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British Columbia History
Vol. 46 No. 2
52 pages
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HISTORY t€t> Publication of the British Columbia Historical Federation | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 | $7.00 tx Htitory LiA/e&Hen Kilby Hi&oric Site directory SKdpvtuTfr ofPiowe&r VL&orui \ 3uj(Xchgra46/ Tfve Harper Brothers vs Qu^ihxrO'ChMcxftivt RMichers ) Longevity | in/the/ y VcwicouA/er oourty Tfwmat HurLey A Wc&bon/y SuX£ca4&of Sorrow VIRGIN!^ OVALS. 20/. 35' iL>* ■ . V lEN ;wo « • JtR fft "•■tortu* i i?' "mi I •»i CTOCIK \^Z ■Z_! HISTORY British Columbia History is published four times per year (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) by the British Columbia Historical Federation. ISSN: print 1710-7881 online 1710-792X Subscriptions: $20.00 per year USA: $32.00 (US Funds) International: $44.00 (US Funds) 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, Andrea Lister PO Box 21187, Maple Ridge BC V2X 1P7 email: bcheditor@bchistory.ca Submission guidelines are available at: bchistory.ca/journal/index.html Book reviews for British Columbia History, K. Jane Watt, Book Review Editor, BC History, Box 1053, Fort Langley, BC VIM 2S4 email: reviews@bchistory.ca Subscription & subscription information: BCHF c/o Magazine Association of BC 201-318 Homer Street Vancouver, BC V6B 2V2 email: subscriptions@bchistory.ca Phone: 604.688.1175 Single copies of recent issues are for sale at: - Caryall Books, Quesnel, BC - Gray Creek Store, Gray Creek, BC - Otter Books, Nelson, BC - Royal British Columbia Museum Shop, Victoria, BC - Touchstones Nelson: Museum of Art & History, Nelson, BC ISSN: 1710-7881 Printed in Canada. Production Mail Registration Number 40025793 Publications Mail Registration No. 09835 We acknowledge the financial support of the Goverrnment of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage. 1*1 Canadian Patrimoine Heritage canadien Canada British Columbia Historical Federation A charitable society under the Income Tax Act Organized 31 October 1922 PO Box 5254, Station B., Victoria BC V8R 6N4 www. bchistory.ca Under the Distinguished Patronage of The Honourable Judith Guichon, OBC Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia Honorary President: Jacqueline Gresko ■ ■■ BRITISH COLOMBIA Congratulations to Derek Hayes, winner of the 2012 Lieutenant Governor's Medal for historical writing for British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas, Vancouver, BC, Douglas St Mclntyre, 2012. Cover Image: Kilby Historic Site store shelves. Read the story on page 5. © Photos by Pharos (Julie H. Ferguson) 2012 Editorial Advisory Committee Anne Edwards Jan Gattrell Don Lyon Catherine Magee Ramona Rose While copyright in the journal as a whole is vested in the British Columbia Historical Federation, copyright of the individual articles belongs to their respective authors, and articles may be reproduced for personal use only. For reproduction for other purposes permission in writing of both author and publisher is required. *_StV WWds i-&4*444& Published by the British Columbia Historical Federation | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 t^et&fogsrt&i. 5 History Lives Here! Kilby Historic Site by Julie H. Ferguson From the early 1900s, two generations of the Kilby family served a community in the eastern Fraser Valley. Their former property offers a step back to the 1920s. 1^ Directory Shows Victoria on ^ Verge of Adulthood by Nick Russell, PhD Edward Mallandaine's 1860 directory gives a fascinating snapshot of pioneer Victoria before it becomes a city. Bunchgrass: The Harper Brothers vs Ranchers by Marie Elliott The Cariboo-Chilcotin grasslands were the setting for a conflict between cattlemen and ranchers. The stakes? A fragile ecosystem. 18 ^ X How a Ranch Began ^T M by John Bragg The dream of owning his own ranch drew John Bragg to emigrate from England to the raw land of Pelican Lake, BC during the post-World War II era. 29 Longevity in the Vancouver Courts by Janet Mary Nicol Thomas Francis Hurley has been overshadowed in history by his wife, Maisie Hurley (Armytage- Moore), but his dedication to law deserves its own place in BC's stories. 38 Annie Watson's Curious Suitcase of Sorrow by Graham Brazier A story of a journey through a chaotic collection of ephemera and the quirks of history. 42 Archives & Archivists by Sandra Parrish; edited by Sylvia Stopforth Take a glimpse into the history and people of the Discovery Islands through the Museum at Campbell River's new online resource. 48 Cabinets of Curiosities by Paul Ferguson While planning an exhibit, Paul Ferguson, Heritage Collections Manager at the Chilliwack Museum & Archives, found his McGuffin in a 1926 calendar. 3 Editor's Note Inside British Columbia History 44 From the Book Review Editor's Desk K. Jane Watt Bunchgrass and Famous Crass BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 1 British Columbia Historical Federation A charitable society under the Income Tax Act Organized 31 October 1922 PO Box 5254, Station B., Victoria BC V8R 6N4 0 www.bchistory.ca 0 info@bchistory.ca Under the Distinguished Patronage of The Honourable Judith Guichon, OBC Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia OFFICERS PRESIDENT Barry Gough Phone 250.592.0800 president@bchistory.ca FIRST VICE PRESIDENT Gary Mitchell Phone 250.387.2992 vpl@bchistory.ca SECOND VICE PRESIDENT Derek Hayes Phone 604.541.7850 vp2@bchistory.ca SECRETARY Judy Lam Maxwell Phone 604.418.8560 secretary@bchistory.ca TREASURER Kerri Gibson Phone 250.386.3405 Fax: 250.361.3188 treasurer@bchistory.ca PAST PRESIDENT (EX-OFFICIO) Barb Hynek Phone 250.535.9090 pas tpres ©bchistory.ca HONORARY PRESIDENT Jacqueline Gresko honorary@bchistory.ca DIRECTORS Marie Elliott essays@bchistory.ca Maurice Guibord director3@bchistory.ca Ron Hyde directorl@bchistory.ca William R. Morrison director4@bchistory.ca Sharron Simpson director5@bchistory.ca K. Jane Watt director2@bchistory.ca Ken Wuschke director6@bchistory.ca EDITORS Andrea Lister, British Columbia History Editor bcheditor@bchistory.ca K. Jane Watt, Book Review Editor, British Columbia History reviews@bchistory.ca Sylvia Stopforth, Archives & Archivists Editor, British Columbia History open newsletter@bchistory.ca R.J. (Ron) Welwood, Website Editor webeditor@bchistory.ca Derek Hayes, Online Encyclopedia Editor vp2@bchistory.ca COMMITTEE CHAIRS CONFERENCES Barb Hynek MAGAZINE LIAISON K. Jane Watt magazine@bchistory.ca HISTORICAL WRITING AWARDS William Morrison writing@bchistory.ca MEMBERSHIP Ron Hyde membership@bchistory.ca W.KAYE LAMB ESSAY SCHOLARSHIP Marie Elliott essays@bchistory.ca RECOGNITION Gary Mitchell recognition@bchistory.ca HISTORIC TRAILS AND SITES Tom Lymbery Phone: 250-227-9448 Fax 250-227-9449 trails@bchistory.ca For awards and scholarship information see inside back cover. MEMBERSHIP The British Columbia Historical Federation has been working since 1922 with historical sites, societies, groups, museums, archives, etc. throughout British Columbia preserving and promoting British Columbia's history. The British Columbia Historical Federation is an umbrella organization embracing a variety of membership categories which are interested in the preservation and promotion of British Columbia's history. Member Societies: Local and regional historical societies with objectives consistent with those of the Federation. All dues paying members of the local or regional society shall be ipso facto members of the Federation. Affiliated Members: Groups, organizations and institutions without dues paying members with specialized interests or objectives of a historical nature. Associate Members: Individuals may become members of the Federation. Corporate Members: Companies are entitled to become members of the Federation. ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP DUES Member Societies: one dollar per member with a minimum membership fee of $30 and a maximum of $75 Affiliated Members: $35 Associate Members: $35 Corporate Members: $100 For further information about memberships, contact Ron Hyde, Membership Chair BCHISTORY.CA: THE FEDERATION WEBSITE AND COMPANIONS BOOK STORE The website Book Store now has over 85 books on its shelves from the British Columbia Historical Federation and member societies. Books can be purchased through bchistory.ca using PayPal. Purchase books about BC history: www.bchistory.ca/publications/store/index.html DIGITAL ARCHIVES Federation publications from 1923 - 2007 can be accessed from the main page. Click on the Publications link from www.bchistory.ca Or go directly to the university library website at http://bchistory.library.ubc.ca/?db=bchf# The archive of BCHF Newsletters can be found at http://bchistory.ca/publications/newsletter/index.html ONLINE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY A comprehensive database of British Columbia history, available free to all online in a "Wikipedia"style format. Submissions will be reviewed for accuracy. The name of the author will be attached to the entry with links to the author's website. Be a part of this exciting new project today and write a few words about your area of interest! http://bchistoryonline.com BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 Editor's Note Inside British Columbia History I recently went for coffee with three other local editors. It was great to chat with others in the same profession and swap stories as we are often on our own. It got me thinking about the editorial process and how it is possibly a bit of a mystery to authors and subscribers. Every editor is different and every relationship between author and editor is different but here is some insight into how an issue of British Columbia History all comes together. I currently have about a dozen different articles in my in-box in various stages of assessment plus some article proposals. I give each piece a first reading without my editor brain on. I merely ask myself if it was interesting and if I enjoyed the article. Then I move on to whether it fits the mandate of British Columbia History. Sometimes I forward it to the Editorial Advisory Group for their thoughts. We do not always agree on what it means to tell BC's story. Does it mean the stories have to be contained within the borders of British Columbia or can we branch out and see how British Columbian's have had an impact on the nation or world at large? Once I have decided that an article will be published then I need to decide when. It rarely goes into the next issue as I work a few issues in advance. If possible, I try to make sure each issue has articles of various lengths about different topics and diverse parts of BC. Then I let the story percolate in my brain for a bit and then work on the substantive edit. Is it too long? Would it work better if reorganized? Should some sections become sidebars? Then I move on to the stylistic editing: clarifying meaning, eliminating jargon, smoothing language and other non- mechanical line-by-line editing. Along the way I do some fact-checking as time permits. At this point it goes back to the author for them to review. Once all the articles have come back to me for a particular issue, I start doing the layout and deciding what images will accompany the piece. Researching images and obtaining permissions from copyright/permission holders can be quite time-consuming and, sometimes frustrating, as those of you who attended my copyright workshop at the Historic Grasslands conference know. Finally, the draft is sent to my wonderful copy editors who do another check for grammar, spelling, punctuation and other mechanics of style; and checking for consistency of mechanics and internal consistency of facts. They also ensure Canadianizing, metrication, proper citations, and missing photo credit lines. Sometimes they encourage a bit of fact-checking or note jargon that I may have missed. Those corrections are made and sometimes negotiated with the author. The drafts are sent to the authors and the proofer for the final once-over. Meanwhile, I have moved on to the next issue except for the moments when I sign off on the proof and then wait for it to arrive in my mailbox. Enjoy, Andrea Lister, Editor Submission Guidelines Manuscripts that have been published elsewhere or are under review for publication elsewhere, will be considered at the editor's discretion. • Word Count 1000 to 5000. • Electronic version, with file extension (either .doc or .rtf), will be required should the article be accepted for publication. • Endnotes must follow Chicago Manual of Style, do not insert notes in text. • Photocopies/scans of research material/ quoted material (pages from books, documents, or journals you have used) for fact checking are appreciated. • Illustrations are encouraged: ° submit copies of permissions (or assurance of permission) for the images; ° sufficient resolution for high-quality reproduction, 300 DPI (dots per inch) minimum or a pixel dimension of 1200x1500 pixels, (with the exception of images such as coins; minimum 600x600 pixels) preferable in jpg or tif format; ° Not embedded in text—send as separate files; ° Please provide suggested captions for the illustrations; ° Image credit information must be provided with all illustrations; ° Low-resolution images may be sent with initial submission in cases where images would need to be purchased from an institution. • A two-three sentence biographical note about the author and photo. If a manuscript is accepted for publication, major changes will be cleared with authors before publication. Authors will also have the opportunity to do a final proof check prior to publication. You agree to grant the BCHF First Rights (the right to be first to publish your material in North America) or Reprint Rights (your material has been published before and this is now a reprint; the original publisher will be credited at the time of reprint), and Electronic Publishing and Multimedia Rights (the right to publish the work on the internet) and to publish that work in British Columbia History for no payment. Future online publication of your work and the right to reprint it in a future publication is included in your granting of publication rights to the BCHF. The British Columbia Historical Federation assumes no responsibility for statements made by contributors. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 3 Inbox Letters from Readers A journal of informed writing on British Columbia's cultural, political, and economic life. Langley Prairie K. Jane Watt's article about Fort Langley in the Spring 2013 edition triggered my memories of Langley Prairie in the 1940s. Langley Prairie* in the 1940s was a small town in the Fraser Valley. One important business on the main street was Rump & Sendall Ltd who supplied baby chicks to almost all of B.C. Dick Sendall was a boarder at St. Georges school in Vancouver, where I was also a boarder. Langley was close enough for Dick to make it home on long weekends, but not those of us from Kootenay Lake, the Queen Charlottes, or northern Alberta. Dick had an older sister, Jean Sendall, who took over the chick hatching business and ran it from Vernon, as Rump & Sendall (Okan) Hatchery until 1994. The most important person was Bob Sukurai who could sex the chicks as soon as they were out of the egg - Japanese having perfected this art. Unsexed chicks were cheaper, but often you took a chance, you might raise more cockerels than hens. Our Gray Creek Store booked orders for spring delivery of chicks from Jean in Vernon for many years. They would be placed in special, vented cardboard cartons and shipped by overnight mail from Vernon to Gray Creek. Day old chicks have enough built in sustenance that they can survive well for two days without food or water. If they were delayed for some reason the incessant peeping of the packages would ensure that someone phoned us, so sometimes we had to drive to Nelson or Creston to fetch them. The night before we would have phoned our customers to make sure they had their heat lamps turned on so that their brooder space was warm and ready. We enjoyed a yearly visit from Jean each year in the off season, as she knew how important that personal contact is. Born 1917 in Norfolk, England she passed away in 1999 in Vernon. *the 1945 BC Directory lists Langley Prairie as a Post Office on BCER and stage, 29 Vi miles east of Vancouver, population 2094. Tom Lymbery Spring 2013 a Winner! A belated message to say that this issue is definitely a winner! The cover and content are terrific. I enjoyed reading the issue very much. Keep up the good work! Jean Wilson Agriculture and Food Lovely issue, as usual, Andrea. Particularly enjoyed the Japanese orange story. Alan I BC BookWorld Send us your thoughts. British Columbia History welcomes reader's letters and emails, while reserving the right to edit them. Email your story to: bcheditor® bchistory.ca, or mail it to: Editor, British Columbia History, PO Box 21187, Maple Ridge, BC V2X 1P7. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 History Lives Here! Kilby Historic Site by Julie H. Ferguson From the early 1900s, two generations of the Kilby family served a community in the eastern Fraser Valley. Their former property offers a step back to the 1920s. The Kilby family are unknown to many British Columbians despite donating their assets to the province as a museum and park. The Kilby authentic general store and old hotel anchor the museum, and the provincial park has a beachside campground with a million-dollar view and a boat launch. Their property, now the Kilby Historic Site, lies on a point of land where the Harrison River pours into the Mighty Fraser at Harrison Mills. Geographically, it's a spectacular spot; historically, it transports us to BC's pioneering days and earlier; and for families, it's kid- friendly. British Columbia, perched on the remotest edge of the Empire, came late to civilization. When railways crisscrossed Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, Vancouver Island and mainland settlers still relied on canoes and horses to travel to villages that clung to the coast and rivers. It wasn't until 1858, when Victoria was barely a decade old, that Harrison Mills (called Carnarvon then) saw Europeans in any numbers. The two wild rivers saw hundreds of gold-crazed prospectors roar through the area to richer claims north of the Fraser Canyon. James Douglas, the governor of the new Colony of British Columbia, had bribed the prospectors to build the Douglas Trail from the head of Harrison Lake to Lillooet with promises that they could stake their claims two weeks before anyone else. Carnarvon's paddlewheeler dock and primitive hotel were not enough to halt the miners' headlong dash. A year later Douglas visited Carnarvon and, surrounded by the Scowlitz Indian band, drank a toast to its future settlement. But the anticipated growth took another Julie H. Ferguson is addicted to writing and photography, and the author of twenty books, four of which are about Canadian and BC history, and five are photo portfolios. You can connect with Julie at: info@beaconlit.com www. beaconlit.com /#!historytitles/d- 5t5 (history titles) www. juliehferguson. crevado.com (photo portfolio) Looking out at Harrison Bay from Kilby Provincial Park in 2012. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 5 Above: The CPR bridge under construction. Its opening in 1885 transformed Harrison Mills with investment opportunities and easy transportation links for industry and settlers. Right: Harrison Mills's CPR station in 1902, a year before Tom and Eliza Kilby relocated. quarter century. Carnarvon languished despite being at the junction of trade routes to the interior and carpeted with rich soil. Settlers and squatters dribbled in to farm, but none prospered. The catalyst for development was the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. By 1885 Harrison Mills had its own station and became desirable for investors. Two stores opened, homes were a-building, but neither a school nor church had been erected. In 1889 the population had two white women, and by summer 1892 a sawmill started operation. Salmon teemed in the river and forests coated the mountainsides. Dressed in period costume, Bonnie Levitt takes me under her wing on a blustery May morning. She shows me every inch of the property and the museum that records the stories of Harrison Mills's checkered past and the lives of the tenacious Kilby family. We walk up the long wooden ramp to the general store that's the heart of the museum. Bonnie points. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 "Years ago another ramp from this veranda connected to the railway station and steamer dock. Before that it was a trail through the bush." As the CPR had brought investment to Harrison Mills, so the lumber mills brought workers. Log cabins were jumbled on both banks of the Harrison River to house the growing population Europeans, Chinese, and Japanese. By 1900 four hundred people had moved in and there were enough children for a one-room schoolhouse and customers for the mill's boarding house and store. The Kilby store overlooks the main Canadian Pacific railway line and is perched high on stilts to avoid frequent floods in the freshet. I push open the door. A bell jangles and I enter the 1920s. The inside smells of wood and old rope and is crammed with merchandise. Canned goods line floor-to-ceiling shelves; tools and gadgets hang from the rafters; clocks tick; and the obligatory pot-bellied stove commands centre stage. I smile—not a hint of anything plastic. "The store sold every thing—staples, fresh groceries, medicines, clothing and jewelry, hardware, chandlery, and fuel—all delivered by train," Bonnie explains. "But more importantly, the store gathered the community for nearly seventy- five years." Old photographs attract me inside the store. The original Kilby owners stare at me solemnly —Thomas sports a thick moustache and Eliza wears an Edwardian hat at a jaunty angle. Their son Acton and his wife Jessie, a motherly figure, smile from behind the counter in a 1967 image. The Kilby store and Manchester Hotel, seen here in 1908, was built on stilts to avoid the frequent flooding of Harrison River in spring. Above: These antique gas pumps date from the 1920s and, believe it or not, operated until 1977. Thomas Kilby when he became postmaster for Harrison Mills in 1906. Eliza Kilby. After the first fire in 1906, Eliza Kilby bought two lots on which to build their own store and hotel. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 the pack train up the old Douglas Trail to Seton Lake. The Kilby operation went smoothly for a few years but changes were afoot that they couldn't control. When BC Electric Company's Left: Rat Portage company houses for employees facing the CPR bridge across the Harrison River. Right: An undated image of a pack train leaving Harrison Mills. Acton was only seventeen when he began to lead them to a construction camp at Seton Lake. Tom and Eliza Kilby had operated a "milk ranch" and a store in Coquitlam before the 1903 recession forced them to move to Harrison Mills and run the sawmill's boarding house. The opportunity appeared heaven-sent, only to be dashed when the Trethewey mill burned to the ground four months later, along with the station and several houses. The boarding house was spared, but with no mill, there was little business for the Kilbys. Rat Portage Timber and Trading Company bought the assets and rebuilt a larger, modern saw mill that was in limited production by the end of 1904. They erected a company town around it, and the Kilby boarding house was occupied again. Tom was appointed postmaster in 1906, but two weeks after he started, another fire struck. This time the company store and boarding house burned down, and the Kilbys lost everything. Eliza snatched the chance to buy two adjoining lots and build their own store with living quarters. She soon added a "dry" hotel above the store for transient workers and rail passengers, who paid $1.00 per night. However, competition loomed when Rat Portage opened its new company store and boarding house almost next door to theirs. Life was hectic for the Kilbys, with their growing responsibilities. Their son Acton had to join the family business in 1907. His major task at the tender age of seventeen was regularly supplying a construction site two hundred kilometres away, which entailed ferrying supplies across the river and guiding rail service from Chilliwack to New Westminster and Vancouver opened in 1910, passenger traffic in Harrison Mills declined. Residents south of the river no longer had to travel by ferry across the river to the station to catch CPR trains heading west. The new saw mill failed in 1911, most likely through mismanagement, so Eliza closed the hotel, operating it as a boarding house for teachers and occasional paying guests. The CPR line continued, carrying mostly freight, and eastbound passengers. Tom, a farmer at heart, decided to diversify and bought two hundred acres in 1912 for a small dairy herd and named it Waterloo Farm. Chickens, pigs, and horses soon followed. Apparently there was enough business for the two stores. But as World War One threatened in 1914, Rat Portage sold its inventory to the Kilbys, who then also became the sole suppliers of the company's logging camps on Harrison Lake. This gave the Kilbys a monopoly that nothing threatened again, although the future continued to bring them challenges. Bonnie shows me the all-important store telephone, the only one for years, in the post office tucked at the back of the store. As I prowl round Tom and Eliza's original living quarters, I try to imagine life here—to my modern eye their home seems impossibly small and primitive, though their kitchen wood stove is enormous. For decades they relied on kerosene lamps and later gas for light. A single tap in BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 the scullery provided cold water; there was no bathroom or inside toilet for years. The stairs creak as I climb to the Manchester House hotel, which contains the museum, with artifacts and photographic panels filling the tiny guest rooms. I read stories about the logging industry and salmon fisheries the area supported, the repeated fires, and how remote Harrison Mills was before roads arrived in the 1920s. I gasp at images of the Great Flood of 1948, which reached the eaves of some houses and destroyed Tom's farm. This was the worst of three floods that Harrison Mills endured—1894, 1936, and 1948—and explains why all the buildings in the images were on pilings. Dikes were built in 1926, but sadly, they failed to protect the town in the later floods. The St6:lo First Nation's contribution to the area is remembered too. The Scowlitz, Chehalis, and Lakahamen bands provided canoe transportation for the early settlers and worked for the industries that defined Harrison Mills in its early years. The bands' staple trade was fish—the salmon and sturgeon that they'd relied on for ten thousand years. Bonnie and I head outside and hear the wail of a locomotive as a CP freight train roars past, shaking the ramp. Bonnie yells over the noise, "When the Canadian Northern Railway, which became Canadian National in 1919, was completed along the south bank of the Fraser in 1915, it eliminated the ferry ride for eastbound passengers and Harrison Mills lost all its passenger traffic." Yet the Kilbys pressed on, serving those that remained. "What happened during World War One?" I ask. "That was Tom and Eliza's third setback," Bonnie says. "The Great War of 1914-18 drained Harrison Mills and the logging camps of men to feed the trenches in Europe. Tom and Eliza had no customers and no choice but to close their store in 1917 after son Acton left to join the Royal Flying Corps." The dairy farm alone sustained the senior Kilbys. Peace did not return their customers or see the sawmill's expected resurrection after the war, and when the store reopened in 1920, Tom found work increasingly hard. Upon demobilization, Acton found employment in Savona, where he married Jessie, a teacher, and they moved to Merritt. His new career as a land assessor was cut short when his father developed heart disease; in 1922 the young couple had to return to take over the business. Acton temporarily ceased the farm operation to focus on modernizing Acton taking a rare rest in the living quarters behind the store, c. 1968. Note the old kerosene lamps on the top shelf behind him. Below: The Kilby post office today, preserved as Acton left it in 1968, with his favourite sweater on the back of his chair. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 9 Check out Julie's story of her visits to Kilby Historical Site on YouTube: www. youtube. com I watch?v=0jnnh6Dw QJ4U. The Kilby acreage is smaller today than it was before Acton sold his dairy herd. A stable is at left, with the rear of the horse barn at centre. the store. Once that was complete, he built a new dairy herd of about seventy Jerseys and soon began shipping milk, and Jessie kept the boarding house running for the farmhands. Eliza and Tom both died at the end of the 1920s, leaving the junior Kilbys to shoulder their legacy of service, the position of postmaster, and a demanding lifestyle. Acton added new revenue streams to the operation. He was appointed notary public; in 1933 bought the church and the site of the old Rat Portage mill and its houses; added satellite stores in work camps; began the Milk Shippers Agency; and established Mission Farm Products. The diversification kept the second generation busier than the first, and a growing family added to the pace. In the museum I examine a collage of Acton and Jessie's four children, all born in Harrison Mills, which hints at an idyllic childhood surrounded by animals and friends, and the pleasures of a beach on the property. But records also show that the kids had jobs in the businesses, some of which they heartily disliked. Whenever Jessie had a spare minute, instead of relaxing she organized picnics, parades, and outings for the youngsters and residents. Her son Peter remembers that she was the glue that held the community together, the dynamo behind ill ; "&^^^^^i^^^gBM everything. Jessie managed the store, the boarding house, the post office, the farm, and parenting, while Acton ran milk marketing for the Fraser Valley. The store remained open throughout World War Two, serving the busy CPR railway gangs, workers across the river, and transients. Again peace failed to restore its former customers—this time many shopped further afield by car. The post office was hectic, with not only incoming and outgoing mail, but also telegrams that had to be delivered to those without phones. The store telephone was one of only three in the community and was also used by tug companies to pass instructions along to their employees. In 1948 the biggest flood in memory dealt a blow that nearly broke Acton's heart. Aging farm buildings and lack of government flood assistance forced him to permanently close Waterloo Farm and sell its acreage and his beloved Jersey herd. The only bright spot in these trying years was the arrival of electricity in 1950. However, Acton and Jessie kept the store and post office running for another twenty years with help from their offspring, until Acton reluctantly retired as postmaster in 1968. "That's when their idea to turn the whole property into a museum germinated," Bonnie tells me as we walk in the grounds. "The province bought the property and buildings in 1972, as well as seventeen acres of beach for the park. Acton and Jessie developed a new lease on life as the museum's curators until 1977, still living in the cottage that his parents had used in retirement and recreating this living history of rural BC." I don't see inside their home, as it's now the Kilby administration centre and archives, but researchers are welcome by appointment. Instead, Bonnie and I meander 10 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 through what's left of the farm, with hens pecking around our feet. I see the remnants of an orchard, now sporting a kids' playground, and a shed filled with old farm implements. There's the original 1948 dairy, a piggery, chicken coops, a stable, and the former bull pen where goats, sheep, and a Jersey cow now delight visiting children. My next stop is the family's beach, now the provincial park. I wind along a country lane with a few houses and over a dike, and come to the road's end. Whitecaps churn the river, turquoise with melt, and the beach where the Kilby children played is almost submerged. The air smells clean and mountains frame the view of Harrison Bay and its log booms. Only a handful of hardy RVers occupy the 27-site campground today, but they tell me it's packed in summer. I walk under the CPR bridge past the remains of the paddlewheeler dock and the overgrown ruins of Rat Portage Mill, yearning to talk to the Kilbys. I have to make do with their legacy of the historic site, but it gives me a warm feeling of connection to the family and the past. The cold wind forces me into the cafe and shop housed in a faithful replica of the old Kilby horse barn. The gift shop is better than most, and its proceeds help with the site's upkeep, a constant concern for the Fraser Heritage Society that manages the site today. For lunch in the Harrison River Restaurant, I choose from a 1920-themed menu and read more about the Kilby's family's 106-year story as I enjoy the hearty, home-cooked food. Over the century, the town and the Kilby family survived floods, fires, economic catastrophes, and two world wars. Today Harrison Mills is a pleasant retreat and boasts a friendly population of seventy-nine.* The author wishes to thank Jo-Anne Leon, Sales and Marketing Manager, and the staff at Kilby Historic Site, whose assistance on two visits made this article possible. Sources Julie H. Ferguson, James Douglas: Father of British Columbia, (Dundurn, 2009). Fraser Heritage Society, Kilby Historic Site: Celebrating 100 Years: 1906-2006, (Kilby Historic Site, 2006). Daphne Sleigh, The People of the Harrison, (Abbotsford Printing, 1990). Virtual Museum of Canada (124 archival images), Cracker Barrels and Jersey Cows (The History of One Family in the Eastern Fraser Valley ofBC): http:// www.museevirtuel- virtualmuseum.ca/ and type "Kilby" into the search box. If You Go A car is essential to explore the region, and Highway 7, north of the Fraser River, is a more scenic route than Highway 1. The Kilby Historic Site is well signed and accessed from Highway 7 just east of the bridge across the Harrison River. Kilby Historic Site: www.kilby.ca Kilby Provincial Park (campground info): http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/kilby/ ^ Harrison River and Harrison Mills: www.guidebc.com/harrisonriver/ Harrison Tourism: www.tourismharrison.com Fraser Valley Tourism: http://www.fraservalley-bc.com/ $ BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 11 Directory Shows Victoria on Verge of Adulthood by Nick Russell, PhD Edward Mallandaine's 1860 directory gives a fascinating snapshot of pioneer Victoria before it becomes a city. Nick Russell is a retired journalist and teacher. He has transcribed 20,000 Victoria Building Permits, Water Permits, Plumbing Permits and other data for research. He was co-editor of Victoria Underfoot, and senior editor of This Old House: Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods. His most recent book is Glorious Victorians: Celebrating Residential Architecture in BC's capital. Title page First Victoria Directory courtesy of Vancouver Public Library's online hosting of old directories of British Columbia. Perhaps 1860 was the year that Victoria came of age. It would have been absurd for Edward Mallandaine to have published the First Victoria Street Directory before that date, as the community did not have the mass or the momentum; until then Victoria must have seemed largely temporary, a nervy gamble by people who might change their minds and leave on the next boat for San Francisco.1 After all, it was only 17 years since that first crew of daring young men arrived on Vancouver's Island to clear the scrub and build a Hudson Bay Co. trading fort. It was just eight years since a Victoria townsite was laid out. Six years since the first census counted a mere 282 whites living in the area. Two years since the first miners arrived, looking for Fraser River gold. But in 1860, everything suddenly looked possible...and Mallandaine was anxious to augment his tenuous income (scratched out from teaching, drafting and occasional architectural projects), so he decided to try making a directory. It was a bold undertaking. In his long-winded "Prefatory Remarks," Mallandaine says Victoria is now ripe for a directory: growth has stabilized after the first gold rush; there's a new bridge across James Bay to the new brick government offices, several streets have been paved and are "passable at all times," new construction is in brick and stone, minimizing the "constant dread of fire." In other words, the raw camp is on the way to becoming a town. The preface is highly promotional, lauding Victoria's charms and resources. It claims that "Victoria possesses seven butchers or meat salesmen, ...ten bakers, six tailors, thirteen commission merchants, ...twenty grocers and provision dealers,. . . about twenty-five hotels, inns saloons and restaurants, ...eight or ten carpenters/contractors," etc., but the directory itself doesn't list nearly as many of these. Likely inspired by San Francisco's directory,2 Mallandaine advertised in the Colonist in November 1859 that he would shortly publish the "First Victoria Directory of Trades and Professions." His goal was not always clear, in a display advertisement on page 9, he described it as "A General Directory of Citizens," and if anybody noticed that this effectively ignored women, First Nations, Chinese and even most working- class whites, they apparently accepted it.3 He subtitled the 1868 edition as "An Alphabetical WCT0RI1 dlMCTOKY- ALSO, AND NOTICES OFTR4m™ 1—-i_ pMCEDED fit :'.". . '■ •'.'