by shirleybook shelf vancouver and its region review by mary rawson otter skins, boston ships and...

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Member Societies and their secretaries are responsible for seeing that the correct address for their society isup-to-date. Please send any change to both the Treasurer and Editor at the addresses inside the back cover.The Annual Return as at October 31st should include telephone numbers for contact.

Members’ dues for the year 1990- 91 were paid by the following Societies:

Albemi District Historical Society - Box 284, Port Albemi, B.C. V9Y 7M7Arrow Lakes Historical Society - Box 584, Nakusp, B.C. VOB 1 ROAtlin Historical Society - Box 111, Atlin, B.C. VOW lAOBumaby Historical Society - 6501 Deer Lake Avenue, Bumaby, B.C. V5G 3T6Chemainus Valley Historical Society - Box 172, Chemainus, B.C. VOR 1 KOCowichan Historical Society - P.O. Box 1014, Duncan, B.C. V9L 3Y2District 69 Historical Society - Box 3014, Parksville, B.C. VOR 2S0East Kootenay Historical Association - P.O. Box 74, Cranbrook, B.C. V1C 4H6Gulf Islands Branch -BCHF- dO Wilma J. Cross, RR#1, Pender Island, B.C. VON 2M0Koksilah School Historical Society - 5203 Trans Canada Highway, Koksilah, B.C. VOR 2C0Kootenay Lake Historical Society - Box 537, Kaslo, B.C. VOG 1 MOKootenay Museum & Historical Society - 402 Anderson Street, Nelson, B.C. Vi L 3Y3Lantzville Historical Society - do Box 274, Lantzville, B.C. VOR 2H0Lasqueti Island Historical Society - Lasqueti Island, B.C. VOR 2JONanaimo Historical Society - P.O. Box 933, Station A, Nanaimo, B.C. V9R 5N2North Shore Historical Society - do 333 Chesterfield Ave., North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 3G9North Shuswap Historical Society - Box 22, Celista, B.C. VOE 1 LOPrinceton & District Pioneer Museum & Archives - Box 687, Princeton, B.C. VOX iWOQualicum Beach Historical & Museum Society - 444 Qualicum Road, Qualicum Beach, B.C. V9K 1 B2Salt Spring Island Historical Society - Box 1264, Ganges, B.C. VOS 1 EOSidney & North Saanich Historical Society - P.O. Box 2404, Sidney, B.C. V8L 3Y3Silvery Slocan Historical Society - Box 301, New Denver, B.C. VOG iSOSurrey Historical Society - 8811 - 152nd Street, Surrey, B.C. V3R 4E5Trail Historical Society - P.O. Box 405, Trail, B.C. Vi R 4L7Vancouver Historical Society - P.O. Box 3071, Vancouver, B.C. V6B 3X6Victoria Historical Society - Box 5123 SIn. B., Victoria, B.C. V8R 6N4

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BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORICAL NEWS

E[)ITORIAL

Last Call for ConferenceRegistration.

Kamloops beckons! History buffseverywhere are invited to enjoy the tours,guest speakers, meals, and camaraderieApril 29-May 1, 1993. Some of the topicson tap am ‘The Notorious McLeans,”“Early Medicine in Kamloops,” “HatCreek Ranch”, and slides on “Wallachin”,pius a visit to the Secwepemc Museum.Registration ($80.) includes 2 lunches and2 dinners.

DEADLINE: April 19. Obtain aregistration form today from your localhistorical society secretary, or phone Mrs.E. Murdoch at 372-3827.

We are fast approaching the centennialof the Women’s Institute, (1897 - 1997).Surely some of our readers have memoriesof special activities undertaken by the local W.I.? Send in your memory, or yourmother’s story to the editor. Even if youonly write a paragraph or two, we canstitch them together to make a quilt ofstories about this Made-in-Canadaorganization.

Gems from the ArchivesDo you have a favorite newspaper clip

ping, postcard from long ago, poster orpicture that you would like to share?Please send it, or a clear photocopy of it,to N. Miller, Box 105, Wasa, B.C. VOB2K0.

Naomi Miller

COVER CREDITLaura Gilbert of Nanaimo posed for this pic

ture on her wedding day in 1887. Read thestory of this wedding dress, and the life of thisbride and her family as told by Pamela Mar onpage 5 & 6. B.C. Tel acknowledges her as oneof the earliest telephone operators in theprovince.

Photo Courtesy Nanalmo Museum & Archives.

Features

Show Us Where Mackenzie Walkedby John Woodworth

A Long Distance Line To The Pastby Pamela Mar

The Island Weaversby Shirley Cuthbertsan

Vancouver’s Jim Gardenby H. Ban Cotton

No Salmon, No Furs: The Provisioning ofFort Kamloops, 1841 - 1849

by Jeffrey W. Locke

U.B.C.’s Deans of Womenby Dolly Sinclair Kennedy

Conrad Kain: Mountain Man Par Excellenceby Mary Andrews

Captain Evans Represented the Minersby Lloyd Bailey

The Baileys of Colonial British Columbiaby Lloyd Bailey

Rollin Art Centre of Port Alberniby Catherine (Lord) Kean

NEWS & NOTES

BOOK SHELF

Vancouver and Its RegionReview by Mary Rawson

Otter Skins, Boston Ships and China GoodsReview by John Frazier Henry

The Dunsmuir SagaReview by Bill McKee

Brother TwelveReview by Peggy Imredy

Sunny Sandy Savary: A History 1792-1992Review Phyllis Reeve

The Run of the RiverReview by Kelsey McLeod

Volume 26, No. 2 Journal of the B.C. Historical Federation

CONTENTS

Spring - 1993

Page

2

5

7

11

14

19

22

27

30

33

36

37

37

37

38

38

39

39

40

Ragged Islands: A Journey by Canoe Throughthe Inside Passage

Review by Kelsey McLeod

Manuscripts and correspondence for the editor are to be sent to P.O. Box 105, Wasa, B.C. VOB 2K0Correspondence regarding subscriptions is to be directed to the subscription secretary (see inside back cover)

Printed in Canada by Kootenay Kwik PrintCranbrook, B.C. 1 B.C. Historical News . Spring 1993

“Show Us Where Mackenzie Walked”

byJohn Woodworth

1993 is the bicentennial of the first recorded crossing of continental NorthAmerica. For Canadians to-day it .signifies A MARl USQUE AD MARE onour Coat ofArms, “from sea to sea”.

For an older generation’s schooling,there was “Alex Mackenzie, From Canada, by land, 22nd July, 1793”, in 1926chipped into a dominating rock in DeanChannel 50 km through fjords fromBella Coola — much memorized fromthe textbooks.

Mackenzie’s CANADA was LowerCanada, now the Province of Quebec.He recorded in his 1801 journals 1 theNorthwest Company’s Route of theVoyageurs from the St. Lawrence Riverto Fort Chipewyan and Athabaska country, plus his unsuccessful search for aPacific trade outlet in 1789 (the first“wrong-way Corrigan” paddled downstream to the Beaufort Sea), and finallyhis 1792-93 zig-zag canoe and backpackexpedition to the Pacific.

There he missed Captain George Vancouver’s coastal survey crews by severalweeks. But between the two explorers,both gentle but determined men, Canada’s “sea to sea” motto was assured.Mackenzie’s breach of the Rockiesbrought the fur trade into New Caledonia, which along with the Cariboo goldrush gave us a British Columbia. Although each assumed Britain wouldclaim the coastline from the Gulf ofAlaska to south of the Columbia mouth,

B.C. got only half a border on thePacific.

Mackenzie’s crew of French Canadianvoyageurs, native Indian guides and hisaide, Alexander Mackay, after winteringnear the present Alberta town of PeaceRiver, paddled, portaged, and riskedtheir lives via the Peace, Parsnip andMcGregor Rivers to an eventual stalemate at or near Fort Alexandria on thesteep-walled Fraser north of WilliamsLake. Taking local (Shuswap) advicethey then struggled back north to a river Mackenzie named the West Road,known to-day as the Blackwater, justnorth of Quesnel. Here they donned85 lb. packs and in 14 days, guidedover the native “grease trail” and also asurprising alpine diversion, reached theBella Coola Valley and further canoeadventures.

Our story centres on this overlandtrek, a 350 km foot-trail that to-day is adesignated linear heritage site under theB.C. Heritage Act. Officially it’s theAlexander Mackenzie Heritage Trail(often abbreviated to AMHT). Enroute signage sub-titles also say “Nuxalk-Carrier Route” which recognizes itsSouthern Carrier origins on the Nechako/Chilcotin plateaus, and its coastalNuxalk (Bella Coola) connection.

But if you live out there, it’s theGrease Trail. ‘While there are dozensof Coast-to-Interior “grease trails”,from Alaska to California, where rendered oil from the little eulichan fishwas the high-priced trade item, there’s aloyalty from Bella Coola to the Fraserthat the AMHT is not just Mackenzie’strail. “It’s the Grease Trail!” So be it.

From 1975 until 1982, a small core ofCariboo and Bella Coola citizens pliedthe political path to get Canada andB.C. to agree that this prehistoric routeshould be recognized and preserved.Names like Rene (Kopas) Morton,daughter of Bella Coola’s famous writerand promoter, Cliff Kopas, stand out.And Andy Motherwell, former Quesnel

school principal, realtor, and regionaldistrict rep. And geographer KentSedgwick, Prince George planner andcurrently President of the 300 memberAlexander Mackenzie Trail Association(AMTA).

When these volunteers first asked forsupport from the forest industry, an aggressive woods boss — or maybe an oldhand B.C. Forest Service manager —

said bluntly, “So, show us whereMackenzie walked.”

A good question. Moccasins don’tleave 200-year-old tracks. Or do they?

A forties Canadian from Banff, naturalized Swedish park warden andphotographer, Halle Flygare, with histravel agent wife Linda, took up theland search between 1975 and 1982 ina series of summer contracts with ParksCanada.

In the late 20th century, one startswith a look-see from the air, backed bygovernment 1:50,000 maps, plusMackenzie’s journal r and useful1875 reports from Geological Survey of Canada’s Dawson 2 and SirSanford Flem s C.P.R. reconnaissance of the Lame period.

But the “nub” rests with the journals.“Walk west”, Mackenzie’s guides said,“along a river to a lake whose water isnauseous.” When you climb west byair from the mouth of the Blackwater,the torturous Blackwater canyons aresoon succeeded by a shallow woodedvalley laced with lakes and a river, coming in from due west with TweedsmuirPark’s Rainbow Mountains on thehorizon.

