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The British Columbia Historical Federation Magazine | Vol 54 No 2

Q Q Q Q

Captain Owen Forrester Browne Navigating Our Heritage Pillars of the BC Parks HBC Brigade Trail

Summer 2021 • $7.50

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Family Tales from the Graveyard of the Pacific ISSN 1710-7881

9 771710 788007

In this issue Published by the British Columbia Historical Federation | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

Features Upriver Captain, Downriver Family Man

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By Susan Garcia Owen Forrester Browne was a navigation pioneer with roots in Polynesia, America, and BC’s Indigenous community. His work with the Fraser River earned him fame and his family’s admiration.

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Navigating Our Heritage

By John MacFarlane BC’s economic, social, political, and intellectual life has always been linked to water, our guest editor writes. But “nautical heritage” goes beyond tugboats, ocean liners, and sailing ships on salt water.

Pillars of the BC Parks Branch

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By Bill Merilees and Jim Anderson BC’s provincial parks system owes a debt of gratitude to some mid20th century visionaries who advocated for the natural value of parks and an orderly approach to planning.

The HBC Brigade Trail

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By Keith Akenhead A 74-km trail that opened in 2016 from Hope to Kamloops allows you to follow in the footsteps of a Hudson’s Bay Company fur brigade from the 1840s.

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Strathcona Provincial Park

By Catherine Marie Gilbert Land use conflicts plagued BC’s first provincial park for much of its existence. But at last it has found peace, free from further industrial development.

The Armstrongs of Bouchie Lake

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By Heloise Dixon-Warren For over a century, members of the same family have homesteaded on land northwest of Quesnel. This story traces how they arrived there and the growth of the community they helped build.

Family Tales from the Graveyard of the Pacific

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By Rick James James becomes the third member of his family to stay at the Pachena Point Lighthouse and uses the opportunity to search for signs of significant shipwrecks and rescue operations.

“Displeasurecraft:” Hunger and Enmity on the SS Yosemite

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By Trevor Williams The arrival of the first transcontinental passenger train in Port Moody in 1886 was cause for celebration. But it was memorable for other reasons for those on board a ship to witness the event.

32

Zuckerberg Island

By Ron Verzuh Verzuh revisits a story he wrote nearly 50 years ago, introducing Alexander Zuckerberg and his island paradise at Castlegar through the eyes of a young boy.

Regulars 35 SHARING SPACE | Mind the Gap: A Gassy Jack Story

By Jenn Ashton Artwork depicting a Vancouver icon who married a 12-year-old Indigenous girl challenges our writer-inresidence to consider conflicts between history and modern beliefs.

37 TIME TRAVELS | Nanaimo Museum

By Mark Forsythe During the pandemic, staff at this cultural hub have been busy renewing gallery spaces and expanding an exhibit about Nanaimo’s first inhabitants with help from a Snuéymuxw Elder.

39 ARCHIVES AND ARCHIVISTS | The Mennonite Historical Society of BC

By Louise Price and Sylvia Stopforth Since 1972, the Mennonite Historical Society of BC has preserved the stories of Mennonites in BC, beginning with the first settlements on the Arrow Lakes. Today it boasts an extensive library that can help trace Mennonite roots.

44 STORIES OF OBJECTS | SS Master: The First 100 Years

By Robert G. Allan Few working BC boats reach their centennial, but the SS Master is a noteworthy exception. It may be the last wooden-hulled, steam-powered tug still afloat anywhere.

BACK COVER THEN AND NOW | Kootenay Lake Hotel

Every Month 2 ADVERTISERS’ INDEX 3 GUEST EDITOR’S NOTE | Bobbing on the Surface of History John MacFarlane

41 REFRACTING HISTORY | Stories in digital and print Aimee Greenaway

Inbox

Letters…

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 Student Patrick Sales worked with Satwinder Bains and Sharanjit Sandhra at UFV’s South Asian Studies Institute (SASI) to track Sikh their work. We have called them the passengers on ships travelling to Vancouver and Victoria early in the “Pandemic Cohort” of UBC Sociology 20th century. This is page 3 of the passenger list for the Empress of 383 Fall 2020—and they worked with India, arriving in Victoria March 4, 1907.

Source: Library and Archives Canada the BCHF, SASI at UFV, and Heritage Vancouver.

• Patrick Sales, Student In placing her students, Professor Renisa Mawani • Tanya Wijesuriya, Student noted that, “we hoped that that project would give • Alec Wilson, Student students first-hand knowledge about the partiality of • Lorisa Yun, Student history and the absence of marginal voices. We wanted • Makenna Zimmerman, Student students to have opportunities to learn about histor• Cherie Tay, Student ical and contemporary contributions of Indigenous • Jacqueline Seppelt, Student peoples, Black, and People of Colour to shaping British • South Asian Studies Institute, University of the Columbia.”

Fraser Valley • Heritage Vancouver Recipients: • Prof. Renisa Mawani, Department of Sociology University of British Columbia • Jeevan Sangha, Community Engagement Facilitator • Anupriya Dasgupta, Student Email us at bcheditor@bchistory.ca or write to: • Refano Evan Lumempouw, Student • Mason McClement, Student British Columbia History PO Box 448, • Lara Minami, Student Fort Langley, BC V1M 2R7

We love to hear from you

Letters may be edited for clarity or length.

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BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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Guest Editor’s Note

Bobbing on the Surface of Richly Layered History

John MacFarlane

I

its ugly parts. The big issues of racial prejudice, gender n 2020 I could not have imagined that anything inequities, political division, and global trade (new and good might come from the Covid-19 emergency.

The lockdown and the restrictions on international ancient) can all be discussed in a nautical context. The successes and triumphs of working people, entrepretravel have redirected the interest of British neurs, and British Columbians of every context can also Columbians: with time on our hands, many of us are be interpreted. Making the currently invisible threads investigating our local and provincial heritage as never of nautical history visible will naturally touch a larger before. segment of the population in a positive way.

The need for online access to heritage has been highThe appetite for online access to our heritage is lighted by the pandemic, and this digital need has never growing rapidly, which will inevitably lead to a desire been greater. It comes at a time when traditional access to participate in first-hand experiences. If we seize this to museums and archives has been severely curtailed. current opportunity to reach out to new markets, we Those museums that had already taken initial steps to can engage generations of British Columbians in our digitize parts of their collections are benefitting from collective histories. newfound online interest We have been only from all ages of people. bobbing on the surface of Nautical heritage the richly layered nautical occupies a big segment of history of our province. our collective provincial Big museums need to history, but interest in it reach out to engage has flagged in recent years. people beyond Victoria Restrictions on access and Vancouver, and small to harbours and watermuseums need to be ways have contributed encouraged to tell their to this turning away of local stories. For those of interest even as current us unable to easily access events have refocused Electrolysis survey on False Creek, Vancouver.

Not all museums with large colpublic attention on other nautical heritage is about ocean liners or tugboats. lections, they need to subjects.

The construction of electric-powered street cars in serve up digital assets This is an issue that Vancouver triggered a study to determine if electric online and give us ready affects us all. Nautical fields set up by the power system was causing elecaccess. heritage exists on every trolysis in the harbour. This could have easily caused I think the future suclake and every river in damage to propellers and propeller shafts—and even cess of broad engagement the province, not just on to steel hulls of ships. Engineers shown in the image in history and heritage— salt water. Each historical undertaking a survey (that probably took several weeks) constructed a makeshift raft to carry their nautical and beyond—may society in every commeasurement devices as they surveyed the harbour lie in presenting digital munity has a potent role to map the electrical field (they started their study on opportunities today. to tell parts of this large May 6, 1914).

Photo: City of Vancouver Archives AM54-S4-_LGN_1269.1 story—both its good and BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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FRONT COVER

Sternwheeler captain Owen F. Browne (centre) with crew.

The large capstan in the foreground was rigged with rope to a fixed point on shore. Long bars were placed in the holes at its top and pushed by the crew to turn its rotating drum, gradually winding in the line and moving the ship forward.

Capstans were also used to weigh—or raise—anchor.

British Columbia History is published four times per year (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) by the British Columbia Historical Federation.

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Sternwheeler SS Charlotte on Fraser River, circa 1900.

Photo: City of Vancouver Archives AM54-S4: Bo P265

Upriver Captain, Downriver Family Man

By Susan Garcia

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everence 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 sister, Sophia, told historians about her family’s Indigenous heritage at her birthplace of Kikait (Qayqayt/Qiqéyt), a former village located in presentday Surrey.5 When Owen lived in Brownsville, he and Sophia maintained a mutually supportive relationship.

Owen Forrester and his siblings traversed the lower Fraser River from their early childhood, fishing and farming and also working marine oyster beds, traplines, and hop fields in the coastal area.6 When Browne’s father died in 1886, Owen Forrester was seventeen. He BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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A young Owen Forrester Browne, circa 1890.

Source: Courtesy of Susan Garcia

The Charlotte at Quesnel, 1897.

Source: BCHQ Volume 13 (1949)

The B.C. Express and B.X. at South Fort George, 1912.

Source: BCHQ Volume 13 (1949)

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BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

and his younger brother, Henry Rufus, crewed riverboats on the Fraser in the 1890s. In 1892, when Henry Rufus was 21, he drowned in Yale while working aboard the SS William Irving.7 This tragic loss might have been preventable8 in less treacherous river conditions, and recommendations for crew safety would have been hammered home to Owen. An older brother, William Wormley Browne, born in 1867, mysteriously disappears from any known records after 1891 in Stave River, BC, where the family farmed until about 1898.9 When Owen and his widowed mother lived in Brownsville10 in 1901, the Census listed his job as “fireman,”11 that is, a ship’s crewman.

Browne spent his early career, from the 1890s to 1906, working on the lower Fraser River and the Yukon River before being hired by the British Columbia Express Company in 1906 as the captain of the sternwheeler Charlotte, which travelled between Soda Creek and Quesnel.12 By all accounts, Captain Browne was a selfmade man, known for his prowess and popularity. Due to his achievements as a captain, Browne earned high status within his family, but he attained even more fame in the riverboat trade along the Fraser River from Soda Creek to Prince George, especially in the years 1906 to 1920. Here Browne found his niche as a gifted navigator through the channels of the upper Fraser River’s Cottonwood Canyon and the Fort George Canyon.

This is an account of a trip Browne took north of Quesnel to South Fort George (near Prince George): In the summer of 1908, high water in the Fraser being over and Captain Irving having arrived from Victoria, Captain Browne thought that the stage of water in the river and the other obtaining conditions were satisfactory for the proposed attempt to steam through the canyons. Taking aboard a large supply of dry cordwood, Captain Browne piloted the Charlotte up the river and steamed to the foot of Cottonwood Canyon. As part of the preparations for the attempt, a heavy ring-bolt had been fixed in the canyon-wall at a point most favourable for attaching the cable for the planned attempt to pull the steamer up through the very strong current at the foot of the canyon. The cable was now strung along the wall of the canyon and attached to the ring-bolt. The capstan was then set in motion and a start was made to pull the steamer through the rapids. Everything seemed to be going well and the vessel had almost reached the head of the canyon when the ring-bolt gave way and the Charlotte, suddenly released from the straining cable, came crashing down-stream and avoided the misfortune of piling up on the rocks only through the brilliant manner in which Captain Browne manoeuvred his

ship. An experienced observer who was on the boat at the time stated that when the cable broke loose the steamer did not clear the rocks by more than a foot or so, and that if she had struck at the foot of the rapids she would have instantly capsized and sunk in the depths of the canyon.13 Captain John Irving was a contemporary of Browne’s as well as his employer. Irving and his partners formed the North British Columbia Navigation Company (NBCNC) to provide comfortable and reliable service from Soda Creek to South Fort George. As more settlers headed to northern BC, the two-day stagecoach ride became less attractive than the one-day luxurious sternwheeler ride. The NBCNC commissioned Alexander Watson Jr. to build the steamer B.X. for this leg of the upper Fraser, and Captain Browne was involved in her design. The aft of the B.X. sternwheeler had a 30-inch (76 cm) draft when loaded with 100 tonnes, and much of her infrastructure was built inside her hull. The B.X. provided “steam-heated staterooms… red velvet carpets…crockery monogrammed in the B.X. colours…[and] a bridal chamber with silk eiderdown.”14 Passage aboard the B.X. cost $17.50. It was $10 less than the stagecoach journey offered by the same company.

The B.X. was launched, tested, and made her successful maiden voyage to South Fort George on June 24, 1910, with Captain Browne at the helm.15 The steamer carried mail, freight, and livestock as well as passengers, and she stopped along the river at woodlots, Indian Reserves, and homesteads, making deliveries in response to a white flag that residents would raise on the riverbank.16 Berthed in Quesnel at the time of the 1911 census, the B.X. was listed as a household with Captain Browne as its head with a crew of twelve men. At that time, Browne reported that he worked 84 hours a week and earned $1,800 per year (about $41,450 today).17 When Browne married Minnie Seymour two years later, the Fort George Herald announced the marriage in the effusive manner of the day, citing his “most enviable reputation.”18 Minnie was the daughter of the wellknown Indigenous healer Granny Seymour.19 Browne’s journeys continued to make the papers.

Quesnel’s Cariboo Observer includes mentions of Captain Browne’s winnings in three trap-shooting competitions: a bronze medal in the annual shoot of 1909;20 a box of cigars in 1913;21 and a pair of cufflinks on Thanksgiving Day, 1914.22 The Observer also reported on a “first exhibition” lacrosse game played on September 12, 1914, which was facilitated by the passage of the Quesnel team aboard the B.X. to South Fort George.23

Captain Browne is listed as both a player for the South Fort George team and a greatly appreciated host of the Quesnel team aboard the B.X. On the return trip, Browne received “three cheers” for his gallantry.

Riverboat races and performance challenges made headlines. When competition in the newly incorporated town of Prince George dubbed the B.X. a “white elephant” because of her luxury, Browne took up the challenge, proving that he could navigate the B.X. through the Prince George canyon, upriver from that city. B.X. had by now earned the title “The Queen of the North.”24 A race from South Fort George to Quesnel between Browne on the B.X. and Captain Shannon on the Conveyor saw Shannon arrive first, allegedly breaking the rules by not honoring B.X.’s stopping protocols, and then ramming the larger B.X. vessel when she caught up. The newspaper noted that, in the

Captain Browne and officer, undated.

Source: Courtesy of Susan Garcia BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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Forrester adventured differently, taking ten children to California and Mexico in 1933 in one car. He retired with a pension on January 1, 1947. He died a year later.

•

Endnotes

A young Minnie Seymour Browne, circa 1910.

Source: Courtesy of Susan Garcia

end, the B.X. won by popular consensus and Shannon apologized.25 The B.X. finally ran aground, wrecked at Woodpecker Island, north of today’s Hixon, in 1919. She was never in service again. In a final swan song to the area, Browne again performed another “first” that made the papers: towing one riverboat behind another, he pulled the B.X. behind the larger B.X. Express. The B.X. rested in South Fort George until she was dismantled.26 Captain Browne and his wife Minnie resided in South Fort George until about 1920 when riverboat traffic in the area was diminishing and the automobile era had arrived. After the birth of four children, the Brownes returned to Brownsville, moving into a large house by the river (near where the Lehigh Hanson cement plant stands now). Five more children were born there.

