleared the latter trail of trees too big for the students and volunteers to handle. The government also erected an outhouse, fire pit, and picnic table on the ridge overlooking the Fraser River, as well as markers and a sign at the beginning of the trail. Recommendation: That the executive of the BCHF attempt to set up a meeting with Stan Hagen, Minister of Tourism, Sports and the Arts, to explore the possibility of extending the provincial park at Alexandra Bridge north to include Anderson's Brigade Trail. Charles Hou's article "A Proposal for a New Park in the Fraser Canyon" appeared in BC History issue 39.4 See pages 39 and 40 for information on ordering back issues of BC History. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 BC Folklore - Mixing Fiction and Fact By Janet Nicol As a man walked along a forest trail in a remote area on Vancouver Island, he suddenly heard the ringing of a bell. "Strange, he thought, there is no town for miles." Seconds later, he saw a white horse gallop by on the far side of a stream, disappearing into the bush. He approached the area where the horse had appeared, but found no hoof prints. This is a re-telling of a story submitted to the journal of the BC Folklore Society by Russell Godfrey. It was Godfrey's father who had this ghostly encounter while walking through Jordon Meadows, not far from a lost Spanish mine. Folklore is about all of us—what we share and pass on. While the historian searches for the truth in a story, the folklorists wants to know why people tell these stories. Mike Ballantyne, a professional folksinger who immigrated to British Columbia in 1973, established the society in 1992. "I came from southwest England where folk songs are close to the soil," Ballantyne says in a telephone interview from his home on Vancouver Island. "When I came here, I wanted to explore Canada's heritage of folk songs." "I was giving a course on family folklore at a local college," he recalls. "A woman, whose husband had died, approached me. She wanted to give me her husband's records, dancing ribbons and books on folklore. I felt these materials were far too valuable for one person to have and should be preserved within a society." While the society has only 35 volunteer members and rninimal funding, its quarterly journal provides an accessible and lively collection of local lore. "The mandate of the society is to preserve and collect BC folklore," Ballantyne says, "but we will also publish folklore from elsewhere." The journal has many tall tales, ghost stories, First Nations legends and songs. Considering BC has its share of monsters, shipwrecks, outlaws, lost mines and treasures, there are many yarns to spin. V$S Folklore is not only about the past. Forestry workers' jargon drifted into the camps of contemporary tree planters, as John Cathro discovered when he visited west coast work sites. Cathro compiled a lengthy glossary of occupational words and included a portion of them in the folklore journal. A highballer, for example, is the fastest tree planter on the job. A crummy is a broken down rig used to drive workers to the cutblock, where the tree planting takes place. Workers bag up, that is, fill bags with seedlings, and bag out, or empty bags of trees. Another form of contemporary folklore can be found on Snopes, a popular internet site containing urban legends. The site is maintained by a husband and wife team in California, both folklore enthusiasts. A search of 'British Columbia' on the site reveals many tales. One story tells of members of British royalty visiting a northern BC town around 1911. The royals were feted at a banquet and as the waiter was clearing between courses, he leaned over and told the honored guests "hold your fork, the pie is coming." This story (if it is true) reveals the "warm and unpretentious" nature of Canadians, according to a Snopes commentator. The journal has also published a long list of 'weather wisdom' stories, taken from people all over BC. In the interior, for instance, some folks believe a storm is coming when mountain goats make their way down to the sagebrush. And a fisherman prefers a cat to a barometer when he takes his boat out to sea. The cat will run up the mast and claw before a wind storm. True crimes of the past can leave the boundaries of truth and enter the field of fiction when re-told, as this yarn, contributed to the journal by T.W Paterson, reveals. >t/GfNG TOC&v _, ^ In 1893, John Green, a 67 year old Englishman with a successful trading post on Savary Island, was said to have hoarded a small fortune. One day Green and his new assistant were killed by two men who went on to Green's property and robbed him. The murderers were captured and confessed but admitted only finding a few dollars. Some say the money they were after is still buried on the property. For more information about the BC Folklore Society, visit their website at www. folklore.bc.ca/ or contact by mail at 7345 Seabrook Road, Central Saanich, BC V8M 1M9. • BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 The Joseph Genelle Affair Edward L. Affleck, News is something invented by newspapers to sell editions and thereby thrive. The