Northern Outdoors by Prince George Citizen

Northern

Outdoors in your backyard

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Northern

Outdoors in your backyard Both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the outdoors - rain or shine, winter or summer - has been our place to go for both our physical and mental health. It is in the outdoors where we take a break from the challenges of our hectic lives and where we reconnect with family and friends. The outdoors also remind us of the bigger, more timeless force of nature that surrounds us. As Ted Clarke’s story on a new book about

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James Teit shows, the outdoors can transform us as individuals. But maybe most importantly, the outdoors is just a fun, healthy place to be. We are blessed in central B.C. to be surrounded by such diverse, interesting geography that’s wonderful to experience whatever the season. Check it out, even if it’s just to walk some of our local trails. You won’t regret it.

Available on-line at: pgcitizen.ca General Inquiries | 250-562-2441 Publisher | Peter Kvarnstrom Editor | Neil Godbout Director of Advertising | Shawn Cornell A division of

Award-winning book shines light on settler’s life as hunting guide and Indigenous advocate

t a time when Indigenous rights were being trampled recklessly, often under the feet of the federal government’s Indian agents, James Teit took it upon himself to become the Indians’ agent. Kind and personable, the transplanted Scotsman immersed himself in the Indigenous culture he married into and he gained the respect and trust of the Nlaka’pamux people from the Cooks Ferry Band of B.C.’s Interior near Spences Bridge. Through his work as one of Canada’s most remarkable anthropologists, Teit became their spokesman in land claims discussions and human rights battles with federal and provincial authorities. Teit’s achievements as a hunting guide, ethnographer and Indigenous advocate are highlighted in Victoria-based author Wendy Wickwire’s enthralling biography At The Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging, this year’s winner of the Canada Prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Wickwire’s

riveting

words

breathe life back into the thousands of pages of descriptive notes Teit recorded in four decades of living and working with B.C.’s Indigenous people in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Her book gives the man his rightful place as a meticulous historian and fearless defender in their uphill struggle for fair treatment. “I think the most amazing thing about him was he just fell in love with the native people,” said 65-year-old James Teit of Prince George, Teit’s sole surviving grandson. “He spoke six or seven dialects and went to Ottawa to represent them for treaties and he was really wellloved by the natives. “Wendy’s done so much work around it, it’s exhaustive. I tell all my kids they’re lucky she’s done all that research on him and it’s all there in print in her book.” The anthropologist Teit was born in the Shetland Islands of northern Scotland and came to Canada at age 19 in 1884 to work at his uncle John Murray’s store in Spences Bridge, near the confluence of the

Nicola and Thompson rivers, southwest of Kamloops. Teit befriended the native people who frequented the store and considered the discrimination he witnessed despicable behaviour. In 1892, he married a Nlaka’pamux woman, Susanna Lucy Antko, and they bought a farm on the edge of the Nicoel

“

The unfortunate thing was that Boas’s name went forward while Teit’s name got sidelined, so bringing him to light now was just a great thing because he did so much amazing work.

“

Ted Clarke Prince George Citizen

ton reserve where she was raised in the Twaal Valley. To finance the ranch, he spent a couple of seasons trapping in central and northern B.C., followed by two years of work in Nanaimo’s coal mines. Teit also earned money guiding wealthy Americans on biggame hunting expeditions. Having watched how his native friends tracked animals on hunting and fishing trips, he knew how to safely lead a team of pack horses on treacherous five-week treks from Spences Bridge to the coast at Bella Coola and into northwestern B.C. to the Stikine and Cassiar regions. He was also a staunch conservationist who argued for controls on hunting. In 1894, Franz Boas, an anthropologist from New York City (who would soon become one of North America’s most distinguished anthropologists) arrived at Spences Bridge to continue his studies of the plateau peoples of south central B.C. Boas met Teit on this trip and hired him to conduct field work on his behalf. Boas considered the local Indigenous peoples to be dying cultures, while Teit SUMMER 2020 | NORTHERN OUTDOORS