In broad terms, this rimrock-lined river valley separates the lava layers of theNechako Plateau to the north and theChilcotin to the south. Where else butthe river valley would you look for aprehistoric path? Sure enough, it’sthere. And not just the obvious 1900swagon and 4x4 rutted trails. In someplaces, as Flygare was to learn, weremoccasin trails that connected 4000-

The author examines an axed square surveypostftundon the 1909 Cluscus trail (now

part ofthe AMHT)

B.C. Historical News - Spring 1993 2

year-old prehistoric habitation sites.But the obvious direct valley route to

the coast mountains was initially notenough evidence to establish B.C.’s firstdesignated linear heritage site. Not in aterritory that was beginning to see hundreds of logging trucks rumble out dailyto mills at Vanderhoof, Prince Georgeand Quesnel.

“Show us where Mackenzie walked!”Fortunately Mackenzie’s journals give

us linkups in a chain of unarguablelandmarks. He wrote that the 1793 trailto the Pacific starts upstream a few milesfrom the Blackwater’s mouth. His Nazkoten guides slipped him by their villageat the south end of Punchaw Lake onthe old Blackwater Road, but SimonFraser archaeological students in a 1973site excavation recorded the old footpaththere at the logical north-south, east-west trail intersection.

Glacial kettles that Mackenzie called“basons” are at the foot of Titetownlake, for example (km 82.5 TrailGuide5). Chine Falls, where the Black-water drops out of Kiuskoil Lake (km99), fits too well the walking time fromthe Fraser up onto the plateau where theriver has slowed into a long chain oflakes. So does Sandyman Crossing (km137) where hikers to-day still wade orswim the Blackwater to get to the old(and now new) Kluskus village site thatentranced Mackenzie.

And it’s hard to argue that the coastal-type trading house at Gatcho Lake (km247), so vividly pictured by Mackenzie,then in 1875 photographed by G.L.Dawson and in the 1 970s excavated byarchaeologist Paul F. Donahue , is not abelievable landmark. Nor is the fishingencampment site in the Tanya LakesRainbow Mountains (km 289) whichwas recently reestablished by the Algatcho Band.

But the irrational climb Mackenzie’slocal guides showed him through a 6000foot snow-choked pass and down thecliff-face to the Bella Coola River andFriendly Village, we’ll come back to.First, “Show us where Mackenziewalked.”

Most credit for the field proof thateventually produced a measured andmarked historic route, goes to Halle andLinda. But their friend Peter Alexis, adescendent of original residents (km204) not only shared campfire with

them but tempted them with manyglimpses of abandoned foot trails andriver fords.

Were these bush-covered segments theaboriginal trail? Useful 1875 mapsfrom both Dawson and Fleming, plus a1909 survey sheet of the Cluskus Trailfrom the Fraser to Kluskus village, narrowed the field. While wagon trails stillin use identified (and also obliterated)most of the foot trail, there were somegaps where the horses and wagons tookthe easier and often swampier way, andthe native trail, as described by Mackenzie, went directly west over hills and lowmountains.

It was in these undisturbed sectionsour modern explorers exploited theirworking clues. First, they knew approximately where the foot trails separatedfrom the wagon roads or the key linkpoints. For example, at the west end oftrout-filled Eliguk Lake, trader PaulKrestinuk’s winter road to the abandoned village at Gatcho Lake slitheredover swamp and underbrush to bypass alow mountain, whereas Mackenziehiked up a trail over the top — where,

incidentally he describes the view of theAnahim Lake/Dean River valley to thesouth, and further on the snowcappedRainbows they were to thread throughin the west. The original foot trail simply had to be buried somewherebetween.

Halle’s bush sense helped him here.First, as an aid to distinguish prehistoricfootpath from meandering game trails,he says, “Could you walk it in yourstocking feet?” That is, moccasins orVibram soles? The latter ruled out a lotof aimless side trails.

Then, just as the big question mark”?”on a modern highway leads to a touristinformation centre, similar “?“ trademarks (see sketches) from earlysurveyors’ “flags” led him to search outtelltale linear footpath depressions. Youcan imagine the elation when a footpathsiting occurred between several of these“hooked” marker trees in a row. Orwhen the trail on the forest floorstopped at a big tree and emerged againon the other side!

What really convinced forestry officialshowever was Halle’s handy core drill.

Diis 5vVL’fO5

“Fk’.

‘hi

CJ4tP

‘F!agged” marker on tJe old traiL

3 B.C. Historical News Spring 1993

He’s a trained forester as well as parkwarden and professional outdoors photographer. Core drill annular rings,drawn from above a thumb-shaped stubwhere a marker tree branched sideways,again and again gave an origin of 1875 —

the year when Dawson and the C.P.R.looked to the grease trail for a Canadasea to sea rail route.

This writer’s father led him manytimes on bush searches, and I can seehim to-day regularly slicing off the topof a sapling as we moved into new territory, to leave a row of white slashes likebandaged thumbs to guide us homeward. (Readers please note, includingmy friend Halle, these are heritage treesto-day and not to be mounted like ant-lets over your fireplace.)

Among other clues that lead a trailwalker to-day to expect to run intoMackenzie in the deep woods, or thegroup Mackenzie met” . . . every man,woman and child carried a proportionate burden consisting of beaver coatingand parchment, as well as skins of theotter, the bear, the lynx, and dressedmoose skins . . . “ are the “kickwillie”holes: over-grown pockmarks, from 25foot diameter family size for permanentresidences, down to smaller for temporary sites and food storage pits. Whenyou spend time on the trail, your primalhuman senses guide you to them. Permanent sites where fishy streams leavelake systems, food pits at salmon rivermouths, lookout sites where to-day’swoods-wise person would tent for bug-free breezes, or to watch for game orstrangers.

Then there are the black glass-like obsidian chips, not only at obviouscampsites but under foot on the moccasin trail. Follow our familiararchaeologist Victoria’s Ian Wilson,head down, on a wet day and he showsyou one after another tiny worked chipsthat reflect up through the needles. Forunknown millennia, quarries in theRainbow Mountains have yielded thesejewels for arrow heads, knives and scrapers, that through scientific tests producea map pattern that covers both the seacoast and the Interior for hundreds ofmiles around. Please, “Leave ‘em be.”They’re protected by law.

So for several summers of rain, flood,frost, gales, bugs and occasionaldrought, Halle and Linda used their

clues and their woods sense to find themissing links between the known linkage points. In some heavy timber sites,often regrowth over forest fires, wherethe trail simply had to be, they were reduced to flagging large acreages intorectangles for conventional “squaresearches” literally nose to the ground.A great sensation on a needle-cover forest floor to find perhaps first thehooked tree and then the logical ongoing scoop-shovel-width section ofcontinuing trail depression!

Little by little, between the FraserRiver and Tanya Lakes in TweedsmuirPark, a legitimate-looking AMHTcame together — much of it existingwagon or horse trail, but with enoughwilderness walking to challenge 15 to20-day long-distance trekkers. For daytrippers, several easy walks exist close topublic roads.

But an enigma exists in Mackenzie’s“grease trail” travels. At Tanya Lakeshis native travelling companions pointed south to a “vee” in the RainbowMountains horizon. Through that veethey said were the seacoast nativesMackenzie wished to visit.

As for themselves, they had otherplans. For Takia River, the Tanya Likestream where they caught spawning salmon led steeply downhill about 25 kmto Salmon House Falls on the world famous Dean River. Why not. . . Ho HoHo. . .bump this enquiring Whiteman50 km in the opposite direction to besomeone else’s guest

Whatever their intent, Mackenziehiked south through a narrow alpinevalley to a 6000 ft. snow-drifted pass,from which he could see to the south“...a stupendous mountain . . . between it and our immediate courseflowed the river to which we were going.” This was to-day’s landmarkTremendous Mtn. at the foot of whichare the Bella Coola Valley sites Mackenzie called Friendly Village and GreatVillage (the latter recently subject to rewarding archaeological excavations bySimon Fraser University).

While there is a 60-70 km ancientabandoned trail, known as the AlgatchoSummer Trail between Tanya Lakesand the Bella Coola River furtherdownstream, it’s not the way Mackenzie went. Too many clues, both goingdown and coming back up, have him

walking straight to the lip of the 4500 ftplateau below the pass and then scrambling dOwn the cliff face into BurntCreek and out to the valley bottom.To-day’s descendants of the original Native families who greeted him have nodoubts that he came and went via BurntBridge. So, by a kind of “judgementcall”, to-day’s Alexander MackenzieHeritage Trail comes down off the alpine on an established switchback packtrail through the west arm of BurntBridge Creek.

The 450 km AMHT full trip is described in detail and with accompanyingphotos, 1:50,000 maps, sketches, anecdotes, and Mackenzie quotations in “Inthe Steps of Alexander Mackenzie” byWoodworth and Flygare. ($20.00mailed from AMTA, Box 425 Stn A,Kelowna, B.C. V1Y 7P1.) Some hikers, such as a Sidney Girl Guides groupwho wrote us, broke the challenge intothree good August excursions.

At present, several day-trip brochuresdescribe a variety of walks at each end ofthe AMHT. Off the Quesnel-PrinceGeorge west-side Blackwater Road alongthe Fraser are both the Lower Blackwater Bridge outings and a range ofTitetown Lake walks. The latter includes shallow fords on the EuchinikoRiver and the glacial kettles Mackenziecalled “basons”. There’s also a favouritehour-long loop trail at the western trailend, up Burnt Bridge Creek from Highway 20. Brochures are stocked by B.C.Forest Service and B.C. Parks, at Williams Lake and Bella Coola.

John Woodwortb was funding president oftheAlexander Mackenzie Trail Association and isnow their volunteer executive secretary and produces its quarterly Newsletter. He is a retiredarchitect who makes his home in Kelowna.

REFERENCES

1. Mackenzie, A. (1801) Voyages from Montreal onthe River St. lawrence Through the Continent ofNorth America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceansin the Years 1789 and 1793 (various editions),M.G. Hurtig, Edmonton, Alberta, 1971.

2. Diary of George Dawson, Geological Survey ofCanada, Ottawa ca 1876.

3. Fleming, Sir Sanford, Report on Surveys and Preliminary Operations of the Canadian PacificRailway. ca 1875.

4. Donahue, Paul F. Ulkatcho An ArchaeologicalOutline — look ftr pollen studies at Teali Site.

5. Woodworth & Flygare, In the Steps of AlexanderMackenzie.

Map - See page 36.


A Long Distance Line To The Past

by Pamela MarFor some time the British Columbia

Telephone Company has exhorted us to“reach out and touch someone”. An opportunity to do so in a very practical waycame in May 1991 when Nanaimo’s pastand present telephone operators held areunion to celebrate the company’s100th anniversary.

In the costume and textile collection atthe Nanaimo Centennial Museum is awedding dress worn by Laura Gilbert.She became the wife of George Cavalskyin 1887. George had a store on VictoriaCrescent, which housed Nanaimo’s firsttelephone switchboard. Laura Cavaiskywas the first operator, and likely the firstfemale to hold such a post in theprovince.

The idea of displaying her dress to recent operators was appealing — it wouldform both an historic link with the pastand honour their reunion.