Browne went further upriver when he was employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1927 as captain of the Canadusa, the D.A. Thomas, the Slave River, the Northland Echo, Pelly Lake, and Beaver Lake steamers on the Mackenzie River.27 Three of his sons, Hugh, Earl, and Owen, worked with him aboard these steam ships in Alberta and the territories.28Downriver, Owen 8

BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

1. BC Baptisms, O.F. Brown. September 1, 1869. St Peters Church, New Westminster. BC Archives. http://search-collections.royalbcmuseum. bc.ca/Genealogy 2. BC Deaths, O.F. Browne. September 14, 1948. New Westminster. BC Archives. http://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Genealogy 3. US Census, 1860. O. W. Browne, Shasta, California. Recorded as “Mulatto.”

4. The exact origins of O. W. Browne and Teresa are obscure: BC Colonial Marriages, O.W. Brown, T. Berra-Berra. August 27, 1869. New Westminster. BC Archives. http://search-collections. royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Genealogy.

5. Pearson, John and Reitz, John M. Land of the Royal Kwantlen (Surrey: North Surrey Athletic Association, 1958): 8.

6. Transcript of Fred Clark interview with Imbert Orchard, Surrey Archives, SA 7776:1, Transcribed October 30, 2014 by Diane Johnson.

4–13.

7. BC Deaths. Rufus Browne. January 1, 1892, Fraser River. BC Archives.

BC Archives. http://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/ Genealogy 8.“Sons of Owen Wormley Browne” Opposite the City, https:// oppositethecity.wordpress.com/2016/03/19/ sons-of-owen-wormleybrowne/ 9.“Owen Wormley Browne: Miner, Barber, Oyster Farmer” Opposite the City, https://oppositethecity.wordpress.com/2016/03/19/owenwormley-browne-miner-barber-oyster-farmer/ 10. Brownsville was located across the Fraser River from New Westminster.

11. Canada Census, 1901.

12. Willis West, Stagecoach and Sternwheeler Days in the Cariboo and Central B.C. (Surrey: Heritage House, 1985), 38.

13. West, 39.

14. West, 44.

15.“BX Sternwheeler,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BX_ (sternwheeler) 16. Ibid.

17. Canada Census, Quesnel, 1911.

18. Nanaimo Family History, http://nanaimofamilyhistory.ca/wp-content/ uploads/2019/11/AncesTree-Fall-2019.pdf, and “Early Prince George Weddings,” The Prince George Genealogical Society, http://www. pggenealogy.ca/1_15_early-prince-george-weddings.html.

19.“Owen Forrester Browne,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Owen_Forrester_Browne, 20. Cariboo Observer, October 23, 1909, p. 1.

21. Cariboo Observer, November 22, 1913, p. 1.

22. Fort George Herald, September 12, 1914, http://pgnewspapers.pgpl.ca/ fedora/repository/fgh:1914-09-12/-/Fort%20George%20Herald%20 -%20September%2012,%201914.

23.“LACROSSE,” Fort George Herald, September 12, 1914, http:// pgnewspapers.pgpl.ca/fedora/repository/fgh:1914-09-12/-/Fort%20 George%20Herald%20-%20September%2012,%201914.

24.“The BX Sternwheeler on the Nechako River,” https://www. theexplorationplace.com/100/bx-stern-wheeler-on-the-nechakoriver-ca-1910?

25.“BX Sternwheeler,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BX_ (sternwheeler) 26. Ibid 27. Hudson’s Bay Archives, Biographical Sheets, Browne, Owen F. https://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/_docs/hbca/biographical/b/ browne_owen.pdf 28. Tito Messer, interview with Susan Garcia, February 1, 2021.

Susan Garcia is a great-granddaughter of Owen Forrester Browne’s only sister, Sophia Browne Clark. Two of Browne’s children, Hugh Kalani “Babe” Browne, 101, and Tito Browne Messer, 91, still reside in BC.

Passengers aboard the SS Komagata Maru in Vancouver Harbour, an international incident that has become a pivotal moment in the history of the province and of Punjabi Canadians. When the ship anchored in Vancouver Harbour on 23 May 1914, all passengers—subjects of the British Empire—were refused entry to Canada. For two months they were held on board as negotiations and court challenges ensued. The British Columbia Court of Appeal ruled that its passengers had no right of entry, and on 23 July, the ship was turned away. Within hours of disembarking at the port of Budge Budge near Kolkata on 29 September 1914, twenty passengers were killed in an altercation with British Indian police.

Photo: City of Vancouver Archives P141.3

Navigating Our Heritage

By John MacFarlane

“N

autical 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 Maritime Museum of British Columbia, which was intended to fill this provincial role. The committee also worked with Victoria’s Thermopylae Club in ongoing campaigns to support the preservation of the world-famous dugout canoe Tilikum that had voyaged John MacFarlane notes: BC History magazine, in its various formats, has always been a key platform for sharing the nautical research of our members. Articles have appeared in issues throughout the decades, giving a voice to nautical historians. Without this publication interest in nautical subjects might have dwindled further.

BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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Bicycle club onboard ferry, 1935.

to London from Victoria. This museum has existed for more than 65 years and is run by a charitable society, unlike the other major Canadian marine museums, which are government funded.

The cultural, economic, social, political, and intellectual life of British Columbia has always been inextricably linked to water. The history of the province, in fact, can be viewed through a nautical optic.

Where is nautical heritage located?

The navigable rivers and lakes of the interior of the province were once the “highways” on which people travelled and goods were transported. Hundreds of vessels worked these waters until competition first from the railways and later from highway trucking began to diminish their significance. Today, access to the province’s waterways and shores have become restricted by private ownership and security concerns. Separated from the water, we have, over the years, seen public interest in nautical history also diminish.

Nautical history, as reflected in the amount of published research, popular publications, and online presence, hit a low point around 2000. It began to look like 10

BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

Photo: James Crookall, City of Vancouver Archives AM640-SV1 CVA 260-1411

interest in it might peter out when a few individuals stepped up to revive interest.

The province’s two big maritime museums began to experience sustainability issues, particularly in finding sustainable museum facilities. Victoria’s Maritime Museum of British Columbia lost a permanent venue when it was forced to leave its long-time home on Bastion Square. The Vancouver Maritime Museum declared its intention to move to a waterfront facility in order to make its operation more sustainable.

Our provincial museum has presented exhibits about the Titanic or Viking ships from somewhere else, suggesting, perhaps, that British Columbia’s nautical history is not significant enough to be the focus of a major exhibition. However, our history can easily keep pace with that of other places in the world, and such exhibitions can be crowd-pleasers at the box office.

The bigger museums have huge, rich maritime and waterway collections that need to be dusted off and presented to the public. What is the point of curating all that material if it’s not being used to assist in interpreting our heritage? As a museum person, I have had the privilege of close contact with these collections and

archives, and I want more of it to be shared with the world.

Community museums also have a huge potential role in documenting stories and sharing them locally and, just as importantly, with the travelling public. The pandemic has prompted BC residents, some for the first time, to travel within the province. They are discovering that they live in one of the most interesting places on earth.

What have other jurisdictions done to celebrate nautical heritage?

Often working with a fraction of the cultural potential that surrounds us here in British Columbia, other regions have celebrated their nautical heritage in a big way. There are maritime museums with a larger footprint than ours in Alberta and Manitoba—even the tiny nation of Estonia has a larger, more prominent maritime museum than BC’s.

Today, the big issues facing nautical heritage are accessibility and participation. The nautical theme is often missing from museum presentations of local history, possibly because it is so difficult to obtain the information and stories that illustrate it. Remote access to primary sources for researchers must become easier and more universally available. Most of us do not live within easy access of a maritime museum, the provincial archives, or the Canadian archives in Ottawa.

Local walking tours, monuments, plaques, audio tours, and publications all need to be developed throughout the province.

However, Libraries and Archives Canada (LAC) have recently initiated a very progressive approach to making nautical sources accessible online. They will soon be rolling out digital access to the ship records they hold in their collection. I think this will become the first of many such initiatives which could be followed by other institutions.

Jenni Martha Cornett, wife of Vancouver Mayor Jack Cornett, christening a new Royal Canadian Navy minesweeper, 1942.

Photo: City of Vancouver Archives AM1616-S1 CVA 136-266

treeless north shore. Photo dated between 1900 and 1906.

.

Photo: City of Vancouver Archives AM54-S4 Bo P533.1 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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Captain George Waard with his 9-year-old son Bobbie and the crew who crossed the Pacific Ocean from Shanghai to Victoria with him in his hand-built 23-ton Chinese junk Amoy in 87 days, 1922. The full crew included Waard’s wife as helmsman, his son as cook and cabin boy, and four men: George Kavalchuck, Chan Tai, Loo Fook, and Wong Fook.

Photo: City of Vancouver Archives, Bo P134.4

A balanced presentation

Fragmented preservation

These days, we look for balance in the presentation of our history; we want it to reflect more than one cultural viewpoint. Progress is being made in telling nautical stories through different sets of eyes, and a healthier focus and tone is being achieved.

The narrow presentations of the past—the stories of the rich and powerful—need to be augmented with those of the workers, the customers, the trades people, and the consumers of the province. It is possible to give a more complete depiction, one that reflects the social mores and difficulties of our past in nautical terms.

Indigenous fishermen, Asian crew members, people of colour, and women have seldom been recognized in the stories being told, yet their participation was and is a vital component. An inclusive approach to history is promoting stronger links between us all and can help us understand many current issues, whether fishing rights, borders, shipbuilding, the export of logs, or patterns of land use and settlement.

Floating heritage (old boats) are the darlings of the nautical world. But conserving and displaying these vessels is expensive and complicated, and waterfront facilities are increasingly difficult to find. Mostly we depend on individuals to own, restore, and occasionally display these older vessels at festivals and museums. We do not have a unified approach to preservation of our floating nautical heritage in BC, and some argue that it is not properly recognized as an important heritage component in the provincial mix. Antique automobiles, for example, even those designed and built elsewhere, get special recognition in provincial licencing, but boats are not considered significant heritage assets in the same way.

The most successful initiative in preserving floating heritage is the S.S. Master Society, which maintains and operates the last operating steam-powered tugboat in the world. This tug is frequently the focus of community events as it travels around the coast each year to display and demonstrate the vessel.

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Built heritage has pride of place at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery at Steveston and the North Pacific Cannery at Port Edward on the north coast. The Britannia Shipyards in Richmond preserves a fascinating collection of domestic and industrial buildings that attract large numbers of visitors. These National Historic Sites, along with accessible lighthouses, give a glimpse of how to preserve and make accessible the province’s nautical-themed built heritage.

The Cowichan Bay Maritime Centre is another example of what can be accomplished by a determined group of volunteers, combining shore access with a working nautical-heritage operation. Visitors to the Centre can get up close and personal with several restored examples of floating heritage.

Successful boat festivals, such as the Victoria Classic Boat Festival, are the floating equivalents of antique car show-and-shine rallies. They give access to otherwise local and visiting exemplars that are generally out of sight for the rest of the year.

The dry-berthed sternwheelers Moyie at Kaslo (which worked on Kootenay Lake from 1898 until 1957) and the 1914 sternwheeler Sicamous at Penticton and the Samson V in the water at New Westminster are all accessible to the public.

For travellers, one of the great nautical delights are the free inland ferries crossing lakes and rivers in the Interior. Some of these routes are a throwback to earlier days when using the reaction of machinery against current to propel the vessel from one side to the other was the only means of propulsion.

Finally, coastal ferries are underrated opportunities to extend travel to the islands and communities beyond the road network. They also offer passengers an opportunity to see a parade of working vessels and many marine-related shore facilities, often of historic significance. Routes up the coast are growing, and more coastal communities are becoming accessible, which means more first-hand experiences for travellers.

John MacFarlane is a fifth-generation Vancouver Islander whose family came there from California in 1859 for the Fraser River Goldrush. He has worked to protect and interpret Canada’s natural and historical heritage since 1969 when he joined the Canadian National Parks Service. He is the Curator Emeritus of the Maritime Museum of British Columbia in Victoria, BC. The author of 14 books, he was the co-recipient of the prestigious 2020 John Lyman Book Prize of the North American Society of Oceanic History for his book Around the World in a Dugout Canoe. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (London) and a recipient of the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers. He lives on the central east coast of Vancouver Island. His almost full-time avocation is The Nauticapedia.

What’s next?

Once they have taken in the magnificent scenery, visitors often want to know what they are seeing—who has lived there, worked there, and who was there before? They do not want to be told what to think, but they do appreciate a presentation with full and balanced information so they can formulate their own viewpoints on history. This means giving information at the locations of the stories.

Modern technology has given us the tools to accomplish that, but the history community has been slow to create the content that we need and want. Almost everyone can now digitally retrieve images and information—if someone has created a source for that information online.

History made understandable puts the modern world in context and can create a sense of belonging.

Understanding builds pride of place. Our nautical heritage on the lakes, rivers, and saltwater is the envy of other peoples in other places. I think we should take better advantage of what we have got and enjoy it more.

•

Nauticapedia This useful online tool for researchers in British Columbia is unlike any digital resource found elsewhere. Two big searchable online databases provide free instant access to detailed information on 70,000 West Coast vessels and 58,000 mariners and related personalities. Supported by almost 15,000 images and 1,500 articles, this is a rich resource accessed more than four million times annually by users worldwide.

What started 45 years ago as a casual recording of my ship research has gradually built up into a significant encyclopedic nautical heritage reference for casual and serious researchers and inquirers focusing on the nautical history of British Columbia, western and northern Canada, and Canada’s naval forces. The related subject matter is diverse and multifaceted.

This is the result of the work of a small core of volunteers who have invested tens of thousands of hours gathering, verifying, and entering the data so that it can be accessed by others. The online content is being constantly updated, added to, corrected, and documented. It can stand as a model for someone wishing to do something similar for other themes of history such as agriculture, forestry, mining, industry, or transportation (for example).

You can access this resource at www.nauticapedia.ca.

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Chess Lyons and Bob Ahrens punting up the Nations River, circa 1945.

Photo: BC Parks Archives, University of Victoria Library

Pillars of the BC Parks Branch

By Bill Merilees and Jim Anderson

I

n 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

For more information about the history of BC Parks, see James D. Anderson, British Columbia’s Magnificent Parks: The First 100 Years. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2011.

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groups such as the Alpine Club of Canada, the BC Mountaineering Club, and various boards of trade and chambers of commerce.3 Many parks were championed by members of the public, including prominent conservation-minded individuals such as provincial botanist John Davidson and Dr. Bert Brink, both members of the Vancouver Natural History Society.4 British Columbia’s earliest parks—Strathcona, Mount Robson (1913), and Garibaldi (1920)—were joined over the next two decades by Tweedsmuir (1938), Wells Gray (1939), Hamber (1941), and Liard River (1944).5 These offered superb natural areas but were remote and not easily accessible to the general public. By 1945, BC had 27 designated parks, with more than 99 percent of its park area included in seven large parks.6 C.D. Orchard’s speech had been inspired by the work of Donald Macmurchie. Macmurchie had found work in the Young Men’s Forestry Training Program (YMFTP) during the Great Depression of the 1930s, where his administrative talents were soon recognized.

He enlisted with the Canadian Army during the Second World War, and after the war returned to the Forest Service. Here, on his own time (circa 1947), Macmurchie prepared the first clear statement arguing that there was an important civil role that the BC Forest Service was ignoring.7 He suggested that the BC Forest Service should get serious about putting in place a planned and properly managed system of provincial parks, and he outlined policies to achieve this. He used his position to advise staff, at all levels, on how they should serve government, other civil services agencies, and the public to promote the BC Parks agenda.