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James Teit poses with three Interior chiefs during a trip to Ottawa in 1916. From left are John Tetlanetza, Teit, Paul David and Thomas Adolph. Photo by Frederick Lyonde

had a radically different perspective and used his work to preserve and celebrate native lifestyles and how they made use of their land and traditions to survive and thrive. Boas encouraged Teit to write down all he had learned about Indigenous people and that continued for 28 years until his death in 1922. Teit left a legacy of 2,000 pages of published monographs in 22 volumes which documented hunting and fishing methods, shelter construction, navigation and mapping, clothing, handcrafts, weaponry and tool making. He also took hundreds of photos of his Indigenous friends and colleagues. Their confidence in Teit showed in their relaxed, often smiling poses. Many of those photos of them wearing mooseskin moccasins and mittens and handmade buckskin shirts, holding blankets and baskets, are now on display in the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “He was in awe of their highlyadvanced skills,” said Wickwire. “When you go through his 1900 monograph, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, you can see the extent to which he covered every detail, whether it was how to make a fish net, how to construct and

use a dip-net, or how to build their underground houses. The reconstructions that you see today are often based on Teit’s sketches and drawings. All the plans are there. It’s just detailed work. Everything was so well-documented.” Handmade artifacts were highly sought-after by museums around the world but were not readily available until Teit made the suggestion that the local women be paid for their handiwork. That created a mini-industry for the Nlaka’pamux people to produce their creative baskets and buckskin dresses. Wickwire maintains throughout her book that a level of tension existed between Boas and Teit which stemmed from Boas’s inclination to take much of the credit for Teit’s work. The two men collaborated for close to three decades. From 1908-10, at Boas’s request, Teit extended his fieldwork into Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon. “The unfortunate thing was that Boas’s name went forward while Teit’s name got sidelined, so bringing him to light now was just a great thing because he did so much amazing work,” said Wickwire. “There’s a lot that didn’t get published (in the book), a lot of detail

that’s really valuable to Indigenous people today – maps and place names and ethnobotany. The bulk of the field notes went with Boas’s professional papers to the Library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. That’s where the treasure-trove lies and people are just getting into that now because it’s all being digitized.” In addition to his familiarity with Indigenous folklore, traditions, superstitions and craftsmanship, Teit had a gift for acquiring languages and became fluent in three native tongues – Nlaka’pamux, Secwepemc and Okanagan (Syilx). Once he could converse with them, he began to learn how badly they were oppressed and discriminated against by the authorities. He was a devout socialist, convinced everyone should be treated equally and spent much of his later life championing minority rights and educating native chiefs about the Western legal system. Spurred by the B.C. chiefs’ political campaign to dispute the provincial and federal governments’ assertion that they had no legal rights to their traditional territories, Teit joined the campaign in 1909 and in 1912 led his first delegation of Interior Salish chiefs to Ottawa to lobby the government. This was the first of three long trips

to protest the government’s stand on the land issue. He had the unique ability to translate their statements in meetings with Prime Minister Robert Borden and D.C. Scott, head of the Department of Indian Affairs. “How many settler Canadians in the 1890s were fluent in Indigenous languages?” asks Wickwire. “You had the missionaries who could run their church services and sort of get by, but hardly any settler in British Columbia learned the languages. It wasn’t just the anthropology he did non-stop from 1894 until his death in 1922. I don’t think we had an-

Citizen photo by Ted Clarke James Teit of Prince George, the sole surviving grandson of anthropologist James Teit, holds his grandfather’s hunting knife and a clock given to Teit by one of his hunting clients. SUMMER 2020 | NORTHERN OUTDOORS

James Teit with his Nlaka’pamux wife, Antko, in 1897. American Museum of Natural History, NYC.

other non-Indigenous activist in Canada who advocated for their basic rights to the extent that Teit did .” Teit’s prominence in Indigenous politics and his continual fight against settler colonialism clashed with Scott’s federal bills that pushed for cultural assimilation of native societies. That earned Teit enemies in Ottawa and resulted in some of his later anthropological contributions being marginalized. Knowing they were denied citizenship and the right to vote, among other basic human rights, Teit was enraged by the Military Services Act of July 1917 which listed Indigenous bachelors and childless widowers as being eligible for conscription in the First World War. He warned the government enforcement of the act would be violently opposed and in January 1918 an OrNORTHERN OUTDOORS | SUMMER 2020

der in Council declared native people would be exempt from conscription. One of Teit’s greatest contributions to preserving Indigenous culture was the archive of music he produced. He bought an Edison wax cylinder audio recording phonograph and used it to record more than 400 Indigenous songs in Spences Bridge and Telegraph Creek. His wife, Antko, was one of the singers on the first recordings he made with Boas in 1897. After 12 years with Antko, Teit lost her to pneumonia in 1899. A few years later he married Leonie Josephine Morens, the daughter of a French pioneer family. He was 40 and she was just 23 and they went on to have five children – Erik, Inga, Magnus (whose son James lives in Prince George), Sigurd and Thorald. Teit died at 58 on Oct. 22, 1922

James Teit at Murray Falls with his friend George Ta-magh-kyn in 1890

after a lengthy illness caused by a pelvic abscess misdiagnosed as cancer. He left his widow and their children destitute and some of his friends, American ethnologists and big-game hunters he had guided, established a trust fund for the family.