The dress is very small — Laura was petite even for her day — and mounting itwas a challenge as none of our modelswas suitable. But we improvised andachieved the necessary effect. A check ofaccessories revealed that we had not onlyher dress, but also her kid leather shoesand gloves. Together with our wedding“finds” a good display ensued, and thosewho were able to visit the Museum werehappy to see this link with the past. Af

ter a month or so, everything was returned to storage. But Laura has comeback several times to jog my memory.

Earlier this year a relative brought in aphoto of Laura in her wedding finery.For our records this was invaluable aswe could see just how the dress hadlooked, and what was missing in theway of trims. In the summer, anotherdescendant visited and was delighted tosee “grandmother’s” wedding dressonce again.

The family promised further information for our archives. However, thisarticle was invited, and so I went insearch of “Laura” once more.

On the occasion of their GoldenWedding, November 1937, the ‘Nanaimo Free Press’ published a shortbiography of the couple. Laura wasborn in Penzance, Cornwall, in 1864.She came to Nanaimo in 1874 withother family members to join their father, who was working in the mines.George Cavalsky was born in Denmarkand came to Victoria in 1880. Hesailed in coastal shipping for some yearsand settled in Nanaimo in 1886 toopen a grocery store. Presumably helost little time in courting Laura as theywere married the next year on November 9th.

In its history, B.C. Tel notes that in

Laura Gilbert/Cavaisky in her wedding dreu.Photo courtesy of tile

Nanaimo Centennial Museum & Archives.

1878 or a little earlier, William Wallwas the first person in the province tomake telephones and install a line.This was for Dunsmuir’s Wellingtonmines, and other telephones followed asthe Dunsmuir interests grew.

Although a telephone company wasnot set up officially in Nanaimo until1890, lines were placed in August 1887and a switchboard installed in GeorgeCavalsky’s store, with less than a dozensubscribers. Newly-weds George andLaura acted as operators. After a yearor so, the exchange was moved to amore central location, and by 1890 thesystem had about 37 subscribers.

Laura’s wedding photo shows a pensive and very young-looking woman.She was given away by John Pawson, aformer Mayor of Nanaimo, her fatherhaving died in 1876 and his brother,her Uncle William, in the big 1887mine explosion. The family had begunthe Temperance Hotel on BastionStreet soon after their arrival, and Mrs.

-

FernvilIe the Cavaickyfamily borne on Esplanade in Nanairno. Mrs. Cavaicky rnade gardening herbobby, and the cultivation ofmany types ofcactus a specialty.

Photo from the Heritage Homes Collection at Nanalmo Centennial Museum.

5 B.C. Historical News - Spring 1993

The writer is a volunteer at the Nanaimo Centennial Museum and Archives. She dedicatesmuch time to working with the textile collection,Princess Royal Day, and otherprojects.

SOURCES

Inftrrmaiion for this article has been culled from material inthe Nanaimo Community Archives and the Nanaimo Historical Society Archives. In paruculan Nanaimo Free PressNovember 1887, November 1937, January 1940 andMarch 1991: B.C. Telephone publications ‘TelephoneTapestry” and “Spirit ofVision”; sections in ‘Nanaiem Retrospective” and “History of Nanaimo Pioneers”. Mrs.Peggy Nicholls also drew on her personal archives for earlyhistory.

On Wednesday morning the citizensof Nanaimo were aIIm a flutter towitness the ceremony that, wouldunite Mr. George Cavaliky and MissLaura Gilbert in wedlock. Shortly before 10 o’clock the spacious MethodistChurch was filled with an expectantcongregation, the fair sex largely predominating. In a few minutes thegroom, accompanied by Mr. WilliamLewis, to support him through thetrying ordeal, entered the Church andtook their starts near the pulpit. Shortly after 10 o’clock the handsome andyouthful bride, leaning UOfl tile armof Mr. John Pawson, tx-Mayor of thisCity, entered the church and walkedup to the altar, when the Rev. JosephHall, Pastor of the Methodist Church,read the ceremony that suede GeorgeCavaleky and LauraGiiberL man andwife. At the conclusion of this ceremony the groom saluted Isis bridewith a kiss and this was followed bythe bridesmaids and numerous friends.As the bridal party returned down theaial. to the carriages, the church bellsrang out a merrie merrie peal.

The bridesmaids were Miss MaggieJones, Miss E. Williams, Miss LauaGreen and Miss Lillie Freethy.

The bridal party and several invitedguests proceeded the residence ofMrs. J. K. Gilbert (mother of the bcide)on Bastion Street, where a sumptuouswedding breakfast was in ‘waiting, towhich most ample justice was doneThe newly married couple left by theafternoon train for Victoria, on a wedding tour to Pu’get Sound.. As thetrain moved off showers, of rice werØthrown over the young éouplà as’ anemblem of good luck and happiness:

The young bride has lived in thiscity for a number of years and was a!general favorite, while the bridegroomis a most popular”geñtleman. Thenewly married couple were the recipients of hearty and numerdtl8 wishesfor as. united life of unalloyed happnest and prosperit’,1 and with ‘thisgeneral felicitation the FuEE ‘Pauss. isheartily. in accord. ‘ On’ their eturi11Mr. and Mrs Geoge. Cavalaky willtake up their reeidenc on ‘Victoria’Crescent. . ,.‘

In the evening asOeial”pa’ct’ ‘tdbkplace at the resIdeticehMr: GilIeçt;’and a pleasant evening was passed. AL’Victoria, Capt. Rudlin gave the newlymarried couple an evening party whichwas also numerously attended. ‘

.,. I

THE nREssE.;I he bride’ore a wiiI.e1 stn drms,

trimmed with crean?:jc?or Frenchlace and pearl bead, oane blospmwreath and embroidereullevei1...

Miss Maggie, Jones,, .,(brjdesrnaid)wore a pink satin dress trimued withcreani colored French lace and pearlbeads. ii ..

• Miss E. Villiatn (bridesmaid) worea ruby plush dress trimmed with creamcolored French lace and pearl beads.

Miss Laura, Green (niece’ of thebride) and Miss Lihlie Freetby (cousinof the bride) (bridesnids) were dressed alike aed wore crç lace dressesand ruby flowers.

.i TH X PRESENTS. .: a ‘i.

Following ‘is the li of the resen tsr.ceived (omitting aunique presentr.ceived by the groornin’ the shape ofa minature baby doll) - by the’ newlymarried couple. ‘The parties making:them have; exerëised ‘eaeellent ‘judgment, for they are of a’pztical character and just the thin; tOstisrt hbusekeeping with :— ‘ •‘ ‘ ‘

Mr. J. Rertraua_TvoIargo.oil paint.usgs. ,. , ,

,

Mr. Win. I.Mwis (grspaunan)—An Album. , ‘,.‘ ‘I

Mrs. .1. W. ‘Glahobei—A. jair’ Of” vasds:Mr. J. Pawson, J. P.—A ooking stove.A Fsiend—An extensiOn tablc.’”Mrs. T. W.’Ghaholm—A butter dIk*Miss Williams (bridesmaid)-..—A silver

cake basket. : , -

Mr. Jag. Williams—A cruet stand....,‘Mrs. John Iljlbert—A’ruset staml:Mrs. Sarah Johns—A Plush table

Scarf. ‘

Miss Lursey—A cake hohles;Miss Bertram—A tea set.Mr. Cicero Wcatwood—A flower” stand.Miss Jones (bridesmaid)—Catsup Jar.

aud Butter Knife.Mrs. JOne8—A bed spread.Richardson & Homer—A bed spread.Miss Parkin—A table cover.Miss Barbara l’rnnln—A decanterMrs. J.’ R. Jenkins—A lamp anti teapot.Mrs. Monck—A pin cushion,Miss Maggie Watkins—A matiMiss Jennie Jones—A matMrs. W. Bone—A fruit basket. fL:.Mrs. (L Old—A handsome; pair of

vases. .

.

Mr. Chas. I)onahue—A ro’kin cuairad towel rack. , ,

‘Mr. Henry Hague—A dozen siler t,a

1rJ. K. Gilbert (mbt’hé’roftlsebride)—Halt-do’e’i chairs, a centre table and

—MissKtie (‘ibetli Ill jeJJdishes. , , ‘ . , , ,

:, ,A friend—A pair of cornice po)s.:Miss’Brañt—A opy of Scotta’ poems.Miss Mebius—A hasidpaluuted hnndker

chief case. ..‘ a” -. ‘

-

Miss Barke—.Avincusbion.Mr. Gooege Mitebeil—A silver fih sHoedMrs.Gar[and-rApicklè.iar. .: .i.. .

MIss Garland—A card receiver.,Mr. Jehn If iibertA coal scuttle, scrub.,

bing ‘brush, blacking brush, , black Itadbrush and a broom. . -.

—.,— . ... —

NOverber 1th 1387Nana.L Free Press.

A HAPPY EVENT.

Marriage of Mr. Geo. Cavaiskyand Miss Laura Gilbert I

THE CHURCH CROWDED.

Gilbert re-opened it following her husband’s death. Weekly board was $6 orcould be had by the day. That theymust have prospered is indicated by thereports of a sumptuous wedding breakfast and the fact that Laura’s weddingdress was a rather “impractical” white.A coloured dress which could later beworn for best was often the 19th centurybride’s choice.

Laura and George were a prominentpart of pioneer Nanaimo, being active invarious lodges and societies. Georgeplayed a major part in public life. Hejoined the Fire Department in 1888, becoming its secretary in 1895, a post heldfor over 40 years. He was elected an Alderman for 17 different terms between1908 and 1935.

Their home on the Esplanade nearNo. 1. Mine was a social gatheringplace. At the entrance the name of thehouse, “Fernvile”, lettered on large bluetiles is still on the concrete path.George was said to have named otherhomes in Nanaimo in this manner, butthey have mostly vanished.

They raised three daughters, and ason, J. King Cavaisky. B.C. Tel proudlynotes that the son followed the exampleset by his parents and served with theCompany for 38 years until his retirement in 1961. Two daughters married.The third, Bertha, remained in Nanaimo, living at Haslam Hall. This was thebuilding that started Nanaimo’s movetowards heritage preservation.

Laura died in January 1940, andGeorge in July of the same year. A photo taken at the time of their GoldenWedding shows this tiny lady with curlyhair and a smile. George sported amoustache as in the earliest photos wehave of him. Many people in Nanaimostill remember the Cavalskys with warmaffection.

The 1887 News item.

B.C. Historical News . Spring 1993 6

The Island Weavers

If you lived in Victoria (or Vancouver)from 1933 to 1974 you may rememberbuying fabric or a suit at the “IslandWeavers”. The Island Weavers was asmall company with its headquarters inVictoria, that made quality tweeds andtartans and shipped them as far away asNew York. Their story is representativeof a business that started as a small family business, flourished and then stopped- for many reasons, some of them typicalof other small businesses in the history ofthis province. It also represents the storyof many people who came to this country, contributed ideas, energy andproducts to our way of life, and who takethemselves for granted, so that we don’talways recognize the contribution. In

some ways, it’s a remarkable story, because it is a success story that startedduring the early years of the Depressionand survived until the seventies.