■ ■ - --. . _ or tax . - ".ttrsTBATBD. " ... ' ^BUSHED By »nur ,, March, ]seo. 12 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 List of Businessmen and Householders," which narrows the field. Whatever it was, it was a first. However, the Colonist greeted its appearance in March 1860 quite coolly, saying it was "neatly printed and contains 621 names." Perhaps Amor De Cosmos was miffed that it was printed in San Francisco. The book cost a hefty $1.50, but could be mailed to Europe for 10c a copy, the paper reported. Astonishingly, only 15 pages of the 140-page volume are devoted to the Victoria street directory, virtually the same length as Mallandaine's preface.4 More than 50 pages are given over to listing San Francisco resources, justifying some lucrative San Francisco display ads.5 The rest is split among display ads for Victoria businesses and data about the community. Officialdom is carefully documented in two "Official Lists" — one for Vancouver's Island & Colony, and one for the British Columbia Colony. Both lists were supplied by William A.G. Young — as Colonial Secretary for the BC Colony and as "Acting Secretary" for Vancouver Island. They list all the senior government posts, from James Douglas down, plus businesses, the hospital, churches, banks, societies, schools, restaurants, hotels, JPs. A bonus was that many salaries were also listed. The book also contains some legislation, verbatim, plus international postal rates and distances to the gold mines. The Vancouver Island section ends with several pages of Voters' Lists, for the whole island, so the directory itself represents perhaps 10% of the total volume. Searching the book When the Victoria directory is transcribed to a searchable spreadsheet, it provides a fascinating, if incomplete, picture of life in the fledgling colony.6 Not only does it list all the movers and shakers, from Douglas and Judge Matthew Begbie down to John Butts, bell- ringer and town-crier, but it indicates which products were available, which streets were busiest, and who lived where. So, it provides a crude first snapshot of the tiny town. In such a frontier community, the traditional professions were thinly represented. Mallandaine himself may have been ready to work as an architect, but the town wasn't ready for Mallandaine. The directory lists him among just three architects, along with John Wright and Rudolphe L'Heureuse. L'Heureuse was actually "d'Heureuse" and he was also trying to start a Drawing Academy at the time. Thomas Trounce is listed as a contractor and builder in the directory but described himself in a display ad as an architect so that makes four architects in town. The experienced John Wright was the architect of choice in the new town. He may have designed Cloverdale, Woodlands, and Fernwood, in I860.7 So Mallandaine had to try other things, and he fills several spaces in the directory with ads for himself — as architect, as teacher, and as calligrapher, offering "Law and Ornamental Writing & Copying." Diversification was the key to survival. MR. E. MALLANDAINE, WfMTfBBB'% Wife OFFICE-BROAD STREET, NEAR YATES, YIGTOMA, Y. I. Not surprisingly, the directory is heavy on the necessities of life, with food, clothing and shelter the primary concerns, and few luxuries available. Food Many commercial farms already existed, such as Craigflower and North Dairy, but, being outside town limits, they get scant attention in the directory. However, there were more people listing themselves as providing "groceries & provisions" than any other single job description in the directory — at least two dozen, plus two fish and vegetable dealers, four fruit sellers (two also offering tobacco), three bakers (one German), three butchers and two milk suppliers. Several restaurants were already in business, including the Johnston Street, the Washington, Ringo's and the Providence. In addition to the essential food groups, a lot of alcohol was available. Saloons were prolific. The directory lists the Phoenix, the Miners', the El Dorado, the California, and the American, plus the Boomerang Inn and the One of Mallandaine's ads for himself on page 11 of the First Victoria Directory courtesy of Vancouver Public Library's online hosting of old directories of British Columbia. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 13 Looking west on Fort Street toward Wharf Street, Victoria. Circa 1860. The left- hand building (#500 Fort 11105 Wharf) had just been built as the Oddfellows Hall (retail on the ground floor), and survives today as the Keg Restaurant. Barre Francaise. Seven outlets supplied wines, spirits or liquors, and one store offered ale and beer. Cigars were big business in the new colony, with three suppliers. One business is listed as provision & miners' outfit, and there is one gunsmith. Clothing There are 10 listings for suppliers of clothing and dry goods; two dressmakers; and one each for hosiery, hat dealer and millinery. There was one tanner/glover. Tailors were in demand: 10 are listed in the directory. Fur clothing was probably regarded as a normal necessity, so there were a couple of furriers. Footwear was vital on the foul streets of Victoria, or in the goldmines. Nine people plied the boot and shoe trade, seven actually calling themselves boot-makers. Luxury Goods There are three hair saloons and one coffee saloon, plus three watchmakers. One business offered syrups and bitters, and two establishments are listed simply as "General dealer/general store." (Things didn't go well for either: Elsasser, who advertised in the Colonist as a "Forwarding and Commission Merchant," died in 1866 with considerable debts. Reid & McDonald held a closing auction in 1862, selling off "Blankets, Alpaccas (sic), Plaids, Dress Goods, Cottons, Hosiery, Shot, 14 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 Beads, Dry Goods, and a fine lot of English Boots & Shoes."8 Shelter The construction industry, of course, was huge, as the town boomed. Apart from the architects, two civil engineers and two surveyors are listed. There are also four bricklayers/masons and two builders. Three men are listed as carpenters; three as carpenter/ builders; five as contractors; two as house or sign painters; and one as a paper-hanger. Three people described themselves as lumber dealers; seven as supplying ironmongery and hardware; one as specializing in tin & hardware. Three others provided furniture. And even as early as 1860, there was a gardener/nurseryman. One firm made roofing materials. At that point, John Teague (later architect and mayor) listed himself as a cabinet-maker & undertaker. There were two sign painters and one tent & sign maker. Real Estate: Leopold Lowenberg is listed as a realtor, but J.D. Caravello listed himself as "real estate & commission." There's also one land and mining agent. Many of the more transient folks used temporary lodgings: five men listed themselves as proprietors of accommodation, and some 20 people gave their address as commercial accommodation, including the American, Bay ley's, Colonial, Royal, Temperance, Union and Vernon Hotels and the Hotel de France, plus boarding houses such as Clifton House. Law & Order In 1860, law-and-order was necessary but primitive. Augustus Pemberton (Commissioner of Police) supervised law enforcement, while John Bayley was superintendent of the police barracks, and Charles Brew was superintendent of police for BC. The courts also had a registrar and a high sheriff. But no actual police officers make it into the directory. There are no other "police" listed, and all the "agents" have attributions such as "estate agent," "land agent" etc. Yet there are already an astonishing number of lawyers. Nine men describe themselves as lawyers, attorneys, solicitors or barristers, plus a couple of conveyancers. Church & Education Schools and churches were still fairly rudimentary. Two bishops, two friars and several ministers saved souls. The indomitable Bishop Demers, who brought in the first printing press and the nuns who started the St Ann's cluster, is listed — but not the nuns. The Church of England and Roman Catholic faiths were dominant, but there was also a Wesleyan, a Congregationalist, and an Episcopalian minister. The directory reports that Rev. Dundas was holding services temporarily in the Police Barracks, while Rev. Evans officiated in the Court House. Was Rev. McFie embarrassed to give his home address in the directory as the Eldorado Saloon, on Yates St? Though some Jews are listed, no Jewish meeting-place is mentioned as the synagogue was not built until 1863. Teachers got very short shrift in the directory: George Burr is the only teacher listed as such, though a Mme. Petibeau is operating the Young Ladies Seminary. Burr is at the Colonial School on Yates, "Terms $5 per year." No teachers are named for Craigflower School or the Roman Catholic Elementary School. Mallandaine, however, gives himself four lines (and a display ad.) as new principal of the Select School. Health Keeping healthy and clean was problematic in the new town, where water was at a premium. One Physician & Surgeon is listed, another calls himself a surgeon- dentist, and one person is listed as MD, while nine people use the title Dr., though it is not always clear if they are offering medical services, dentistry...or music lessons. Many of these dubious doctors seem to have quickly disappeared. Only Drs. N. Clerjon, James Dickson, J.B. Haggin, and Trimble survive into the next city directory (1863). By that time, Dr. H.A. Tuzo has morphed into HBC wharfinger, and by the next directory (1868), he is listed as HBC Chief Trader! Dr. Helmcken is listed in the street directory without his medical credentials; he is included twice in the Official Lists, once as "John Helmcken, Esq., Speaker of the House of Assembly," and once as "J.S. Helmcken, M.D., H.B.C." BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 15 Many accommodations did not provide ablutions, so two establishments provided public baths. Only one business offers washing services, but that was probably left to the Chinese, who are invisible in the directory. Three chemist/drugstores make the list (including A.J. Langley, who carried not only the predictable drugs, but also "paints, oils, and window glass" according to his display ad on page 50. Services The postmaster played a vital role in keeping Victorians connected to the outside world. But the printing and newspaper business was already flourishing, with both the British Colonist (Amor DeCosmos) and the New Westminster Times (Edward King) listed. There was a "news depot," plus one stationer. John Butts is listed as Bellringer & Town-crier. Only two banks are mentioned: Macdonald & Co and the Bank of British North America. One assayer is mentioned, and there were several auctioneers, including Cheap John's. The HBC was still a major employer; six clerks are listed, along with a "director". "Commission merchant" was a popular job description, nine are listed, though it is not always clear what products they handled. Transport The horse was king, though only one livery stable is listed in the directory. Four men described themselves as blacksmiths/farriers/ machinists, and two were saddlers, but there was only one veterinarian. Two firms supplied seed and feed. The harbour was the town's hub, and Capt J. Nagle was harbour master, while one man was listed as a boatman. Wharves were vital, with six specifically listed, plus the HBC. And there was already one shipbroker. Ship-building was likely already a growth industry around the James Bay peninsula, but the builders seemed to have escaped the attention of Mr. Mallandaine's researchers. A large ad on page 24 for the "Governor Douglas" and the "Colonel Moody" — "reputed to be the finest specimens of the Stern Wheeled River Steamers on the Pacific Coast" — notes that both were built in Victoria. But the engraving shows a side-wheeler flying the Stars-and-Stripes. The same cut then reappears on page 80 in an ad for "The splendid new American steamer "Eliza Anderson." Some skills have disappeared in the intervening 150 years, as have some products. The directory lists one "camphene dealer." This Shanties along Victoria harbour, circa 1860. 16 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 explosive lamp oil was also reputed to be used to dilute whisky for sale to the First Nations.9 The influence of immigration from south of the border is suggested by such names as the San Francisco Market, the Texas Store, the Saucelito [sic] Baths, the Union Bakery and Union Market. Conclusion Despite the evidence of emerging sophistication in the young town, the veneer was thin, and many products and services were evidently not available. For contrast, it is interesting to scan the next Victoria directory, published in 1863. Howard & Barnett may have developed a better system of canvassing citizens for the directory, but their book suggests a significant refining of supply — and presumably of demand. For instance, the 1860 directory has only one or two cabinet-makers or carriage builders. By 1863, there are four carriage builders and eight cabinet-makers. Some services were entirely new. For instance in 1863 a piano-tuner, an upholsterer, a confectioner and a candy maker are listed. There was apparently also a greater pool of skilled craftsmen available: an artist, a photographer a cooper, a brass-founder, a plumber, a gas-fitter, a brick-maker, a carver, and a steam sawmill. The ladies of the house had increasing variety available: a dealer specializing in wild game, a coffee roaster, a muffin baker, a sausage maker, and a china and glass shop. And Samuel Nesbitt's biscuit bakery was already in full swing. The ladies may not have been entirely impressed by the advent of a "washing-machine manufacturer," but they were surely relieved that two doctors now advertised themselves discreetly as accoucheurs (a male obstetrician or midwife). None of these services were listed in the 1860 edition. In three short years, citizens were increasingly able to forget the isolation, the lack of resources, and the stink of the tannery, as they ventured to the new oyster saloon, the theatre or the horticultural show. Victoria had really grown up. • Endnotes 1. My deep appreciation goes to the Vancouver Pubic Library for scanning and putting online dozens of Victoria Street Directories. Also to Ron Greene, for helpful suggestions. If we assume the Vancouver library's collection is definitive, then Mallandaine's was the first, in 1860. He planned to publish annually, but when he failed to produce a second edition, entrepreneurs P. Reston Howard & George Barnett filled the gap with their own 1863 version. Perhaps this goaded Mallandaine back into the fray, for he then published several more: 1868,1869,1871 and 1874. But he called them all, "The First Victoria...." 2. The first San Francisco Directory was 1852-3, but the city was already much more developed than Victoria: The 80 pages of listings includes more than 8,000 names. 3. The Howard & Bennett directory, in 1863, still ignored First Nations, but recognized more than a dozen Chinese citizens, mostly focussed in the Cormorant/Store St area. Five were doing laundry; two ran boarding houses, but two were already making their mark in commerce: Lang Lang and Kwong Lee & Co. 4. The directory itself is so thin because it comprises only an alphabetical list of names: It was some 15 years before a directory responded to the need for First Victoria Directory courtesy of Vancouver Public Library's online hosting of old directories of British Columbia. listings by address. And that —William Cubery's Visitor's Guide to Victoria in 1875 — is little more than a tourist brochure, omitting, instead, the alphabetic name list. But producing street lists was particularly thankless, as most houses weren't numbered until the 1880s. Indeed, Howard & Bennett complained bitterly about the lack of house numbers, and vowed to number them themselves. 5. The San Francisco segment of Mallandaine's directory is displayed separately on the Vancouver Public Library website, and the publisher paginated them separately, so it is easy to miss the fact that they are two parts of the same book. 6. This 1860 City Directory spreadsheet should be available shortly online. This author has transcribed and concatenated all 600 entries with Mallandaine's Errata and Addenda, the Voters List, the Official Lists, and the local advertisements into a single searchable database. 7. In 1861 he was joined from San Francisco by George Sanders, and they did many of Victoria's classic buildings, including Angela College, the synagogue, the Carr house, Pentrelew, and possibly Pt Ellice, Wentworth, and the Ross Bay Villa. 8. Colonist 12 May 1862. 9. The Oneida Sachem 2 May 1852 reports the president of the New York Temperance Society making the accusation. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 17 Bunchgrass: The Harper Brothers vs Ranchers by Marie Elliott The Cariboo-Chilcotin grasslands were the setting for a conflict between cattlemen and ranchers. The stakes? A fragile ecosystem. Marie Elliott is the author of the fur trade history: Fort St. James and New Caledonia, Where British Columbia Began (Harbour, 2009) and of the Cariboo gold rush: Gold and Grand Dreams, Cariboo East in the Early Years (Horsdal & Schubart, 2000). Durrell's Wine Glass Ranch, lower Chilcotin Valley Cattlemen versus ranchers is a well- worn theme in Western movies and fiction, but spend a few hours browsing through the colonial correspondence at the British Columbia Archives and you will find that this conflict played out in real time in the Cariboo-Chilcotin grasslands of the province. Although no shoot- outs or range wars took place, a good deal of public protest was needed to ensure that ranchers, cattlemen and a fragile ecosystem would be protected by law. The Cariboo-Chilcotin grasslands are part of North America's Intermountain Grassland ecosystem that once ranged northward from Washington, Oregon and western Idaho through the Okanagan, Nicola, Thompson River and Fraser River valleys to Riske Creek. Today it is the most threatened major ecosystem in British Columbia, covering only 1% of the province but supporting "almost one-third of its known threatened and vulnerable plant and animal species."1 Bunchgr asses dominate the ecosystem's vegetation, especially bluebunch wheatgrass. With abundant fibrous roots, these grasses, along with needle-and-thread grass, junegrass, and Sandberg's bluegrass, grow best in the hot summer temperatures and sandy/silt loams of interior river valleys. Although vulnerable to overgrazing by livestock and intensive agriculture, only 5% of the Cariboo-Chilcotin grasslands have been affected. The provincial government has established the Churn Creek Protected Area, including a working ranch in Empire Valley, to ensure the continuity of the ecosystem for future generations. Bunchgrass deserves a high profile in the history of the fur brigades, the gold rush, and ranching in British Columbia. The Hudson's Bay Company relied on it to nourish more than two hundred horses when the annual brigade travelled from Fort Alexandria via Kamloops to Fort Okanogan between 1826 and 1847, BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 and through the Nicola Valley to Fort Langley between 1848 and 1863. Beginning in 1858 livestock drovers depended on bunchgrass to sustain thousands of animals arriving on the heels of gold seekers, during the Fraser River and Cariboo gold rushes. The cattle and sheep were purchased from ranches in Oregon and Washington Territory that had flourished because of the California gold rush. In the face of the livestock invasion established ranchers moved to protect bunchgrass resources. Some ranchers like the Cornwall brothers at Ashcroft quickly fenced their preemptions then applied to lease extra grasslands. But drovers wintering herds nearby in the valleys and driving up the Cariboo Road needed free access to pasture. To their dismay, it wasn't long before ranchers located along the Cariboo Road began fencing in their lands, too. The colonial government was caught in the middle of the controversy. As the Cariboo Road neared completion to Barkerville in 1865, the Cornwalls applied to lease all of the Hat Creek Valley. Governor Frederick Seymour approved only a small portion because he expected that Barnard's Express and others would need the hay meadows for their horses.2 At the same time, sixteen ranchers had taken up preemptions in the grasslands along the east bank of the Fraser River, between Big Bar and the Chilcotin River junction. Their modest number of cattle, 1758, was kept in the mountains during the summertime, to allow the bunchgrass to mature. The ranches were connected to the Cariboo Road at Clinton and to Williams Lake by trails that eventually became secondary roads. Unfortunately, the east bank grasslands had already caught the notice of Jerome and Thaddeus Harper. Jerome and Thaddeus were prime examples of cattlemen who took advantage of the bunchgrass resources to further their business. Born into the large family of Adam and Margaret Harper, Randolph County, Virginia, they ranched in California during the gold rush before arriving at Yale in 1859. For several years they operated a sawmill, then headed north to Barkerville and became involved in providing cattle and merchandise. # % George Anthony Walkem had emigrated to Canada from Northern Ireland in 1847 with his parents, Charles and Mary Walkem, and after attending McGill College in Montreal he was called to the bars of Lower Canada in 1858, and Upper Canada in 1861. Walkem applied for admission to the British Columbia bar in 1862, but Judge Matthew Baillie Begbie was "ot keen on admitting "colonial trained" lawyers.3 Within a year Governor James Douglas introduced the Legal Professions Act that permitted non-British "awyers to practice, and Walkem quickly became popular with the citizens of Barkerville and elsewhere in the Cariboo. In 1864 he was elected to the Legislative Council as a representative for Cariboo East. At the time that he wrote these letters he sat as an appointed justice of the peace on the council, and politics soon filled the next decade of his life. He was returned for Cariboo in the first election following confederation under Premier John Foster McCreight, and appointed chief commissioner of Lands and Works. When Amor De Cosmos replaced McCreight in December 1872, Walkem became attorney general, and when De Cosmos resigned in 1874 he became premier. His tenure lasted until 1882 when he stepped down to take a judicial position. He retired frorr the bench in 1903 and died in 1908.4 J Jerome was the sharp businessman. Forming a partnership with local butchers Isaac and Benjamin Van Volkenburgh, he began purchasing herds in Oregon and Washington, wintering them south of Osoyoos.5 He was soon able to lease Crown Land and buy private property at Kamloops to form the Harper Ranch. After the Cariboo gold rush died down the two brothers diversified with a short-lived sawmill at Quesnel and a flourmill at Clinton that was well supported by local ranchers. With plans to supply meat and flour to the CPR once it reached Ashcroft, they bought the Kelly Ranch southwest of Clinton as a holding area. The Harper brothers posed a serious threat to bunchgrass ecology when a young Canadian lawyer, George Anthony Walkem, tried to help the ranchers in May, 1869, by writing to the colonial government. The following letters and petition were submitted to the Colonial Secretary a few Inset: Judge George Anthony Walkem, circa 1870. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 19 cattle dealers and drovers, as at present, ESTATE NP 1. 3928%, Acres. are allowed to drive large bands of animals, and numerous flocks of still more destructive sheep, over their cattle [range?] these people will inevitably have to relinquish their farms if not to abandon the country. E. H. Sanders7 ^ / ' ^l^" [Stipendiary Magistrate] Letter from George A. Walkem to the Colonial Secretary Clinton, B.C., May 20,1869 Sir: \ <JC I have the honour of forwarding, through the Magistrate of the District, i a petition from the Lillooet farmers to > His Excellency the Governor. Some five a. - —~^\& S^X of them waited upon & requested me to O a no9 ^^ V represent their grievance on behalf of i 3 ^° /^ \V^^ all. The signatures are not appended as 1 d /T / great delay would unnecessarily ensue S «=^ / in obtaining them. The threatened 2 UJ mischief may become irreparable, a .»•'* hence the application for an immediate a. remedy. In substance, they complain that Mr. Harper Ranchlands: months after Alkali Lake rancher Herman [Jerome] Harper, whose cattle range Jerome Harper's O. Bowe's request for a pastoral lease of 1600 practically extends from Oregon to early land acres (647.5 ha) was refused by the Colonial Cariboo, drives his bands in the summer acquisitions. Secretary because it was too large. The Land time upon the very grass carefully Ordinance of 1870, Section XXVI, would set preserved by the petitioners & forming down requirements for pastoral leases in great their only winter feed. If he be allowed detail.6 to continue to do so, the result will be Clinton, May 25,1869 as inevitable as it is now apparent. Mr. Harper will control the cattle business The Hon. The Colonial Secretary of the Colony, as he has heretofore done Victoria by obliging these men to sell to him and Sir: abandon their enterprise. Competition will thus be silenced & a class of men, I have the honor to enclose a petition whose industry has tended to enrich from settlers about Big Bar Creek themselves as well as the colony, may and Alkali Lake, praying that certain be crushed and driven from their tracts of land may be leased to them homes. The complaint is serious as for pastoral purposes. Their request is many are affected. The result of even deserving of every consideration, for the present monopoly of the Cariboo their grievance is well founded and it market is injurious to the miners. Beef is urgently necessary that the relief which would yield a handsome profit at sought should be afforded to them. If 10tt on foot, is sold there at 15it & 16$ 20 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 per lb. and the difference in the retail prices is still more marked. It is hardly necessary to say that the greater number of stock-raisers there are in the Colony, the richer the Colony & its inhabitants will become. Each individual not only competes with Mr. Harper, but with the neighbouring farmers who are in the same line of business. Hence, the distinction of a competition such as this must prove most injurious & should therefore be prevented if possible. Last summer Mr. Harper had about 1000 sheep & 500 cattle on the ground. This summer he has already 1800 sheep and 400 cattle (with a threatened addition of 360) on the same "Flats". The amount of grazing land they destroy is great. Allow ten acres to the head & 2 Vi acres for each head of sheep, we have 7500 acres of good winter pasture land destroyed last year, and an anticipated destruction of 12,100 acres this year, or 19,600 acres in all. Of course, some part of the colony must suffer to this extent, but Mr. Harper should not be permitted to select the only winter grass of the farmer for such a case, especially as his wants may be supplied to an unlimited extent elsewhere and at no extra cost & as his cattle can find ample feed to the right or left of the waggon-road along its whole length. I take the liberty of recommending the prayer of the Petition to His Excellency's serious & I hope favorable consideration as it seems to offer the only feasible & just plan of meeting the difficulty. Mr. Harper stands in a position rather different from that of the farmer. He is the Middle man, in between the farmer & consumer, & by means of a large capital can control the market by purchasing all imported stock as well as the small lots necessarily sold by the farmer to assist him in paying his expenses. I offer these few suggestions, weak as they may be, in the hope that they may prove of some service to the petitioners. May I request you to place them before His Excellency, and kindly send me his reply at your earliest convenience. I have the honor to be, Your Obedient Servant, George. A. Walkem. P.S. To the Honorable The Colonial Secretary: I may add that pastoral leases are granted in the Port Phillip District, Melbourne, to farmers engaged in the usual farming business. The land granted is contiguous to their farms & is given for the purpose of fostering the branch of their calling above. I am told as a fact that a Mr. Smithson left Dog Creek last year on account of the field being all eaten off by Mr. Harper's cattle. He sold out & has gone to Oregon. The purchaser, Mr. Brown, (a settler) says that [possibly?] he will be compelled to follow Smithson's example, first selling his 320 head of cattle to Mr. Harper at a probable sacrifice. Minutes for Acting Col. Secretary Inform Mr. Walkem that each application must be made separately thru the Magistrate & I will consider the applications. FS [Governor Frederick Seymour] Private Letter to Colonial Secretary for Governor Seymour, from Walkem Clinton, May 20169 [Excerpt] Dear Sir: May I take the liberty of telling you privately what I can't well state in an official letter or petition. I refer to the Farmers of the Fraser who have memorialized Your Excellency on the subject of pastoral leases. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 21 Mr. Harper a few days ago admitted to me that in the control of the Cariboo market he had a mine of wealth. His profits are enormous & eventually he will probably leave the Colony with $200,000. In the meantime his object is to crush both open opposition & indirect competition. Hence, he temporarily benefits himself by destroying the Fraser River grass, while he permanently crushes & ruins the farmers on that river. I am confident, Sir, that you will not permit a continuance of this; and I have taken the liberty of assuring the farmers that in you is their stronghold of redress & that you will protect their interests as far as is consistent with justice & right. I have simply as a Legislator [Walkem sat on the Legislative Council ofBC by appointment] taken this interest in the subject, and I need hardly say that I feel confident that permanent interests will always receive encouragement at your hands. Of this the Petitioners have been assured. Petition To His Excellency Frederick Seymour Governor of the Colony of British Columbia Also Vice-Admiral of the same & c.&c. The humble petition of the undersigned farmers of the Lillooet District, whose names, with other data, appear in the appended tabular statement Respectfully Shewith, 1. That Your Petitioners with the intention of permanently settling in this Colony, preempted and purchased farms lying between Alkali Lake and Big Bar Creek on the left bank of the "Fraser", mainly with a view of stock raising, as the neighbouring country presented inducements promising success. Within these limits lies a low strip of land about 10 miles long and 400 yards broad, which from its situation on the margin of the River, forms a good winter pasturage for cattle. Bunch-grass, as your Excellency is aware, is the only grass indigenous to the soil, and as—unlike most other grasses—it springs from seed and not from a permanent root, preservation becomes a necessity to Your Petitioners. The grass once eaten off in the summer time is forever destroyed and hence they have hitherto adopted the expedient of grazing their stock during the summer months upon the mountain slopes and distant table lands, leaving the strip referred to for winter feed. The grass on this strip has thus an opportunity of ripening and in this manner, a continuous crop is ensured from the fallen seed; while the dry bunches form an excellent substitute for hay & food for the cattle when driven by frost and snow from the higher altitudes. This strip forms the only resource of the stock raiser in the winter time, and in the event of its destruction as a grazing ground, your Petitioners will undoubtedly be compelled to abandon this very important branch of farming. Your Petitioners cannot cut hay for winter use to any advantage, as the grass on the mountains—already far distant—becomes more and more so every year. With a view of further preserving the grass on the strip for the use of their cattle, your Petitioners have wholly abstained from sheep farming. 2. Notwithstanding all these precautions a large area of the strip was destroyed last year by large bands of the sheep and cattle of passing drovers, who selected this spot for fattening their animals, regardless of the destruction of the grass; and this year larger bands now driven upon it threaten to reduce the whole strip to the arid and sterile condition of the once fertile plains of Lillooet. 22 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 3. If no relief be afforded, your Petitioners feel that such a system will defeat all their past efforts, and their interests as permanent settlers will be sacrificed to the temporary wants of the class of men mentioned. 4. Your Petitioners are well aware that they have no title to the grazing ground mentioned, but they most respectfully submit that as permanent settlers they are entitled to Your Excellency's consideration and protection, especially so as the inroads complained of appear wholly unjustifiable, as the owners of the droves referred to have an unlimited range extending from Oregon to Cariboo. 5. As Your Excellency will perceive by the appended statement, your Petitioners have acquired in the aggregate a large band of cattle upon which they principally rely for a livelihood, the other branches of farming being merely ancillary to the branch of their business, and of trifling importance when compared with it. 6. They are desirous of obtaining pastoral leases as the only feasible means of protection and they confidently hope that Your Excellency will be pleased to reconsider your adverse decision with respect to these leases and order such concessions to be made to your Petitioners as our Excellency may deem just and advisable. 7. Your Petitioners have laboured under the painful apprehension that if the mischief continue unabated, and unredressed, they will be compelled, as stated, to sell all their cattle, abandon a hitherto successful enterprise, and seek a home elsewhere—a step they are most unwilling to take. 8. Your Petitioners have thus addressed Your Excellency at an early period of the year as the mischief is immediate and may become irreparable. Top left: Bonaparte River Valley (wintering area for drovers). Bottom left: Lower Chilcotin River Right: The northern terminus of Grasslands ecosystem. Becher's Prairie, Riske Creek. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 23 Our Petitioners therefore pray that Your Excellency will be pleased to grant to the undersigned (upon special application made) leases of pastoral land in the District of such extent and upon such conditions as to Your Excellency may secure meet and just. Clinton, May 20,1869. [This list is copied verbatim as written by G.A. Walkem and contains many errors in names and an error in the total number of cattle.l Name Residence Preemption Date No. of Cattle owned by each Wm Bowie Alkali Lake 1861 200 Tiara & Co. " 1863 200 Wm Terry " 1868 20 Chas. Brown Dog Creek 1859 320 Peter Collins " 1859 10 Moses Pigeon " 1859 60 Pierre Senay " 1864 26 Jesse Davis " 1862 25 Jas. Dessau It " 1866 15 Ves. Gaspard " 1862 76 A. Isnardi Chimney Creek 1862 165 John Rose " 1861 80 C. Branson " 1867 35 CP. Ritchie Canoe Creek 1861 200 Blight a Co. China Gulch 1864 200 Jos. Hallar Big Bar Creek 1861 126 Total number of cattle wintered by Petns. as stated 1753 Draft of a reply from the Colonial Secretary to E.H. Sanders, undated Sir: In reply to your letter of the 25 ultum. forwardfing] a petition from settlers in your district with subject of pastoral leases, I am directed by the G. to request you will inform the Petitioners that all applications for leases must be made separately through yourself with full particulars when they will receive His Hon. consideration. A few of the ranchers on the petition did not remain in the Cariboo, but Herman Bowe, R.P. Ritchie, Moses Pigeon, Charles Brown, Verespeuch Gaspard, Amadee Isnardy and Joseph Haller are well known pioneers in the region. On June 6, 1870, the east bank ranchers submitted another petition to the new Governor, Anthony Musgrave, requesting that pastoral leases should be granted, "on all such lands as cannot be used for agricultural purposes" for a minimum of five years, rental should not exceed three cents per acre, and ten acres per head of cattle should be allowed on all old, settled ranges. They also wanted advance notice of one to two years if their leases were to be terminated.8 Their requests met with approval from B.W. Pearse, Lands and Works, who commented, "It is of the utmost importance to protect them against the drovers from the neighbouring American Territory, so far as to give them leases of those lands which are unfit for other purposes, at present." He recommended their application to the Governor's favourable consideration.7 As for Jerome and Thaddeus, they may have developed their business farther had they not suffered from venereal disease. Mercurial ointment obtained from the HBC store in Quesnel failed to help Jerome who died insane at a Santa Barbara resort in 1874, at the age of 42.8 He left an estate estimated at $150,000 to Thaddeus and $10,000 to a brother, Ezekiel. Thaddeus began spending his large inheritance wildly. Gathering up over 1,000 cattle he embarked on a two-year drive to 24 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 the railway in California, and spent another eighteen months at San Francisco investing in unsuccessful stock and land schemes. Upon returning to British Columbia he terminated the long-standing partnership with the Van Volkenburgh brothers, by now butchers in Victoria.11 In 1877 he refused to pay $550 in taxes on 11,000 acres of Wild Land situated on the Fraser River, claiming that he had never received title from the government.12 Thaddeus moved the Clinton flourmill to the mouth of the Bonaparte River near Ashcroft and made it his Cariboo headquarters, then borrowed money from the Western Canadian Ranching Company to buy up lands to expand the cattle business. These new holdings included the Perry/Stuart ranch next to the mill, and a large property on the west side of the Fraser River that was named the Gang Ranch after the gang plough. His medical condition was exacerbated on July 1, 1884 when a horse kicked him in the head at a Gang Ranch cow camp. He had been unconscious for 24 hours when his ranch manager, Alexander "Sandy" McEwen, brought him across the Fraser River by canoe, at the mouth of Churn Creek, and accompanied him to St. Joseph's Hospital in Victoria. For six weeks McEwen remained by his bedside until Drs. Helmcken and Davie thought he was well enough to return to the Bonaparte mill. Thaddeus lost his memory and reasoning ability and was soon duped into investing in a worthless mining venture at Lightning Creek for $50,000. In a second venture he lost an estimated $18,000 in placer mining at Harpers Camp (Horsefly). By court order Matthew Baillie Begbie had his holdings placed in the hands of receivers. They included some 40,000 acres of freehold land. In 1889 the Western Canadian Ranching Company, a subsidiary of The British Columbia Land and Investment Agency, London, acquired control of his property at auction. Thaddeus died insane at age 65, at Victoria, December 9,1898. These letters and petition illuminate just a small part of ranching history in British Columbia. It was a tough business, aggravated by a distant government and large cattle companies. Nourishing bunchgrass played a major role in determining the future of small ranching in the Cariboo-Chilcotin.13 • Endnotes 1. Chris Harris, Spirit in the Grass, The Cariboo Chilcotin's Forgotten Landscape (108 Mile House: Country Light Publishing, 2007), p.12; Friends of Churn Creek website, www.friendsofchurn.ca: Ministry of Forests, The Ecology of the Bunchgrass Zone, (July 1998); Anna Roberts, Williams Lake, personal communication. 2. GR1372, Colonial Correspondence, F334/16a, Seymour to P.H. Nind, August 31,1865. 3. Dictionary of Canadian Biography online, "George Anthony Walkem" by Hamar Foster, www.biographi. ca/009004-119.01. 4. Ibid. 5. Dictionary of Canadian Biography online, "Jerome Harper" by G. R. Newell, www.biographi.ca/009004- 119.01 6. GR 1372, E.H. Sanders to Frederick Seymour, April 24,1869, BCA; Robert E. Cail, Land, Man, and the Law (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1974), p. 257. 7. Edward Howard Sanders was born in England and held a commission as Lieutenant in the Second Regiment of Light Dragoons, British German Legion, 1855-57. He served as a Stipendiary Magistrate at Yale during the building of the Cariboo Road, and replaced Andrew Charles Elliott as Magistrate for Lillooet and Clinton in 1867. 8. GR 1372, Sanders to Colonial Secretary, June 15,1870, BCA. 9. Ibid. 10. Robert Williams to James A. Grahame, B.226/c/2, HBC Archives. Jerome died on November 27,1874, at a Santa Barbara hot springs resort. His body was returned to friends in the eastern United States for burial. 11. British Colonist, February 6, and March 18,1883, p. 2. 12. GR 868, Box 3, 468/77, Edward Allen, collector, to FG. Vernon, February 24,1877, BC Archives. 