seasoned historian who sifts through files of newspaper back issues only to discover that Day One's controversial front-page item has a tendency shortly to disappear from sight forever after cannot help but develop an ounce or two of cynicism as he realizes that once again the press has copped out of following a story to a climax or conclusion. The case of Joseph Genelle provides a good example of the fickleness of the press Joseph Genelle was one of fourteen children who had come west from Thessalon, Ontario with a widowed mother to participate in the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Rocky and Selkirk mountains. The young men in the family had worked on railway construction while the youngv women worked as cooks in the construction camps. They conserved their earnings and plowed them into the lumber industry. By the mid '90's the Genelle family was prospering, their chief endeavour being the Yale-Columbia Lumber Co. whose mills were established from Yale to the Kootenay District in British Columbia. Joseph Genelle first became involved in steamboating when in 1895 he commissioned the Str. Thompson to tow booms of logs on Shuswap Lake to the mill at Tappen. He seemed to resist getting into the steamer business during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush, but did in April, 1900 become involved in a steamboating consortium headed by Samuel Barber, a coast entrepreneur. At the height of the Klondike boom in 1898 the consortium had acquired the coastal vessel Alpha and later had picked up two modest river sternwheelers, the Mono and the Glenora. Page two of the Tuesday, April 8, 1902 issue of the Victoria Colonist contains a generous spread advising that Kootenay District lumberman Joseph Genelle had been arrested in Rossland the previous Saturday evening and was being brought to Victoria under police escort to answer charges that he had incited or conspired with steamboat watchman Harry McMillan to torch the sternwheelers Mono and Glenora at their winter berth in a slough on the west side of the Yukon River upstream from Dawson City. The screw-propelled Alpha had been built in 1863 by Barclay Curie of Glasgow for the Cunard Line's Halifax-West Indies service, and had worked faithfully in that trade until she was snapped up and brought out to Vancouver in 1898 to work up the Inside Passage to the ports serving the Klondike traffic. She likely earned her keep at the outset, but by mid-1900 the boom had slackened and competition on the northern runs became fierce. The Barber consortium found itself with a coaster in dire need of a major refit and of some profitable trade. The sternwheelers were in relatively good condition, but the pickings on the Yukon River were now slim. The bloom was obviously off the Barber fleet by April, 1900 when Genelle elected to buy out the interest of Captain J. Warren in the consortium. On December 7,1900 the Alpha set sail from Victoria, bound for Japan with a cargo of salted fish. Several hours later, the vessel sprang a leak in a gale off Cape Flattery and limped back to the Union Iron Works for some hasty repairs. On December 14,1900 she set out again, bound for a coal up at Union Bay. A number of new crew members had been recruited to replace those who refused to sail again in the vessel. To escape the worst of a storm, the Alpha was worked through a passage between Denman Island and the east coast of Vancouver Island, but piled up on Yellow Island Reef. Captain F. H. M. Yorke, Samuel Barber and seven others lost their lives in the wreck. In its April 8,1902 coverage on Joseph Genelle, the Victoria Colonist saw fit to print a retrospect of the ugly details of the final months of the career of the Alpha, and also advised that the sternwheelers Mono and Glenora had been heavily mortgaged to McLennan and McFeely. It certainly looked plausible that Genelle, sole surviving villain in the Alpha affair, might have been hard- pressed for cash and might have seen fit to cash in on some fire insurance. It was said in Dawson City that the Mono and Glenora had in the late fall of 1901 both loaded up cargo at St. Michael, Alaska and had worked up the Yukon River to Dawson City and had gone into winter shelter before all the cargo was unloaded at Dawson, as an imminent freeze-up was threatened. When watchman Harry McMillan was arrested after the March, 1902 fire, he is said to have confessed that over the winter he had stripped both vessels of remaining cargo and had quietly disposed of it in Dawson. He then doused the boats with kerosene and set fire to them. Was there complicity between McMillan and Genelle in this evil action? Was McMillan merely covering his tracks, or did Genelle stand some chance of cashing in on the demise of the sternwheelers? Some revealing clue may linger in obscurity in the Court Records of Yukon or British Columbia, or on the back page of a newspaper. In the meantime the reader, along with this historian must await patiently the final word on the Joseph Genelle affair. •. Edward (Ted) Affleck was a chartered accountant, opera lover, and prolific historian. He spent 40 years documenting the maritime history of BC. His