$10,000 Canada Prize, the Canadian Historical Association’s Clio prize for the best regional history and the BC Historical Federation’s Lieutenant Governor’s silver medal for historical writing.

Teit’s knowledge gained by living with native people and his work documenting their ways of life might have been lost if not for Wickwire’s 30 years of devotion to finish her 400-page book. The Nova Scotia native first started digging into Teit’s life when she began studying his song recordings in in the 1980s as a grad student and she finalized the book project after her retirement as a University of Victoria history professor. Released a year ago by UBC Press, At The Bridge, became a B.C. bestseller this spring. It also won, in addition to the

James Teit author Wendy Wickwire

The City of Prince George boast an excellent selection of long, medium and short trails for serious hikers and casual walkers alike.

Long trails (11+ kilometres) CENTENNIAL CONNECTOR TRAIL LOOP DISTANCE: 30 kilometres ELEVATION: Varied TRAIL TYPE: Paved and dirt AMENITIES: Benches Boat and canoe launch Interpretive signage Washrooms/outhouses

COMMON ENTRY POINTS Kilometre 0: Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park at 17th Avenue and Ash Street. Kilometre 18: Moore’s Meadow Nature Park. Kilometre 22: Massey Drive at Ginter’s Meadow.

CRANBROOK HILL GREENWAY DISTANCE: 23+ kilometres ELEVATION: 245 metres TRAIL TYPE: Dirt AMENITIES: Benches and picnic tables COMMON ENTRY POINTS Otway Nordic Ski Centre on Otway Road.

Greenway parking lot at UNBC. Forests For The World parking lot off Kueng Road. Kimball Road (off Highway 16 West).

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3330 Massey Drive, Prince George BC Tel 250-563-3113 â&#x20AC;˘ Toll Free 866-725-4124

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FORESTS FOR THE WORLD DISTANCE: 15.2 kilometres ELEVATION: 50 metres TRAIL TYPE: Dirt AMENITIES: Outhouse Picnic shelter Lookouts Canoe launch Fishing lake Interpretive signage Traditional indigenous pit

house MAIN ENTRY POINTS Follow Cranbrook Hill Road to Kueng Road and turn left onto the gravel road. Follow Kueng Road to the Forests For the World parking lot. Greenway parking lot at UNBC (off Tyner Boulevard)

UNBC CONNECTOR TRAIL SYSTEM DISTANCE: 11.5 kilometres ELEVATION: Up to 120 metres TRAIL TYPE: Paved and dirt AMENITIES: Information kiosks Viewpoints Off-leash pet area in Ginter’s Meadow COMMON ENTRY POINTS For a shorter walk on relatively

flat terrain, enter at the west end of Ferry Avenue, the west end of Massey Drive, or at the corner of 18th Avenue and Foothills Boulevard. For a physical challenge, take the dirt trail heading up Ginter’s Meadow to University Way.

Medium Trails (4-10 Kilometres)

COLLEGE HEIGHTS TRAIL SYSTEM DISTANCE: 6.4 kilometres ELEVATION: Relatively flat with less than 10 metres of elevation change. TRAIL TYPE: Paved and dirt AMENITIES: Playgrounds in Fairmont, a, North College, and Jean de Brebeuf Parks. Ball diamonds, outdoor ice

rinks, and parks along the trail route. COMMON ENTRY POINTS Multiple access points in College Heights. North College Park entry points include Eton Avenue, Monahan Crescent, Moriarty Crescent, and Simon Fraser Avenue.

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Medium Trails (4-10 Kilometres) HERITAGE RIVER TRAIL SYSTEM DISTANCE: 9.2 kilometres ELEVATION: Relatively flat with less than 10 metres of elevation change. TRAIL TYPE: Paved and dirt AMENITIES: Boat and canoe launch Benches and picnic tables Seasonal washrooms at Cottonwood Island Nature Park

and Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park Interpretive signage Tree carvings at Cottonwood Island Nature Park COMMON ENTRY POINTS Cottonwood Island Nature Park Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park Hudson’s Bay Wetland Carrie Jane Gray park

MILLAR ADDITION-FRASER RIVER LOOP DISTANCE: 4.2 kilometres ELEVATION: Relatively flat with less than 10 metres of elevation change. TRAIL TYPE: Paved AMENITIES:

Picnic tables and seasonal washrooms are available in Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park. COMMON ENTRY POINTS Multiple access points (refer to map).