For the Royal B.C. Museum’s Historystaff the story began with a loom, collected in 1975. The catalogue card thatis supposed to tell us everything aboutthis object had this photo on it, and thecard said that the source was “not established”. Between the time that it wascollected and the present, the museum’slarge artifacts had been moved fromone warehouse to another. Everythingwas moved and had to be inventoriedlater, so the Museum hired summerstudents to help. Although the museumhad the data in the files, no one had

time just then to go through all the papers; if a tag came off during the move,the original number was missing.Without a number or a name, anypaper concerning an artifact is just oneof several hundred thousand pieces ofpaper.

The loom no longer had all its parts,as some had been moved separately. Inorder to stabilize the frame, we neededtwo crossbars replaced. One of ourstaff, a conservator who looks after thetextile collection, gave me the name ofsomeone who fixes looms for membersof the Weavers’ Guild - Emory LaLonde.I called his home, and his wife said hewould probably be very pleased to help.In fact, she said he was “a loom nut”!

by Shirley Cuthbertson

Joan OUfield working the Loom. c. 1940.Photo courtesy of Bonita Jackson.


Emory came, figured out what wasneeded, he and some of our Historystaff got the materials, and conservatorGeorge Field worked with him to replace the essential pieces. While Emorywas working on the loom, he suggested Italk to Chris Howland, who had workedfor a long time in Victoria as a professional weaver. I called Chris, who cameout to see the loom, and of course herecognized it immediately. Chris hadbeen the one responsible for bringingthe loom to the Museum from the lastplace it was used, at 1019 LangleyStreet. Later I found a “specimen receipt” dated October 25th, 1975, withChris’s signature as the donor, and sincehe still lives at the same address, I wouldhave been able to track down the storythrough this piece of paper. However,as often happens with museums, it is thecommunity network of people with similar interests and good memories thatgot us started on this story.

The loom was one of those brought toVictoria by Chris’s employers, MajorR.G.H. and Mrs. Enid Murray, afterthey started the Island Weavers company in Victoria in 1933. Chris told us itwas a Galasheils loom, 54” width, madeby Thomas Kennedy in Scotland. Sidney Pickles, who had been a consultantto GM on gear ratios, designed andbuilt the gears in Victoria.

I asked Chris if he would talk aboutthe loom while I videotaped, becausewhen you have a very large, complex object like this loom, the best documentyou can make is one that connects thespoken word with the object and itsparts. What we wanted for our recordswas its origins, history of use, and something about how it worked, since noneof us are weavers. While we were doingthis, Chris said I should talk to Mrs.Murray, who lived in Victoria, and whocould tell me much more about the Island Weavers. So I wrote to Mrs.Murray and followed up with a phonecall and visit. She told the story in herbusiness-like way, not making too muchof her and her husband’saccomplishments.

The Murrays chose Victoria to start aweaving business when Major Murrayretired from the British Army in the early 30’s. Major Murray had wanted tocome to Canada, and a naval officerthey met in India, who had been sta

tioned in Esquimalt, mentioned that“Victoria has everything, except goodtweeds!”Enid Murray’s father was a civil engineer in India (he laid the railroad intoKarachi), and her husband’s father wasSurgeon-General there. She had comethrough British Columbia when she hadbeen sent to school in England. Mrs.Murray says that although the British inIndia refer to England as “Home”, andshe had been born there, it had neverbeen “home” to her. Her father hadwanted to come to Canada earlier. Hehad brought her back to India after avisit to England when he found she wasstudying Latin by candlelight becauseshe wanted to be a doctor - “No daughter of mine is going to work for aliving!”

For a retiring Major, the British Armypension after 1929 was not enough forboth to live on, especially as the stockmarket crash and depression altered circumstances. Mrs. Murray became aweaver because it was suggested by herhusband - “Enid, you’re going to be aweaver!” She had had some experiencewith textiles, having worked at a friend’stweed shop in Kashmir, and hadwatched the Kashmir weavers producingexquisite work on primitive looms. Infact, weaving done on hand looms wassuperior to fabric produced on powerloom systems. (A power loom is anyloom that is run by machinery, a handloom such as the one in the Museumcollection is powered by the treadlesworked by the feet of the weaver.) TheMurrays decided that Canada, especiallywestern Canada, might be a good market for Scottish style weaving. Theycame to Victoria from India in March1932, and she left for England in April.Major Murray used the Public Libraryto research the business, and the Librarian had put him in touch with a Mr.Cochrane, who said “You must go toGalasheils Technical College”.

Galasheils was the centre of the Scottish tweed trade, and the college, startedin 1909, is the Scottish Woolen Technical College, Selkirkshire. Mrs. Murraywent first to London and “went to allthe shops” - doing what we would calltoday “marketing research”. Then shewent to Galasheils and entered theTechnical College, which had been builtto train the sons of the mill owners. At

first she lived in a room over a grocerystore, and was able to visit her husband’ssister on weekends as her only break.

As she was there to learn a complexcraft as quickly as possible, she oftenworked from eight in the morning untilmidnight. There is more to weavingthan learning the physical movements.One of her instructors told her to findthe reciprocal square root of an area inorder to determine the number ofthreads to the inch. Fortunately, although she was not acquainted withsquare root, mathematics was one of herbetter subjects.

She must have done well, although itwas unusual to have a woman in theCollege - she was only the second woman in 32 years to apply. The mill-owners, who treated her well, invitedher to visit the mills, and one of thelarge manufacturers, Fairgraves, took herin. In fact, throughout her years in business, she retained close ties with anumber of the mill-owners, and returned at least once, often twice a year,to purchase yarns. Arranged by Paton& Baldwin’s Canadian agent, yarn wasshipped via the Panama Canal. One ofthe mill-owners, a Mr. College, showedher the material “S - P”, a hard-wearingfabric, which was to become a staple ofher business. She returned to Victoriain November 1932, with a Scots weaverloom and 500 pounds of yarn. The Island Weavers is listed in the 1932-33Directory. The name “Island Weavers”was suggested by his mother, who livedin Victoria for several years.

The first loom brought to Canada(they had limited capital, as some money Mrs. Murray had inherited had beeninvested and was lost in the “crash” of1929), was set up in the attic of Rossmead, now the Olde English Inn inEsquimalt. Rickards bought the housethree months after the Murrays rentedit. They then rented a room in the oldEsquimaft High School (818 EsquimaltRoad, near Dominion Street), for $13 amonth, and later bought the building.Later in 1933, the Murrays broughtover two more looms, and two Scottishboys as weavers. These were olderlooms, which they got from Mr.College.

Major Murray did the accounting forthe firm. The Murrays had a “HeadBoy” running the factory in Esquimalt,

B.C. Historical News Spring 1993 8

and by 1938 the business had prosperedso that ten looms were kept in production. The first head boy was JimmyDavidson, who later returned to Galasheils, as did Jimmy Birney, who hadcome from a large working class family.In 1939, he joined the Air Force, andwas given a commission as a Flight Lieutenant. Mrs. Murray took him toWilson’s in Victoria to get him a uniform. Later he became manager of Mr.College’s firm in Galasheils.

Before the war, the Murrays employedonly boys, after the war started, onlygirls. In addition to weavers, they employed two darners, who went over thefabric, took out any knots and wove thethreads in. Cloth was measured by theScottish “porter” system (20 porters in37”). In the early days, they sometimesworked from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.,not just on the looms, but doing all theother work to get ready and finish thecloth.

The loom in the museum collectionwas used to weave Harris tweed as wellas other fabrics. The Island Weavers

wove the “S - P” fabric, and Kashmiryarn as well. It took anywhere from21/2 to 3 or even 4 hours to set up aloom for weaving. The actual weavingtime for the professional weaver averaged about 11/2 yards an hour. Thecloth was removed from the loom,checked, and menders removed anyknots or loose ends before it was “finished” - washed, stretched and pressed.Some of this work was done in women’s homes. This attention to detail iswhat makes hand-woven material ahigher-quality product than machineweaving.

The first downtown retail outlet wasin the Belmont Building - they had acorner window in the Period Arts Shopopposite the Empress Hotel in 1933.In 1936, they opened their own shop at1013 Government, with a tailoringshop in the room above. Mrs. Murrayhad a retail outLet in Vancouver at 12thand Granville in 1935, which shemoved to Georgia Street opposite Hudson’s Bay, and which did well after thewar. When they needed to fill a Vancouver order, Mrs. Murray drove it tothe ferry and sent it express.

In 1935, realizing that the summertourist trade in Victoria was not sufficient and they needed the business overthe winter, she went to the U.S. immigration authorities and the people inthe Textile Tower in Seattle, and sinceno one was weaving in Seattle at thattime, she was allowed to bring over twoScots boys and set up two looms in theTower. She was partly financed bymill-owners in Galasheils, and boughtyarn and fabric from them for theAmerican market.

In order to find markets in the UnitedStates, she travelled to New York, stopping at Chicago en route with anintroduction to the man who was thebuyer for Marshall Fields. (They hadbought out Frederick & Nelson in Seattle, where Mrs. Murray dealt.) Hereferred her to McCutcheons in NewYork.

With orders from both MarshallFields - the dress she was wearingturned out to be “the Marshall Fieldscolour” for that year, and from McCutcheons, she and the two “boys” workedlong hours from July 4, when they received the yarns (it usually took twoweeks for an order to come from Brit

Chth Howland in an Island Weave, Suit.Photo courtesy of Chris Howland.

am) until September, when the orderswere due for the winter line of clothingto be manufactured.. They had to maketheir own warps and patterns, and Mrs.Murray did the “darning” in the evenings. The looms they used there were74” wide to meet American demand.They were hard to operate: “too demanding, heavy”, compared with the54” width in Britain and Canada. During this period, 1935 to early 1940,they (mostly Major Murray) spent agood deal of time in Seattle and traveLling, so they (mostly Major Murray)lived at the Empress. He belonged tothe Union Club and had some of hismeals there. Their daughters attendedQueen Margaret’s School at Duncan.

They kept on with the Seattle business, eventually with four looms (Mrs.Murray trained two American boys),until war made it too difficult to get theyarns in time to fill the orders. Theysold once to Bullock-Wiltshire in California, but they were difficult to dealwith. During this time, they startedsending parcels from the U.S. (a neutral

Mrs. EnidA. Murray, 1935.Photo courtesy of Chris Howland.


country at the time) to Canadian prisoners of war. By the time they finished,they were sending up to 230 parcels amonth to Canadian and GalasheilsPOW’s. At first they did it on theirown with a few friends, but later moneywas contributed by all their customersvia a charitable organization in theStates.