13. Other recent books about ranching in the Cariboo Chilcotin include, Veera Bonner, Irene E. Bliss and Hazel Henry Litterick, Chilcotin: Preserving Pioneer Memories (Surrey: Heritage House Publishing Company Ltd., 1995); Ken Mather, Buckaroos and Mud Pups, the Early Days of Ranching ("Victoria: Heritage House, 2006); Rick Blacklaws and Diana French, Ranchland (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2001). BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 25 How a Ranch Began by John Bragg The dream of owning his own ranch drew John Bragg to emigrate from England to the raw land of Pelican Lake, BC during the post-World War II era. John Bragg was an early Cariboo rancher. An abridged version of How a Ranch Began was published in Andy Motherwell's "Historical Footnotes"in the Quesnel Cariboo Observer. Completed barn, Massey- Ferguson 2085 tractor and farm wagon, 1955. John Bragg was born in Billericky, England in 1931. In 1937, at the age of 6, he started school. Two years later World War 2 broke out. John, his mother and two sisters, moved to the safer area of Devonshire. John's dad worked on the airfields of Salisbury Plain. When John left school he worked on a farm which, in turn, led to his desire to own his own ranch. The family considered immigrating to South Africa, but the paperwork would have taken too long so the family agreed that John and his dad would sail to North America on the Queen Elizabeth 1 in May of 1948. Landing in New York, a war time friend met John and his dad and showed them around the city. Then it was off to Toronto where they boarded a train to Vancouver arriving on May 24, 1948. They left England with £3 each which was spent getting them to Vancouver.1 Consequently, upon their arrival in Vancouver, they had to bum a ride to the YMCA Hostel. To further complicate matters, it was the May Day holiday weekend so they were unable to access their funds until the following Tuesday morning. May 1948 was the year of the Lower Fraser Valley flood. It was extensive enough that the Irish Fusilliers, an army unit, were called in to assist with providing access to dykes, clearing dykes of overgrowth, filling sandbags, as well as, evacuating people and livestock from flooded areas. John and his dad volunteered to help the unit fight the floods in Abbotsford and surrounding area. After the floods, John's dad bought a 1941 Chevy car and they set out to explore the interior of British Columbia. Life on a ranch appealed to John, but not to his father so dad returned to Vancouver and civilization. The experience John gained working for the Holtes, the Bryants and others, led to his desire to have his own ranch. John was on one of the famous cattle drives from 26 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 Pan Phillip's and Rich Hobson's home ranch at Anahim Lake to Quesnel. Upon returning, Pan showed him Pan Meadow, a wet, willow area just off the Blackwater River. John also looked at Rich Meadow. John's companion, Ivan Domenico, took up the Rich Meadow property while John filed for a pre-emption around Pelican Lake. The 65 ha parcel cost John $2.00 for the pre-emption and later $10.00 for the title.2 John went to Chilliwack and bought a Massey-Ferguson 2085 tractor and a four wheeled farm wagon. He drove to his parents' place in North Vancouver where he added sides creating a 2.5 m x 5 m x 1.2 m high trailer and loaded it with everything he would need to start his ranch at Pelican Lake. In May of 1955, John left North Vancouver for Quesnel. He traveled Highway 97 at a speed of 15 mph (25 km/h). Five days and 435 m (700 km) later he reached his destination. The pavement ended at Lac La Hache in those days and on the rest of the journey along by the Fraser, gravel was the closest description for the road surface. The last leg of the trip was not easy as John broke an axle just 20 mi. (32 km) from Quesnel. He used a pine pole to replace a wheel. At Puntchesacut Lake he installed half-tracks on the tractor. Two days later, he reached Paul Krestenuk's store at Nazko where he switched to horses. He left the tractor and wagon at the store and came back later for them. By the fall of that year, he had built a 3.7m x 4.7m log cabin with a dirt floor and a hay and dirt roof. A log hayshed came later as well as a house. In July 1956, John attended the Anahim Lake Stampede, a legendary gathering of Cariboo characters. It was there that he met Jean Merz who later became his wife. The ranch grew as he cleared land and acquired more pre-emptions. He bought a large TD18 Top: John Bragg, first day on his ranch, Pelican Lake. July 1, 1955. Left: The beginnings of the hay barn with first cabin to the right. Massey- Ferguson 2085 in background, 1955. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 27 Endnotes 1. £3 in 1948 converts to approximately £89 in 2011 money, about $142 CDN. "Inflation Calculator," Bank of England, accessed January 23, 2013, http:// www.bankofengland. co.uk/education/Pages/ inflation/calculator/flash/ default.aspx. Second source: "Exchange Rates," Bank of Canada, accessed January 23, 2013, http://www. bankofcanada.ca/rates/ exchange/. 2. $2 CDN in 1955 converts to approximately $40 CDN in 2012 money; $10 ~ $200. "Inflation Calculator," Bank of Canada, accessed January 23, 2013, http://www. bankofcanada.ca/ rates/related/inflation- calculator/. 3. Phil Gaglardi was known as Flyin' Phil for convincing W.A.C. Bennett to buy the government a Learjet. To convince Premier Bennett that travelling by government-owned ferry was too slow for government business, Galardi convinced a pilot friend to fly him to Prince Rupert in a Learjet, thereby managing to get there before Bennett. Gaglardi waited on the dock to greet the Premier with a purchase contract for the plane. bulldozer, as well as larger farm tractors, and equipment. One of the risks of pioneer life was a medical emergency. There was no support nearby. In November 1959, John's oldest daughter, 18-month old Laura, became very ill and polio was suspected. It was -60°F (-51°C) and no engine would start until it warmed up; warming up an engine usually took several days. John finally got his Massey-Ferguson 2085 tractor going and plowed the road as far as the Blackwater Bridge which was impassable due to ice jams on the river. It was after dark, so he hung a naptha gas lantern on the tractor. It worked for a while until the fragile mantel broke. He stopped again at Trout Lake and replaced it and after two days of plowing was able to take Laura to G.R. Baker Memorial Hospital in Quesnel. On reaching the hospital, it was determined that Laura did have a mild case of polio and she was hospitalized for sixteen days. Flyin' Phil Gaglardi, the highways minister, learned of this adventure and ordered the Nazko Road cleared to Gillie's Crossing (35 km from Nazko) from then on.3 The ranch was still 10 km west of the crossing. One should add an interesting side note. John had drained the radiator of his tractor because the liquid had to be warmed before being poured into the cold engine. Hunters got stuck while John was away from the ranch. They started the tractor, and got themselves out, but ruined the tractor's engine. They never compensated John for the damage. John sold to an Alberta group in 1979 and moved to Quesnel, where he lives today. As he ponders his life, he's proud of his achievement of building a ranch from raw land far beyond the settled areas of civilization.* Frantic Father Plows Snow To Get Baby To Hospital A FRANTIC father spent two days bulldozing a road through the snow from Pelican Lake, 75 miles west of Quesnel, to get his sick daughter into the G. R. Baker Memorial Hospital. Laura Bragg, 18-month-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Bragg, became ill last week and her father set out to bring her into Quesnel for treatment. Heavy snow had blocked off the bush road and he spent two days with a tractor clearing snow before he could get through. This morning Laura's ill-, ness was diagnosed as a mild case of spinal polio in one leg. "She is walking now and is making a good recovery," said Dr. L. Maher. "Frantic Father Plows Snow to Get Baby to Hospital." Cariboo Observer, November 26, 1959, page 1. Digitized by the Quesnel Museum www. quesnelmuseum. ca. f 1 \mn r. t.t.ta'o «•■> <un.f»iiBmi»si i«aa<un.t>niT«rea«ira«iiiTa«ra«i?!Tiiiii % :tor has its own story. As an Englishman, Hai 3 point hitch and introduced that innovation to the world — no modern tractor is without it today. Ferguson joined Henry Ford to produce Ford-Ferguson tractors to North America, but after a dispute Ferguson joined with Canadian Massey-Harris (a long time agricultural firm) to produce MasseyFerguson Equipment — a ame that is common on many pieces of farm equipment today. These small, versatile tractors replaced the horse on thousands of farms. 28 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 Longevity in the Vancouver Courts by Janet Mary Nicol Thomas Francis Hurley has been overshadowed in history by his wife, Maisie Hurley (Armytage-Moore), but his dedication to law deserves its own place in BC's stories. //I will not allow my client to be thrown ' * to the lions to provide a Roman holiday for sadists and sensationalism," defense lawyer Thomas Hurley told the Vancouver Sun newspaper following Walter Pavlukoff's arrest in 1953.l Hurley's client was wanted for shooting Sydney Petrie during an attempted bank hold-up in Vancouver on August 25, 1947. Pavlukoff was apprehended five years later in Toronto after police received a tip from a shoe salesman who recognized him from a photograph in a newspaper article. When the officers found Pavlukoff on a Toronto street, he was carrying a spring knife and six hacksaw blades. Later they discovered an automatic handgun in his rented room. Pavlukoff was in hiding "with a gnawing fear of a slow death," the Vancouver Sun later wrote.2 The Pavlukoff case appealed to a post- Second World War citizenry with a hard-edged appetite for news of crime and retribution. The accused man had already spent several years in prison for robbery and armed assault in Michigan and BC. The media characterised Pavlukoff as a "Doukhobor ex-convict" in an era when the BC-based religious colonies were regarded with extreme prejudice. Defending Pavlukoff under intense media scrutiny would prove to be a challenge for Hurley, an experienced Vancouver criminal lawyer. A grey-haired man with a round face, his serious demeanour in the courtroom belied a sparkling wit. Hurley accused the press of waging a campaign of sensationalism against his client, amounting "almost to propaganda."3 Pavlukoff sat "calmly" in the defense box on the first day of the trial, March 23, 1953, the Vancouver Sun reported, his older brother among the spectators in a packed courtroom. Justice Manson presided as a jury of ten men and two women was selected in fifteen minutes. Crown lawyers Walter Owen and Arthur Johnson had gathered 50 witnesses and Hurley and his associate, defense lawyer Harold Fisher, aimed to prove their testimonies were unreliable. The details of the shooting emerged as witnesses were questioned.4 The bank, on Vancouver's west side, had been crowded on a late August afternoon when a gunman entered and ordered customers to face the wall. The gunman then walked in to Petrie's private office, shot him once in the chest and ran out, partly shielding his face with a newspaper. The killer fled down a side street and over several back yard fences, dropping his Luger ammunition clip along the way. Later a hat with the initials "WP" was found in Tatlow Park. Further along at a beach, a hotel key and Luger pistol were also discovered. The culprit eluded capture and police suspected Pavlukoff, based on the trail of clues. Almost all the Crown's eyewitnesses believed Pavlukoff fit the description of the killer. Only Conrad Gunn, now a young man; five years ago a fourteen year-old, who had been standing outside the bank during the attempted hold-up, disagreed. Gunn surprised the court by testifying the killer had been thinner then Pavlukoff and had heavier eyebrows and lighter hair.5 Despite Hurley's "harried" cross- examination of Mrs. Smith, the "young housewife" who had been a teller, was convinced the accused was the same man she saw in the bank five years ago. The Vancouver Sun reported their exchange: Hurley: "What was peculiar about the way he (the gun man) looked at you?" Witness: "Does it have to be peculiar?" Hurley: "Yes, if a man's life depends on it." Mrs. Smith was a "clever witness" as Hurley characterised her during the proceedings, and did not waver in her testimony.6 Hurley had more success cross- examining Robert Sowden, the bank accountant Janet Mary Nicol is a freelance writer, with more than 200 articles, including several stories about contemporary First Nations issues. She has been teaching history at Killarney Secondary in Vancouver since 1997. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 29 who admitted the passage of time could have affected his recall. The newspaper reported: "Finally Hurley swinging on the bank man, hurled the question. 'You can't say that Pavlukoff, the man in the dock, shot Petrie. Can you not?' T can't,' Sowden answered."7 A letter Pavlukoff wrote to his mother, found by police in his rented room, was read out to the court by the Crown. Its rambling, frequently incoherent contents took 24 minutes for the lawyer to read, depicting a man with paranoid, anxious and suicidal thoughts and did not relate directly to the crime.8 "I need not remind you in Canada we do not hang men who resemble murderers," Hurley cautioned the jurors in his summation at the trial's end. "We hang men who are murderers, proved to be such by evidence cogent and convincing beyond a reasonable doubt."9 In less than an hour, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. The judge sentenced Pavlukoff to hang. Hurley appealed the verdict on two grounds—the accused was not sufficiently identified and the conduct and actions of the presiding judge during the trial conveyed the judge1 s own belief the accused was guilty. The appeal was turned down. Soon after receiving the news, Pavlukoff plunged a kitchen knife in to his chest, killing himself in his prison cell on July 9,1953.10 "A Simple Irish Boy" Famine, poverty and discrimination were part of Hurley's ancestral past in Ireland. He immigrated to Vancouver as a young man in 1911, the same year a new court house of sandstone and granite, now the city's art gallery, was built downtown. Oakalla Prison Farm was established in the city's suburb of Burnaby a year later and in Hurley's fifty year legal career, 44 men were hanged within the prison walls —some his clients.11 Hurley came to Vancouver by way of San Francisco, working for a short time in law firms in British Columbia's interior before settling in the city's West End, in 1911. He was 'a simple Irish boy' he would tell a journalist many years later.12 Several families with the Hurley surname hailed from the Catholic parish of Schull in county Cork, Ireland. Thomas Hurley's grandparents grew up during the worst years of the potato famine, from 1845 tol852. The spread of fungus on the peoples' main food source across Ireland resulted in tenant evictions, starvation and mass immigrations to other part of Britain and North America. For a period of time in 1847, it was reported 50 people died every day in Schull.13 The inadequate response to the crisis by English rulers and the Irish elite is still remembered. In the 19th century, mainly as a result of 'the great hunger,' the Irish formed the largest single immigrant group in Wales, working in the docks, steel and coal industries. Thomas' father, Cornelius Hurley moved to its capital, Cardiff, more than two decades after the famine. He lived in the city's Irish enclave of Canton where he met and married Elizabeth Donovan, a locally born woman of Irish stock. Thomas was the second born, the only boy in a family of four girls. In 1901, at age 16, Thomas stood at 5 foot 8, with blue eyes and brown hair. The census indicates his father, as head of the household, was unemployed, though his bachelor uncle, Daniel Hurley worked as a "coal trimmer."14 Sometime after 1901, the family moved to Dublin, Ireland. Thomas' parents and three adult sisters appear in the 1911 census, his father employed as a Commission Agent's Clerk.15 Thomas attended university and then returned to Cardiff to work in a law office.16 Like many young people, he saw opportunities across the sea and so boarded a ship to North America. While his family lived through the momentous events of the Irish revolutionary period of 1916-1923 and the establishment of an independent Irish state, Thomas would experience the offerings of a young democracy with fewer social class restrictions. When Hurley arrived, Vancouver had been incorporated only twenty-five years and had a population of 100,000, of which 80 percent were Canadian, American, or British born. First Nations people also lived in the city and on nearby reserves. Other Vancouverites originated primarily from China, Japan and India. Most of the city's male citizens had manual jobs and outnumbered women three 30 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 7. J.O'Brien. £J&rdine.. /free CaftJ PHart. N. , ,.„. s W.e.fl„„,ia//. J.W. Ifudston. leapt.;< H.fiajfe/le. T. HarUj. to one. Only eight police officers patrolled the streets on foot or by bicycle. Hurley applied to the BC Law Society and was admitted to the bar July 3, 1911.17 He rented a suite in a house a few blocks from the courts and was accepted as a law student at the law firm of MacNeill, Bird, McDonald and Bayfield on Granville Street, within walking distance of his home.18 Typically, law students endured low pay and long working hours. Hurley would be required to copy, record-keep, file and deliver legal papers with occasional opportunities to sit in on court proceedings. The following year Hurley is listed in the city directory as a solicitor. In 1913, he is a qualified barrister and working at the firm of criminal defense lawyer Charles S. Arnold. Hurley added 'notary' to his credentials in 1914 and practised independently, as he would for most of his career. Despite gaining these qualifications by the start of the First World War, Hurley did not take his bar exams until July 6,1925.19 Hurley's determined effort to become a lawyer involved a remarkable amount of self- education. Students-at-law in BC only began attending lectures and debates in 1914 and the province's first law school at University of BC was not established until 1945.20 Hurley was also among a small group in the city to establish their own legal practise without benefit of family and social connections. A "free spirit" practising law Hurley did not join the rush to volunteer when Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, possibly due to an animosity toward the English instilled by his Irish upbringing. Hudson Bay Co. Cricket Club [Vancouver Section] Vancouver BC, September 1924. Tom Hurley is in the front row seated on the right. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 31 f %, Fur Readin Learn r Hur (Army "The \ of M? Hurl Briti Colun Histo Sum: 2012, 45 No "The ofM Hurle the wi of the In 1917, as war dragged on and casualties mounted, the federal government conscripted men between the ages of 18 to 35. Hurley, aged 32, was drafted and reported to the BC 1st Battalion depot. The war ended before he went overseas.21 Hurley moved residences and offices frequently. By 1925, he was renting a suite in a prime West End location, directly across from English Bay, now the Beach House restaurant. In 1927, he moved his offices to the Dominion Building, still a downtown landmark.22 Hurley's first big murder case, as he recalled to a journalist decades later, involved a love triangle on Vancouver's waterfront. A First World War veteran with the surname Russell lived in a 'shack.' The Adams lived close by. Russell and Mrs. Adams began having an affair and her husband found out. A fight between the two men ensued and Adams was stabbed to death. "Some poor devil of a lawyer is going to get that case," Hurley said he remembered thinking, as he read about the murder in the newspaper. "I can hear the scaffold going up and every nail being driven in." As it turned out, Hurley took on the defense. A key witness testified Adams started the brawl and Hurley was able to convince a jury to acquit his client.23 Another criminal defense lawyer coming on to the scene in the 1920s was Angelo Branca, raised in the Italian-Canadian community on the city's working-class east side. As a young lawyer, Branca watched the more experienced Hurley 'perform' in the courts with great drama and sometimes with humor. "To that free spirit, practising law was more a way of enjoying life than earning a living," Branca reminisced in his biography. Lawyers such as Hurley, "loved the law, enjoyed the courtroom combat, counted their wins more than their fees and could always sacrifice a few days in a good cause," Branca recalled. Several lawyers formed an informal group, taking turns donating their services to clients unable to pay. Branca credits Hurley for this initiative, begun decades before the BC government set up legal aid. The publicity also helped lawyers build their practise.24 Unlike Hurley, Branca eventually left his criminal defense practise to accept an appointment as Crown counsel and later the BC Supreme Court and Appeal Court. The two men remained loyal and in 1951, when Hurley married, Branca was his best man. A formidable partnership An economic depression had set in when Hurley moved to Holly Lodge in 1930, a six-storey red brick building off Davie Street. He was an avid fan of boxing and helped reinvigorate the Vancouver Athletic Club on the city's east side. It was there he met Maisie Armytage-Moore (nee Campbell Johnson), a determined woman with strong convictions. In 1934, Armytage-Moore's eldest son Michael Murphy was hired as a clerk in Hurley's law office. A year later Armytage- Moore also joined Hurley's firm, working as his secretary. Michael left in 1937 but Armytage- Moore stayed—for good.25 Armytage-Moore became a fixture in the courts in the 1930s and 40s, Vancouver Sun journalist Patrick Nagle wrote in a newspaper profile, "as she cruised the corridors looking for Tom Hurley, her boss, to remind him of forgotten appointments and upcoming cases."26 Hurley, still living on his own, moved to the Sylvia Hotel and Apartments in 1935 and then the Kenmore in 1938, another elegant building with stain-glass windows near Stanley Park.27 When Hurley re-located his law practise in 1938 to the fifteen-storey Standard Building on West Hastings Street, his years of moving offices were over. In 1941, Hurley moved residences—for the last time—settling in to Armytage-Moore's West End apartment at 975 Denman Street. Their formidable partnership, now at home and work, continued. Courtroom battles A Vancouver murder in 1942 sparked local war-time tensions and was to be a major case for Hurley and his colleague Branca. It happened shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbour brought Americans into the Second World War and the internment of hundreds of Japanese-Canadians living along the Pacific coast. 32 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 Robert Hughes and three other Caucasian men, John Petryk, William Billamy and Floyd Berrigan, entered a grocery store in Vancouver to commit a robbery. In the process, Hughes shot and killed the Japanese-Canadian owner's son, Yoshyuki Uno; all four men were charged with murder. Each of the accused had legal counsel: Hurley with Berrigan, G.S. Annable (and later Branca) with Hughes, W.A. Schultz with Petryk; and J.S. Burton with Billamy. The judge directed the jury to convict on "murder or nothing." The jury came back with a conviction and the four men were sentenced to hang. The defense team successfully appealed, arguing manslaughter should have been an option. The guilty men were saved from the noose, each given a prison sentence instead.28 A client Hurley could not save from execution was Byron Bruce Potter, a 47 year old American soldier and Alaska highway employee. Potter was found guilty of murdering Mrs. Edna Ina Rogers in Dawson Creek, BC in 1945 and was hanged at Oakalla Prison Farm a year later. When Hurley retrieved the body on behalf of a family member, he discovered his client had been decapitated in the process of the hanging. There were "stitches under a band of adhesive tape around the neck," Hurley reported to the press. The decapitation was confirmed, he said, by "an authoritative source." His news made headlines across Canada, lending support to those favoring an end to capital punishment, though abolition would not occur in Hurley's lifetime.29 Another incident making headlines involved a bootlegger padlocked in to his home by the police in 1949. "A man's home is his castle," Hurley argued as he advised his client Tom and Maisie Hurley behind bars. The pair were arrested for smashing a police padlock on the headquarters of a bootlegger client of Tom's. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 33 "You shouldn't be appointed to the bench unless you've been thrown out of a beer parlour." — Tom Hurley to stay inside while he and Armytage-Moore passed food through the window. Finally Hurley broke the padlock. "I have broken a lock but I have not broken a law," Hurley declared. Hurley and Armytage-Moore were arrested, detained in jail and later released on bail. The case was thrown out after a long legal fight.30 Armytage-Moore founded The Native Voice in 1946 and continued to work out of Hurley's office as she advocated on behalf of First Nations people within its pages. One story she reported involved Hurley's successful defense of Mike Duncan Antoine. Antoine was sentenced to hang after a jury convicted him of the murder of Daniel Elkins at a plantation near Kamloops, where both First Nations men had been temporarily employed as hop pickers. The knifing had occurred about midnight near the workers' cabins and was witnessed by several pickers. Hurley was able to win an appeal for Antoine and a new trial was ordered in 1949. As described by Armytage-Moore, the trial was the longest to date in Kamloops — five days—and the jury reached its verdict in the shortest time — 20 minutes. There were many tense moments in the court room as Hurley cross-examined witnesses. "Are you sure it was Mike Antoine?" Hurley asked a key eye-witness. With no answer forthcoming, Hurley allowed for a very long dramatic pause. "I have waited in vain for four minutes," Hurley finally said, "for an answer to my question. That means that you are not sure." In response, the witness broke down, saying, "Yes, I am not sure." The accused was acquitted.31 Hurley was appointed as a Crown lawyer in 1951, for the second time in his career. However, once again, he soon returned to private practise.32 "He had skill, humour and compassion," Thomas Berger, a much younger colleague and friend, observed of Hurley's abilities, "and though he practised law alone, he had Maisie."33 The Honorable Patricia M. Proudfoot remembers the courts were a man's world when she attended UBC law school after the Second World War. "We'd go down to the courthouse if there was a good trial going on," she said, "Angelo Branca, Tom Hurley, Hugh McGivern ... it was a pleasure to watch those guys in the courtroom."34 In 1954, Margaret Jean Gee became the first Chinese-Canadian woman lawyer admitted to the bar in Canada and she articled with Hurley. Her ideals echoed Hurley's. Law was a way of "assisting her own people and helping the underdog," she told the media. "I am a Canadian and I hope to play my part in preserving the democracy of this country through our great courts of law."35 "The Doyen of the criminal bar" Tom Berger, a BC judge, politician and Royal Commissioner of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry of 1977, was a young man articling at Shulman, Tupper and Southin law firm in the Standard Building when he met Hurley in 1957. His first day in the office, Berger went to coffee with a group of lawyers, including Hurley, whom he described as an impressive man in his mid-70s and "the doyen of the criminal bar." Discussing a case before the Supreme Court, Hurley gave his opinion and then turned to Tom and said "Mr. Berger what do you think of the judgment?" "What struck me was his genuine interest in my opinion," Berger remembered. Hurley's law library, full of unbound law reports, was in the same condition as his clothing—"not altogether tidy." "Yet he knew the cases in the criminal field," Berger observed, "because he had argued many of the principal cases and in the civil field because he had a remarkable knowledge of the law anyway."36 Hurley took notes on scrap envelopes, Berger remembered, and these formed the basis of his cross- examination and arguments. "We spent many hours in beer parlours having a few beers and talking about the law." 'Be sure to ask such and such a question,' Hurley would tell Berger or 'The key to the case may well be such and such...' Berger 34 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 recalls there were no telephones or messages to interrupt their talk, "though one of the other patrons might turn out to be an old client of Tom's and would send beer over to our table."37 Many young lawyers used to talk to Hurley about cases, Berger remembered. He was always available. "He never had a bad word to say about anyone," Berger also noticed. Hurley would return to court after losing a case to the same judge but would be "unfailingly courteous."38 "He never received any of the professional accolades that he should have— Queen's Counsel, appointment to the bench. Of course he had a drinking problem and lived many years with Maisie, a woman not then his wife. I suppose that in the Fifties when I knew him, those were quite dreadful things, but I remember him as a man who taught me much."39 Hurley liked to say, "You shouldn't be appointed to the bench unless you've been thrown out of a beer parlour." In other words, judges should not become too far removed from the lives of the people they judge.40 Armytage-Moore and Hurley were quite a team, fighting for First Nations rights, Berger believed. "They were not conquered," Armytage-Moore often said about aboriginals, "they were just robbed." Hurley worried about who would support Armytage-Moore's various "charities" when he was gone, Berger recalled, as she was always giving money away. Berger remembered a 'poignant' moment in what was to be the last year of Hurley's life. It was illegal to possess liquor off a First Nations reserve and Berger and Hurley planned to challenge the law under the Bill of Rights. "Tom wasn't up for it," Berger observed. "Tom realised his career was over." However Armytage-Moore would have none of it and insisted Berger carry on in his stead. "She didn't want him to give up his place at the bar, even if it was a diminished place," Berger observed.41 On Christmas Day, 1961, Hurley had a heart attack while walking the couple's four Pekinese dogs. Rushed to St. Paul's hospital, he died an hour later. He was 77. "Humanitarian, Character" Lawyers and judges, along with family, First Nations friends and trade unionists attended Hurley's funeral at the Guardian Catholic Church in the West End. Former clients came to pay their respects too. Hurley left behind his wife and four step-children, (the eldest, Michael Murphy, had died serving for the United States in the Second World War) and grandchildren. Hurley also left two spinster sisters, Annie (aged 73) and Nellie (aged 70) in Dublin. At the service, banks of flowers surrounded the coffin, draped with the Irish Republican flag. The burial, with police escort, was on December 29 at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Burnaby.42 Isaac Shulman, a senior lawyer, told the press procedures in bootlegging cases were altered because of Hurley1 s legal battles, as with Hurley's 1949 court victory against police who lost the right to padlock a citizen's home. Cross-examination practises changed too, because of Hurley's challenges, giving defense counsel greater latitude in cross-examining witnesses.43 An editorial in the Vancouver Sun with the headline, "Hurley: Humanitarian, Character" described him as a "master of criminal law" who had great "courtroom oratory and wit." Lawyers' fees "never entered his mind," as Hurley "repeatedly offered his talents to men he saw come in to court without counsel." "He won far more than he lost but he never won financially."44 Andrew Paull, a First Nations leader and friend, addressed Hurley's widow in an editorial in The Native Voice: "We Indians always say when someone leaves us: 'There is a lesson to be learned.' The lesson your late husband left us Indians and whites was just one word: justice."45 In 1970, a criminal law award was named in honor of Thomas Francis Hurley at UBC law school.46 Ironically this man of law did not leave a last will and testament, but then Hurley's success was not measured in material wealth. Hurley's legacy is found in his dedication to the law and in the many lives he touched. • BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 35 Endnotes 1. Vancouver Sun, January 19, 1953,1. 2. As recounted in a Vancouver Sun feature, "This Day in History, January 9,1953" and appearing January 9, 2013, page 2. 3. Vancouver Sun, January 19, 1953,1. 4. Vancouver Sun, March 23,1953, 1. Vancouver Sun, March 26,1953, Vancouver Sun, March 25,1953, Vancouver Sun, March 25,1953, Vancouver Sun, March 26,1953, 9. Original transcript, Court of Appeal: Regina vs. Walter Pavlukoff, Addresses to the Jury, Vancouver, 1953, 40. The author is grateful to T.F. Hurley's granddaughter Moira Movanna the use of this court document. 10. Ibid and Vancouver Noir, 169, 170. Also see Vancouver Sun, July 2,1953, page 6 for a newspaper account on the appeal. 11. Canada Death Penalty Index http://members.shaw.ca/canada_ legal_history/bc.htm44 hangings - on line stats 12. Vancouver Sun, December 27, 1961. Brief details on Hurley's education and work experience before coming to Vancouver in 1911 are mentioned in this newspaper account following his death. 13. Famine Diary, Brendan O'Cathaoir, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1999,104. 14. Ancestry.com 1901 Wales census, (database on-line) Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc. 2005. Source Citation: Class: RG13; Piece: 4986: Folio: 131; Page 49. Note: Last name of Hurley is misspelled as "Harley" in the 1901 Wales census. 15. The National Archives of Ireland on line census (1911) at http://www.census, nationalarchives.ie/ 16. Ancestry.com lists a Thomas F. Hurley, solicitor in the 1910 Cardiff directory. 17. Law Society of BC files, Vancouver. 18. Henderson Directory, Vancouver. T.F. Hurley's various downtown offices and West End residences are listed in the directory from 1911 to 1961. 19. Law Society of BC files, Vancouver. 20. W. Wesley Pue, The Story of Legal Education in British Columbia, (Vancouver: UBC, Faculty of Law, 1995), http://faculty.law.ubc.ca/ Pue/historybook/schoolOlc.html 21. Ancestry.com, Canada Draft Registration Card. Do you mean: Ancestry.com. Canada, Soldiers of the First World War, 1914-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006. Images are used with the permission of Library and Archives Canada.Hurley reported his birth on December 15,1885 in Cardiff Wales. 22. Henderson Directory, Vancouver. 23. "Courtroom Showman," by David Willock, Vancouver Sun, October 11,1952, magazine section, 29. 24. Angelo Branca, Gladiator of the Courts, by Vincent Moore, Douglas & Mclntyre, Vancouver, 1981, 32-34. 25. Additional biographical details of Maisie Hurley in "The Voice of Maisie Hurley" by Janet Mary Nicol, Summer, 2012 issue of British Columbia History, Vancouver. 26. Vancouver Sun, April 4,1964, magazine section, 14. 27. Henderson Directory, Vancouver. 28. Angelo Branca, Gladiator of the Courts, 101. Also see Vancouver Noir, Diane Purvey and John Belshaw, Anvil Press, Vancouver, 2011,168. 29. The Montreal Gazette, January 15,1946. 30. The Native Voice, January, 1949, 5. The story is also chronicled in Vancouver's daily papers. 31. The Native Voice, May, 1949, 3. 32. Vancouver Sun, September 5, 1951. 33. Hard Choices: A Life of Tom Berger, by Carolyn Swayze, Douglas & Mclntyre, Vancouver, 1986, 66. 34. http://www.law.ubc.ca/alumni/ profiles/alumni/proudfoot.html 35. Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Massachusetts, May 7, 1955. 36. Hard Choices, 23 37. One Man's Justice: A Life in the Law, by Thomas R. Berger, Douglas & Mclntyre, Vancouver, 2002,12 and Hard Choices, 24. 38. Hard Choices, 26 39. Ibid, 26. 40. Vancouver Sun, Weekend Magazine, March 1,1975. 41. Hard Choices, 26, 27 42. Vancouver Sun, December 27, 1961. See also The Fisherman newspaper, January 12,1962. Obituaries also ran in the Province, The Advocate, The Native Voice among other BC newspapers 43. Vancouver Sun, December 27, 1961, 24. 44. Vancouver Sun, December 28, 1961,4. 45. The Native Voice, February, 1962,4. 46. Thomas Francis Hurley Prize, Awards and Financial Aid Office, UBC Archives, Vancouver. # .all 2013 issue of British Columbia History Almost a Crystal Palace No trace exists today of the impressive Willows Exhibition Hall in Victoria, BC, 1891- 1907. Read about its glory days. by Robert R. Taylor Our Neon Nightmare: The Role of the Civic Arts Committee in Dismantling Vancouver's Sign Jungle, 1957-1974 Inspired by the Museum of Vancouver's exhibition Neon Vancouver, Ugly Vnacouver, the 2012 W. Kaye Lamb Essay Scholarship winner explores the sign debate. bv Katherine Hill k 36 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 Call for Paper Proposals for Spring 2014 — Sports Do you have a story about sports in British Columbia? If so, then we want your stories. In Spring 2014 we will feature a special themed issue on British Columbia's sport history. Maple Ridge Archery club, 1950's. Image P02370 courtesy of the Maple Ridge and Museum Archives. 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. Articles for the Spring issue can vary widely in word length, from 1000 to 3000. We also accept submissions for Cabinets of Curiosity - do you have a sports related object with an interesting story? Send us 300 to 400 words with a high-resolution image of the object, telling the story of the object. The ideal British Columbia History story is a pleasure to read and is informative. When readers have finished an article, they should feel that they have been engaged and have learned something about BC history that they never knew before. The publication is looking for articles with strong leads. The first few paragraphs must be able to capture readers and compel them to read on. Crisp, clear, and concise prose. British Columbia History is not an academic publication. No theses please. Readers of British Columbia History are well informed and expect names, places, and dates to be correct and based on credible sources. The deadline for article proposals is October 1, 2013. Contact the editor of British Columbia History at bcheditor@bchistory.ca. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 37 Annie Watson's Curious Suitcase of Sorrow by Graham Brazier A story of a journey through a chaotic collection of ephemera and the quirks of history. KA ■ ^1 __ 1 (%■ Graham Brazier lives on Denman Island, where he writes and ponders history. He is the editor of The Fort Victoria Journal, http://www. fortvictoriajournal. ca/about.php as well as co-editor with Nick Doe of Proceedings of the Islands of British Columbia Conference 2004, (Arts Denman: 2005) and has published work in Canada's History (formerly The Beaver) as well as in numerous other publications including two previous articles in British Columbia History. Prologue I The article that follows was created from the contents of a suitcase which came unexpectedly into the possession of the author a few years ago. From its arrival to its appearance and contents, everything about it was curious. It's made of bright, shiny aluminum with rounded corners - reminiscent of the tail-lights on a 1958 Chevrolet. It has a clear plastic handle and the remains of two Trans Canada Air Lines decals stuck to its sides. Its contents were no less curious. It was chock-a-block with a chaotic jumble of personal papers, including newspaper clippings, photographs, correspondence, official documents, an appointment book for 1949, menus from formal dinners, recital programs and a vast array of miscellaneous ephemera as well as a sealed envelope containing, what appears to be, a lock of hair. Few of the photographs are labelled. The newspaper clippings are of all sizes; from full pages to tiny brittle scraps. Most are rather carelessly folded and many appear to have been cut-out hurriedly, while others were simply torn from their source. Many omit by-lines, dates and titles, and some are simply fragments of articles in which the name 'Annie Watson' appears. In the course of bringing order to this collection, the details of the events recorded below emerged. One of the most compelling photographs contained in Annie Watson's aluminum suitcase takes us back to 1929; a year that, in the human imagination, is inseparable from a dramatic plunge. It was late in the afternoon of Saturday, May 25,1929, when the unknown photographer captured a solemn threesome at plot 63, grave #1, section D in the Vancouver Masonic Cemetery in Burnaby, British Columbia where the remains of Charles Wingate Watson had just been laid to rest. Five days earlier Charles was at work in the elevator shaft on the fifth floor of the Empress Hotel 38 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 in Victoria where, shortly after 4 o'clock, he "plunged 100 feet to the ground". He suffered a fractured skull, as well as numerous other injuries and, according to newspaper reports, died "almost instantly". Pictured amid the flowers and crosses are his wife Annie, age 46 and sons Leonard Alfred, age 15, on the left and Charles Wingate, age 17, on the right. The deceased Charles Wingate Watson, or Charlie, as he was known to friends and co-workers, apparently lost his footing while working in the elevator shaft in the new wing of the renowned hotel. Despite his almost instant death, Charlie was described in the local newspaper as "an injured man" with "a mutilated face", when the ambulance arrived to rush him to St. Joseph's Hospital. Upon arrival at the hospital the attending doctor required only "a summary inspection" before he pronounced "life extinct". Charlie's body was then ordered removed to the Sands Funeral Parlor where a co-worker volunteered to inform his family of the accident. Later that evening a telephone rang in the Watson household on East 13th Avenue in the Vancouver enclave of Mount Pleasant. The suitcase doesn't reveal who answered the phone. Perhaps one of the boys had to call his mother from the garden to take the call, or, perhaps Annie was preparing dinner in the kitchen and answered herself. We don't know all the words she heard, but undoubtedly, "accident," "fall," and the phrase "fractured skull" as well as "death" were among them. We do know that the conversation concluded with a commitment on the part of the Steel Worker's Union to make arrangements to transfer Charlie's remains across Georgia Strait for burial nearer his home and family. Before the transfer could take place, however, the grim machinery of accidental death required that a jury hear the circumstances of Charlie's last few moments. At the inquest, held in the Sands Funeral Parlor two days after his fall, the jury learned that Charlie was a steel erection expert employed by the Dominion Bridge Company. The company was under contract for the expansion of the well-known landmark on Victoria's harbour. His foreman testified that Charlie was an expert workman and added that he had ample room with good footing at his work place. A co-worker and member of the six-man erection gang testified next. He reported that, at four o'clock, they had just completed placing a beam above the new high speed elevator shaft in the old hotel building when Charlie lost his balance and fell backward to his death. A newspaper account of the inquest reported that the six-member jury's official conclusion was that Charlie's death was accidental and it was noted that the jury adjourned before noon. In the afternoon of the same day, Wednesday, May 22, his remains were released for removal to Vancouver. Three days later, at three o'clock in the afternoon, he was buried and the somber photograph was taken. As the brackets were closed around the life of Charles Wingate Watson (born, March 15, 1884, in Middlesbrough, England; died, May 20,1929, in Victoria, Canada), his funeral announcement reported he was survived by his "sorrowing wife and two sons." The suitcase, however, offers one further tidbit of information regarding Charlie's death. It contains a letter written to Annie from the Worker's Compensation Board, dated May 29, 1929 which acknowledges having received her claim for compensation on behalf of her son Leonard and provides her with a claim number. We might wonder how Annie felt about the claim. The suitcase, however, contains no further information as to whether Annie felt the jury should have found Charlie's employer negligent.1 Work Safety Timeline iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 1917 The Workmen's Compensation Act of British Columbia takes effect January 1. Approximately 75,000 workers employed by 6,000 firms are covered by the Act. Illlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll Accident Prevention Regulations 1918 iiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiii Scaffolds 3. On suspended scaffolds, where practicable, it shall be necessary to use wire rope for slings and stirrups. 4. Floor opening shall not be allowed without guard-rails and toe-boards, unless by permission of Inspector.2 Illlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll Accident Prevention Regulations 1935 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin Protection of Workmen — Temporary Floors 7. e) All openings in floors, temporary or permanent shall be enclosed by guard-rails and toe-boards installed as soon as flooring is laid around opening and left in place until the operation is completed. 9. Life-lines and Safety-belts shall be kept on hand, and used when practicable for the protection of workmen in hazardous locations, when no other protection can be afforded.3 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 39 200 MODE"" Fl"EpB Hotel Wales Y. ALBERTA ew u a 4 stvt • t^yu-l <^U^ 1951 Fast forward 22 years to June, 1951. Annie, in her home now on York Street in Vancouver, opens a letter from Charles Wingate Watson. Chuck, as he was known to friends, (though he remained Charles to his mother) has become active in the oil industry in Alberta and, like his father, is apparently not one to shy away from risk, for he has formed his own drilling company. On the letterhead of a Calgary hotel he writes to remind his mother to make a payment for his hospitalization plan. The letter is dated May 31; payment is due June 1. The suitcase offers no explanation as to why Chuck made the request of his mother rather than his wife. Nevertheless, he promises to reimburse her when he returns to Vancouver and then lets her in on his most recent business news. He was preparing, he wrote, to begin drilling in three weeks and added: My deal is over the top and looks very Letter from Charles Wingate Watson to his mother, 1951. We can't help but wonder if the phrase "over the top" together with a reference to hospitalization produced a shudder in Annie - one that may have momentarily taken her back to the Vancouver Masonic Cemetery in May of 1929, or perhaps one that took her back just to September of 1944 when she purchased a burial plot adjacent to Charlie's for $35. In any case, it's now three weeks after she received the letter from her son, the oil executive in Calgary - it's June 26, 1951. The phone rings in Annie's home. As she is now the only occupant of what was once a busy household, there is little doubt who answered. An unfamiliar voice calling from a hospital in Princeton, BC. tells her that late Saturday night a car driven by Charles Wingate Watson plunged off a highway and hit a tree near the small mining community of Hedley, in southern British Columbia. Charles suffered a fractured skull, along with several other broken bones. He died three hours after the accident in Princeton Hospital. We don't know if Annie was able to make the payment on his hospitalization plan but we do know that when she returned the phone to its cradle some minutes later, she discovered she had been 40 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 writing on a small perforated note pad she kept nearby the telephone. She had written: Doctors report Extensive brain injury Skull fractured internal [illegible] cause of death 3 hours fractured left humerus accident Auto accident nr. Hedley, B.C. June 25,1951 Annie knew the words "skull fracture" and "accident" well. They were the same words used 22 years earlier to describe the death of her husband Charles Wingate Watson who had plunged down an elevator shaft in Victoria, and now, in 1951, they were invoked once again to describe the death of her son, Charles Wingate Watson whose car had plunged off a highway in southern BC. Back at the Vancouver Masonic Cemetery on the afternoon of Saturday June 30, 1951, Annie Watson chose plot 113 in section F for her son and continued to hold plot 63 1(a) in section D, beside her husband, for herself. Following the services Annie returned to her home on York Street in Vancouver where she cut two copies of the press account of her son's death from the front page of two copies of The Vancouver Province and two copies from the The Vancouver Sun. Four times they proclaimed "Company Executive Killed". And four times they reported that Charles, accompanied by a woman - not his wife, was driving from Vancouver to Penticton to meet with men "on oil matters" when the wheels of his car skidded off the paved surface onto a soft shoulder before plunging into a tree. Sometime afterward, Annie Watson consigned all four copies of the clipping to an aluminium suitcase; what she did with her sorrow we can only try to imagine. Epilogue Annie Watson lived almost as long as her husband and son combined and it was May of 1966 before she joined them under the grassy slopes of the Vancouver Masonic Cemetery. Her surviving son, Leonard married Stella Bridgman and was a partner in Bridgman's Note Annie Watson wrote in 1951. r Studios (portrait photographers) in Vancouver before settling near Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island, where he took up farming until his death in 1978. • Endnotes 1. The Workmen's Compensation Act provided compensation to the dependants of a deceased worker regardless of fault, unless the worker was exceptionally at fault. British Columbia. Statutes. 1901; CH. 74:313-322." 2. British Columbia. 1917. Annual report of the Workmen's Compensation Board of the Province of British Columbia. Victoria, B.C.: Printed by William H. Cullin, Printer to the King's Most Excellent Majesty. 3. British Columbia. 1935. Accident Prevention Regulations, rev. 1935. Vancouver: Workmen's Compensation Board. Editor's Note Thank you to Lance Nordstrom, Librarian, WorkSafeBC for the work safety information. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 41 Archives & Archivists by Sandra Parrish; edited by Sylvia Stopforth Sylvia is a Librarian and Archivist at Norma Marion AUoway Library at Trinity Western University. Sandra Parrish is the Collections & Exhibits Manager at the Museum at Campbell River. She is responsible for managing the Museum's archival holdings and has overseen all three of the Museum's digitization projects. Take a glimpse into the history and people of the Discovery Islands through the Museum at Campbell River's new online resource. The Museum at Campbell River recently launched its latest on-line resource which features an intimate glimpse into the history and people of the Discovery Islands. Located on the east coast of BC's Vancouver Island, the Discovery Islands comprise a loosely defined area that extends south of Georgia Strait and to the tip of Johnston Strait. Abundant in natural resources, this area was once well populated and included several thriving waterfront communities. Connected by an intricate waterway, area residents quickly developed a unique coastal lifestyle based on the rich marine life and forests of the region. First Nations villages, canneries, and logging camps, both on land and floating, were once commonplace in this area. Boats and ships — including those operated by the famous Union Steamship and Canadian Pacific Railway companies — were the preferred method of travel. Changes to the logging and fishing industries, coupled with improved transportation via the introduction of float planes in the 1950s, resulted in a gradual de-population of the Islands and inlets in this region. Today the Discovery Islands are sparsely populated with only a few communities remaining. With funding from the BC History Digitization Program, the Museum recently digitized over 1,500 photographs from its archival holdings, which document this history. The digitized photographs are accessible online at www.islands.crmuseum.ca and include images of some of the region's better known residents such as Jim and Laurette Stanton and August Schnarr. The Stantons' experiences living at the head of Knight Inlet are the subject of the book Grizzlies in Their Backyard by Beth Day. Schnarr A picture of Percy Belson's float camp near Dent Island taken by Francis Barrow in the summer of 1938. Belson was operating a logging camp in the area. 42 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No.2 was a coastal pioneer who lived and trapped in the remote Bute Inlet. Life in these remote regions was often difficult, and required the ability to utilize available resources, which is evident in the Stanton and Schnarr photographs. Also included on the site are photographs originating from Francis and Amy Barrow. Residents of Sidney, BC, from 1933 to 1941, the Barrows would set out in the early summer in their boat, the Toketie, to explore the coast. Their experiences are the subject of Beth Hill's book Upcoast Summers. As well as keeping a travel diary which documented their trips, Francis was an avid photographer and took pictures of the people and places they visited. Many of these images give us a sense of the social aspects of coastal living, as area residents clearly took time to welcome these seasonal visitors. This is the third digitization project undertaken by the Museum and joins previous projects to digitize photographs relating to logging in the Northern Vancouver Island area as well as Campbell River history. Collectively these projects provide access to a broad range of images associated with the history of the Northern Vancouver Island area. Not only have these projects improved access to the Museum's archival holdings but they have enabled staff to document additional information about the photographs. All three projects can be accessed through the "Resources" section of the Museum's website www.crmuseum.ca. Museum staff worked with Chameleon Creative, a Campbell River based web design company, on this project. The resulting website enables users to search for and order photographs, and to easily contribute additional information regarding the images. From the Museum's perspective the site is easily managed and allows for additional images to be added, which enables the continued expansion of this resource. Since the first digitization project went live in 2010 there has been a definite increase in researchers, genealogists and historians accessing the Museum's archival holdings through this medium. • ~~s =H ™ =■—» »»n.,.,p-a ICjsgSi Museum at Campbell River's online project, www. islands, crmuseum. ca Quathiaski Canning Co. boats operating near Quadra Island. Photograph taken by professional photographer Henry Twidle. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 43 From the Book Review Editor's Desk K. Jane Watt Bunchgrass and Famous Crass With the BCHF gathering in Kamloops this year to consider the history of British Columbia's historic grasslands, it seems fitting to open my column with recent books on life in the Cariboo — its celebrated ranching life based on a handful of humble and hardy grasses, on the open spaces in which they thrive, and on the people who have chosen to make their homes there. Doris C. Lee's Ever-Changing Sky: From Schoolteacher to Cariboo Rancher (Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin, 2012) $24.95 chronicles the sometimes reluctant adoption of the place by a young woman. Lee recalls that when she was a newly- minted schoolteacher in Redding, California, "If someone had told me I would ever be living in the remote wilderness of British Columbia, far from modern conveniences ... I would have laughed. Me! A schoolteacher, a real greenhorn, who if asked to saddle and bridle a horse would not have known which end to start with." Married in 1949 to John, a man she describes as a "rugged, even- tempered, always pleasant man" she left the comforts of California to ranch near Big Lake, east of Williams Lake in 1950, a place she called home for almost twenty years. Summers were spent with her kids and her herd of Rambouillet and Merino cross-bred ewes at Sheep Camp, her summer grazing grounds at Yanks Peak in the Cariboo Mountains. They retired from the ranch in the late 1960s and took on new and different challenges. John died in 1994, and today Doris lives in Williams Lake, but she writes, "As John and I entered our twilight years and looked back, we knew that without a doubt, the mountains gave us the best years of our lives." Volume 2 in Caitlin Press's series called "Extraordinary Women," the anthology Women of Brave Mettle: More Stories From the Cariboo Chilcotin ($26.95) has recently appeared. Written by Diana French with a foreword by Sage Birchwater, it is a vibrant collection of stories and tributes to the women past and present who quietly worked to create community in this heartland of British Columbia. French writes, "A lot of people weren't aware of what they did Yet in the rough and tumble macho image of the Cariboo Chilcotin, isn't it interesting the Williams Lake has the oldest art society in British Columbia?" Andy Motherwell's collection of historical sketches called Footnotes of the Cariboo: Stories of the Early Years was sent to me by Andy. It is a compilation of his articles published in the Quesnel Cariboo Observer over the past five years. Containing his recollections and his photos, it considers a lot of ground as it observes the passing of time in the Cariboo — and covers such diverse territory as the WW 11-era airport at Dog Creek, mining lava rock at the Nazko cone, dredging gold at Antler Creek, and farming in the High Bar area on the mighty Fraser. This good little read is $24.95 and available at afmoth@telus.net. FOOTNOTES OF THE CARIBOO Stories of the Early Yt SMITHERS A Railroad Town tun 44 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 Book Reviews Books for review should be sent to: K. Jane Watt, Book Review Editor, British Columbia History Box 1053, Fort Langley BC V1M 2S4 Moving north from the Cariboo - The Bulkley Valley Historical and Museum Society has published a revised and expanded edition of its regional history called Smithers: A Railroad Town — Revised Edition (2012) By Harry Kruisselbrink. And south again: The Deep Cove Heritage Society has created a history called Echoes i Across Seymour: A History of North Vancouver's Eastern \Communities, [Including Dollarton iand Deep Cove. Written by Janet Pavlik, Desmond Smith, and Eileen Smith and published by Harbour (2012) $39.95, this history "provides unparalleled insight into each of Seymour's eighteen neighbourhoods." The Port Moody Heritage Society has published a photographic memoir called Tracks in Time: Port Moody's First 100 Years. It will be promoted throughout the city's centenary in 2013 and is testament to the hard work of volunteers and the awesome power of seniors who offered to research, write, edit, and proof the text. Tracks in Time "paints the picture of the life of Port Moody residents during pioneer times, war time, and the daily grind at the mills." The book is $40 and available at the Port Moody Station Museum or at www.portmoodymuseum.org. Aaron Chapman's Liquor, Lust, and the Law: The Story of Vancouver's Legendary Penthouse Nightclub (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2012) $24.95 tells the sometimes lurid history of this iconic piece of Vancouver's entertainment history. With its stage graced over the years by entertainers such as the Mills Brothers, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, Billie ALEDOMA Patrons of the Caledonia Hotel pose for a photo in the early 1880s. Hotel operator Colonel Scott is wearing an apron and bowler hat and to his right is Captain Clarke. From Tracks in Time: Port Moody's First 100 Years. iHoliday, Louis Armstrong, LSammy Davis Jr, and many pothers, its bar tfrequented by ^sports greats Isuch as I Sugar Ray iRobinson and Rocket Richard, and its reputation for "great food and beautiful girls," the survival of the Penthouse is tribute to the tenacity of the Filippone family, immigrants in the 1930s from the Calabria area of southern Italy. Through the generations, they have remained adept at the reinvention required to spark and capture the imagination of the paying public — from the Palomar Supper club they bought in the 1940s to their enthusiastic embrace of the historical tours they conduct today. And finally, if you are a daily obit reader like myself, or if you merely dabble in them Lout of necessity, ^Tom Hawthorn's Deadlines: Obits of Memorable [British Columbians U Madeira Park: Harbour, 2012) $26.95 is a must- read. Hawthorn gives life to the stories of fascinating British Columbians, noting in his preface, that his sketches are "neither tribute nor elegy, nor are they written for the benefit of surviving family members. They are designed to enlighten the reader with anecdotes from a life of interest, giving voice to those who no longer have one." And to propel us into the pages of the book, he writes, "In these pages, death is mere detail. These are tales about how lives were lived." A fitting end, I think. Until next time. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 45 The Art of the Impossible: Dave Barrett and the NDP in Power, 1972-1975. By Geoff Meggs and Rod ^Mickleburgh (Madeira Park: Harbour, 2012) L$32.95. The Art of the Impossible delves into an under-appreciated political era in BC history, the short but remarkable reign of the New Democratic Party led by Premier Dave Barrett. Authors Meggs and Mickleburgh, Vancouver councillor and seasoned journalist respectively, look back four decades and are still able to interview key participants, including the former premier. Carefully researched, the narrative's success lies in combining lively personal stories with larger political themes. The BC citizenry is awakened during the 1972 provincial election campaign as Barrett called for progressive change after a long, stifling era under the cautious leadership of W.A.C. Bennett. "Barrett is Bennett with social awareness," observed Jack Wasserman in a Vancouver Sun column. "I am not anti-union," the charismatic NDP leader reassured voters, many wary of 'socialism.' "I am pro all people of this province, who work for a living." A social worker, married with two children, Barrett wooed crowds, saying "Unashamedly I call for love." Feminist groups emerged to find a voice as the NDP took office following their election win. Emery Barnes and Rosemary Brown brought racial diversity to the legislature as did Frank Calder, BC's first aboriginal MLA. Bob Williams, representing Vancouver East, proved to be the mastermind behind money matters. He managed the purchase of forestry and other companies, infuriating free- enterprisers. Collectively, the NDP offered a more modern, visionary leadership to BC voters. The government worked quickly, Barrett especially, believing its time was limited. Legislation included the preservation of farmland in the Agricultural Land Reserve, setting up the Insurance Corporation of BC, and creating the BC Ambulance Service. The proceedings of the legislature were recorded in Hansard, and a regular question period was initiated. Progressive legislation for workers included an increase to the minimum wage, making it the highest in Canada. Corporal punishment was eliminated in schools, free prescription drugs for seniors were approved, and provincial parkland was expanded. The list went on, as a record-setting number of bills were passed. Barrett could lose his cool with reporters as the media sniped at the avalanche of changes and at the public's growing sense of insecurity. Over time, Barrett relied less on consensus decision-making, failing to heed the advice of Tommy Douglas, who had led the first democratic socialist government in North America. The opposition readied for the next election, with Bennett's son at the helm. The final blow came as trade unions sought revenge after the government passed back-to-work legislation. Barrett believed he had enough public support when he called an election in 1975, but his party was defeated. In its articulation of a time of possibility peopled with inspired British Columbians, The Art of the Impossible sheds an instructive light on the province's history. Reviewer Janet Nicol is a freelance writer who teaches history at a Vancouver high school. She blogs at janetnicol@wordpress.com. Gold Rush Steamboats: Francis Rattenbury's Yukon Venture. Written and published by John ^Motherwell. $31.50 plus shipping ^from john_ motherwell® telus.net. When the name Francis Rattenbury is mentioned, we think of his architectural legacy: the legislature buildings in Victoria, the Empress Hotel in Victoria, and many other buildings in British Columbia, from Nanaimo to Nelson. His Yukon venture is relatively unknown, but author John Motherwell, has changed that now in his well-researched and well-written book about Rattenbury's involvement in the steamboat business and the historical and geographical context in which he worked. Rattenbury was born in England in 1867 into an established architectural family, and it seemed natural for him to follow in the family footsteps. After a start in architecture in England, he emigrated to Vancouver in 1892. 46 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 Shortly after, he moved to Victoria and won the 1893 contest to design the new Provincial Legislature. A few years later — in 1896 — gold was discovered in the Klondike and miners flocked north to seek their fortunes. Some made money, but most lost everything, and a large number even lost their lives. "For businessmen everywhere," Motherwell writes, "the question was: how could this new opportunity be exploited? Produce and supply merchants thought of new branch stores, hardware merchants thought of warehouses, liquor vendors thought of saloons and, like a few others, Francis Mawson Rattenbury thought of a steamboat line." In July 1897 Rattenbury became a financial partner in a cattle drive that saw over 60 head driven part way to Dawson City, processed en route, and delivered frozen in November. "A handsome profit to Rattenbury resulted," Motherwell observes, and "This venture whetted his appetite for more gold rush business." By early 1898, Rattenbury, supported by two business associates, "developed a simple idea: a fleet of small sternwheel steamboats could navigate the Yukon River system between the trail head at Bennett, BC, and Dawson and effectively compete with the steamboats of the big American companies which operated from St. Michael, at the mouth of the Yukon River." The Yukon River was navigable in both directions for over 3,500 km from Bennett to its mouth on the Bering Strait — except for Miles Canyon and White Horse Rapid, both near present day Whitehorse. These obstacles to steam traffic broke the river into two sections. Rattenbury's idea was to service the river with one steamboat above and two below the rapids. Once miners and other travellers left Skagway, they would make their way the short distance up the White Pass Trail or the Chilkoot Pass Trail to Bennett and from there take a relatively quick and smooth ride all the way to Dawson — a much easier and safer route than building their own boats and scows and sailing them downstream to Dawson. Rattenbury's company, Bennett Lake and Klondyke Navigation Company Limited (BLKN), had three steamboats built and launched on Lake Bennett. The Ora, Flora, and Nora were all named after Rattenbury's wife. The Ora quickly set sail to make its way through the two obstructive rapids near present day Whitehorse. A short while later, the Flora was launched, and it served the upper section of the river until the Nora was completed. Eventually, the Flora followed the Ora to the lower part of the river and Rattenbury's dream was fulfilled. However, six months after the launch of the Ora, Rattenbury "abruptly terminated all contact with [the company], sold the shares he held, and left it to return to architecture." The BLKN was a revolutionary force on the Yukon River system, but after five short seasons between 1898 and 1902, the company was defunct. The ships were dismantled. Motherwell's history doesn't end there though, as he weaves into his work the commercial context of steamboat life in the era of gold, not only on the Yukon River system, but also on the Stewart River, Stikine River, and on Atlin Lake. Rattenbury returned to England in 1930, died in 1935, and was buried in an unmarked grave. In 2009 when Motherwell visited the grave, he erected a headstone at his own expense. It now reads: "In Remembrance of Francis Mawson Rattenbury, 11 October 1867 to 28 March 1935, A British Columbia Architect." John Motherwell is a life member of the Association of British Columbia Land Surveyors, a Dominion Land (now Canada Lands) Surveyor, and a Professional Engineer. He lives in Victoria but spent a good portion of his working career in northern British Columbia and the Yukon. His research for this book goes back to 1955, and since then he has spent countless hours visiting the sites mentioned in this book that brings to life a fascinating part of history. If you have ever panned for gold, you may have caught gold fever. It will never leave you. And, if you have ever been to Dawson, Whitehorse, Skagway, Carcross, Telegraph Creek, Atlin or anywhere in between, you will find this book very interesting. Along with the draw of gold fever, it will get you planning your next trip in search of that precious, but elusive, mineral. Reviewer Robert W. Allen is a British Columbia Land Surveyor (Life Member), a Canada Lands Surveyor, and a Life Member of the Canadian Institute of Geomatics. He writes from the Sunshine Coast. • BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 47 Cabinets of Curiosities by Paul Ferguson While planning an exhibit, Paul Ferguson, Heritage Collections Manager at the Chilliwack Museum & Archives, found his McGuffin in a 1926 calendar. I often find, when searching for an exhibition title or a theme for an exhibit, the answer is often in front of our eyes. When the first incarnation of our current presentation began as Healing Chilliwack we eventually found ourselves struggling with the content, overwhelmed by the vastness of the subject. Where do we begin? How do we make it work? Not being medical experts certainly added to our dilemma and despite a rather rich and diverse collection of heath related objects and archival collections we were rather — wandering. What to do? We found our inspiration from a 1926 Hipwell Prescription Druggist calendar. With an image of a mother with her child, perhaps a stereotypical image, we found our McGuffin.1 The calendar's inscription, May Health, Peace and Contentment be Yours became our exhibit champion and title. In 1905 Henry "Harry" David Hipwell at the age of 17 qualified as a pharmacist and arrived in Chilliwack in 1913 where he worked for the Barber Drug Co. After service during WWI with the Canadian Army Medical Corps he returned to Chilliwack and began his own business in 1921. It proved a popular venture and subsequently additional branches were added to the Hipwell Empire in the Fraser Valley including Sardis in 1926 and Abbotsford in 1929. Hipwell's first store was located in the BC Electric Block near to Chilliwack's Five Corners where in 1929 a fine neon sign announced his business. Hipwell, imminently proud of his glowing glass sign, added the feature to his newspaper advertising "HARRY D. HIPWELL / THE PRESCRIPTION DRUGGIST / Chilliwack (The Neon Sign Drug Store) Phone 111"2 Hipwell's store was similar to many of today's modern pharmacies. His weekly advertisements, apart from the health products, included Ansco cameras, Waterman Ideal fountain pens, Eversharp pencils, stationary, school supplies, film and photographic supplies, and a circulating library. While visiting, customers might even discover a tasty treat in the store's soda fountain. In 1938 Hipwell purchased the Irwin Block, a prominent building located at Five Corners. Here Hipwell continued to offer his quality service, as well as promoting his soda fountain. Having installed a Coca- Cola dispenser, his ad, featuring an image of the famed machine read, "Drink Coca-Cola mixed this modern way - every one alike...every one 'delicious and refreshing'...every one ice-cold."3 Hipwell was a champion of Chilliwack taking on prominent positions within the community. Always active in service and charitable organizations he was strongly associated with the Canadian Legion, parks, highways, the Chilliwack Board of Trade, Boy Scouts, the Cherry Carnival and several health related organizations. In 1960 Hipwell was named Chilliwack's Citizen of the Year. From one object in the collection we have learned much about one enterprising soul in Chilliwack. Hipwell's success was achieved through his spirited desire to do good for the greater good of his community and reflective of wishing upon others, health, peace and contentment. Harry Hipwell died in Chilliwack September 27, 1965 though his store at Five Corners continued until about 1974.* Endnotes 1. McGuffin: an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance. Merriam-Webster Online, www. merriam-webster.com. 2. Chilliwack Progress, June 6,1929, 6. 3. Chilliwack Progress, May 3,1939, 3. Every object has a story. Do you have an object of curiosity in your cabinet? Send me 300 to 400 words together, with a high-resolution image of the object, telling me the story of the object. Email your story to: bcheditor@bchistory.ca. 48 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2013 | Vol. 46 No. 2 Awards and Scholarship Information for complete details go to http://bchistory.ca/awards/index.html W. KAYE LAMB Essay Scholarships Deadline: May 15 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,l,500 to 5,000 words. By entering the scholarship competition the student gives the editor of British Columbia History the right to edit and publish the essay if it is deemed appropriate for the magazine. Applications with 3 printed copies of the essay should be submitted to: Marie Elliott, Chair BC Historical Federation Scholarship Committee, PO Box 5254, Station B, Victoria, BC V8R 6N4 Anne 6t Philip Yandle Best Article Award Deadline: To be eligible, the article must have appeared in the BCHF journal British Columbia History for that year. A Certificate of merit and $250 will be awarded annually to the author of the article, published in British Columbia History, that best enhances knowledge of BC'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. BC History Web Site Prize Deadline: December 31 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 December 31st each year. Web site creators and authors may nominate their own sites. Prize rules and the online nomination form can be found on the British Columbia Historical Federation Web site: http://bchistory.ca/ awards/website/index.html Best Newsletter Award Deadline: March 1 Newsletters published by member societies are eligible to compete for an annual prize of $250. They will be judged for presentation and content that is interesting, newsy and informative. - Only member societies of the BCHF are eligible - Only one issue of a society's newsletter will be evaluated - Submit three printed copies of this best issue from the previous calendar year - BCHF reserves the right not to award a prize in a given year should applications not be of sufficient quality Submit three printed copies of a single newsletter issue to: BCHF Recognition Committee, PO Box 5254, Station B, Victoria, BC, Canada, V8R 6N4 Certificate of Merit Deadline: March 1 Group or individual who has made a significant contribution to the study, project, or promotion of British Columbia's history. Certificate of Recognition Deadline: March 1 Given to individual members or groups of members of BCHF Member Societies who have given exceptional service to their Organization or Community. Certificate of Appreciation Deadline: March 1 Individuals who have undertaken ongoing positions, tasks, or projects for BCHF. Nominations Any member of BCHF may nominate candidates for Certificates of Appreciation, Certificates of Merit or Certificates of Recognition. Nominations, supported by a letter explaining why the nominee is deserving of a certificate, should be submitted to the Chair of the Recognition Committee by March 1 of each year. The Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Historical Writing Deadline: December 31 Each year, the British Columbia Historical Federation invites submissions for its Annual Historical Writing Competition to authors of BC history; and the winning author is awarded the Lieutenant- Governor's Medal for Historical Writing. Eligibility - To be eligible, a book must be about BC history and be published within the competition year - Non-fiction books representing any aspect of BC 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 of the year in which the book was published Submission Requirements - Those wishing to enter books MUST obtain a copy of the entry rules from the entries chair at writing@bchistory.ca - Authors/Publishers are required to submit three copies of their book - Books are to be accompanied by a letter containing the following: 1. Title of the book submitted 2. Author's name and contact information 3. Publisher's name and contact information 4. Selling price - Books entered become property of BCHF - Judges' decisions are final and confidential - By submitting books for this competition, the authors agree that the BCHF may use their name(s) in press releases and in its publications William R. Morrison: Email: writing® bchistory.ca 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 Publicity All winners will receive publicity and an invitation to the Award's Banquet at the Federation's annual conference in May following the year of publication. Lieutenant-Governor's Medal and Other Awards The BC Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Historical Writing will be awarded together with $1000 to the author whose book makes the most significant contribution to the history of British Columbia. The 2nd and 3rd place winners will receive $500 and $250 respectively. Certificates of Honourable Mention may be awarded to other books as recommended by the judges. Johnson Inc. Scholarship Deadline: September 15 Canadian residents completing high school and who are beginning post-secondary education. 100 scholarships of $1500 each for Canada, http://wwwl.johnson.ca/about- us/scholarships Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to Circulation Department. Canadian Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 40025793 British Columbia History Publications Mail registration No. 09835 BCHF c/o Magazine Association of BC, 201-318 Homer Street Vancouver, BC V6B 2V2 Snapshots of John Bragg's life ranching in the Cariboo. The top left photo shows John and his two daughters on the range, circa 1970. The photo on the top right, taken in the 1970s, shows the white church at Kluska Reserve. The Alexander Mackenzie Trail runs in front. John rode through this area on his Massey-Ferguson 2085, farm wagon and wordly possessions in tow, on his way to Pelican Lakes in 1955. John Bragg's daughter Laura, 9 years, on Massey-Ferguson 2085 raking hay. Circa 1976. Read more of John Bragg's story on page 26. Photos courtesy John Bragg.
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