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MOOREâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S MEADOW PARK TRAIL DISTANCE: 9.5 kilometres ELEVATION: 30 metres TRAIL TYPE: Dirt AMENITIES: Outhouse Off-leash pet area in the

meadow COMMON ENTRY POINTS Located off Foothills Boulevard and south of Otway Road

Short Trails (2.5 to 4 Kilometres) CASINO AND CEMETERY TRAIL DISTANCE: 3.6 kilometres ELEVATION: Relatively flat with less than 10 metres of elevation change. TRAIL TYPE: Paved COMMON ENTRY POINTS The Cemetery Trail is accessi-

ble from several points including Cowart Road, Lansdowne Road, and Ferry Avenue. The trail connects the Fraserview, Lansdowne, Assman, Perry, and VLA neighbourhoods.

CONNAUGHT HILL PARK TRAIL DISTANCE: 3.0 kilometres ELEVATION: Connaught Hill Loop (15 metres) and a 45-metre climb and descent on the hill. TRAIL TYPE: Paved AMENITIES: Seasonal washrooms

Picnic tables Scenic viewpoints COMMON ENTRY POINTS Access the Connaught Hill Loop from the east or west end of Patricia Boulevard. Complete the Loop by starting from the base of the hill and walking to the top on the paved road.

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FERGUSON LAKE NATURE RESERVE DISTANCE: 2.5 kilometres ELEVATION: Relatively flat with less than 10-metres of elevation change. TRAIL TYPE: Dirt AMENITIES: Outhouse

Canoe launch Fishing Boardwalks Interpretive signage. MAIN ENTRY POINT Follow signs on Ferguson Lake Road to the Ferguson Lake Nature Reserve parking lot.

LC GUNN PARK TRAIL DISTANCE: 3.9 kilometres ELEVATION: 60 metres. Visitors are advised to be careful near the cutbanks. TRAIL TYPE: Dirt and woodchip surfaces. AMENITIES: Outhouse Scenic viewpoints

Benches. COMMON ENTRY POINTS Follow Highway 16 over the Yellowhead Bridge and turn right onto Guay Road. Follow the paved road, turn right onto the gravel road and continue to the parking lot and trailhead.

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RIDGEVIEW PARK TRAIL DISTANCE: 3.5 kilometres ELEVATION: 15 to 20 metres. TRAIL TYPE: Dirt COMMON ENTRY POINTS Multiple access points in the

Hart Highlands neighbourhood including Sadler Drive, Panorama Place/Crescent, and Wildwood Crescent.

Trails Under 2.5 Kilometres COTTONWOOD ISLAND NATURE PARK TRAIL DISTANCE: 2.2 kilometres ELEVATION: Relatively flat with less than 10 metres of elevation change. TRAIL TYPE: Paved, dirt, and granular. AMENITIES: Washrooms Picnic shelter Benches and picnic tables Canoe launch

Paved boat launch Bridges COMMON ENTRY POINTS Multiple entry points off River Road via Highway 16 near the Yellowhead Bridge or off Carney Street. Located adjacent to the Prince George Railway and Forestry Museum. Part of the Heritage River Trail and Centennial Trail.

MCMILLAN CREEK AND CUTBANKS DISTANCE: 2.3 kilometres ELEVATION: 70 metres TRAIL TYPE: Dirt AMENITIES: Outhouses Picnic tables Interpretive signage Scenic viewpoints COMMON ENTRY POINTS McMillan Creek is comprised of two sections:

A regional park that includes a trail providing views of Prince George from the top of the cutbanks. A municipal park that provides access to fishing areas on the Nechako River where McMillan Creek flows. The regional park is accessible from Hoferkamp Road near the intersection with Highway 97. The municipal park is located off PG Pulpmill Road.

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adjacent Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park COMMON ENTRY POINTS Parking lot located off Queensway. The trail can also be accessed from the Heritage River Trail System via Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park or Carrie Jane Gray Park.

WILSON PARK TRAIL DISTANCE: 2.2 kilometres ELEVATION: Relatively flat with less than 10 metres of elevation change. TRAIL TYPE: Dirt AMENITIES: Outhouse

MAIN ENTRANCE Located in the 900 block of Ospika Boulevard North (across from Crieff Place). Follow the gravel road across the train tracks and turn right to access the parking lot.

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HUDSON’S BAY WETLAND DISTANCE: 1.8 kilometres ELEVATION: Mostly flat with less than 10 metres of elevation change. TRAIL TYPE: Paved, dirt, and granular AMENITIES: Picnic tables Playground Wildlife viewing platforms Seasonal washrooms in the

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