Mrs. Murray had been selling for twofirms in Scotland as well as her own, butdid not enjoy dealing with the NewYork buyers, the cost of yarns went upvery quickly, (especially after the war).When double knits came into fashion,exports coming into the United Stateswere severely limited, and the devaluation of the French franc gained theadvantage for that country in shippinggoods into the States, the Murraysclosed the business in Seattle.

Because the Murrays had built in theBrentwood Bay area near Woodward’sfarm in 1946, Mrs. Murray was acquainted with the Woodward family,who built two shopping centres in Vancouver. She was invited to move herVancouver shop to Park Royal when itopened in 1950, and later to Oakridgewhen it opened in 1959. Mrs. Murrayran the Oakridge shop herself, and livedin Vancouver. They employed eight tailoresses from a variety of nationalbackgrounds (Danish, German, Japanese and others), in the back of theOakridge shop. Oakridge was their“best-paying” place, but in 1974, whenthe lease went from around $300 amonth to $1,500, added to the fact thattaking on the shop as it was, they hadborrowed to fix it up, they decided tosell the lease.

They ended up with eleven 54” loomsin Victoria before they closed. Therewere a number of reasons for closing,but probably the most important werethat the cost of yarn “sky-rocketed”:sometimes when she first started Mrs.Murray was able to get odd bits of yarnfor as little as tenpence or a shilling apound, more often it was 2 shillings apound. By 1950, the minimum pricewas 20 shillings a pound, rising to 35and sixpence. By the early 70’s, it wasanywhere from $3.50 to $6.00 a poundand still rising. It became harder to get,and other kinds of fabric (mostly synthetics) became more and more popular.The Murrays’ daughters had decided to

develop their talents in other ways thanto carry on with the weaving business,so in 1974, Mrs. Murray closed the Island Weavers.

Some of their work was used in theCanadian Embassy in Washington inthe 60’s, and they were asked to exhibitat the Rockefeller Institute in NewYork. The quality of their work mayhave been better known away from their“home town” than here. Mrs. Murray’shusband Robin (Major R.G.H. Murray)died in 1973 - as did Jimmy Davidsonand Jimmy Birney, her two early “headboys”.

The Island Weavers operated duringthe best years for handweaving. Fromthe early 19th century, when the heavytweeds of Scotland began to be marketed elsewhere, until synthetics weredeveloped for outdoor wear, there was agreat demand for warm, tough fabricwith a wide range and mixture of colour. Handweaving in Scotland, whichwas maintained for an elite market, haslost ground in the competition withsynthetic fibres and large-scale production as recently as the 1980’s. TheToronto Globe & Mail (January 1,1990, B3) reported that weaving production in the Hebrides has declinedfrom a high in 1984 of 5 million metresto 2.1 million metres in 1989, when theU.S. buyers bought less than 200,000metres. The hand-weaving industry inScotland is still a mixture of old andnew - yarn is produced and finished inmills, but handweaving is a cottage industry. In Scotland, this means that thecrofters, who get the yarn from the millsand weave it in their homes, then returnit to the mills for finishing and distribution, face a bleak future. One of themwas quoted as wishing that it would be a“terribly hard, cold winter in America soall the Yanks buy some tweeds.”

Elsewhere, as here, new technology,cheaper material goods and increased international marketing have a powerfulimpact on everyday life. As I said, thestory of the Island Weavers is representative of many manufacturing businessesin British Columbia, they are a part ofworld economic change.

The story of the Island Weavers loomis also typical of many artifacts in theMuseum: the donor recognized it as apiece of twentieth century history,which is how most museum collections

continue to grow. What museums andarchives will have to tell about the 20thcentury depends on what we decide tokeep. But museums have almost runout of space, so our dilemma is to decidenow what can be kept for the future. Itmay be that the best understanding ofthe past will come from maintaining traditions in the “museums” we preserve inour homes, like the other Island Weaver’s loom, still in use in ChrisHowland’s basement.

Shirley Cuthbertson is a senior staffmember atthe Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria. She servedas secretary of the B.C. Historical Federation frrseveralyears.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Belford, Margaret, “The Island Weaveis,”Colonist, April 13, 1969, p.4.

Howland, Chris, (interviews) 1989- 92.

Murray, Enid, (interview and correspondence)January - February, 1990

Prokesch, Stephen, “Declining Harris Tweed popularityjeopardizes age - old industry”. Toronto Globe & Mail(January 1, 1990, 03)

Adfrom the Times-Colonis4 1962.

ISLAND WEAVERS30th

Congrust,tIon, 0,the nt, of Vtrtort, Os It,100th Aflolver,ary, ,, we Jot, I,, by rot,bratI,g war own 30 yea,, to bust,,,,.

Hand-Woven FabricsCrenled at 0ar Own boa., In Victoria

If de,Ired, thee, fabric, designed for ourcustomer,,, Into diatinetivo

•SUITS•COATS• DRESSES• SKIRTS• Special Orders

taken forDraperydesigns

Island Weavers Ltd.1059 OOVF.RNMF1iT 0-fReer

nSt.blt,h,d 9012


Vancouver ‘s Jim Garden

Practicing surveyors are not oftenfound as members of Provincial Legislatures, but as RE. Gosnell wrote in1926: “1 know of no-one in my timewho was so personally popular in Vancouver as Garden . . . not because hetried to be, but because he was always‘Jim Garden’, with a smiling face andcheery greeting”. So it seems only logical that his career would expand intopolitics.

His story begins on February 19th1847, in Woodstock, New Brunswick,where he was one of seven sons and twodaughters born to H.M.G. and Jane(Gale) Garden. The family were ofUnited Empire Loyalist descent. Thesons were James Ford, Charles, Herbert,Edward, Arthur, Julius and Henry, thefirst four of whom followed the engineering profession, and were identifiedwith the construction of the main lineand branches of the Canadian PacificRailway. The two daughters becameMrs. Ballock and Mrs. L. Bull.

James Ford was educated at CharlotteCounty Grammar School, and as ayoung man he first worked at an oil-refinery in Portland, Maine. Later hecame west to Ontario, and spent sometime on railway operation and construction under Hugh Lumsden C.E. Aboutthis time, the Dominion Government ofCanada started a systematic survey ofthe North-West Territories, and Mr.Garden decided to go in for surveying.He served his apprenticeship with Mr.Sing, at Meaford, Ontario, qualiing asan Ontario Land Surveyor in 1877, anda Dominion Land Surveyor in 1880,commission #49.

He was at Flat Creek, Manitoba in1882, the headquarters for DominionLand Surveyors for that year. This wasthe year when the earliest meetings ofthe Association of Dominion Land Surveyors took place, and J.F. Garden wasone of those who attended. The year1883 was noteworthy in that Townshiplayout in the Territories reached an unprecedented peak of activity. Otto

Klotz’s diary for that year mentionssharing a sleeper on the newly-constructed C.P. Railway with Messrs.Garden, Cotton and Hermon, and preliminary evenings spent in camp atMoose Jaw, where each survey party inturn hosted a social evening. Gardenwas in Moose Jaw for that year, and in1884 also. In the fall he would returnto Toronto, where he made his home.

However in 1885, Louis Riel returnedto Canada, and the problems that hadcharacterized the young days of theProvince of Manitoba came to a head,

with the second North-West Rebellion.Government surveys on the prairieswere suspended, and many surveyorsjoined the Dominion Land Surveyors’Intelligence Corps, which was beingformed under Capt. John StoughtonDennis Jr. It was a mounted corps,formed for the purpose of scouting, andhaving a somewhat top-heavy establishment (there were 22 commissionedofficers out of a total force of 53). J.F.Garden was commissioned asLieutenant.

At Batoche — reputedly while General

by H. Barry Cotton

James Ford Garden - Mayor of Vancouver 1889- 1900. MM 1900- 1909Photo courtesy of B.C. Archives & Records Service - Cat. No. HP21 641

11 B.C. Historical News . Spring 1993

Middleton and his staff had retired tohave lunch — the Surveyors’ corps exchanged scouting duties for more directaction, and went on to capture the position. Their success, however, was notachieved without loss. Killed in the engagement was Lieut. W.A. Kippen; whileamongst other casualties Lieut. Gardenwas wounded in the left arm. He wasthen 38 years old.

In the spring of 1886, work startedagain for the profession, and Mr. Gardenreceived instructions to proceed to British Columbia and make surveys in theRailway Belt — that strip of land 20 mileson either side of the centre-line of theC.P.R., granted by the Province to theDominion of Canada as part of the termsof Confederation (It was conveyed backagain much later, in 1930). ThomasFawcett, who had also been wounded atBatoche, and A.F. Cotton were also inthe contingent. E.B. Hermon, whomGarden had first met in 1882, was engaged as his assistant.

Mr. Garden’s destiny from that timeon was to be bound up with British Columbia. In the fall of that year, insteadof returning to Toronto, he and E.B.Hermon opened an office in Vancouver,as the firm of Garden & Hermon, comprising two-thirds of the City’s landsurveyors (the other one was John Strathearne). In 1887 the first train arrived.Mr. Garden continued on Governmentwork through the seasons 1887 and1888, when local work increased sufficiently to pass on his contracts toColonel J.R.O. Vicars D.L.S. ofKamloops.

Mr. Garden’s last season with the Dominion Government on Railway Beltsurveys deserves mention, as it was thesubject of an article in the Daily NewsAdvertiser, Nov. 1, 1887, when he returned to Vancouver. The article isinformative, and is entitled: “DominionLand Surveys in B.C.”

It describes Mr. Garden’s party — 8men plus himself — the agricultural andgrazing land which would be available —

the 200 miles of lines run, mostly at thejunction of the North and SouthThompson Rivers. It also describes theFourth System of Survey.

The most general system in use duringthe survey of Dominion Lands had beenthe Third System, in which road allowances of one chain in width extendedalong each Section line running north

and south, and along every alternateSection line running east and west.However, in the rugged terrain of British Columbia, to lay out roadsaccording to astronomic rather than engineering principles was (notsurprisingly!) considered impractical.So, while the astronomic layout ofTownships and Ranges was still projected throughout the Railway Belt, theFourth System of survey came into being, in which road allowances were notsurveyed as such, but included in theSections, which were made correspondingly larger.

Later that year, a light-hearted account of Mr. Garden’s leaving the Cityto spend Christmas with his brotherappeared in the same newspaper: —

Mr. Garden was a Lieutenant in theIntellience — or as the irreverent called itthe 7nteiient Corps ‘ during the NorthWest Rebellion, and received a severewound in the arm at the capture ofBatoche. He is a great favorite in the Cii,,,and a large number offriends assembledat the CP.R. Depot to see him offTheirfeelings were so overcome, and theirtears so copiously shea that the engineerfound it impossible to start the train untilhe ‘ave her sand” In fact a quantily ofthe new embankment has been washedaway by the excess ofemotion. The onlything that mitzated the sorrow of theboys was the thought that Mr. Gardenwould return in a couple ofmonths or so,andprobably not alone.