column, Around The Bend, regularly appeared in BC Historical News, the last one was published in issue 36.3. A eulogy of Ted Affleck appeared in BC Historical News 36,3 This is one of a number of Affleck's articles on file with the magazine. (Ed) BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY • Vol. 42 No. 2 37 A Chance to Complete Your Collection Back Issues of BC History on Sale HISTORY &&£ (%LJte history HISTORY m ■Plf Vol. 37 No. 4 Vol. 38 No. 1 &&££ Vol. 38 No. 2 Vol. 38 No. 3 0^^(&W«< HISTORY HISTORY HISTORY HISTORY r i*i^w- Vol. 38 No. 4 Vol. 39 No. 1 Vol. 39 No. 2 Vol. 39 No. 3 HISTORY HISTORY HISTORY HISTORY Vol. 39 No. 4 Vol. 40 No. 1 Vol. 40 No. 2 Vol. 40 No. 3 38 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No. 2 HISTORY . HISTORY IIP HISTORY I |Jfj Vol. 40 No. 4 HISTORY Vol. 42 No. 2 Vol. 41 No. 2 Vol. 41 No. 3 Vol. 41 No. 4 Windows to Our Past: A pictorial history of British Columbia Special edition celebrating BC's150th birthday ISBN 978-0-9692119-1-4 Contains 117 different unpublished photographs, postcards and images from around British Columbia. A unique collection of rarely seen buildings and subjects - many from private collections. A limited edition. Please ship BC History x $ = $ Windows to our Past x $ = $ Total $ Enclosed is my cheque for $ as per the price list. Please ship to: Name Address City Email [if you would like confirmation of shipping date] Mail your order and your cheque to: Alice Marwood, Subscription Secretary, #211 - 14981 - 101A Avenue, Surrey, BC V3R 0T1 For enquiries and availability of other volumes Prov. Postal Code. List your issues here BC History issues (includes shipping) Canada $5.00 U.S.A. $8.00 International $10.00 Windows to the Past (includes shipping) Canada $5.50 U.S.A. $6.50 International $8.50 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY ■ Vol. 42 No. 2 Miscellany SLUMACH rsiSOQs Greg Nestoroff presents the 2008 British Columbia Historical Federation website prize to Brenda Smith representing Fred Braches. Photo by Alistair Fraser From Wes Knapp, City Reflections As chair of the City Reflections Committee within the Vancouver Historical Society, I would like to acknowledge with thanks your nomination of the DVD, City Reflections: 1907-Vancouver-2007, for an Award of Merit by the British Columbia Historical Federation. We are thrilled with the news that we have received one of the two Merit Awards. To be recognized in this way by our parent and provincial organization is such an honour. Peer recognition is perhaps the most important form of acknowledgement, thus making us so delighted to receive this award. The response to the City Reflections film project and student resource guide is proving to be very gratifying. The recent workshops with teachers in which we show the dvd and work through the student resource guide underscore what a valuable historical document we have in the 1907 film footage by William Harbeck. Its implications for teaching history to students are far reaching. And, as teachers are telling us, the resource materials are making history fun—something that isn't easy to do in a classroom setting. 2008 British Columbia Historical Federation announces website prize winner: "slumach.ca: A website for all who prefer facts over fiction" The site explores and documents the story of Slumach, an elderly Sto:lo man from the Pitt Lake area, who is believed to have discovered one of the richest gold mines in British Columbia history. In 1890, however, Slumach shot and killed Louis Bee at the south arm of the Alouette river. He was subsequently hanged for the murder in January, 1891. Over the years, there has been considerable interest in circumstances of Slumach's case and his reputed knowledge of a gold bonanza. Fred Braches' "Slumach" is a well designed site which nicely lays out the history of Slumach and has transcriptions of virtually everything ever written about the subject. The website is easy to navigate, has many primary and secondary sources that are nicely presented and documented, and includes some excellent and relevant photographs. In general, the site represents a huge amount of research work and careful thought given to the presentation of an interesting and controversial piece of British Columbia history. As the author/creator of the site, Fred Braches is a very deserving winner of the 2008 BCHF website prize. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY - Vol. 42 No, 2 British Columbia Historical Federation Awards and Scholarship Information W. KAYE LAMB Essay Scholarships Deadline 15 May 2009 The British Columbia Historical Federation awards two scholarships annually for essays written by students at BC colleges or universities, on a topic relating to British Columbia history. One scholarship ($750) is for an essay written by a student in a first or second year course; the other ($1000) is for an essay written by a student in a third or fourth year course. To apply for the scholarship all candidates must submit (1) a letter of application and (2) a letter of recommendation from the professor for whom the essay was written. First and second year course essays should be 1,500-3,000 