As the province’s post-war economy improved, Macmurchie astutely recognized that many people had increasing leisure time and wanted improved access to outdoor recreational spaces. He also saw the growing public interest in the protection of watersheds, the conservation of fish and wildlife populations, and other natural landscapes.

Macmurchie believed that the park administration would require a dynamic and forceful leader. He made it known to E.G. (Cy) Oldham, then working for Parks Canada at Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, that a new Parks and Recreation Division was being created. Both men had worked together in the YMFTP and both had enlisted from the Forest Service for war service.8 Oldham, who was charismatic and had a “bull of the woods” personality, became a great staff motivator who enjoyed making things happen.

In the years following the Second World War, the BC Forest Service began to receive a steady increase in the number of applications for special use permits for recreational cottage sites, hunting and fishing lodges, and other uses. This demand led, in part, to the establishment within the Forest Service of a Parks and Recreation Division to process these requests. Staff within the division were also aware that the establishment of large non-urban parks, which would reduce the available timber allocation to the forest industry, was not generally supported by senior Forest Service staff nor by most of the provincial cabinet. The in-joke was that Parks could “have any land you wish, just as long as it’s above 5,000 feet” [1,524 m], that is, well above the optimal timber-growing environment.9 However, some prominent British Columbians—notably Canadian writer and conservationist Roderick Haig-Brown, MLA and Minister of Lands Arthur Wellesley Gray, and the president of the BC Electric Company, W.G. Murrin—became influential supporters for park creation.

Each has a provincial park named in his honour.

With the formal establishment of a Parks and Recreation Division, a more orderly approach to park-system planning began. A reconnaissance and inventory section was created, initially under the leadership of D.M. (Mickey) Trew, and from 1951 onward by Robert (Bob) Ahrens.

Ahrens was from Nelson. In 1949, he was 22 years old and a recent graduate in Forest Engineering at UBC. His experience in the logging industry led him to think that some of the province ought to be set aside in its natural state. What began for him as a six-month probationary appointment with the BC Forest Service became a 36-year-long career in public service, including time as Director of the Provincial Parks Branch within the Ministry of Recreation and Conservation.

Under Ahrens’ guidance, park personnel began to lay the foundation for the park system we have today. Over the following years, by float-plane, horseback, canoe, riverboat, helicopter, and on foot, park staff explored the province. Hundreds of areas of interest were inventoried and mapped and files created. Unfortunately, reports that recommended the establishment of larger parks—large enough to preserve wilderness—often languished in filing cabinets due to government and/or a rival ministry’s resistance.

Don Macmurchie, Bob Ahrens, and Cy Oldham, the pillars of the Parks Branch,

D.L. (Don) Macmurchie, 1950s BC Parks, Archives, University of Victoria Library

E.G. (Cy) Oldham, 1950s BC Parks, Archives, University of Victoria Library

R.H. (Bob) Ahrens, 1950s BC Parks, Archives, University of Victoria Library

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Reservoir), and the smaller John Hart power development on the Campbell River flooded large portions of Hamber, Tweedsmuir, and Strathcona Parks. In consequence, by Order-in-Council, the area of Hamber Provincial Park was reduced by 98 percent (961,680 hectares [9,616.8 square km]). 13 This was somewhat tempered by the creation of Bowron Lakes Park in 1961, with 120,314 hectares [1,203.1 square km]; Bowron is renowned for its 116 km canoe circuit.

Generally speaking, the political climate at this time was not conducive to the dedication of larger parks. When Ahrens was asked how BC Parks was able to make progress within a ministry Lloyd Brooks, Bob Ahrehs, and Bob Broadlands and CPL at Yellowhead (the Forest Service) largely adverse to Lake. A day of spectacular flying in the Rockies and peaks north of park creation in a province bent on Wells Gray Park, early 1950s.

Photo: BC Parks, Archives, University of Victoria Library power generation and highway development, he replied “that as long as the public was happy, and their support staff were strong advocates of the the government of the day was happy. Our mandate was natural values of parks, working in the tradition of to advise government directly.” Public support for nonThoreau’s Walden and the more recent writings of Aldo 10 urban parks was growing, especially for larger areas Leopold in A Sand County Almanac. Their message preserved in their natural state. The provincial governto all was: “The purpose of our provincial parks is to ment also recognized the need for a distinct organizaprovide the public with open space and natural surtion charged with administrating a growing park system. roundings which offer a change of scene from their In 1957 the Ministry of Recreation and Conservation accustomed day to day surroundings, and to maintain 11 was established,14 removed from the Forest Service, and these areas.” This message was persuasively delivered at public forums, including the annual provincially functioned as a new entity. The provincial Parks Branch 12 sponsored BC Natural Resource Conferences. They became part of this new Ministry.15 also believed that provincial parks should not be While Hydro development had been detrimental developed with facilities such as restaurants and fixedto park values, the acceleration of provincial highway roof accommodations, though there were exceptions, construction opened new opportunities for the Parks such as in Manning Park. The decades of the 1950s and and Recreation Division. When the federally funded ’60s were British Columbia’s era of gung-ho Hydro and Trans-Canada Highway project began in 1949 (officially highway development, and were therefore challenging opening in 1965), staff at Parks and Recreation argued times for the small Parks Division. Mammoth-scale for a roadside park to be created every 50 miles [80.5 Hydro reservoirs on the Columbia River at Mica Creek, km], and a campground every 100 miles [161 km].16 the Kemano project on the Nechako (Ootsa Lake Further, field staff in the Lands Branch and Forest Table 1: Summary of Protected Areas in British Columbia (as of June, 14 2019)

Provincial Parks (all classes) Conservancies Recreation Areas Environment and Land Use Act Ecological Reserves Total: Federal Parks and Reserves: 16

Number 643 156 2 84 148 1,033 7

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hectares [km] 10,520,948 [105,209.48 sq.km] 2,999,899 [29,998.99 sq. km] 5,929 [29.29 sq. km] 384,733 [3,847.33 sq. km] 160,293 [1,602.93 sq. km] 14,071,802 [140,718.02 sq. km] 634,705 [6,347.05 sq. km]

Rangers recommended that hundreds of parcels of Crown Land be withheld from disposition or sale.

These areas, they said, had value for the 17use, recreation and enjoyment of the public.” Known as UREPs, many of these areas eventually became roadside parks in the province’s expanding highway system. Don Macmurchie’s work was not yet finished. His new goal became the creation of a stand-alone Parks Act, which was enacted into law in 1965. Macmurchie was the primary author of this landmark work.18 For the past century, BC had had few political figures noted for their leadership in provincial park creation.

In the early 1970s, however, NDP MLA and Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources Robert Williams began to revive many previously shelved reports that recommended large-scale parks, and he saw them through to dedication. (The field work and analysis done by the earlier reconnaissance and inventory staff was not in vain!) Then, in the late 1980s, cabinet ministers Terry Huberts and Ivan Messmer succeeded in ending mining in provincial parks and championed a public process for parks system planning.19 Premier Mike Harcourt took Messmer’s plan and made good on a political commitment for a Protected Area Strategy in 1992.20 As of June 14, 2019, there were 643 provincial parks and 309 protected areas (recreation areas, conservancies, ecological reserves, etc.) established in British Columbia. At 14,071,802 hectares [140718 sq. km] this equates to 14.4 percent of the province’s land base21 (see Table 1). This makes BC one of the few jurisdictions in the world that has met or exceeded the 12 percent International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) protected area target.22 When combined with BC’s five national parks and two national park reserves, an additional 634,705 hectares [6,347 sq km] can be added to the total, increasing the province’s protected area to 15.2 percent.

This incredible accomplishment owes its beginnings, in large part, to the pillars of the Parks Branch: the visionary Donald Macmurchie, the scribe who sold his park concept to the province; Bob Ahrens, the architect who, during the formative years of provincial park administration, was largely responsible for placing this system on the ground; and Cy Oldham, under whose leadership all of this took place. Their dreams were Bill Merrilees was born and educated in Vancouver, graduating from UBC in zoology and botany. After working his way around the world, he joined the staff at fledgling Selkirk College in Castlegar. Recipient of a Rotary International Scholarship, he concluded his professional career with BC Parks on Vancouver Island.

enthusiastically supported by a substantial, like-minded cohort of dedicated, energetic colleagues.

Today, the mission of BC Parks, as stated on their website (bcparks.ca), is as follows: “Our parks and protected areas are a public trust. As such, our mission is to protect representative and special natural places within the Province’s protected areas system for world class conservation, outdoor recreation, education and scientific study.”

Acknowledgements The authors are indebted to Jane Morrison, Archivist, University of Victoria Library; Jarrett Teague, park historian, John Dean Park; David Macmurchie (son of Don Macmurchie); and especially Bob Ahrens, for their assistance during the preparation of this article. Chess Lyons’ photographs came from BC Parks’ archives at the University of Victoria Library.

•

Endnotes

1. C. D. Orchard, “The British Columbia Forest Service in the Field of Recreation in Provincial Parks and Forests,” as presented to the Canadian Institute of Forestry, Montreal, November 1952.

2. Annual Report, 1949, Dept. of Lands and Forests, Report of the Forest Service. 95.

3. Bob Ahrens, personal communication.

4. Jim Peacock, The Vancouver Natural History Society, 1918–1993.

(Vancouver: Vancouver Natural History Society, 1998), 14, 52.

5. BC Parks List, 1911 to 1961. Photocopy from personal files of Bill Merilees.

6. Annual Report, 1945, Dept. of Lands and Forests, Report of the Forest Service, 26.

7. Annual Report, 1941, Dept. of Lands, Report of the Forest Service, p.

FF 7.

8. Annual Report, 1941, Dept. of Lands, Forest Branch Report, p. FF 7.

9. Bob Ahrens, personal communication.

10. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Or Life in the Woods (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854) and Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1949).

11. Bob Ahrens, personal communication.

12. James D. Anderson, BC Parks 1911-2011: A Centennial. ([place unknown: self-published], 2010), 39.

13. James D. Anderson, British Columbia’s Magnificent Parks: The First 100 Years. (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2011), 72.

14. Report of the Department of Recreation and Conservation for the year 1957. (Victoria: Queens Printer, 1957), 7.

15. Report of the Department of Recreation and Conservation for the year 1957.(Victoria: Queens Printer, 1957), 7.

16. Annual Report, Dept. of Lands and Forests, Report of the Forest Service, 1945. 28.

17. Anderson, 84.

18. Anderson, 76.

19. Anderson, 267.

20. Anderson, 188.

21. Summary of the Parks and Protected Area System, BC Parks website (bcparks.ca).

22. Anderson, British Columbia’s Magnificent Parks. 238; Summary of the Parks and Protected Area System, BC Parks website.

Jim Anderson was born in Yellowknife. A graduate of UBC, he joined BC Parks in 1970 as senior planner and land administrator, working with Director Ahrens. He is proud of his leadership in protecting Naikoon, Tribune Bay, Bear Creek, Kalamalka Lake, Cowichan River, and Adams River corridors. He is the author of British Columbia’s Magnificent Parks: The First 100 Years (2011).

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When the HBC trail was used in the 1850s, brigades sometimes numbered 400 horses with approximately 20 horses per man. If you can identify any of these men, please let us know.

Photo: Hope Mountain Centre

THE HBC BRIGADE TRAIL From packhorses to backpackers

By Keith Akenhead

T

he 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.

Find out more about the work of the Hope Mountain Centre and access trail maps at www.hope mountain.org. Support the work of the Hope Mountain Centre by making a donation, purchasing a topo map and trip planning guide, a new HBC Trail Guide, or one of their iconic tee shirts through their online store.

Many portions of the HBC trail are extremely rugged and only the most experienced backcountry horsemen should attempt it. In particular, Manson’s Ridge and Mount Davis are especially steep. Jacobson Lake offers good vehicle access and easier terrain for horseback riding.

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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 the HBC would ply the waters of the Fraser River up to Fort Langley to load the precious fur bales bound for England each summer.

Anderson received approval to search for a route from HBC Governor George Simpson in the early summer of 1846 and spent two summers exploring two potential routes.

In May of 1846, Anderson was advised by the company’s Chief Factor, James Douglas, to explore a water route via the upper Fraser from Fort Alexandria to Pavilion Lake, then to Seton Lake and overland to Harrison Lake, then by boat to the Fraser River and on to Fort Langley. Anderson discussed this with the Company’s chief trader at Fort Kamloops, John Tod, who thought this route would be a good way around the canyons of the Fraser River. Anderson spent May 1846 exploring this route, but he deemed it too difficult both for both men and the horses needed to carry fur bales, which weighed in at just over 90 lb [41.2 kg].

In late May, while resting at Fort Langley, Anderson met a friendly Stó:lō chief called Pahallak who told

Anderson of a river called the Coquihalla that flowed east of the Stó:lō fishing village called Ts’qol:s, built at the junction of the Fraser and Coquihalla. (In 1848, HBC men would build Fort Hope at this site.) He told Anderson the soil was not too rocky for horses’ hooves, winter snows were largely gone by late July, and there were plentiful grassy meadows for the horses to feed on. Together with ten company men, numerous horses, and several Indigenous guides, Anderson spent June Detail of HBC Trail map developed by the Hope Mountain Centre. of 1846 exploring this route.

Source: Hope Mountain Centre A helpful Similkameen chief Tulameen and west to the Sowaqua River (now called known as “Blackeye” showed Anderson his summer Sowaqua Creek). From this point, the trail continued hunting route; this section later became known as west over Manson’s Ridge and down Peers Creek to “Blackeye’s Trail.” the Coquihalla River and its junction with the Fraser This route-finding and rough construction took Anderson and his men 26 days from Hope to Kamloops. River at Fort Hope. Here, in the late summer of 1848, the group built Fort Hope. From here, the Stó:lō people A friend of Anderson’s named Edouard Montigny, helped transport the group downriver to the Fraser and employed as a clerk by the HBC, acted as interpreter Fort Langley. with several Indigenous nations that helped Anderson: In December, the group reported to James Douglas the Stó:lō people near Hope; the Lil’wat from north that “the new route was quite feasible as a trail.”2 By the of Harrison Lake, the Nkaka’pamux from the Fraser Canyon area, and the Smalqmix or Lower Similkameen summer of 1849, the route was used to transport furs from the Tulameen/Princeton area. from New Caledonia down the Fraser River, overland to By 1848, HBC Chief Factor James Douglas had Kamloops, and on down the new trail to Fort Langley. promoted Anderson to Chief Trader at Fort Colvile This trail was used extensively for the next ten years by (in present day Washington State). The HBC now HBC fur brigades each summer. Trail builders sowed needed to find a land route from Kamloops to Fort sweet alfalfa in the meadows to help feed the horses Hope because the Americans had closed the Columbia that were used to carry the fur bales and equipment for River to the HBC. Company men Henry Peers and the brigades. Each summer, beginning in late July, windEdouard Montigny were put in fall from the previous winter had charge of building the route disto be cleared, mud bogs spanned covered by Anderson in 1846. with corduroy log sections, and Blackeye had promised to again new blazes carved in the trees to show the fur traders his route mark the trail. over the Coquihalla and Cascade In 1858, thousands of miners Mountains south of Kamloops came into the area, panning along to the Tulameen River. Peers and the Fraser River for gold. When Montigny met Blackeye’s son at gold was found in Cariboo in 1862, Kamloops Lake in the late sumthe miners demanded a better mer of 1848 with ten company road north to the gold fields. James men, some Indigenous packers, Douglas, now governor of the new and 27 loaded horses (each horse, colony of British Columbia, had carrying a full load, weighed about Harley Hatfield, credited with keeping the Cariboo Road built in late 1862.