In the fall of 1888, Mr. H.M. Burwell joined the firm, and for the nextten years their work embraced allbranches of surveying and engineering;including much of the original layoutof the City of Vancouver, and resurveyswhich followed the fire of 1886. Mr.Garden who in 1894 was elected amember of the Canadian Society ofCivil Engineers, had personal charge ofthe Pitt Meadows Dyking Project, andthe original design, estimates and construction of the Vancouver StreetRailway Company. Several surveyorsof note, who were to play their part later in B.C.’s expanding economy, wereassociated with the firm in those earlydays — nephew H.T. Garden B.C.L.S.,and R.W. Cautley P.L.S. were both articled pupils, and J.H. Bushnell P.L.S.was for a time inspector of constructionon the Vancouver Street Railway Co.

The day to day running of the prac

tice of Garden, Hermon and Burwell isilluminating. The bills for hardware(from the good old firm of McLennan& McFeely) were between 20 and 30times less than pertain today, while asfor wages that ratio would be closer to100.

2 dozen surveyors pins $1.502 boys’ axes $2.001 pr. leggings (a necessary itemtoday, too) $2.50Insertion of a professionalcard in J.H. Brownlee’s“Mining Laws of B.C.” $4.00Assistant’s wages per day $1.00During the survey of Cranbrook

Townsite, wages were $2.50 per day,room and board of 75 per day beingdeducted. But in the majority of projects, accommodation would be in atent for weeks at a time, and the grub —

salt pork, beans, bannock — would haveto be free. ‘When the crews hit town,they had cause to celebrate.

An account of one such celebrationappeared in the Vancouver Daily Worldon February 10, 1896, describing one ofthe early meetings of the ProvincialLand Surveyors Association. Mr. Garden was President, and it is noteworthythat both E.B. Hermon and H.M. Burwell were on the executive. In theevening, a banquet was held at the Merchant’s Exchange, and although thetenor of the article was quite sedate, it

seems that the evening was a lively one.Speeches were made, mostly extollingthe virtues of B.C. and its future; songswere sung, interspersed with numeroustoasts — to the Province, to the ArmedForces, to the Press and, of course, tothe Ladies (who obviously weren’tpresent); and A.F. Cotton demonstratedboth a song and a dance. The eveningconcluded with Auld Lang Syne, andGod Save the Queen, bringing “acharming evening, full of racy anecdoteand sweet melody to a close”.

Such decorous reporting is highly conducive to reading between the lines; myown interpretation is that it was a wing-ding of an affair!

In 1890 J.F. Garden was elected an alderman of the City of Vancouver. Hewas a very dynamic councilman, mostlyactive in engineering affairs, such as theCambie Bridge, sidewalks, approvedgrades for city streets and water-works.In 1891, however, allegations weremade that he still had connections with


the Vancouver Street Railway Company(they had been severed on completion ofconstruction, and before he was elected).He resigned; which enabled him to carryon serving the City in a consulting role.

Mr. Garden ran for the B.C. Legislature in 1894 as an independent, butunexpectedly was defeated at the polis.He had been known to favor Turner,whose office was regarded as an “Island”government. Turner was not popularon the Mainland, where detractors insinuated that the administration was runfrom the smoking-room of the UnionClub.

But on January 13th 1898, the City ofVancouver was certainly ready for Mr.Garden. He was elected Mayor with athumping majority. Enthusiasm was intense, and he was carried shoulder highfrom the committee rooms to a waitingcarriage, then escorted in procession tothe corner of Carrall and CordovaStreets. Here, there was much speechifying — mostly by others, including exMayor Collins, all of whom congratulated Mr. Garden and praised hishonorable character. After which theCity Band formed up, and the procession marched with blazing brooms tothe Hotel Vancouver, where rocketswere fired; and thence to the newspaperoffice, where Mr. Garden again spoke tothe crowd.

Elections in the 1890’s were meant toentertain, and did so, unlike the somewhat dull events we hold today.

Mr. Garden was Mayor for three years,dealing with all the problems inherentin this rapidly growing city. Early in histenure, he was called upon to read theRiot Act, to restrain one Theodore Ludgate from cutting down the trees onDeadman’s Island in order to establish asawmill there. The Ludgate affair hasbeen held up as a conflict between anenvironmentally-minded City Hall versus commercial interests. CertainlyMayor Garden and his council took afirm stance; and when Ludgate, after listening politely to the announcement, sethis crew to cutting down the trees anyway, he was arrested. The affair couldalso be construed as an early example ofFederal Government bureaucracy actingwithout consideration of local interests(and certainly not of Native concerns,for which they were directly responsible). Unfortunately for the City,

Ottawa had provided Ludgate with a legally water-tight lease, and it took yearsof litigation before the senior government backed down and ceded the landto the City.

E.B. Hermon wrote: — “Garden was agood Mayor. He had much to do withgetting the City started on the rightlines in those early days, and he hadgreat visions for its future as a commercial port”. His last year as Mayor was1900, and many electors felt that in anew century, his abilities could be putto use in a higher level of government.After retiring from the firm of Garden,Hermon & Burwell to avoid conflictingduties, he ran for the House of Commons, but being defeated tried for theLegislature, where he was elected on the“Liberal-Conservative” ticket, as amember for Vancouver City, and thereafter re-elected in 1903 and 1907.

The B.C. Legislature at the turn ofthe century had its exciting moments.Ever since Confederation, influence ingovernment had been determined bythe personal following of the premierand cabinet, with little regard for partyaffiliations. At this session, just prior tothat in which J.F. Garden took his seat,this system was about to be put to thetest by a bizarre series of circumstanceswhich culminated in the elected members in a body stalking out of theChamber immediately prior to theThrone speech, leaving the Lieut. Governor to read his speech to an audienceof two (one being the Speaker). The result of such shenanigans was, of course,another general election, and, at the behest of Sir Wilfred Laurier, a new Lieut.Governor. In the early 1900’s politicallife in B.C. could never be regarded asdull.

J.F. Garden’s name was included inthe 1st session of the 9th parliament,also in 1900. He was quite active,moving for the establishment of a Government Assay Office in Vancouver, aprivate bill to amend the City Corporate Act, and two railway petitions.Richard McBride’s star would not be inthe ascendant for more than two years,but invariably he received Mr. Garden’ssupport.

Standing committees are where mostof the hard work of politicians takesplace. J.F. Garden served on Railway,Municipal Affairs, Private Bills and

Standing Orders from 1902 until 1909.The Province was undergoing unprecedented expansion during those years,particularly in Municipal growth; railway lobbying was a way of life; andmany were the resolutions put forwardattempting to limit the employment ofChinese and Japanese nationals.Against the latter measures Mr. Gardenvoted steadfastly, yet continued to support McBride. In 1906 he waschairman of the select committee looking into the acquisition of parts ofKaien Island by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, which found thegovernment blameless.

Politics aside, however, J.F. Garden’sprofession was still that of a surveyor;and in 1903 he had formed a new partnesship with T.H. Taylor B.C.LS.,which continued until 1909, when Mr.Taylor dropped out, and a new firm ofGarden, Roberts and Hawkins continued until 1911. Mr. Taylor re-enteredthe firm later. The firm was engaged inthe general survey work of timber limits, pre-emptions, mineral claims, andsubdivisions, and in particular hadmuch to do with the C.P. Railway Co’sresidential area of Shaughnessy Heights.

Mr. Garden’s rifle, a model 1876Winchester, similar to the North WestMounted Police service issue, is in adisplay case at the Surveyor-General ofB.C.’s office., where it is on loan fromthe Association of B.C. Land Surveyors.He was known as a man who had thehappy facility of making friends, and always had a sympathetic ear for anyonein trouble. On December 8, 1914, hedied of a stroke, to general regretamongst all classes. He was unmarried.

Richard McBride said of him: “Iknew him intimately, and was proud tonumber him among my friends. During the period in which he sat as amember of the Legislature, he showed amarked capacity for public life, and dida great deal of excellent work for hisconstituents. He will be very greatlymissed.”

Mr. Cotton it a rrtired surveyor (B.C.LS.)who makes his home on Salt Spring IslantL

SOURCESB.C. ArchivesVancouver Cky AtchivesB.C. legislative LibraryMen & Meridians Vol.2 (Don W. Thompson)TheColonist-Masdi2, 1900


No Salmon, No Furs.The Provisioning ofFort Kamloops, 1841 - 1849

by Jeffrey W. Locke

When news of the murder of SamuelBlack reached John Ted at Fort Alexandria he gathered a few men and quicklyset off for Fort Kamloops ‘ where Blackhad been Chief Trader. Immediatelyupon his arrival at Kamloops on August3, 1841 Ted examined the state of theprovisions and supplies within the fort.Having found all stores to be in satisfactory condition he proceeded with burial

arrangements for Mr. Black and othermatters of importance. In retrospect,in the midst of such turmoil, it mayseem strange that Tod would be primarily concerned with the condition ofthe stores. Such was the importance ofprovisions to the fur traders of theHudson’s Bay Company. Black, as important a man as he was, could bereplaced. It would have been much

more difficult to replace the stores inside the fort.

The provisioning of trading posts wasone of the most important tasks of furtraders. Without provisions they couldnot expand operations or even survivefor very long in the wilderness. If thetraders could not survive there wouldhave been no fur trade. In the earlystages of the HBC, when the posts wereclose to the Hudson Bay, most of theprovisioning was carried out throughyearly supply ships from England. Thiswas a costly and often unreliable method of securing supplies. On manyoccasions ships would not make itthrough the passage before the winterfreeze and would be forced to winterover.

As the fur trade expanded it becameincreasingly evident that an alternatefood source would have to be secured.Soon the Bay posts were taking advantage of the abundant fish and wild fowlin the area and were able to providemuch of their own food. 2

Further expansion to the west provedexisting supplies to be impractical. Thenew exploration of the frontier wasaccomplished primarily through voyageuring. This rapid movement of smallparties by canoe demanded a staple thatwas fairly light, of a manageable size,nutritious, and would not spoil easily.The ideal solution to the problem wasfound in pemmican, a food sourcerelied on by various native groups inNorth America. Pemmican was madeby combining dried and pounded animal flesh, usually buffalo, with animalfat. The product was an extremely concentrated food source that could surviveindefinitely if properly protected. Itwas said that a man could survive ontwo pounds of pemmican per day withnothing else. Pemmican was used extensively by both the HBC and theNorth West Company (NWC) inbuilding and maintaining lines of corn-

John Tod — This Portrait was taken shortly after Tod retired to Victoria.Photo courtesy of Bhsh Columbia Archives and Records Service. HP57024


munication across the west.‘When traders pushed across the Rocky

mountains into what is now the interiorof British Columbia they were facedwith the need for another staple. Thepemmican that had been used on theplains and in the north was not readilyavailable in the interior. There was nolarge reliable source of game animal likethe buffalo to be counted upon to produce the pemmican. The maintenanceof lines of communications across theRockies was difficult enough withoutthe added burden of provisioning thenew areas. To supply the expandingtrade by transporting pemmican wouldhave been nearly impossible. At best itwould have tied up a considerableamount of resources. Once again thetraders turned to the natives and foundthat they managed to survive quite welloff a local and abundant source of food,salmon. Salmon soon became the staplefor the region, vastly outweighing anyother food source. Without it, it isdoubtful that many posts, and perhapseven the fur trade itself, could have survived west of the Rocky mountains.

