The Object’s the Thing

An Excerpt from the Royal BC Museum’s Latest Book

Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably encountered the work of Yorke Edwards. In the course of his long career in nature and heritage interpretation, which included a stint as the director of what was then the BC Provincial Museum, Edwards’s outlook and vision came to shape park interpretation across Canada in many ways still visible today. In the Royal BC Museum’s newest publication, The Object’s the Thing, editors and Royal BC Museum alumni Dr. Rob Cannings and Richard Kool collect Edwards’s writings— his speeches and notes, and the advice he gave to interpreters and guides across the country—offering an engaging look into the thinking that shaped so many Canadian experiences of nature. The following is an excerpt from “What Is Interpretation?,” a presentation made to the BC Parks Branch training school in Manning Park, BC, in 1965.

People like to use their brains. Dozens of tourist surveys have shown that the places tourists aim for are historic sites, museums and parks. They do not go to these places to be bored. They are looking for interesting things to make their lives interesting, and they know that these places are interesting places.

It will help to think a minute about things that are interesting. How important, how valuable, are interesting things? Aside from food and shelter, interesting things are the most important things in our lives. Only interesting things can make life interesting. An interesting life is what makes life worth living. It’s as simple as that. Interesting things are as valuable as our lives. I can think of few things as valuable to me as the interesting things that make life pleasant and satisfying and worthwhile…

People want to know more about nature, but most people don’t even know that they want to know more, and many that do know, don’t know how to go about it. Every year we see clear evidence that this is so. We interpret nature in BC parks to over 100,000 people each summer, and we find that the best way to understand people is to watch them. For that matter, what other way is there?

We have people who once didn’t know a robin from a cedar coming back every year to learn more—about their parks. Every year parents bring us children who somehow caught fire last summer, or the summer before perhaps, and they have taken something a park naturalist said or showed to them, and they have built it into a lifetime interest that will give them a lifetime of pleasure. It really makes no difference what this interest is. It can be anything. It can be in bugs or flowers, in birds or rocks, in spiders or pine cones, and no matter what the interest is, it is valuable because it will bring a lifetime of pleasure. There can be nothing more valuable than this, and like most really valuable things, money can’t buy it.

The Object’s the Thing:

The Writings of R. Yorke Edwards, a Pioneer of Heritage Interpretation in Canada is available for pre-order at rbcm.ca/edwards

For a limited time save 20% by using code EDWARDS at checkout. Offer ends April 30, 2021.

“To glimpse this diversity is to feel some of the meaning of being Canadian.”

—R. Yorke Edwards

1. Yorke Edwards (right) hunting in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park, 1957. Chess Lyons photograph. Courtesy of the Edwards family. 2. Yorke Edwards with his binoculars in the 1960s. Courtesy of the Edwards family.

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