1,800 lbs or 816 kg). Blackeye’s son The gold rush removed many valualive the idea of the trail for recreaguided the trail builders south to able HBC men from the fur trade, tional use.

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Indigenous packers, 1890s, location unknown. Note the details of style and utility: felt hats, suspenders, knotted scarves, and chaps. If you can identify any of these men, please let us know.

Photo: BC Archives i-61673 courtesy of Hope Mountain Centre.

and it became harder to obtain the services of reliable, skilled employees to paddle the canoes and guide the horses over the mountain routes.

However, the Hope to Tulameen brigade route continued to be used by Indigenous people for trade and hunting for the next hundred years.

During the 1960s, renewed interest in hiking the area was spearheaded by Harley Hatfield and volunteers from the Okanagan-Similkameen Parks Society of Penticton. They cleared brush from the neglected 1849 trail, located historic brigade camps, and relocated and protected large sections of the trail.

Around 2009, Kelley Cook of Princeton teamed up with the Backcountry Horsemen of BC, Hope Mountain Centre, and a group of passionate local volunteers to restore the trail for hiking and horseback riding.

Funding came from private citizens and key organizations such as the Okanagan-Similkameen Parks Society, New Pathways to Gold Society, Similkameen Valley Planning Society, Heritage BC, National Trails Coalition, and Recreation Sites and Trails BC. Helicopter support was donated by Valley Helicopters and Wildcat Helicopters to fly materials into worksites.

The trail was officially completed in 2016.

Eleven overnight camps were built, each equipped

Trail Guide developed by the Hope Mountain Centre.

Source: Hope Mountain Centre

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with fire pits, outhouses, food caches, and either benches or picnic tables. All 74 kilometres of the trail were marked with signs on trees. A few footbridges have been built for hikers, but most creeks must be crossed by wading as the brigades did. Numerous interpretive panels have been installed that tell the story of the 1849 trail construction with historic photos.

In May 2016, a large opening ceremony was held at the Tulameen trailhead. Numerous speakers from Indigenous communities and other involved groups lauded the excellent restoration work. In future summers, the groups will continue to maintain and improve the trail. Many volunteers have adopted sections of the trail to personally maintain.

I have hiked most of the western sections of the trail in recent summers. The interpretive signs and trail markers help to bring the trail’s history alive, and the amenities for hikers at the camps are greatly appreciated.

All the camps are located near water sources. The alpine scenery—especially the wildflowers during the summer months—is unparalleled, and the snowcapped Cascade Mountain peaks around the area are breathtaking.

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Endnotes 1. Much of the detail for this piece was taken from first-hand accounts by its original builder, Alexander Caufield Anderson, in a book written by his great-granddaughter Nancy M. Anderson, titled The Pathfinder: A.C. Anderson’s Journeys in the West (Victoria: Heritage Publishing, 2011). Details of the trail’s reconstruction in the 21st century were taken from the Hope Outdoor Learning Centre’s website: hope mountain.org/trails/hbc-heritage-trail/ 2. Anderson, p. 145

Keith Akenhead is a retired high school teacher who has lived in Maple Ridge for 39 years. He loves exploring BC’s trails—especially in alpine areas—and has explored trails on six continents. He has written short pieces about his many travels for newspapers and magazines.

STRATHCONA PROVINCIAL PARK

Land of long memory

By Catherine Marie Gilbert

T

hroughout the 110 years since the establishment of Strathcona Provincial Park, its history has been contentious. Issues arising over land and water use have plagued the Park, and no consideration was initially given to Indigenous use or archaeology. Its roughly 250,00 hectares (2,500-sq km) were first set aside by Premier Richard McBride as a triangular shaped reserve in the centre of Vancouver Island in 1910; however, a lack of planning meant that pre-existing mineral claims and timber licences lay within this park reserve. Initially, plans were made to turn Strathcona into a tourist mecca, but successive changes to the Park Act allowed for continuation of industry, and it was not until 1993, when the Master Plan was finally completed, that it was made clear that recreational values would supersede all others.

Ancient trails created and still used by Indigenous peoples criss-cross the mountains of today’s Park. The Coast Salish, Kwakwa̱ ka̱’wakw, and Nuu-chah-nulth, whose villages surrounded the region, hunted and fished there, traded with each other, and held sacred ceremonies.1 Marmot remains found in Park caves in the 1990s provide evidence these creatures were hunted by humans at least 700 years ago, and archaeological finds in 2019 around Buttle Lake include about 1,000 artifacts—arrowheads, tools, and microblades. Coastal water levels 14,000 years ago were roughly 200 metres above what they are today, and archaeologists have determined that the sites were once tidal.2 Nineteenth-century explorers such as British-born commander John Buttle in 1865 and Reverend William Bolton in 1896 led parties through this mountainous region. Buttle’s party found gold in the Bedwell Valley and laid claims, and Bolton made an excellent map and kept detailed journals.

It was Bolton’s description of the region’s beauty that prompted McBride to set aside a reserve, and immediately he authorized an expedition led by Minister of Lands Price Ellison and guided by the infamous “Lord” Hugh Bacon, a local trapper and prospector, to determine if this region would be suitable as a park. Ellison’s glowing report convinced McBride to create Strathcona Park the next year, in 1911, and surveying began.

There is a paucity of images and information in local

historical records of the 1930s to the 1950s in the Park’s history, but some reside with the Reid family, who had property within the Park’s borders beginning in 1936. Californian Will Reid flew into the Park over a period of 18 years in hi Seabee plane, often bringing friends and family to stay at cabins built over his mineral claim on Buttle Lake’s west side. Reid’s daughter Virginia lovely pictures of the holidayers enjoying the outdoors and captured a moment in time when Buttle Lake was in its pristine glory. Will Reid became friends with local author and conservationist Roderick Haig-Brown, and the two lobbied in the early 1950s to prevent a dam from being constructed at the lake.3 Nonetheless, their beloved lake would still be altered by flooding when the Strathcona Dam was constructed at adjacent Upper Campbell Lake in 1958. In 1965, Western Mines activated its mineral claims at the south end of Buttle Lake and established an open pit mine.

Cream Silver Ltd. intended to mine nearby in the 1980s, but a significant public protest thwarted its plans.

Today, this wilderness park, with its stunning vistas, rugged mountains, jewel-like lakes, and magnificent waterfalls, is protected from further industrial development and enjoyed by campers, mountaineers, hikers, fishers, and paddlers.

•

Endnotes

1. Information from Sheila Savey Sr., Researcher, Mowachaht/ Muchalaht First Nations Evidence Gathering, Gold River, BC. 2. Owen Grant, telephone interview with Catherine Gilbert, September 1, 2020, Black Creek, BC. 3. Elizabeth Westbrook (granddaughter of Will J. Reid), telephone interview with Catherine Gilbert, May 3, 2020, Black Creek, BC. Catherine Marie Gilbert is a Vancouver Island historian and writer with a Masters Degree in Public History from the University of Victoria. Catherine was formerly with the Museum at Campbell River, and recently, she taught Canadian history at North Island College. Her current book, A Journey Back to Nature: The History of Strathcona Provincial Park is being released by Heritage House Publishing in May 2021.

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21

THE ARMSTRONGS

Bouchie Lake’s First “Century Family”

By Heloise Dixon-Warren

T

he 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 Vancouver Province, the Salmon Arm Observer, and the Cariboo Observer. George and Jeannie, both originally from Ontario, met in Silver Creek (near Armstrong, BC) where they married on November 27, 1901 and pre-empted land to farm. After more than a decade there, they sold the farm and went to Vancouver where George worked for the Province newspaper.

In the summer of 1920, however, George and Jeannie packed up their five children, Arthur (Wesley), (George) Lewis, Irene May, Thomas (Brazier), and Richard’s father, Wilfred Reginal, known as Slim, eight years old at the time, and travelled north.

Jeannie’s sister, Kari May Johnston, lived in Bouchie Lake. She had married an American by the name of Floyd Vernon and settled at Six Mile Corner a few kilometres from Bouchie Lake. They resided in a roadhouse; the building exists today and is located at the junction of the Blackwater and Nazko Roads. George and Jeannie had learned from Floyd and Kari May that the last piece of property on Bouchie Lake was available.

The roads that access this property today are the Bouchie Lake Road and Jeanney [sic] Bell Road. It was around the beginning of July in 1920 when the Armstrongs settled on the southeast Quarter of Lot 4503.

In those days, homesteaders typically wanted land 22

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George and Jeannie Armstrong, 1940s.

Photo: Courtesy of Armstrong family

that included meadows, which were valued for farming.

The lot that the Armstrongs pre-empted had no meadows; rather, it was forested with Douglas fir and spruce trees, species found in natural climax forests that existed before industrial harvesting and development.

The family was resourceful, at first living off the land by gathering berries and hunting. In time, their land became a productive family farm after they felled the trees and pulled and burned the stumps. Richard says that his grandparents “built a farm out of the bush.”

The house and all of the outbuildings were constructed from logs taken off the property. The big house that the family lived in became known as Fir Point Ranch. Richard recalls there being two large barns for the cows and horses. Many of the buildings were constructed by Richard’s father, Wilfred, as he became an expert log home builder. The Armstrongs developed a farm on which they grew potatoes, turnips, and carrots for the market. They also had a large garden and ran a dairy and grain farm. From 1921 to 1924, George’s dad, John Wesley Armstrong, also lived at the homestead with the family.

George and Jeannie’s lakeshore property became one of the popular gathering places for many events.

People from Baker Creek to Kersley would gather on the property for picnics, ball games, swimming lessons, and boating on the lake. Docks on the lake and a gazebo with a kitchen were constructed in addition to a square dance floor and several picnic tables. The very popular community picnics hosted by the Farmer’s Institutes and sewing circles were also held at the Armstrong’s; the first local picnic and sewing circle took place there

in 1922 and 1923 respectively. The picnics consisted of races for the children while the men played horseshoes and often a baseball game.

Through a cooperative effort by both the men and women of the community, in 1929 the West Quesnel Farmer’s Institute Hall was constructed at Six Mile Corner on donated land. Socials and dances were held at the hall at least once a month. In 1947 another hall was constructed adjacent to the original one where the parking lot of Bouchie Lake Elementary School is located today. Construction of the hall was a community affair; some of the lumber was provided by H. J. Gardner & Sons Ltd. Sawmill (which commenced operations in 1943 on the western shore of Bouchie Lake) and A. L. Patchett & Sons. Over the years, the WQFI Hall was used for many theatrical musical productions. The hall had a beautiful hardwood dance floor, and every Saturday night a dance was held with the Women’s Institute operating the concession. The entrance fee covered the payment for the live band and security was someone at the door with a baseball bat.

In 1940, Slim, now 28 years old, married Emily May “Mayme” Johnston. Mayme wanted her own property and home, separate from the rest of the Armstrongs, so she and Slim subdivided two acres from the original homestead and constructed their home. Here, Slim and Mayme raised their family of three children, Lew, Molly, and Richard. Mayme Armstrong died in 1985, and Slim passed away in 1995. This property is still in the family today.

On July 25, 1946, the women of Bouchie Lake gathered at the Armstrong’s home to establish the Bouchie Lake Women’s Institute. The first regular meeting of the Institute was held in the Hall on August 26, 1946, with Jeannie Bell Armstrong as the Chair. Over the years, the Bouchie Lake Women’s Institute was an integral part of the community.

Following the Second World War, Brazier Armstrong returned to Bouchie Lake. Under the Veteran’s Land Act (VLA) of 1942, he and his wife, Louise, purchased land across from the Farmer’s Institute Hall and opened the Bouchie Lake Store. The store was the site of the Bouchie Lake Post Office from September 19, 1950 to May 31, 1962.2 The property was eventually purchased by the Ministry of Highways, and the store was burned down to allow the Blackwater Road to be upgraded to a highway in 1985.

Jeannie died in Vancouver in 1967, and a year later George died at the family’s home in Bouchie Lake.

Richard married Linda Gronlund at the Bouchie Lake Hall in 1970. They lived in Jean and George’s house at Six Mile Corner until 1975 when they moved

Mayme, Lew, Richard, and Molly Armstrong, 1950s.

Photo: Courtesy of Armstrong family

to the family property on Bouchie Lake. Richard and Linda have two children, both raised on the family property.

In 1972, the two original Farmer’s Institute halls burned down and a new hall was located on a site across the road.

Today, the community of Bouchie Lake is a predominantly residential area with a school, the hall, a volunteer fire department, a pub, two retail businesses, and many farms and home-based businesses.

Although its postal address is now Quesnel, it has its own identity, with a strong sense of autonomy and pride. Volunteerism continues to be key to the social fabric of the community. The community has grown to include Milburn Lake and is sometimes referred to as Bouchie-Milburn. Many of the roads are named after the early settler families, including Armstrong Crescent, Norwood, Vernon, Barker, and Rawlings Roads.

In 2019, Richard and Linda moved to Quesnel, but Richard still considers Bouchie Lake his home. Today his son and daughter-in-law, Graeme and Trine, and their five children, make their home on the same property where Richard’s great-grandfather, grandfather, and father lived.

•

Endnotes

1. Named after William Walker Boucher (“Billie Bouchie”) and Lizette Allard Boucher who were the first people to pre-empt land in 1902 with the formation of L729.

2. BC Geographical Names: http://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/bcgnws/ names/409.html.

Heloise Dixon-Warren has lived in the Bouchie Lake since 2002. She and her husband, Ted, live on a farm and own the local “country store” down the road. Her article “The Other Billie” was published in our Winter 2019 issue. Heloise is Vice-Chair of FARMED (www.farmed.ca), Secretary of the Friends of Bouchie-Milburn Society, a Director with Growing North Cariboo Society, and a Director with the Bouchie Lake Watershed Stewardship Society.

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Lend lease freighter S.S. Uzbekistan up on the rocks April 1943

UT-1146 in National Photography Collection, The Public Archives of Canada

Family Tales from the Graveyard of the Pacific

By Rick James

I

n 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 family to have stayed at the Pachena station.

I bunked down in the large crew house situated high up on a steep cliff looking over the surf breaking over the rocky shelves below. I had a stupendous view over the wide-open Pacific to the south and west, and I could see the entrance to Juan de Fuca Strait and the outside of the Olympic Peninsula far off in the distance to the east. We could look to the distant horizon and just make out the outlines of massive freighters and cargo ships coming and going across the Pacific. I was out on 24

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the light with Norbie Brand, retired permanent keeper of Cape Beale light station, who was standing in as principal keeper.

My mother’s older sister, my aunt Peggy Burrows, was in her late teens when she was hired on as a babysitter and housekeeper on the station for two years.

Back then, in the mid-1930s, not only the permanent light keepers and their families lived on station but also a crew of four radio operators with their families.

In addition, the station had a cabin available for trail patrolmen who maintained and watched over what was called the West Coast Lifesaving Trail. And there I was, looking out at the Graveyard of the Pacific, where the second family member, my father, Richard (Dick) James, was involved in a rescue operation just down the beach from Pachena Point and got to spend a night there.