A significant illustration of the importance of salmon can be found in theprovisioning of Fort Kamloops. The period in focus, 1841 to 1849, is the termwhen John Ted served as chief trader.This is also a relatively early period inthe history of the post; a time when allEuropeans in the area were connected tothe HBC. A time when the only sourceof provisions was the stores of the post.

Kamloops had originally been a NWCpost. The first traders in the area hadreceived their supplies overland fromMontreal by way of Fort William.These goods were transported by canoeand portage, an extremely difficult journey. This practice was continued untilsalmon, a more expeditious source ofprovisions, could be collected in sufficient numbers. Norwesters continuedto supplement their diet with importedEuropean goods until the amalgamationof 1821.6

The merger of the HBC and NWCput an end to old provisioning practicesin the region. With the amalgamationthe HBC gained control of all NWCposts in the interior region. GeorgeSimpson, the Governor of the HBC,was faced with rising costs, falling prof

its, and the redundancy of HBC andNWC posts and institutions; he setabout on a zealous cost cutting programunder the maxim “Economize”. Aspart of this cost cutting program tradersin the interior were required to obtainall their provisions from the land onwhich they lived.

By the middle of the 1 820s the forthad become largely unproductive, thefurs in the area had been exhausted.Simpson seriously considered closingthe post. He had tried to encourage natives in the area to use the post atRocky Mountain House as their trading area so he could close Kamloops.Warfare between the Shushwap peoplesaround Kamloops and the natives inthe Rocky Mountain House region prevented the Shushwaps from migratingnorthward. When Simpson travelledthrough Kamloops in 1828 he plannedto close the post. He was persuaded bya clerk at the post, Archibald McDonald, to leave it open as a depot placefor the New Caledonia fur brigade.Simpson was convinced of the usefulness of the post and elected to keep itopen; he was also impressed withMcDonald and promoted him to theposition of Chief Trader for the post.

Kamloops became an important areafor the administering of neighboringdepartments, supplying food, and raising horses. The post was transferredfrom the Columbia district to the NewCaledonia district as its main task wasin providing feeding grounds and abreeding area for the northern horses. 8

When the HBC entered the area in1821 the overland supply route thathad been used by the Pacific Fur Company was taken over. This route, whichpassed through Kamloops, becameknown as the fur brigade trail. Theroute began at the Yellowhead Pass andtravelled in a mainly southerly directionpassing through Fort Alexandria, FortKamloops, Fort Okanogan and finallyto Fort Vancouver where the goodscould be transported to the Pacific viathe Columbia River. For this reasonKamloops was equipped with corralsand fenced pasture areas for the 250horses it supported.

It was in this capacity that Kamloopswas operating when John Ted arrivedin August of 1841. As mentioned pre

viously the main reason for the arrivalof Ted at the fort was to survey mattersand take control of the post after themurder of the former chief trader, Samuel Black. There is some debate overwhy Black had been murdered. It hadbeen carried out by the grandson of arecently deceased native leader, ChiefTranquil. One thing is certain, Blackhad no great regard for the native people. The rest of the post company,which numbered nearly twenty, fled after the murder fearing for their ownlives. This had left the post in the solecare of Jean Baptiste “Sr. Paul” Lob, anative of Iroquois origin who had beenemployed as post interpreter. As mentioned earlier the first matter ofpriority upon his arrival was to take aninventory of the stores and provisionsin the post. Ted was fortunate that themost important article of provisions,salmon, had not been stolen or ruined.

The importance of salmon to theKamboops post cannot be emphasizedenough. “No salmon, no furs” was asaying in the regions west of RockyMountains. ‘° That is to say that without salmon the fur trade could not haveoperated, it was the fuel of the operation. Later in his life Tod wrote that,“to us the loss of salmon might meanthe ruin of our years’ work”. 11 Without a supply of salmon traders wouldhave been forced to abandon their postsfor other areas as a means of survival.Archibald McDonald wrote that,“Dried salmon is the staff of life”, without it the post could not have beenmaintained. 12

Salmon was an ideal food for the furtrade. It met all of the requirements ofa staple as outlined by Ted, salmon was“something obtainable regularly in largequantities, something fairly nutritious,prepared as to keep without decay, easily packed and carried, and with theadvantage, also, of cheapness [sic]”. 13

Kamloops was fortunate to be situatednear some of the best salmon rivers inthe west, for most of the term with Tedas Chief Trader there was a large andregular supply. Each man could surviveon a diet of twenty-one pounds of driedsalmon per week, even less if supplieswere low. When dried or smoked itcould keep indefinitely as long as it wasprotected from the elements. It was


also easily packed; each horse could carry two bags of 84 pounds each, thiscombined for a total of 168 salmonwhich could provide for a man for twomonths. 14 Salmon was also cheap bothin the fact that it was fished locally andthat its relative abundance gave it amoderate trade value.

The vast majority of salmon was obtained by trading with the various nativegroups in the area. The predominantnative group in the area were the Shushwaps, seven different Shuswap bandstraded with the post. Other groupsfrom as far south as Fort Okanagan alsooccasionally made their way to the postto trade.15 Both dried and smoked salmon were traded as well as fresh fishwhen it could be secured. A number ofgoods were traded by the fort to obtainthe salmon. The most important oftrade goods were tobacco, guns and ammunition. Other trade goods such asmedicine, tools and baize, a coarse woolen cloth, are also referred to in the postjournal. 16

The natives, who also depended on salmon for their own survival, were wellexperienced in the large scale fisheriesnecessary to supply the posts. Fish werecaught by a variety of methods. Onemethod was to construct a weir, or trap,by driving stakes into a stream at lowwater. The salmon were driven into theweir where they could be easily spearedor netted. Platforms were also built overfavorite fishing areas from which the fishcould be speared or netted.’ On thelakes natives would often fish at nightfrom canoes using a torch to attract fishto the surface where they could bespeared. While this method could notbe relied upon for large quantities of fishit was useful in providing enough fordaily fresh fish. 18

The native method of preserving thesalmon was both simple and efficient.The fish were split into four strips, eachone of these was a “salmon” in terms ofaccounting, approximately one poundwhen processed. The strips were eitherhung on racks and left to dry in thewind or sun or were smoked over a fire.Another method, although less common, was to pound the dried salmonbetween two stones until it was a flakypulp. This pounded meat was placedinto specially prepared bags made ofgrass matting and cured salmon skins.

The product was a pemmican like substance which could be kept for severalyears. 19

Local to Kamloops the Thompsonand Fraser rivers both supported a largeannual population of salmon. Alongthese rivers some areas were particularlyoutstanding as reliable fisheries. One ofthese areas, Pavilion on the Fraser River, was important to the yearly salmonsupply for Kamloops. Pavilion, or Pebion or Popayou 20 as it was called inthe native tongue, was relied upon eachyear for a supply of between 10,000-12,000 salmon.21 A large number ofsalmon were secured each year from theCoutamins, which appears to be southof Kamloops and east of the Fraser River.22 The post also usually received afew thousand salmon each year fromFort Alexandria.

A large amount of salmon was neededeach year to provision the post. In 1842when the post had traded approximately 20,000 dried salmon the trade ofsalmon was stopped, having reached asufficient level for the winter. Tradesof between 2000-5000 dried salmon atone time were not uncommon. Apartfrom the dried and smoked fish tradedfor use later on, fresh salmon, a muchmore palatable food was traded whenever it was available.

Although salmon was usually plentifulobtaining it was often not as easy assimply trading it. One example of a difficulty in obtaining salmon occurred inthe summer of 1846. Ted had sentLob and a company of natives withhorses to Pavilion to obtain the annualsupply from that area of the Fraser.Two days after the party had left Tedfound that Lob had returned to thepost alone. Ted experienced difficultyin gaining any useful information fromLob except a continual request for afine horse that Lob had been deniedseveral times before. After much prodding Ted was able to determine whathad happened to the rest of the salmonparty. En route to Pavilion Lob hadlearned that another native group wasplanning an attack on the fort, he hadhidden the rest of the salmon party sothey would not be discovered.

In the middle of the night, after Lobhad fallen asleep, Ted left the fort tofind the rest of the salmon party andfind out if Lob had been telling the

truth. Tod found the rest of the menin hiding and unaware of any danger.Tod ordered the party back to the fortand rode ahead. As he approached theFraser he inadvertently came upon thevery war party that Lob had warnedhim of. Seeing that he was caught Tedthrew his sabre and pistol to the groundand made his horse perform severalwild rotations on the spot then rodeinto the midst of the natives. Theywere stunned and taken aback by thisstrange behavior. The natives demanded to know where Lob was, Tedquickly replied that Lob had taken illwith smallpox and was recovering inthe fort. He also told them that he hadcome to vaccinate them all if theywished.

The anger that the natives had felt towards Tod quickly turned to fear.They begged him to save them fromthe dreaded disease. Tod had noticed arack of some 10,000 salmon drying onthe shores and realized an opportunityto trade. As a means of stalling time heordered the warriors to cut down alarge tree. As they did this he tradedwith the women who had come out ofhiding. Once the tree was cut Toilstood upon the stump and vaccinatedmen with three pieces of vaccine scabhe had with him. These were placedinto a cut which he made in the arm ofeach individual. For the serious troublemakers of the lot he made an extradeep incision.

Once he had completed this task Toilwas able to return to Kamboops withthe 10,000 salmon he had managed totrade. Lob was very much surprised tohear the news but was even more delighted when Tod rewarded him withthe horse he had requested. 23 This example clearly shows that even in timesof threat and grave danger traderswould be on the watch for the opportunity to trade. The consequence ofhaving no salmon would have been asdangerous as a raiding party of warriors.

Even though salmon was “the staff oflife” it was not especially well liked.Many times the men were forced tospend much of the year enduring themonotony of dried salmon and coldwater.2’Francis Ermatinger complainedof the “misery of Damned Dried Salmon [sic] — with which we are obligedto sustain a miserable existence”.25


While in the New Caledonia area traderThomas Dears complained that “many anight I go to bed hungry and cravingsomething better than this horrid driedsalmon”.2 John Tod noted that “Webecame very tired — most of us — even ofthe indispensable salmon”.27 Tod understood that men often suffered, notfrom the lack of food, but from a lack ofvariety in their diets. In an effort tomake life a little better Tod and othersstrove to add other items to the regulardiet.

