Innholdsfortegnelse for 52.3 | Fall 2019 i British Columbia History

I was five years old at the time of my first Union Steamship voyage on the SS Catala, but I remember it well. When I mentioned this to my eighty-seven-year-old aunt, Edith Nelson, she surprised me. “Oh,” she said, “I sailed on both the SS Catala AND the SS Cardena.” I quickly asked for details. My aunt explained that in 1952, she boarded the SS Cardena from Hardwicke Island, where she was teaching at the time.1 There she’d met her fiancé, construction worker Jim Edwards, and the two lovebirds headed for Vancouver by ship to meet her parents at Easter. My aunt later travelled on the SS Catala after she and Jim Edwards married and were setting off on their honeymoon. For seventy years, the Union Steamship Company formed a…

The old steamboat landing at Soda Creek is one of the most interesting historical sites along the Cariboo highway north of Williams Lake. Standing on the bank of the Fraser River, it’s easy to imagine the excitement of gold-rush days when sternwheelers plied the river north to Quesnel and Prince George. Weary miners, bent over carrying their bedrolls and sacks of gold, and hurdy gurdy girls with their luggage, all returning south for the winter, made their way up the steep road to the Colonial and Exchange Hotels. There the stagecoach waited to take them down country to Yale. The hotels were dismantled long ago, but a century-old log jail and a cairn stands dedicated to those who came before. The information plaque reads: In commemoration of the first canoe…

It’s the elegant star of Union Bay. A maroon coloured, three-storey Canada Post building occupies the heart of this coastal Vancouver Island village — and its citizens. When Public Works Canada decided to close and tear down the post office in the late 1980s, residents quickly formed a historical society, bought the building for $50,000 in 1993, and raised another $170,000 to restore it. The Society leased part of the first floor back to Canada Post to help cover ongoing maintenance costs. Stamps are still sold, and the mail sorted into bevelled glass postal boxes, much like it has since 1913. A branch of the Vancouver Island Regional Library shares the first floor, and at just 300 square feet (91 sq metres) is the smallest on Vancouver Island. Union Bay…

The boomtown of Soda Creek grew up in the 1860s in the territory of the Xatśūll First Nation (Soda Creek First Nations) located north of Williams Lake on the Fraser River, and the gold-rush economy of the river that depended on successful navigation of sternwheelers on the Fraser was supplemented by the knowledge and labour of local Indigenous people. Yet, as the Xatśūll First Nation website documents: Indigenous relations with European settlers would steadily decline as the gold rush died down, and the European settlers began claiming lands that belonged to the Xatśūll and other nations. Backed by the colonial government the settlers encroached further onto Xatśūll lands. By 1865 the people of Xatśūll were forced onto a small reserve established by Governor Douglas. Indigenous people’s rights and interests were…

The Vickers fonds is a collection of records, exhibits, and transcripts from the 2007 British Columbia Supreme Court case, Tsilhqot’in Nation v British Columbia (2007 BCSC 1700), considered to be one of the most important Aboriginal title cases in Canada.1 Justice Vickers was the presiding judge at trial. After completion of the trial in November 2007, Justice Vickers contacted the University of Victoria Faculty of Law about donating his judge’s copies of the exhibits, transcripts, and records. The donation was accepted in 2008 after consultation between the Law Faculty, the Law Library, and Justice Vickers. The collection consisted of 19.8m of textual materials (74 boxes) and 154 maps. These materials included most of the evidence presented at trial. Ultimately, the Supreme Court of Canada in 2014, relying on Vickers’ findings…

Ever since humankind learned to make fire, charcoal has been in existence. In Wonderwerk Cave, an archaeological site in South Africa, there is clear evidence that ancestors of homo sapiens were using fire almost a million years ago. Later, fire could be transported from one place to the next by carrying charcoal embers. Charcoal is produced by partially burning wood in a process known as “pyrolysis” that eliminates moisture and volatile gasses in the wood and leaves a stable form of carbon. Charcoal was a necessary ingredient for making black powder (gunpowder), invented in China in the 9th century.1 In old Japan, charcoal was useful domestically as fuel for the open hearth in the kitchen. Artistically, charcoal was used in the tea ceremony. Commercially, it helped fire the pottery kiln.…

Apart from A.A. Milne’s One Hundred Acre Wood I can’t imagine a more magical urban wildwood retreat than Oak Bay’s Uplands Park in greater Victoria, especially its meadows of brilliant blue spring camas and long shafts of golden grass waving in the late summer. Drifting among islands of blackberry bushes in autumn and trudging along muddy trails in winter is a delight. However, one cannot wander through the park and not ponder what circumstances created such a haven — locked into a suburban setting — and who had the foresight to preserve its natural state. No specific plan ever existed. This magical place resulted from diversion of design, the economic flow during and following two world wars, federal and municipal bylaws, and a referendum involving the ratepayers of Oak Bay.…

The Wildest Night in Vancouver  https://meijiat150dtr.arts.ubc.ca/the-wildest-night-in-vancouver/ In September 1907, up to 500 people vandalized dozens of stores owned by Chinese Canadians and Japanese Canadians. Damage was estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars and one person, who was Japanese Canadian, was killed. The Wildest Night in Vancouver website includes a geomap of all the Japanese Canadian-owned stores that were vandalized and a five-episode podcast. Content was created by University of British Columbia students in Dr. Tristan Grunow’s History 271: Japan and Global History, 1550-1900 classes in the Spring of 2018 and 2019. On This Spot  https://www.onthisspot.ca A guided walking tour app, On This Spot users can view an archival photo of the location where they are standing and learn about its history. Using a then and now photo comparison,…