words; third and fourth year,1,500 to 5,000 words. By entering the scholarship competition the student gives the editor of BC History the right to edit and publish the essay if it is deemed appropriate for the magazine. Applications should be submitted to: Marie Elliott, Chair BC Historical Federation Scholarship Committee, PO Box 5254, Station B, Victoria, BC V8R 6N4 essays@bchistory.ca BC History Web Site Prize The British Columbia Historical Federation and David Mattison are jointly sponsoring a yearly cash award of $250 to recognize Web sites that contribute to the understanding and appreciation of British Columbia's past. The award honours individual initiative in writing and presentation. Nominations for the BC History Web Site Prize must be made to the British Columbia Historical Federation, Web Site Prize Committee, prior to the 31st of December each year. Web site creators and authors may nominate their own sites. Prize rules and the online nomination form can be found on BCHF's web site: bchistory.ca/awards/ website/index.html Anne & Philip Yandle Best Article Award A Certificate of Merit and $250 will be awarded annually to the author of the article, published in BC History, that best enhances knowledge ot British Columbia's history and provides reading enjoyment. Judging will be based on subject development, writing skill, freshness of material, and appeal to a general readership interested in all aspects of BC history. The British Columbia Historical Federation invites submissions for the 27th Annual Historical Writing Competition for authors of British Columbia History. Eligibility • To be eligible for this competition, books must be published in 2009. • Non-fiction books representing any aspect of B.C. History are eligible. • Reprints or revisions of books are not eligible. • Books may be submitted by authors or publishers. • Deadline for submission is December 31, 2009. Judging Criteria Judges are looking for quality presentations and fresh material. Submissions will be evaluated in the following areas: • Scholarship: quality of research and documentation, comprehensiveness, objectivity and accuracy • Presentation: organization, clarity, illustrations and graphics • Accessibility: readability and audience appeal Lieutenant-Governor's Medal and Other Prizes The BC Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Historical Writing will be awarded together with $600 to the author whose book makes the most significant contribution to the history of British Columbia. The 2nd and 3rd place winners will receive $400 and $200 respectively. Certificates of Honorable Mention may be awarded to other books as recommended by the judges. Publicity All winners will receive publicity and an invitation to the BCHF Awards Banquet at the Federation's annual conference in May, 2010. Submission Requirements Authors/Publishers are required to send three copies to the Chair of the Writing Competition Committee. Barb Hynek 2477 140th Street, Surrey, B.C. V4P 2C5 Email: writing@bchistory.ca Phone: 604-535-9090 Books are to be accompanied by a letter containing the following: • Title of the book submitted • Author's name and contact information • Publisher's name and contact information • Selling price Submission Deadline: December 31, 2009 By submitting books for this competition, the authors agree that the British Columbia Historical Federation may use their name(s) in press releases and in its publications. Books entered become the property of the BCHF. Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to Circulation Department. British Columbia Historical News Alice Marwood, 211 -14981 -101A Avenue Surrey, B C V3R 0T1 Canadian Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 40025793 Publications Mail registration No. 09835 745 15/2xxP1(M) UBC LIBRARY, CENTRAL SERIALS PO BOX 2119 VANCOUVER BC V6B 3T5 L/3I13.CI3. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the Publications Assistance program (PAP), toward our mailing cost ffospitai, Phoenix^ M & Postcard courtesy of Ron Hyde
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Title | British Columbia History |
Publisher | Victoria : British Columbia Historical Federation |
Date Issued | 2009 |
Description | Vol. 42 No. 2 |
Extent | 52 pages |
Subject |
British Columbia--History |
Genre |
Periodicals |
Type |
Text |
FileFormat | application/pdf |
Language | English |
Notes | Titled "British Columbia Historical Association Report and Proceedings" from 1923-1929; "British Columbia Historical Quarterly" from 1937-1957; "BC Historical News" from 1968-2004; and "British Columbia History" from 2005 onward. |
Identifier | FC3801_B72_H44_2009_vol042_no002 |
Collection |
British Columbia History |
Date Available | 2019-08-26 |
Provider | Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library |
Rights | Images provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from the British Columbia Historical Association (info@bchistory.ca). |
CatalogueRecord | http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=3202327 |
DOI | 10.14288/1.0380630 |
AggregatedSourceRepository | CONTENTdm |
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