In September 1940, Dad signed on, aged 17, as a Boy Seaman at the Esquimalt Naval Base and served aboard Royal Canadian Navy ships on West Coast patrols during the Second World War. In the spring of 1943, he crewed as an Able Seaman aboard HMCS Outarde, a Royal Canadian Navy minesweeper, when she was out on patrol in Juan de Fuca Strait between Jordan River and Slip Point, Washington, on the American side. The

graph trail into a life-saving system. But no action was Outarde was one of several Bangor-class steel minetaken until the wreck of the Valencia in 1906. By 1907, sweepers built in the 1939–1940 naval construction the Pachena Point lighthouse was under construction. programme and was launched from the yard of North Its tower was to stand 38 feet, nine inches (11.8 m) high Vancouver Ship Repair Ltd in January 1941. She was 180 from its base to the lantern deck on a steep 100-foot feet in length (55 meters), of 672 tonnes displacement (30.5 m) cliff overlooking the Pacific. A wireless radio (682,784 kg) and was armed with one four-inch (102station was also built on site that same year, and in 1923, mm), one three-inch (76-mm), and two 20-mm guns. a direction-finding antenna added. Then, in 2015, what On the 2nd of April 1943, HMCS Outarde was was the only remaining wooden lighthouse along BC’s ordered to proceed at full speed to the scene of West Coast was restored and today stands as a recoga stranded Russian lend-lease freighter, the SS nized heritage building.

Uzbekistan, which was up on the shelving beach just Also in 1907, a life-saving trail was finally undertwo and half miles (four km) from Pachena Point. This way. Some sixty workmen, using handsaws and horselocation, on the outside coast of Vancouver Island, was drawn equipment, cut through the dense forest and only three miles (4.8 km) west from the wreck site of undergrowth to widen the telegraph trail to twelve feet the Valencia. This passenger steamship was inbound (3.7 m). A series of shelter cabins were constructed from San Francisco for Victoria and Seattle with 108 along what was known as the Dominion Life Saving passengers and 65 crew aboard when she ran ashore Trail at five-mile (eight-km) intervals to provide refuge on January 22, 1906 with a loss of 136 lives. What made this wreck particularly tragic was that no women or children were counted among the survivors. Valencia was an iron steamship built in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1882. She was 252 feet long (76.8 m) in length and 34 feet (10.3 m) in breadth. At this time, there was no lighthouse at Pachena Point, although it protrudes some distance out into the Strait. A light had been built and gone into operation at Cape Beale in 1874 and then another at Carmanah Point in 1891.

Between 1888 and 1890 the government had erected a telegraph line, a single-strand cable strung from tree to tree along the coastline. The line was an attempt to establish communication between Victoria, Cape Beale and Carmanah Point lighthouses along with other The sixth birthday party for young Betty Joan Hadley, daughter of the head radio communities along the coast in operator, Pachena Point Light station, July 1936. hopes of saving mariners’ lives.

Michael Hadley pointed out that he is “the little bundle on the far left in the arms When the four masted barque of my cousin Peggy Sheppard who had come to Pachena with her mother Mary Janet Cowan, which crashed aboard the Princess Maquinna for a brief visit.” Betty is now a retired teacher living ashore just five miles (eight km) over in Vancouver while her little brother Michael, a retired University of Victoria down from Pachena Point on professor of German Language & Literature, lives in Victoria. As for their babysitter, December 31, 1895, there was my Auntie Peggy? She passed on a few years ago in Powell River where she had martalk of adding another lightried Second World War army veteran and mill worker Bruce Butler and raised their house and developing the telefour boys.

Photo: Rick James BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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vessel was constructed at Skamokawa on the Columbia River in 1888 for William M. and George L. Colwell, recent arrivals from the Eastern US.

Below the Michigan Creek campground along the West Coast Trail, the steamer Michigan’s massive boiler is still holding up 125 years after the ship’s loss.

Photo: Rick James

for shipwrecked mariners. Each shelter had a telegraph with instructions for use in several languages, survival provisions like blankets and rations, and directions on how to navigate the trail. In the 1920s, patrol men were hired to keep the trail well cleared, to inspect the beaches, and maintain a lookout during the winter season.

Taking advantage of some half-decent weather and a good low tide, one afternoon I set out to hike down the West Coast Trail to see if could find the remains of the Uzbekistan. I had the trail all to myself (it had been shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic), and I got to saunter through the luxurious coastal forest of thick salal and salmonberry undergrowth without having to run into anyone else. The trail dropped down to the beach at Michigan Creek where a campsite for hikers is located.

When I stepped of the woods to look over the rocky shelves with the waves pounding over them, I saw a magnificent marine artifact rusting away, a testament to the days of steam power. Here lay the boiler of the steam schooner Michigan, which had run aground in 1893.

The first edition of Lewis & Dryden’s Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, published in 1895 and edited

by E.W. Wright, provided a good account of the loss.

It starts off by noting that, “The steamer was built by L. Mortenson and was one of the most strongly constructed vessels of her class that ever floated.” The wood Rick James is currently immersed in working up his next book tentatively titled: Twin Cities: Victoria and San Francisco. He aims to provide a detailed account of how Victoria was overrun with hundreds of American gold seekers in 1858, including a stampede of disappointed ’49ers who did not strike it rich in the Sierra Nevada foothills, so galloped down to the Bay to board anything that floated and head north. It will detail how Victoria was transformed into just another American wild west town following the gold rush, with a strong American presence into the 1880s.

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She was 158 feet three inches in length [48.2 m] with a 34 foot [10.3 m] beam, with engines 11, 14, 20, and 31 by 24 inches [28, 35.5, 50.8, and 78.7 by 61 cm]. She was seized soon afterward for smuggling and put under heavy bonds, and in January, 1893...left her bones in that well known cemetery on the west coast of Vancouver Island near Cape Beale.

The Michigan was en route from San Francisco to Seattle in charge of Captain Graves with a full cargo of general merchandise. Four days out from the California port, she encountered thick weather—a heavy westerly sea running, strong wind, and terrible northerly currents. At 10:50 p.m. on January 21st, several miles off course, she struck the rocks about 30 miles [48.2 km] north of Bonilla Point. The crew escaped in the boats and reached shore with their personal effects. Although the steamer was strongly constructed, the great force with which she struck, together with the weight of her cargo, rendered it impossible to save her.

After a close examination of the Michigan’s massive boiler, I was amazed that it was still so solid, if well rusted, but realized it was time to locate the surviving wreckage of the Uzbekistan.

On the morning of April 1, 1943, the Uzbekistan slipped her moorings in Portland, Oregon, and was bound for Seattle where she was to load lend-lease supplies for Vladivostok. The Russian freighter had been originally launched from a shipyard in Saint-Nazaire, France, in 1937 and measured 326 feet in length (99.3 m) and was 3,039 registered tonnes. She was registered in Arkhangelsk, a major seaport on the White Sea near the Arctic Circle. Just prior to her last voyage, she underwent a refit in Portland, Oregon, to make her more suitable for ice breaking.

Unfortunately, on that April morning a southeast gale was blowing, bringing with it limited visibility. Once the ship was along the outside coast of the Olympic peninsula, captain and crew missed the flashing light marking the Umatilla buoy. When they did finally spot a light, they mistook it as that of Umatilla, but this was a grave error—it was actually the Swiftsure buoy, off the entrance to Juan de Fuca Strait. The captain held his ship on a steady northerly course, which headed them right into the outside coast of Vancouver Island. To make matters worse, the navigational lights at both Cape Beale and Pachena Point had been blacked out following the shelling of the Estevan Point light

station by the Imperial Japanese Navy’s submarine I-26 on June 20th the year before. Once the Uzbekistan lay grounded on the shore, the crew fired off their guns to attract attention. Upon hearing gunfire, those living at both Pachena Point and Carmanah Point light stations were initially fearful that another Japanese attack was underway.

HMCS Outarde, with my father aboard, arrived offshore at the scene of the stranded vessel late in the afternoon of April 2nd to find her grounded against a rocky shelf, just off the mouth of the Darling River. The US coast guard cutter Nellwood was the first to arrive on scene and was soon joined by a Fishermen’s Reserve patrol vessel serving with the Canadian navy, the seiner Allaverdy, followed by the Canadian Coast Guard’s lighthouse and buoy tender Estevan. While these vessels were standing by offshore ready to assist with a rescue, the Outarde’s whaler, carrying a landing party of 11 men, was sent out. But as they approached the stranded ship, with a strong sea pounding against her hull, the whaler was carried around inside her bow, caught in the breakers, and hurled forward in the surf—but luckily the whaler was deposited upright among the rocks well inshore. With their ship firmly grounded and stable, the Russian crew, who had walked ashore at low tide and made camp, went down to lend the whaler’s crew a hand in dragging their boat up to safety.

After signalling between ship and shore, the Outarde’s landing party left the beach that evening for Pachena Point where arrangements were made to accommodate the sailors. Here they received a good meal and beds for the night. The next morning, the Outarde flashed a signal to Pachena, instructing her shore party to head out on the trail for Bamfield where they would be picked up. The Russian crew stayed behind in order to continue unloading more stores, guns, and ammunition onto the beach. After consultation with a naval security officer and RCMP interpreter, it was decided that the Russian crew should also make their way out to Bamfield the next morning. After the site was abandoned, the vessel and campground were soon vandalized and looted.

I hoped that although 77 years had gone by, there would be at least some remnants of the Uzbekistan still lying on the beach. I headed off to see what I might come across while the tide was still low. I had to scramble over the flat and slippery shelving beach to find what little was left of the Uzbekistan, her massive boiler.

It lay there intact with the surf pounding over it, where my dad—as a young sailor in the Second World War— would have stepped ashore out of a swamped whaler back in 1943.

•

Looking out from the landing pad out across the Pacific to the west past Pachena Point lighthouse, the only remaining wooden lighthouse on our West Coast, completed in 1908 and now recognized under the Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act. Its priceless and massive Fresnel lens, which revolved in a bath of mercury to produce a double flash every 7.44 seconds, is still there in the tower and behind curtains in the lantern room.

Photo: Rick James

References

Wells, R. E. A Guide to Shipwrecks along the West Coast Trail. Comox, BC: R. E. Wells, 1981.

———. The Stranding of Uzbekistan U.S.S.R. on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Comox, BC: R. E. Wells, 1974.

———. There’s a Landing Today: Stories about the Lives of West Coast Residents of Vancouver Island between Port Renfrew and Bamfield.

Victoria, BC: Sono Nis Press, 1988.

Wright, E. W., editor. Lewis & Dryden’s Marine History of the Pacific Northwest: An Illustrated Review of the Growth and Development of the Maritime Industry, From the Advent of the Earliest Navigators to the Present Time with Sketches and Portraits of a Number of Well Known Marine Men. Portland, OR: The Lewis & Dryden Printing Company, 1895. 123.

Rick James is a writer, maritime historian, and photographer. Many people recognize him from his role in The Sea Hunters documentary Malahat: Queen of the Rum Runners, which aired on Canada’s History channel back in 2003. He is also the author or co-author of a number of popular reports published by the Underwater Archaeological Society of British Columbia: Ghost Ships of Royston; Historic Shipwrecks of the Central Coast and Historic Shipwrecks of the Sunshine Coast. His 2018 book Don’t Never Tell Nobody Nothin’ No How: The Real Story of West Coast Rum Running won three major awards. Check out his website www. rickjamesauthor.ca BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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The SS Yosemite, 1887.

Photo: City of Vancouver Archives 2011-010

“DISPLEASURECRAFT”

Hunger and Enmity on the SS Yosemite

By Trevor Williams

T

he 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

Captain John Irving was one of the most famous and prosperous riverboat captains of his era, recalled for his contributions to investment, development, and political life in BC. Irving was no stranger to swagger, and he’d been steering a boat since the age of 18. One day, Captain Irving saw the SS Yosemite, which had been built in 1862 in Sacramento, California, “leaning forlornly against the piling of her wharf” in Oakland and he found her a new home in Victoria harbour among the classic boats of the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company.3 28

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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 when the first train would finally arrive in the Lower Mainland and into the ancestral home of the Coast Salish people. In Victoria, Captain John Irving offered a special rate to those who wished to travel on the SS Yosemite to meet the inaugural train. The special excursion was scheduled to leave on July 4 from Victoria at 4 a.m. to arrive in Port Moody by noon, in time for the arrival of the train, then return to Victoria at 7 p.m. later that evening.2 No one living close to Victoria got much sleep that night. Many of the SS Yosemite passengers, alongside Captain Irving, had begun the day at the annual picnic and sports day of the St. Andrews and Caledonian Society. For the whole day at Beacon Hill Park, Victorians had been busy sword-dancing, sack-racing, wrestling, foot-racing, and waging a tug-of-war, most while wearing Scottish Highland regalia. Before midnight, a large and spectacular fire started in the shops

Smithe had consistently supported the railway for years and stores at the corner of Fort and Government 4 against his persistent political opponent, Robert Beaven.

Streets.

A provincial election campaign was underway in British The official festivities had long concluded when the Columbia, and in three short days Smithe would cruise evening revelries were interrupted by the clanging of to another victory. Being on hand with boatloads of his fire bells. The crowds rushed from Beacon Hill Park Vancouver Island supporters to welcome the first CPR to the town site, but “little did they expect to see such 5 train was important for his re-election.14 a disastrous conflagration as they witnessed.” The fire began in the cellars of M.W. Waitt and Company After several hours during which passengers stood music store, then spread to several adjacent businesscrowded against one another, the SS Yosemite steamed 6 es. Captain Irving recalled how “the whole town, male into Burrard Inlet, past Andy Linton’s boathouse, and approached the wharf at Hastings Mill. Captain and female, young and old, was on the spot” to watch Irving had docked to pick-up more from Vancouver the ravenous fire, and ensure Victoria would not burn 7 who wanted to go up to Port Moody to see the train as Gastown had weeks earlier. The Government Street arrive. “Consequently, everyone who could get away got fire burned well into the early morning before finally aboard,” one passenger recalled, and the already tight being extinguished. Since many Victorians were awake conditions worsened as even more people squeezed anyway, Irving believed that many “had taken the philosophical view that it was not now worth while returning onboard.15 home to bed, and they might as well see the first train After a brief stop in Moodyville, located in what is 8 arrive from Eastern Canada.” today North Vancouver, the party had reached Port For two dollars apiece, Victorians piled onto the wide Moody just in time, and people happily disembarked from the congested pleasurecraft. Sixteen minutes deck of the wooden, ocean-faring side-wheel steamer. later, the excitement began when the first train whistle The excursion was open to a maximum of 500 people, trill was heard, followed by curls of smoke rising from but Irving himself recalled the crowds were “more 9 the trees in the distance. Next, people heard the harsh like 1,200”. And Victor Jacobson, at that time still a clang-clang of the engine bell, and a locomotive and boy, recalled in 1936 how there were 1,500 passengers cars decorated with flags and bunting finally emerged that day on the SS Yosemite. The Victoria Colonist 10 into view. She chugged slowly up the line greeted by simply noted that “a very large number” were aboard. waves of cheers from the British Columbians awaiting Permitting passengers to swamp the steamer suggests her!16 the “naturally reckless disposition” of Captain Irving, as described by historians Norman Hacking and William People shouted for all they were worth, and when Kaye Lamb, and the overflow crowds also quickly conthe train finally stopped, the crowd rushed around it in 11 sumed all the food aboard the SS Yosemite. high excitement. Many had never seen a train in person before and began climbing all over the engine. People The Victoria Brass Band entertained the excited stepped up onto locomotive 371, while others marvelled crowds as Captain Irving steered the SS Yosemite out of the inner harbour, still wearing his kilt.12 But problems related to the lack of food on the cramped vessel would only grow, as a routine journey of several hours grew into an entire day. Captain Irving recalled how “it was an ordeal trying to care for this crowd and at the same time arrive in time.

But we managed to do it.”

