Innholdsfortegnelse for 54.2 Summer 2021 i British Columbia History

We are proud that the students in our fall partnership with UBC have been awarded a Recognition prize in the Education and Awareness category from Heritage BC. This cohort of students was remarkable in their enthusiasm, their willing rise to the challenges of the pandemic, and the quality and thoroughness of their work. The project—called Heritage Partnerships in Community Engaged Learning—paired 11 Third Year UBC students with heritage organizations and/ or historical research projects to assist community partners during the pandemic, which has greatly impacted the ability of many organizations to conduct their work. We have called them the “Pandemic Cohort” of UBC Sociology 383 Fall 2020—and they worked with the BCHF, SASI at UFV, and Heritage Vancouver. In placing her students, Professor Renisa Mawani noted that, “we hoped that…

“Nautical heritage” usually conjures up images of tugboats, ocean liners, and sailing ships on salt water, a stereotype regularly reinforced by maritime museums. However, the scope of nautical heritage encompasses other significant historical themes, including links to agriculture, mining, industry, fishing, settlement, communication, recreation, research, and international relations. In time, our nautical heritage is an unbroken flow of events from millennia past to the present. Our view of this heritage is slowly but positively evolving with broadened awareness guided by nautical history enthusiasts. Origins The British Columbia Historical Federation’s predecessor, the British Columbia Historical Society, struck a Marine Committee led by Judge Frederic William Howay that focused on preservation and research, and their work in lobbying for the establishment of a provincial maritime museum eventually led to the creation of…

The Hudson Bay Company’s Fur Brigade Trail from Fort Hope to Kamloops was constructed in the 1840s—long before there was a British Columbia. More than 100 years later, it was reconstructed as a trail for hiking and recreation.1 By 1840, the HBC faced a dilemma. The American Boundary Commission planned to extend their boundary from the Rocky Mountains along the 49th parallel to the Pacific Ocean. This would put an end to the HBC’s route from its northern forts in New Caledonia down the Columbia river to its mouth at Fort Vancouver. In 1845, A.C. Anderson, the company’s chief trader at Fort Alexandria (south of Quesnel) offered to search for a new overland fur brigade route from Fort Kamloops to the company’s new depot at Fort Langley. Oceangoing ships for…

In August of 2020, I found myself right next to the incredibly beautiful West Coast Trail which runs through Pacific Rim National Park—and I was getting paid for being there! I was out on Pachena Point Lighthouse station, working as a relief assistant light keeper. The Canadian Coast Guard service maintains a pool of relief keepers to stand in for staff who wish to get off the lights for a family visit, medical appointment, or holiday. It has been one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve ever had, giving me the wonderful opportunity to work up and down the BC coast at a number of the 27 lighthouses still being manned. But what particularly resonated with me about this particular posting was that I was the third member of my…

It’s difficult being in the middle of two things—like the proverbial rock and the hard place. My life is lived in that cleft, and I have found a way to be in this place. I’m constantly redefining what it means to live here. My family are born of two worlds, the pre-contact world and the modern world, which gave way to a third world, a future, which is where I write from. All things that have passed, the good and the ugly, have resulted in me. There is a constant flow of revisiting, enlightening, and revising our understanding of the past as well as what has come down our DNA to sit and grow in our bones. The story I present here is very close to a story in my…

The arrival of the first transcontinental passenger train at Port Moody on July 4, 1886 was recorded as a joyous occasion, a day full of political addresses, crowds, festivities, cheering, and admiration for the endeavour of building a train to connect all the in-between spaces that constitute Canada. Victoria newspapers described how the largest mob of people “that ever left the city of Victoria in any one steamer”1 made a special excursion to see the arrival of first train. Month by month, newspapers noted the passing milestone for each section of the Canadian Pacific Railway, of each ceremony held or another joyous gathering and photograph that celebrated further progress before Canada was joined from sea to sea. As the rail line was nearing completion, a day and time was announced…

And they’re off! When the ferry docks at Departure Bay, so begins a frantic race for the Island Highway, and Nanaimo is quickly in the rear-view mirror. This summer, why not visit the city’s historic downtown to see what you’ve been missing? Also known as the “Hub City” (the downtown streets are laid out like the spokes on a wheel), Nanaimo is very walkable and easy to explore. Hoof it along the Harbourfront Walkway, then drop into the Art Gallery or Vancouver Island Military Museum. Both are just around the corner from the landmark Hudson’s Bay Company Bastion that’s been standing guard above the harbour since 1853. The downtown is loaded with quaint shops, restaurants, and pubs—one of them inside a restored E&N Railway station. There are other impressive heritage…