One sojourner recalled: “William Smithe, who was then Premier of BC, sitting at the head of the table for over half an hour before he could get anything to eat, and he fared M.W. Waitt and Company music store, 1009 Government Street, Victoria, 1890s. much better than others.”13 Photo: Royal BC Museum and Archives A-05683

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Men and women gather at the platform next to CPR locomotive 371 as the first transcontinental train reaches Port Moody, 1886.

Photo: City of Vancouver Archives CanP4

at the opulence and luxury of the coaches—a stark contrast to the miserable conditions on the SS Yosemite.

Several onlookers climbed up a nearby embankment above the track to watch the proceedings from afar.

Cigars were passed to much cheering, the band played, and a large wreath of flowers was presented to the first female passenger to emerge from the train. Several triumphant and rousing speeches by various politicians followed, until rain began to fall, and the crowd was herded back onto the steamer.17 After the event was over, the side-wheeler trilled its whistle one last time at Port Moody for the return trip. Vancouver pioneer F.W. Hart recalled leaving Port Moody: “There were three times too many people for the steamer; we took them on board until the captain would not take any more, and then started back.”18 The steamer travelled to the north shore of the inlet and docked in front of the hotel at Moodyville. The few passengers that spilled out were able to get something to Locomotive No. 371 came close to never leaving British Columbia. Since it had first passed through to Port Moody, forest fires erupted through the BC Interior. The Victoria Colonist reported that “terrific fires with a hurricane are raging” through the remote mountain country around Donald, BC.19 On the return trip, the locomotive attempted to pass through the forest fire. However, the extreme heat had caused the rails to warp and the train had derailed. A work crew quickly cleared and renovated the rails and set No. 371 back on track. Although many elegant sleepers and first-class cars were burned, the unharmed passengers, crew, mail, and baggage were loaded into the single remaining car, which continued through the Rocky Mountains to Calgary.20

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eat at the adjacent store, but most went without. These excursionists, for the first time, seemed resentful as the ship loitered aimlessly. Captain Irving had gone ashore, and no one on board could offer any information as to when our sidewheeler would lift her gangplank and resume the trip.21 The SS Yosemite was becoming a displeasurecraft after the first pangs of an unwanted fasting were felt by crowded passengers. No food was offered at the CPR ceremony, so “many of us had eaten nothing since 4 o’clock that morning, and all supplies aboard the Yosemite had been used long before,” remembered one passenger.22 Another, A. G. McCandless, recalled how some passengers wanted to “take the SS Yosemite, sail her across the Burrard Inlet ourselves and get something to eat.”23 These murmurs rolled into louder, clearer threats which rippled through the crowd: “Take the boat!”, “Get the firebox open!” or “Get another Captain!” Before anything happened, Captain Irving reappeared, and the SS Yosemite departed to cross the Burrard Inlet.24 After the boat arrived back at Vancouver and tied up at the Hastings Mill wharf, passengers learned that the local supply of food was still very limited after the devastating fire that had occurred just a few weeks earlier on June 13. But many pioneer Vancouverites, who had lost everything in the fire, came together to feed the hungry Victorians who had disembarked from the boat.

Some charred trestles and rough boards were rigged up as tables on a vacant lot on Water Street, where some of the crowd received what food Vancouverites could muster for them, which was not much. Some enjoyed free hot coffee, tea, and bread, “which tasted mighty good to those who had neither breakfast or lunch,” one passenger recalled.25 However, Vancouver did not have an alcohol short-

Hastings Mill on Burrard Inlet as it would have looked when the SS Yosemite docked with its hungry passengers.

Photo: North Vancouver Museum & Archives 3690

age, and residents offered it to the passengers instead of food. When the SS Yosemite left Vancouver that evening, hunger still irritated the passengers; however, “everyone was pretty well fixed with stimulants.”26 Most could not wait to leave the boat, where conditions remained chaotic; they stood for hours on the packed boat, with no place to rest and no food to be had. Then the SS Yosemite ran into a southeast gale in the Haro Strait, which swayed the boat, and rocked and tossed everyone inside, and further compounded the misery of sleeplessness and hunger. The storm slowed the travel time considerably, and the overflow crowd onboard gritted their teeth as they bumped into one another for several extra hours.27 The SS Yosemite had a reputation as a fast steamboat—it held the record for travelling between Victoria and Vancouver in just four hours and twenty minutes, a speed record which stood until 1901. But on this occasion, the SS Yosemite didn’t arrive at the Victoria inner harbour until 2 a.m.—nearly one full day after first departing. On arriving, the hungry and tired passengers scattered back to their homes.28 After eating and sleeping, along with the passage of time, the memories handed down by those onboard the ship that day were not about their discomfort. Many travellers looked back with genuine satisfaction and delight at having seen the train appear, and “most were glad that they had made the trip.”29 All those memories of raging fires, hunger, binge-drinking, and sleeplessness seemed to fade as they thought back to seeing the very first Canadian transcontinental train arrive in British Columbia.

•

Endnotes

1.“It Is Completed,” Victoria Daily Times (July 5, 1886), 1.

2.“Only Two Dollars,” Victoria Daily Times (July 2, 1886), 1.

3. Ruth Green Bailey, “Marine Notebook,” Harbour and Shipping (June 1966), 450-1.

4.“Scotch Picnic,” Victoria Colonist (July 4, 1886), 3; “Reminiscences,” Mrs. B.T. Rogers collection, City of Vancouver Archives, AM-198; “Fire,” Victoria Colonist (July 4, 1886), 3.

5.“Captain John,” Vancouver Province (November 11, 1928), 9.

6.“Fire Inquest” Victoria Daily News (July 23, 1886), 4.

7.“Captain John,” Vancouver Province (November 11, 1928), 9.

8.“Captain John,” 9.

9.“Only Two Dollars,” 1; “Hungry Crowd Welcomed First Train in 1886,” Vancouver Province (June 17, 1936), 21.

10.“Saw First Train Arrive on Coast,” Victoria Colonist (April 19, 1936), 2; “The First Through Train,” Victoria Colonist (July 6, 1886), 3.

11. Norman Hacking and W. Kaye Lamb, The Princess Story: A Century and a Half of West Coast Shipping (Victoria: Mitchell Press, 1974), 79; Major James Skitt Matthews, Early Vancouver, Volume 3 (City of Vancouver, 2011), 231-2.

12.“Hungry Crowd”, 21; “Captain John,” 9; “Reminiscences,” Mrs. B.T. Rogers collection.

13.“Hungry Crowd,” 21.

14. Arthur J. Johnson, “The Canadian Pacific Railway and British Columbia,” 1871–1886, [Unpublished MA Thesis], University of British Columbia (1936), 181.

15. Johnson, 181.

16.“The First Through Train,” 3; Johnson, The Canadian Pacific Railway, 180; Matthews, Early Vancouver, Volume 5, 125.

17. Benge Atlee, “The Operating Room Mystery” Macleans Magazine (September 15, 1930), 47; Matthews, Early Vancouver, Volume 5, 125; “Hungry Crowd.” 21.

18. Matthews, Early Vancouver, Volume 3, 231-2.

19.“Destroyed by Bush Fires” Victoria Colonist (July 11, 1886), 3.

20.“A Train Burned,” (July 10 1886) Victoria Daily Times, 4; Matthews, Early Vancouver, Volume 4, 167–8; “City and Vicinity” Calgary Herald (July 17, 1886), 3.

21. Matthews, Early Vancouver, Volume 5, 125; “Hungry Crowd,” 21.

22.“Hungry Crowd,” 21.

23.“Hungry Crowd,” 21.

24.“Hungry Crowd,” 21.

25.“Hungry Crowd,” 21; Matthews, Early Vancouver, Volume 5, 125; Matthews, Early Vancouver, Volume 3, 231-2.

26. Matthews, 231-2.

27.“Reminiscences,” Mrs. B.T. Rogers; “Saw First Train Arrive on Coast,” 2.

28.“Brief History of the SS Yosemite on Indian Arm” from Ralphdrew.ca, October 15, 2018; “The First Through Train,” 3.

29.“Hungry Crowd,” 21.

Trevor Williams is a maritime history writer based in Gibsons. He is an avid archives user, which also feed his hobbies of reading, travelling, and camping. Trevor’s historical essays have appeared the Canadian Journal of Native Studies, Northern Mariner, BC Studies, and Alberta History.

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ZUCKERBERG ISLAND

A youthful encounter in the Kootenays

By Ron Verzuh My article “Are there ghosts on Sugar Mountain?” appeared in the Kootenay Miner, a brief resurrection of the pioneer-era Rossland Miner, on Thursday, April 5, 1973, almost 50 years ago.

The piece offers some reflections as a young boy and a young man tour Zuckerberg’s Island (now known as Zuckerberg Island) in Castlegar. It also provides some thoughts on an obscure corner of Kootenay history. It is a personal history; I grew up in the Trail-Castlegar area and spent time as a boy roaming the island. I met Alexander Zuckerberg once but was too young to truly appreciate him. In some way, the piece served as my recognition of this special person as I grew older and somewhat wiser.

I returned to the island as a caretaker in 1973 and tried my hand at poetry. I was struggling in that role when an opportunity came along to start a local alternative newspaper. The Arrow began life on the island and survived for a few years.

Today, Zuckerberg Island is a municipal park enjoyed by local residents and visitors alike.

T

he other four boys had left the island. It was a place much like the one they had envisioned in the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, or Joseph Conrad. Here was a real live Treasure Island—or maybe just a place away from all the big people. This playground was at once haunted and enchanting to them, and perhaps because they had been forbidden to go there by their parents, they were mysteriously lured to it. Everyone who set foot on the island felt they were returning to memories of their own childhoods; maybe it was the smell of trees and earth the way they used to smell.

Only little Davy stayed on when the other boys left.

He was smaller than the rest, about six, I guessed. Davy was reluctant to render me the privilege of knowing his surname because it was “too funny to tell.”

“Your name can’t be all that strange, Davy. Why, it can’t be any more unusual than mine or the man who first lived on this island. His name was Alexander 32

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The distinctive shape of Alexander Zuckerberg’s home, built in the 1930s and restored in the late 1980s.

Zuckerberg was a civil engineer, a cabinet-maker and a sculptor.

Photo: Ron Verzuh

Zuckerberg.” I thought it might break some ice between us if I told him that Zuckerberg means Sugar Mountain in German. But Davy was having none of this idle chitchat from me.

He evaded my wish to know his surname by barraging me with questions about the island. “Are there ghosts here? Who was he? Do you live here? This house is creepy. What did he look like? What’s this?” He finally took a breath, thrusting the badly decayed remains of a Columbia River mudsucker jowl up at me.

I hardly knew where to begin as my mind raced with the little man-child’s non-sequitur questions. Davy the leprechaun, I thought as he stood there in his oversized pea jacket asking me about everything under the sun.

I thought back to when I had first come to Zuckerberg’s Island. I was a little older than Davy perhaps, and the old gentleman himself was still very much alive then. He had tutored schoolchildren for much of his life, and many of the older kids who went away to university talked about him. He’d taught Russian to some of them, mathematics to others. They had grown to respect him as their teacher in the Doukhobor schools at Raspberry Village and Brilliant.

I hesitated before mentioning to Davy that I had originally wandered over to the island from the nearby

Z. lived alone on his five-and-a-half high school to catch a furtive glimpse acre plot of island. of the nude figurines and statuettes Davy zeroed in on the small onethat “Zukie” was rumoured to have room cabin nearby that had been scattered about his island kingdom.

Zuckerberg’s first residence. A rusty There was a mystique about the place potbellied stove lay on its side. Davy that had always made me keep my diswas already on the roof. The place tance before. I had overheard adults seemed livable yet. Maybe it could be calling him an eccentric. Lately, local used for a sauna, I thought—a “banya” folks had held séances, and it was said he would have called it. that voices had been contacted. Davy We skipped down the main pathdidn’t seem to balk at this at all. way leading to what was probably the A few weeks back, I had read about vegetable or rye-grain garden. Gazing some evidence that there were human Alexander Zuckerberg out over the once-mighty Columbia, I inhabitants in this vicinity as far back Photo: Courtesy of Ron Verzuh recalled that Zuckerberg had threshed as 1,600 BC. A maritime archeologist and ground his rye to make his own bread. Now, the named Chris Turnbull had published his findings from garden was choking with a plague of acacia trees—a research done around Thrums (a settlement on the miscalculation or a dream gone wrong.

Kootenay River between Castlegar and Nelson). I had As we walked back toward the house, I recounted the also heard that ramparts of a number of Indigenous fact that Zuckerberg had cobbled his own shoes. When dwellings had been discovered on the island, and I the river was low, he constructed the causeway that suggested to Davy that these might have been the first connected the island to the mainland. “He was a civil people to live here. He seemed coolly disinterested. engineer,” I explained, but then he might have been an I tried to engender a bit of enthusiasm by resourcearchitect. fully tapping some historical data. “In 1923, Mr. Inside the house, Davy wanted to be in every room Zuckerberg came to Vancouver, maybe because he was at once. He wanted to know about the coal and wood running away from the Revolution in Russia. They say stove and about the cement bathtub in a cramped little he was well off. He bought Emerald Island on a homecorner of the two-storey house where the old man lived stead basis from the provincial government in 1935. exclusively during colder winters. The tower upstairs Some say he squatted on it until they sold it to him was the subject of a never-ending list of incredulous along with other land in the area. imaginings as we paused to view the dam-tamed river “And some say he came to the Kootenays because again.

Peter Verigin, the Doukhobor leader, invited him. He I wanted to impart some information about had two children, Gilbert and Asta, with his first wife.

Byzantine, Baroque, and Rococo architecture to my Alice, his second wife, was an assistant nurse during the young acquaintance, the little I knew, but it was easier Great War and a teacher in Russian as he had been.” to describe the house as a log model of the Russian Davy probed a little deeper about Alice as he busied himself burrowing around a once-functional waterline that had been exposed in hopes of repair. She’d refused to live on the island, so her husband had built a beauty salon for her in the heart of the fledgling village of Castlegar. It had been built with the same curious craftsmanship with which Mr. Z. did everything. It had a European arch-front, and in the window was an original Zuckerberg painting, another of his artistic endeavours. Alice involved herself in the social life of the community and was coaxed onto the island only on special days or perhaps during the summer. She insisted that he install a phone, which served as their The City of Castlegar is the steward of Zuckerberg Island, located at communication link. For the most part, Mr. the confluence of the Kootenay and Columbia rivers.

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Orthodox chapels. The red onion-ball turret mounted with a flagpole on the centre roof, the meticulously shaped window frames, the large porch with ominous wooden carvings of faces—these were classic architectural ideas, yet somehow unique. Alexander Zuckerberg had intended this to be his log castle.

A few days before, I had been paging through the remnants of what must have been his fairly complete classical library. There were grammar books for French, German, English, and Russian, instruction manuals for gardening and interior decorating, math texts, a book on Greek and Roman art, even a novel or two by an obscure Russian author, and a tattered volume on house-building. In the old days, while he was still alive, that library must have been replenished constantly with a range of books: a smattering of Dostoyevsky writing about Russian society when French was still the language of high society there; some Turgenev; a play or two by Chekov about personal struggle in a harsh social climate; maybe some terse hilarity by Gogol; and of course, Tolstoy. These books would have told a story about the man, his thinking, beliefs, and understanding.

The house had been ransacked several times by vandals, thieves, and little children with a curiosity for the sound of breaking windowpanes. Davy was quick to deny any knowledge of this. He asked about the gravestones he had spied from the woodshed. I described the bas-relief sculpture that Zuckerberg had erected in honour of Alice, telling him that he’d worked on it just a year before his own death in 1961.