As this summer marks the 150th anniversary of British Columbia joining Canadian Confederation, I contemplate centennials gone by and reflect on the role of commemoration in BC’s past and present. In 2008, I worked at the BC Forest Discovery Centre in Duncan and curated an exhibit about Thelma Godkin, who worked as a whistle punk for a Vancouver Island logging operation in the 1940s. The exhibit was one of dozens created across the province to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of the crown colony of BC by highlighting the historical contributions of women. The Nanaimo Museum—established as a 1967 centennial museum and where I have worked since 2011—developed the “Canada 150: Centennial Stories” exhibit in 2017, which featured a selection of artifacts to help visitors decipher the dizzying…

The Kootenay Lake Hotel once stood on the high bench above Balfour, overlooking the “outlet” of Kootenay Lake across from Procter. In the spring of 1912, it opened as a summer hotel, with a grand celebration for more than 300 guests. The hotel sported several tennis courts, a small golf course, and the finest amenities the guests could desire. A cable car carried the visitors’ luggage and supplies up from the sternwheelers’ landing. The hotel stayed open for just four seasons before the First World War greatly reduced tourist travel. In 1917 it reopened as the Balfour Sanatorium for wounded Canadian soldiers, and in 1919 His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales visited with a large party on his Kootenay tour. Shortly afterward, the last patients were transferred to the…

Reverence rings out in the voices of Captain Owen Forrester Browne’s family when they describe his place in their childhoods in Brownsville, a part of Surrey, British Columbia (named for Ebenezer Brown, a New Westminster merchant). Between his birth in New Westminster in 18691 and his death there in 1948,2 Browne anchored his family in this small Surrey village while pursuing a successful career unlike any others in his family. Captain Browne came from a proud, independent family. His part-Black or part-Tahitian-American father, Owen Wormley Browne,had worked as a barber in the 1860s gold rush in Shasta, California,3 then in New Westminster and Yale. Owen’s mother, Teresa Aponi Berra-Berra Browne,4 preserved the family’s Polynesian heritage in dance and ohana (a Hawaiian word that roughly translates as “family”). Owen Forrester’s only…

In November of 1952, C.D. Orchard, then British Columbia’s Deputy Minister of Forests, addressed the Canadian Institute of Forestry in Montreal.1 It was not unusual for a Deputy Minister to do so, but the topic of his address certainly was, for it signalled a significant new role for the BC Forest Service. Beyond ensuring a timber supply for the forest industry, the Forest Service would now have a role in the field of outdoor recreation. Orchard’s speech put in motion a system that has created one of the best park systems in the world.2 Following the creation of Strathcona, BC’s first park, in 1911, there was no formal plan for provincial parks. Parks were established in a random manner, generally from proposals put forward by various advocacy groups such as…

The year 2020 marked the celebration of Bouchie Lake’s first “Century Family.” It was 1920 when George Wesley Victor Percival Armstrong (b. March 10, 1874) and Jeannie Bell (Johnston) Armstrong (b. June 19, 1894) travelled from Vancouver to the Cariboo and settled in the Bouchie District1 on the shores of Bouchie Lake (sometimes called Six-Mile Lake). Richard George Robert Armstrong, George and Jean’s grandson, who has lived his whole life on Bouchie Lake, isn’t sure what motivated his grandparents to move to the “bush.” Richard wonders if the move was also driven by George’s knowledge of the Spanish Flu pandemic, which killed between 20 and 100 million people between 1918 and 1919, including approximately 50,000 Canadians. George Armstrong was a newspaper editor and worked for several papers in BC, including…

The roots of the Mennonite community in British Columbia can be traced back to the Reformation, in the 16th century, when dissident preachers such as Menno Simons urged followers to leave the Catholic Church. Their insistence on adult baptism and non-resistance brought these “Mennonites” in conflict with religious and civil authorities. Fleeing persecution, many escaped to the Danzig (now Gdańsk) area and East Prussia (now Poland and Russia). In the late 1700s, when threatened with military conscription, large groups of Mennonites migrated to southern Russia. Tsar Alexander II’s reforms in the 1870s, which included universal conscription, triggered a wave of emigration to Canada. Civil war and increasing persecution under Communism in the 1920s brought a further wave of immigrants, and Mennonites displaced from Europe during the Second World War made…

There are few vessels in BC waters a century or more old. A few vintage yachts remain, but seldom do workboats achieve that distinction. The notable exception is SS Master, approaching her centennial in 2022 and, according to our research, the sole surviving wooden-hulled, steam-powered tug afloat in the world. Master was built by noted shipwright Arthur Moscrop on the shores of False Creek in Vancouver. She worked for various companies connected to the local construction industry, most notably Evans, Coleman & Evans, forerunner of Ocean Cement Ltd. Her duties consisted mostly of towing logs and barges laden with sand, gravel, limestone, and coal along the coast. Supplanted in 1959 by steel, diesel-powered tugs, Master was left to deteriorate. However, in 1962 the local branch of the World Ship Society…