Davy was off toward what were once flower beds, down a steep path, past a fruit tree to the sleepy river once again. People had died in that river, even in my time. People I knew, in fact. And as Davy trundled down to the rocky beach, I tried to shout out tales of Mr. Z.’s courageous life-saving efforts and how he had made numerous attempts to rescue children and adults alike.

“Who lived here before you?” I told him about Ron and Jeannette Hooper, the couple that had stayed through the mild winter months last year. Ron was one of Zuckerberg’s three grandchildren who’d inherited the island, and he had related to me stories of two other island residents over the 13 years since his grandfather’s death. There was the Polish field marshal who had managed to establish some rapport with a family of skunks that resided under the house. Then, about five years ago, there was the “mystery couple” who lived on the island for a short time and then disappeared one day, leaving food on the table and clothing in closets. Davy shuddered slightly and so did I. I guessed, a bit pretentiously, that I had felt some of the same feelings and challenges that Zuckerberg must 34

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This 473-foot suspension bridge built in 1984 provides access to the 5.5-acre Zuckerberg Island Heritage Park. The Castlegar and District Heritage Society is now responsible for the park’s ongoing operation and maintenance.

Photo: Ron Verzuh

have felt standing by the graves on the highest point of the island. He was a dreamer, but he was also a practical doer. Some of those close to him called him a Tolstoyan who believed in a creed of self-sufficiency and relationship with the earth, a man who tried to educate the peasants, loved company of all ages, and who had the courage and fortitude to live as he did. He was at home with nature and a humanitarian.

I was awestruck by a shadow image of a little man dressed in short pants with high socks, suspenders, and an Alpine hat. My blurred dream-vision focused slowly, and it was Davy stalking close to the mammoth river that I saw.

“There’s a new dam staked out down near Murphy Creek, Davy,” I told him. “It’ll probably flood the island.”

He stopped and turned to me quite suddenly, his features wizened up like those of a very old man, and asked why. I had no answer, really, and there he left me to traipse from stump to tree to boulder, his image fading behind the rock piles created by the river that would soon run here again.

•

Ron Verzuh is a writer, historian, and photographer. He is the author of three books, several booklets, and many articles. He holds a PhD in history from Simon Fraser University and has been published in several academic journals.

Verzuh is also the producer/director of three short documentary films. Joe Hill’s Secret Canadian Hideout revisited the history of the Rossland Miners’ Union Hall. Codename Project 9, which premiered in the Kootenays, described the role of the Trail smelter in building the atomic bomb. Salt Remembered recounted the historic showing of a banned Hollywood film in the Castle Theatre in Castlegar. All films are available for viewing on YouTube or Vimeo or are for sale at amazon.com. For more of Verzuh’s work, visit www.ronverzuh.ca.

Between

By Jenn Ashton

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 family, in which a very young Indigenous woman is taken/chosen as “wife” by a modern settler; in my family, it was Alexander Merrifield, one of the “Pioneers of Granville,” and my ancestor granny Siamelaht. The story that follows is about the settler John Deighton (a.k.a. Gassy Jack) and his two “wives.”1 All my relations.

MIND THE GAP

I

A Gassy Jack Story

live in a place in-between, where I am in-between the present and the past, in-between generations and in-between cultures.

There is a void, which I want to rush to fill, but I know that it is a slow stitching that must be done in order to connect the times, the families, and the ways. I find I am “minding the gap” daily, worried that I might overlook something or that somebody will pass away before I can learn from them—but that’s the kind of person I am, anxious and urgent, because I am keen to fill in that gap so that future generations have a steady ground to stand on, a tighter connection. I find myself now in the crossover place of knowing and not knowing, of readjusting my feelings and decolonizing my mind. I am slowly doing that, and thanks to my ancestors and newly found family, I am feeling that gap slowly close.

And even though it is closing there are still two sides to the gap, the before and after, and I am learning how to find places for the befores. Sometimes they are out of sight, but sometimes I can see them, and they remind me of who I am, and the strength and courage my family had, which brought me here into this time and place.

A scant nine years ago we moved into a new house.

I couldn’t wait to buy a local artist’s painting for our bedroom wall, showing bright colourful scenes of Vancouver. I bought a painting of Gassy Jack.

This is what I knew about it then: It reminded me of “my” Vancouver, when I was growing up, seeing the famous statue, and walking around downtown when it felt small and safe. This is what I know about it now: I dread looking at it. But I look at it to remember what

happened to my family and so many others. It is a constant reminder of how Vancouver was built on top of the of the lives and hopes of another population. I think about Gassy Jack marrying a Squamish woman (name unknown and lost in time).2 When she passed away, he then married her 12-year-old niece Xˁ áliya/Madeline Williams.3 I think about her having her first baby with him when she was 13 and he was over 40.4 I think about all of these things, and about how this is the real story of Vancouver, and I feel like I have disrespected the land that I walk on, especially because it was the land where I came from, and because this is so similar to my family story.5 Yorkshireman John (Jack) Deighton (1830–1875)6 was known as Gassy Jack; the nickname was given to him “because of his talkative nature and his penchant for storytelling.”7 He arrived in British Columbia in 1858, after many years spent at sea. He came as many others did, in search of gold, making his way through gold fields up the coast of North America. Having no success, he turned to a more comfortable life as a customs officer in Queensborough (New Westminster) in 1859.

For a while he piloted steamboats on the Fraser River, and when he tired of that, he went back to prospecting for gold in the Cariboo where he ended up working as a labourer “on other men’s claims”8 in order to pay his way back to the coast again.

Even though “the bride ships of 1862 and ‘63 had brought marriageable English girls to Victoria, there was still a surplus of men,”9 and so “Jack Deighton married an Indian woman from Burrard Inlet.”10 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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In some cultures, and in other times, marriages did take place when people were barely out of childhood,20 but the context that I want to recognize here is that one culture could lay claim to another.

There are two versions of me. The one before I knew the past, and the me who now has eyes open to the truth. I know that if I took my Gassy Jack painting down, I would probably not think about the past as much. I know I don’t have to look at it—it’s a choice. But I try to learn as much as I can about the past and feel it deeply in my bones so I can respect every footstep that I take here. There will be conflicts between history and modern belief systems, and our legacy will be what we do between.

•

Endnotes

1. Bob Kronbauer, “Squamish-nation-releases-statement-aboutgassy-jack-and-his-12-year-old-wife.” The Squamish Chief June 24, 2020. https://www.squamishchief.com/local-news/squamishnation-releases-statement-about-gassy-jack-and-his-12-year-oldwife-3124230. This article contains the full statement from the Squamish Nation.

2. Kronbauer, “Squamish Nation.”

3. See photographs of her at https://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/qwahalia-madeline-deighton. Her name also appears as Quahail-ya and as Qua-hail-ya in other sources.

4.“John Deighton,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_ Deighton.

5. Jenn Ashton, “Siamelaht,” British Columbia History Magazine 52.4 (Winter 2019), 5-8.

6.“John Deighton,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_ Deighton.

7.“John Deighton.”

8. Raymond Hull and Olga Ruskin, Gastown’s Gassy Jack: The Life and Times of John Deighton of England, California and Early British Columbia, (Vancouver: Gordon Soules Economic Research, 1971), 22.

9.“Putting the Saddle on the Right Horse,” Vancouver Sun (November 17, 1915).

10. Hull and Ruskin, 22.

11. Hull and Ruskin, 34.

12. Kronbauer, “Squamish Nation.”

13. Hull and Ruskin, 41.

14. Mildred Valley Thornton, Potlatch People: Indian Lives and Legends of British Columbia (Vancouver: Hancock House 2003), 164.

15. Thornton, 202.

16. Matthews, 294.

17. Kronbauer, “Squamish Nation.”

18. John Mackie, “Petition calls for removal of Gassy Jack statue,” Vancouver Sun (June 18, 2020).

19.“Gastown’s First Citizen, Man or Myth?” Vancouver Sun (January 22, 1971), and Liam Britten, “Vancouver’s Gassy Jack statue defaced, petition calls for its removal,” CBC News June 16, 2020, https:// www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gassy-jack-statuegastown-1.5615177.

Jenn Ashton is an award-winning author and visual artist living in North Vancouver, BC. She is the author of the prize-winning article “Siamelaht” in British Columbia History (Winter 2019) and of the recently released People Like Frank, and Other Stories from the Edge of Normal (Tidewater Press, 2020). She is a Director on the Board of the Federation of British Columbia Writers and is currently working on numerous projects including a book about the history of her family in the Lower Mainland. She is now studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

PHOTO BY MELISSA NEWBERY

Jack worked on the steamships for a few years, but then went into the saloon business. In New Westminster, he owned the Globe Saloon from 1865 to 1867. After its failure, he took his wife, her mother, and her cousin to Luk’luk’i, which would later be called Gastown. Here, with help from millworkers from nearby Stamps Mill, they set to work building a new Globe Saloon, and Jack resumed his role as saloon keeper. By 1870 he had expanded his business to include a two-storey hotel and saloon.11 Soon after the expansion, Jack’s wife became ill and died. “Before she died, she arranged for Jack to marry her niece Qua-hail-ya (X̱ áliya) or Madeline.” Madeline was 12 years old; Jack was 40. By the end of the year, Madeline was pregnant. “When Jack’s brother and sister in-law arrived from England, Madeline and her baby (Richard Mason)...went back to her people.”12 In 1874 Deighton left the hotel and brought Madeline and the baby back to New Westminster. Later that year, he returned to his Gastown hotel, where he died on May 29th, aged 44. Madeline’s son passed away on November 14th, 1875, and, aged 17, Madeline went to live in North Vancouver.13 As in many similar instances, and because of oral traditions, there are not many words written about X̱ áliya’s early years and about her time with Jack Deighton. However, when X̱ áliya was elderly, Mildred Valley Thornton painted her portrait.14 There is also a snapshot of her in a Vancouver Sun article from 1946, titled “Madeline: Wife of Gassy Jack” and later reprinted in Potlatch People: Indian Lives and Legends of British Columbia.15 Thornton said, regarding the time Madeline left Jack to return to her people, that “though she was young at this time, Madeline was a woman of strong character and convictions.” In 1940, Vancouver archivist Major J.S. Matthews visited X̱ áliya and found her to be a “woman of undoubted intelligence and character; gracious and kind, who in earlier years must have been of womanly strength.”16 “After Gassy Jack’s death, Madeline (X̱ áliya) remarried a ‘Squamish’ man known as Big William. They have descendants in the ‘Squamish’ Nation today.”17 “X̱ áliya died on August 10th, 1948 at Eslhá7an, a ‘Squamish’ village community located on the shores of North Vancouver.”18 The Gassy Jack statue has been defaced, and some have petitioned to have it removed altogether.19 I understand this, but also understand that we can’t change the past; we can talk about it in light of today’s truths, however. The story of Jack Deighton and his Indigenous “wives” are like the stories of my family too. I am the descendent of the union between Indigenous and settler, but for me to hate would be to hate part of myself.

Time Travels | Telling Our Stories

Snunéymuxw Reserve south of downtown Nanaimo, circa 1900.

Mark Forsythe travels through BC, and back in time, exploring the unique work of British Columbia Historical Federation Members.

Photo: Nanaimo Museum A1-80

Nanaimo Museum

By Mark Forsythe

A

nd 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 Downtown Nanaimo, 1890s.

Photo: Nanaimo Museum A1-32 not visit the city’s historic downtown to see quaint shops, restaurants, and pubs—one of them what you’ve been missing? inside a restored E&N Railway station. There are other Also known as the “Hub City” (the downtown streets impressive heritage structures, including the Nanaimo are laid out like the spokes on a wheel), Nanaimo is Courthouse that was designed by Francis Rattenbury. very walkable and easy to explore. Hoof it along the Built from granite and sandstone, it speaks to the prosHarbourfront Walkway, then drop into the Art Gallery perity of Nanaimo’s coal, lumber, and fishing industries, 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 Nanaimo Museum: https://nanaimomuseum.ca, located at the harbour since 1853. The downtown is loaded with the corner of Commercial and Museum Way. BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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of coal?” William adds that when the Hudson’s Bay Company first showed interest in mining coal, the Company didn’t reveal that they would sell it. “Our people traded; that was our currency.”

The museum plans to move a rejuvenated Snunéymuxw exhibit to the front of the gallery space. Curator Aimee Greenaway says this will give it the weight it deserves, and will “reposition these stories.” Aimee sees this as part of a larger, necessary shift. “Our internal wiring is to tailor to interests and research, but there are also overlooked histories, from Métis to Jewish and Black histories.”

During the pandemic, the Museum is discovering new ways to share stories, whether through online programming, one-on-one visits developed through an innovative “Bubble Buddies” project, or self-guided tours. Challenging and exciting times are ahead for the seven full-time and five part-time Q’Puthet Unwinus, Snunéymuxw cultural research project, staff members. Nanaimo is a key intersection for 1970s. Left to right: Elder Hazel Good; Q’Puthet Unwinus travellers going to or from Vancouver Island; the project coordinator Kay George; Elder Anderson Tommy; Museum itself could become an important crossand Roy Aleck.

Photo: Courtesy of William White road to reconciliation and understanding.

For William White, collaboration with the and the unbridled optimism of the era when it was Museum will “give people voices who have not been constructed, in 1895. heard before. This development is the first time in hisFor a strong sense of place and history, the Nanaimo Museum is an essential stop. Exhibits are numerous and tory that the songs, values, and images will be brought forward for a new time and place.” He remembers lisvaried: a coal mine, settler-era classroom, Snunéymuxw tening to recordings of the late Anderson Tommy, who cultural artifacts, and a Hall of Fame dedicated to the grew up at what is now Departure Bay. “His old people city’s persistent love affair with sports, from soccer to taught him a Welcome Song, and he remembered his track and field and hockey. Manager Sophia Maher old people telling him—he almost cried—you will hear says she’s proud that the museum is part of a vibrant this song echo long after we are gone.” downtown. In addition to adapting to the pandemic, staff have been focused on renewing gallery spaces and expanding an exhibit about Nanaimo’s earliest inhabitants, the Snunéymuxw (“Nanaimo” is derived from their name.) At a city reconciliation event, Sophia asked Elder William White to visit the Museum and help deepen their presence. “We tell lots of European stories, but we want to know what’s missing from the Snunéymuxw point of view. We’re missing thousands of years’ worth of history.” William, with a degree in history and anthropology, accepted the invitation: “I fell in love with their model of the longhouse, people making blankets, the spindle whorls, the welcome figure, and the regalia case.” He’s also keen to help animate the exhibit. “What can we add to make it more exciting for the museum-goer? We could possibly hear people speaking, drumming, or singing Welcome Songs.” He also sees a need for more stories about the impact of colonialism on his people, through the eyes of the Snunéymuxw themselves. “How do we work the Indian Self portrait, Kin Jung working on a coal barge in Residential School experience into this? The discovery Nanaimo harbour, 1950s.

Photo: Nanaimo Museum R5-32

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Volunteers Lorna and Marie in the Archives Research Centre.

Photo: Jennifer Martens

Archives & Archivists

The Mennonite Historical Society of BC

By Louise Price, Edited by Sylvia Stopforth

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he 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 up a third migration.

Mennonite settlement in BC began around 1911, when twenty families settled in Renata, on the Arrow Lakes, and ventured into fruit farming. A larger influx followed in 1928 after the draining of Sumas Lake, when Chilliwack businessman Chauncey Eckert offered lots for sale in the Yarrow area, attracting prairie

Mennonites impoverished by the Depression. By 1951, Mennonites in BC numbered 15,000—including 2,000 war refugees. They settled largely in the communities of Yarrow, Arnold, Greendale, Chilliwack, and Abbotsford, although some were also moving to larger cities.

Today Mennonites live in all parts of the province and come from a wide variety of backgrounds, reflecting the diverse cultures in BC. As well, there are many who consider themselves “ethnic-Mennonite” but have joined other denominations or do not attend church.

This makes it difficult to accurately state the current number of Mennonites in BC. In the 1970s, there was a growing interest in Mennonite history, leading to the founding of the Mennonite Historical Society of BC (MHSBC) in 1972. Originally, the purpose was to build a museum to showcase historical artifacts. When that project stalled, members opted to develop an archival centre, which eventually found a home in Garden Park Tower, on Clearbrook Road, in 1997. In November 2015, the MHSBC moved to its present location on the second floor of the Mennonite Heritage Museum, with offices, libraries, a large research area, processing room, and an environmentally controlled archival storage room.

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provided includes names, birth dates, marriage dates, camps in which the applicants were registered, and genealogical records going back several generations. Visitors can request copies of information from GRanDMA or EWZ for a small fee.

The MHSBC has an extensive heritage library that includes a large family-history collection, reference books, and the personal library of Mennonite scholar Dr. John B. Toews.

The Society’s $35 membership fee includes a one-year subscription to its quarterly publication, Roots and Branches. This periodical features articles on Mennonite history—focusing particularly on BC—as well as stories, art, book reviews, and occasionally short fiction or poetry. Many back Mennonite Heritage Museum (owned by the Mennonite Museum Society), Abbotsford.

Photo: Richard Thiessen issues can be accessed free-of-charge online at https://www.mhsbc.com/newsletters.php.

The Historical Society and the Museum Society complement each other in many ways. Visitors to the Museum can study the broad spectrum of Mennonite history through interactive displays, maps, and artifacts, then go upstairs to the MHSBC offices to research their own family story.

MHSBC book launches and other events such as writing and genealogical workshops are often held, and the Museum’s art gallery and book shop feature Mennonite artists and writers. As well, the MHM Coffee Shop offers traditional Mennonite foods (currently available via a take-out ordering system online).

Both societies plan to welcome back individuals as well as tour groups when Covid-19 restrictions John B. Toews Historical Library Collection. lift. In the meantime, visit www.mhsbc.com or Photo: Courtesy of Rally Creative send research questions to genealogy@mhsbc. com. For museum-related questions, contact On most days, visitors to the archives research ceninfo@mennonitemuseum.org. For more information tre will find trained volunteers entering data, indexabout the history of Mennonites in BC, see http://www. ing Mennonite periodicals, entering data, indexing yarrowbc.ca/pioneers/mennonitehistory.html Mennonite periodicals, cataloguing books, scanning and indexing photographs, and sifting through material Louise Price has been an active member of donated by BC Mennonite churches, schools, and MHSBC for over 20 years, both as an editor conferences. The Society boasts a very active board of and contributor to the Society’s periodical, Roots and Branches. She loves being with directors who chair and work in committees and head her grandchildren, gardening, and digging project teams. into the stories behind historical events, Volunteers are available to help visitors research especially those related to her family story. their family roots through programs such as GRanDMA (Genealogical Registry and Database of Mennonite Ancestry) which contains information regarding Sylvia Stopforth is a writer some 1.5 million individuals. For those whose and editor, and served in the ancestors escaped from the Soviet bloc during the heritage sector for 24 years as a University Archivist.

Second World War, MHSBC has access to the EWZ (Einwanderungszentralstelle) files from Germany. Data

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Refracting History | Stories in Digital and Print

Contemplating Commemoration

A

s 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 number of centennials from 1958–1974. Memorable artifacts from six centennials included souvenir boxes of the World’s Biggest Birthday Cake (1958), a boat from the World Championship Bathtub Race (established in 1967), and a glass mug (centennial of Nanaimo’s 1874 incorporation).

But more important questions emerged from Canada’s sesquicentennial celebrations. Whose stories were not included? Considering some of its historical legacies, should Confederation be commemorated? These questions and many others remain relevant at the 150th anniversary of BC’s entry into Confederation.

I have found these sources helpful as I rethink commemoration.

—Aimee Greenaway

“Questioning the Past: How to Better Understand Historical Controversies”

by Lindsay Gibson at Canada’s History: https://tinyurl.com/ QuestionPast

Looking for a series of questions to guide thoughtful discussion about commemorations in Canada?

Gibson used six historical-thinking concepts as scaffolding to support readers as they examine, analyze, and consider the impact of a commemorative event or monument on the community.

“Recognizing and Including Indigenous Cultural Heritage in BC”

by First Peoples’ Cultural Council: https://tinyurl.com/fpccfactsheet

Written “to address the immediate need to revitalize, manage, and protect Indigenous cultural heritage” (5), this paper includes important next steps in commemoration and heritage interpretation. “While many people acknowledge and celebrate Canada’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, this diversity, as it relates to Indigenous Peoples, is under threat, and has been since contact” (7).

Challenging Racist “British Columbia”: 150 Years and Counting http://www.challengeracistbc.ca

150 Years and Counting records how contemporary “anti-racist activism is part of a broader history of Indigenous, Black, and other racialized communities challenging white supremacy for over 150 years—particularly since 1871 when BC joined Canada.” The 80-page, illustrated booklet is an open-source publication available in pdf format for printing and viewing, with addi-

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Stand Like a Cedar by Nicola I. Campbell, illustrated by Carrielynn Victor (Winnipeg, MB: Highwater Press, 2021) 19.95

BC Curriculum link: Grade 2 Social Studies—Students are expected to know about relationships between people and the environment in different communities

The last sentence in Stand Like a Cedar, “We are grateful for all living things,” encompasses the book’s cultural and land-based teachings about interconnections in the natural world. Award-winning storyteller Nicola I. Campbell, author of Shin-chi’s Canoe and A Day with Yayah, seamlessly blends Nłeɍkepmxcín, Halq’eméylem, and English.

Salish perspectives, messages about environmental sustainability along with phrases and animal names in Nłeɍkepmxcín and Halq’eméylem are superimposed on Carrielynn Victor’s art—filled with colour, light, and movement. Stand Like A Cedar includes a language glossary, translation guide, and is ideal for grades one to four.

tional information and resources on the website.

Challenging Racist BC is a joint initiative between the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the University of Victoria research project Asian Canadians on Vancouver Island: Race, Indigeneity, and the Transpacific. “Co-authored by activists/scholars from diverse communities, this resource will assist anti-racist educators, teachers, scholars and policymakers in piercing the silences that too often have let racism fester in communities, corporations and governments.”

Chinatown Stories Volume 3 by Chinatown Today (Vancouver: Chinatown Today, 2021) 25 or open source at: https:// chinatownstoriesv3.netlify.app

150 St Stories i th thatt Sh Shape B British iti h C Columbia l bi att K Knowledge l d N Network: t k https://tinyurl.com/StoriesShapeBC

To mark this year’s sesquicentennial, the Knowledge Network has launched 150 short films by BC filmmakers to explore how history, art, and culture shape Canada’s sixth province. Most films are less than three minutes long and cover a wide range of topics, including people, places, and events, making them ideal for classroom screening. Not just for students, the films will pique the interest of anyone who wants to learn about BC. If you are familiar with provincial history, you’ll find it interesting to discover which stories were selected by filmmakers and uncover the overlooked ones.

Sample playlist from 150 Stories: The Golden Spruce ’64 Tsunami The Penthouse Gino Landucci Madame Dishrags Sophie Pierre Cowichan Sweater Canning Salmon Sointula Mayo Singh

Children at Work Vancouver Island War Ginger Goodwin Wilmer Gold Home Front Work Front

BC Curriculum link: Social Studies from grades four to ten— The breadth of topics connects to curriculum content across grades 42

BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

Through interviews, multimedia art, and prose, Chinatown Stories Volume 3 explores the theme “reimagine resilience” and documents the experiences and perspectives of business owners, leaders of community organizations, artists, and performers from Vancouver’s Chinatown. The book also delves into “how resilience in its various forms has become part of the intangible heritage of Vancouver’s Chinatown” (Foreword).

Some of the interview questions include: What do you think are the ways the pandemic will change Chinatown? What are some examples of cultural assets or intangible heritage that you see in your dayto-day life? Why do you continue to be part of the Chinatown

community? What is intangible heritage in Chinatown?

The mission of Chinatown Today is to share Chinatown’s stories, past and present.

market farm on Denman Island, circa 1900, a photo documenting the ruins of a home after the Merville fire of 1922, or a black and white photo of Elk Falls.

The authors all work for or volunteer with the Courtenay and District Museum and collaborated on the 2015 book Watershed Moments. All proceeds from the sale of Step into Wilderness will go to the Courtenay and District Museum, a member of the BC Historical Federation and co-host of the BCHF’s 2019 conference.

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Please books to:

Aimee Greenaway Books Editor British Columbia History c/o Nanaimo Museum 100 Museum Way, Nanaimo, BC V9R 5J8

Recently Released

Step into Wilderness: A Pictorial History of Outdoor Exploration in and around the Comox Valley

by Deborah Griffiths, Christine Dickinson, Judy Hagen, Catherine Siba (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2020) $39.95

The Comox Valley region of Vancouver Island boasts spectacular landscapes that have shaped the lives of its inhabitants. From fish traps on the Comox Estuary to skiing on Forbidden Plateau, historical narratives are captured with photographs and complemented by personal accounts.

Designed as a coffee table book, Step into Wilderness features 150 never-before-seen, black and white and colour photographs from the Courtenay and District Museum’s collection, along with maps and ephemera. Nearly all photos focus on people, documenting the community’s evolving interactions with the natural world and outdoor exploration, including at landmark locations such as Mt. Albert Edward and Mt. Washington.

Every time I flip through this book, I find something new—a story about the Nakano brothers’

Balancing Bountiful: What I Learned about Feminism from My Polygamist Grandmothers by Mary Jane Blackmore (Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, 2020) $24.95 Big Promises, Small Government: Doing Less with Less in the BC Liberal New Era by George Abbott (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020) $32.95 Chiro Sakura—Falling Cherry Blossoms: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression by Grace Eiko Thomson (Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, 2021) $24.95 Fool’s Gold: The Life and Legacy of Vancouver’s Official Town Fool by Jesse Donaldson (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2020) $18 Here & Gone: Artwork of Vancouver and Beyond by Michael Kluckner (Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2020) $19.95 In Sight: My Life in Science and Biotech by Julia Levy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020) $34.95 In the Company of Sisters: Canada’s Women in the War Zone, 1914–1919 by Dianne Graves (Montréal: Robin Brass Studio, 2021) $27.95 Pinkerton’s and the Hunt for Simon Gunanoot: Double Murder, Secret Agents and an Elusive Outlaw by Geoff Mynett (Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, 2021) $24.95 Reading the Diaries of Henry Trent: The Everyday Life of a Canadian Englishman, 1842–1898 by J.I. Little (Montréal: McGill-Queens Press, 2021) $37.95 Slashburner: Hot Times in the British Columbia Woods by Nick Raeside (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2020) $24.95 Story of the Squamish People, Story from 1800 to 1900 by Kultsia, illustrated by T’Uy’t Tanat (Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2020) $30 The Pocket Guide to The Unheralded Artists of BC Series, edited by Mona Fertig (Salt Spring Island, BC: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2020) $24.95 The Object’s the Thing: The Writings of Yorke Edwards, a Pioneer of Heritage Interpretation in Canada, edited by Richard Kool and Robert Cannings (Victoria, BC: Royal BC Museum, 2021) $24.95 To Share, Not Surrender: Indigenous and Settler Visions of Treaty-Making in the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, edited by Peter Cook, Neil Vallance, John Lutz, Graham Brazier, and Hamar Foster (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021) $89.95 Writing the Hamat’sa: Ethnography, Colonialism, and the Cannibal Dance by Aaron Glass (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021) $95 BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

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Stories of Objects

SS Master: The First 100 Years

By Robert G. Allan

T

here 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 SS Master towards the end of her working life, Vancouver Harbour, 1950s. noted shipwright Arthur Photo: Courtesy of the SS Master Society Moscrop on the shores over by the SS Master Society, a small group of volunof False Creek in Vancouver. She worked for various companies connected to the local construction industry, teers who for nearly 60 years have shown her off up and down the coast, educating residents and visitors alike most notably Evans, Coleman & Evans, forerunner of about the important role of tugboats in the developOcean Cement Ltd. Her duties consisted mostly of towment of the BC economy. In 2018 the Historic Sites and ing logs and barges laden with sand, gravel, limestone, Monuments Board of Canada recognized “Tugboats of and coal along the coast.

Canada’s West Coast” as “an Event of National Historic Supplanted in 1959 by steel, diesel-powered tugs, Significance” with the unveiling of a plaque at Granville Master was left to deteriorate. However, in 1962 the Island, and specifically acknowledging SS Master. She local branch of the World Ship Society saw the promise also received the Beaver Medal for maritime excellence in this fine little ship and restored her to a semblance of from the Maritime Museum of BC. her past glory. That work has subsequently been taken But age is relentless, and old wooden tugs need care beyond the skill set of even the most dedicated volunteers. The SS Master Society is therefore raising awareness and money to see this iconic steam tug preserved for decades to come. The SS Master Centenary Project aims to raise $3.5 million for a significant restoration effort. The scope of work covers extensive hull, deck, and bulwark repairs, steam machinery overhaul, and general upkeep.

This maritime world treasure deserves the utmost care and attention of all British Columbians.

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Every object has a story. Do you have an object with an interesting story behind it?

Visitors tour the SS Master and learn from Society volunteers during one of many open houses, circa 2010.

Photo: SS Master Society

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BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY | Summer 2021 | Vol. 54 No. 2

Send us a high resolution image of the object along with 350 words telling its story. By email: bcheditor@bchistory.ca. By mail: Editor, British Columbia History, Box 448 Fort Langley BC V1M 2R7.

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Then and Now

Kootenay Lake Hotel

by Canadian Pacific Railway 1911–1929

Reception for Lord and Lady Byng, Balfour, 1924.

Source: Touchstones Nelson

The short-lived Kootenay Lake Hotel stands proudly above Kootenay Lake, circa 1914. Photo: Touchstones Nelson

T

The site today, with just a concrete corner visible.

Photo: Peter Bartl

he 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.

HISTORY IN CONTEXT

Shortly afterward, the last patients were transferred to the King Edward VII Sanatorium at Tranquille, and the building stood empty until 1929 when it was sold for salvage.

Many of the materials were used to construct new houses along Nelson Avenue in Nelson. Today only some concrete foundations can be found around the houses in the new subdivision along Upper Balfour Road.

By Peter Bartl Information thanks to Michael Cone, in Kootenay Outlet Reflections: A History of Procter, Sunshine Bay, Harrop, Longbeach, Balfour, Queens Bay, edited by T.J. Madsen (Procter-Harrop Historical Book Committee, 1988.)

Do you have an old photograph with a story to tell?

Contribute the photograph to British Columbia History magazine’s back page feature. We would like to encourage you help bring a photograph of the past to the present. Anyone can contribute a photograph! Please send your photograph of the past in the present to: bcheditor@bchistory.ca and include information on who or what is in the photograph and why it is important to you or your community. It could appear here on the back page.