The most prevalent secondary sourceof meat at Kamloops was horse meat.As mentioned previously Kamloopsmaintained a large number of horses forthe fur brigade. Whenever a horse wasinjured and had to be put down itwould be used to feed the men. Othertimes, when supplies were low, a horsewould be slaughtered to tide the company over until other provisions could besecured. On most holidays a horse wasbutchered for the celebration. In lateryears, as the salmon fishery became lessand less reliable, more reliance was puton horse as a source of food. 2 By thelate 1850s salted horse meat had replaced salmon as the staple food. 29

The local habitat also offered additional game animals. Venison was obtainedseveral times each year as was duck andother wild fowl. Several different fishbesides salmon were also taken, including: white salmon, carp and suckers. 30

Although not mentioned in the postjournal it is evident that bear, elk, caribou, rabbits and dog were also used asfood in the region. ‘

Apart from meat other sources of foodwere also sought out. One item thatwas vigorously pursued in Kamloopswas potatoes. Once again traderslearned from local native practices. Experiments with potatoes had beenattempted early in the history of thefort. Samuel Black had cleared land in avalley near the post and had plantedsome potatoes as an experiment. Thesuccess of early trials encouraged Ted tostart his own project when he took control of Fort Kamloops.

At first potatoes were acquired fromthe natives through trade. Once a tolerable seed stock was obtained Tedorganized the cleating of land near theriver for gardens. Initially it was difficult to cultivate the land. The only

plow was in poor shape and of all-woodconstruction. Ted compensated forthis by paying natives in the form of tobacco to turn the soil by hand. Thesoil was worked further by a crude harrow which was made by the men at thepost. The land used for the gardenswas irrigated by the river, producinggood conditions for potatoes. Still, attimes, the post had to contend withfloods in the spring and long dry spellsnear the end of summer. By the thirdyear the enterprise had produced a considerable crop. The typical expectedyield was 17.5 kegs of potatoes for every keg planted. Even while the postwas enjoying a healthy harvest from itsown crops Ted never turned down anoffer to trade for good potatoes.

A second crop that was initiated under Ted was wheat. In 1843 Tedplanted 4 bushels as an experiment.

No mention is given in the post journalas to the fate of this crop. It must havebeen somewhat successful as there arelater references to a wheat crop at thepost. The closest mill for producingflour was to be found in Okanaganwhere a grist mill that had been built byPeter Ogden was in operation. 32 it ismost likely that the majority of thewheat found at Kamloops would havebeen obtained from Okanagan, Coleville, or even from the Cowlitz area

near Fort Vancouver.Additional provisions that were nei

ther collected or produced at Kamloopswere imported from other posts. Forthe New Caledonia district the mainsupply centre was Fort Colevile. Coleville boasted good gardens in whichbarley, wheat, turnips, tomatoes, potatoes, and other vegetables were grown.In addition to this the yearly rations offlour and sugar were obtained from thispost. The men at Kamloops receivedtwenty-five pounds of flour and ten tofifteen pounds of. sugar each year.35From the records at Fort Alexandria itis evident that inland posts stocked avariety of foods. Included in the 1832inventory are: coffee, chocolutr [sic](chocolate), mustard square, black pepper, butter, spirits, salt, and sugar. ‘

‘While these items may have been keptin stock it is not likely that they wereconsumed on a regular basis, certainlynot by the general labourers. An example of an “extravagant” meal can befound in the 1841 Christmas gift fromthe post to the men. It included: 1quart flour, 1 quart Indian corn, 3pounds of fresh horse meat, 1 pound ofgrease and 1 pint of wine.37 Officerscould usually expect better provisions,most often they were supplied withflour, rice, beans, bacon, tea, sugar, andMadeira wine and brandy. When this

Thisfamily portrait was taken when a photographer visited Fort Kamluops in 1865. Jean Baptise “St.Paul” Lob had been in the service ofthe HBCo for many years. Lob ‘r scowl shows that he disliked having to posefir the camera.

Photo cowtesy of 8ritish Columbia Archives and Records Seivice. HP2007


Jeffi’ey Locke is ihe winner ofihe 1992 BCHFScboLrnI4 This essay was written as a ihirdyear assignment at the University of Victoria.

FOOTNOTES

1. Fort Kamloops has also been referred to as FortThompson, Thompson’s River, and Fort Shushwap.

2. Lois Haffiday McDonald., Fur Trade Letters ofFrancis Ermatinger, (Glendale, California: ArthurH. Clarke Co., IS)80), p. 49.

3. John Tod., History of New Caledonia and the NWCoast, (Victoria, 1878), BCARS, p. 3.

4. Frederick Merit, ed., Fur Trade and Empire, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1931), pp.346-347.

5. Inland Sentinel, “Kamloops and Yale”, (KainloopstMay 29, 1905). p. 22.

6. Mary Baif, The Miojny Company: Kasnloops andthe HBC, (Kamloops: Kaniloops Museum, 1973).

7. Ibid.8. M.S. Wade., “The Founding of Kainloops”, (Kasn

loops: Inland Sentinel Press, 1912).9. One account states that the grandson of Chief Tran

quil perceived Mr. Black to have caused the death ofthe Chief. Another account explains that the grandson of the Chief thought Mr. Black would be a goodsoul to accompany his grand&ther into the hereafter.

10. Gilbert M. Sproat., Career of a Scotdi Boy who Became the Hon. John Ted, (Victoria: Victoria DailyTimes, Sept. 30-Dec. 30, 1905), Chapter XXIII.

11. Ibid., Chapter XXII.12. Rodney Wiens., The HBC in BC, (Vancouver:

Simon Fraser University History Dept., 1983),BCARS, p.9

13. Gilbert M. Sproat., Career of a Scotch Boy who Be-cane the Hon. John Ted, Chapter XXIII.

14. Calculations: Each man could survive on three salmon per day (Tod Journal). Each man could live on21 pounds of salmon per week (Career of a ScotchBoy. . .). Therefore, each salmon weighed approximately 1 pound. If each horse could carry 168pounds, they could carry 168 salmon, enough for 8weeks at 3 per day.

15. Malcolm McDonald, ed., Peace Riven A CanoeVoyage, (Ottawa: J. Dune and Son, 1872), P. 115.

16. John Ted., Journal of Thompson River, BCARS.17. J. J. Morse.. Kamloops: The Inland Capital,

(Kamloops: Kamloops Museum).18. John Ted.. Journal of Thompson’s River., BCARS.19. Frederick Merk., Fur Trade and Empire, pp. 40-41.20. Tod referred to the area as Pebion in Career of a

Scotch Boy Dan Munday referred to the acmearea as Popayou in. “John Ted of Fort Kamloops”in The Shoulder Strap, (February, 1942). Thename could either be different pronunciations of thesame word or the name of the acme place; but in different native languages since several tribes shared thefishery.

21. Gilbert M. Sproat., Career of a Scotch Boy who Be-cane the Hon. John Teal, Chapter X)UI.

22. Coutarnins, also called Countamine, Cutmins andCutanais, seems to be a native group and/or area located south-east of K.amloops. Several references aremade to it in the letters of Francis Ermatinger and inthe Thompson River Journal.

23. Op. Cit. Chapter XXII.24. Gloria G. Clime.. Peter Skene Ogden and the Hud

son’s Bay Company, (Norman, OkIa.: Universityof Oklahoma Press, 1974), p. 123.

25. Lois H. McDonald., Fur Trade Letters of FrancisErmatinger, p. 64

26. Gloria G. Clime., Peter Skeene Ogden and the Hudson’s Bay Company, p.l23.

27. Gilbert M. Sproat., Career of a Scotch Boy who Be-cane the Hon. John Toil, Chapter XXIII.

28. Jj. Morse., Kansloops: The Inland Capital, (Kamloops: Kamloops Museum).

29. RC. Mayne., British Columbia and Vancouver Island, (Londoru John Murray, 1862), p. 121.

30. John Ted., Journal of Thompson River.31. G.P.V. Aknigg and Helen B. Aknigg., British Co

lumbia Chronide, 1778-1846, (Vancouver:Discovery Press, 1975), p. 244.

32. Gloria G. Clime., Peter Skeene Ogden and theHudson’s Bay Company, p. 127

33. Lois H. McDonald., Fur Trade Letters of FrancisErmatinger, p. 149.

34. Ibid.. p. 142.

35. Gloria G. Cline., Peter Skeene Ogden and theHudson’s Bay Company, pp. 127-128k

36. Papers relating to Fort Alexandria, BCARS.37. John Ted., Journal of Thompson River.38. G.P.V. Aknigg and Helen B. Akrigg., British

Columbia Chronide, 1778-1846, p. 198.

Akrigg, G.P.V. and Helen B. Alcnigg., British ColumbiaChronide: 1778 - 1846, (Vancouven Discovery Press,1975.

Balf Mary., Kamloops: A History of the District to1914,

(Kamloops: Kamloops Museum, 1969).BalE Mazy., The Mighty Company: Kamloops and the

HBC, (Kaxnloops: Kamloops Museum, 1973).Clime, Gloria GriBan., Peter Slceene Ogden and the

Hudson’s Bay Company, (Norman, Okla.: Universityof Oklahoma Press, 1974).

Fort Alexadreia, Various Papers, BCARS.Island Sentinel, “Kamloops and Yale”, (Kamloops:

May29, 1905), BCARS.Mayne, R.C.., British Columbia and Vancouver Island,

(London: John Murray, 1862).McDonald, Malcolm, ed., Peace River: A CanoeVoyage,

(Ottaws: J. Dune and Son, 1872).McDonald, Lois Halliday., Fur Trade Letters of Francis

Ermatinger, (Glendale, Calit: ArthurJ. Clark Co.,1980).

Merit, Frednick, ed.., Fur Trade and Empire,(Cambridge, Man.: Harvard University Press, 1931).

Morse, J. J.., Kamloops: The Inland Capital,(Kamloops: Kamloops Museum).

Munday, Don., “JohnTod of Fort Kamloops”, inThe Shoulder Strap, (Victoria: Feb. 1942), BCARS.

Rich, E.E.., Fur Trade and the North West to 1857,(Toronto: McLellsnd Stuart, 1 %7).Sproat, Gilbert Malcom., “Career of a Scotch Boy ‘Who

Became the Hon. John Ted”, in Victoria Daily Times,(Victoria: Excerpts taken from Sept. 30 to Dec. 30,1905), BCARS.

Ted, John., Histozyof New Caledonia and the NWCoast, (Victoris: 1878), BCARS.

Ted. John.. Journal of Thompson River, (Kamloops:1841-1843), BCARS.

Wade, M.S.., The Founding of Kamloops, (IslandSentinel Press: 1912), BCARS.

Wiens, Rodney., The Hudson’s Bay Company in BC,(Vancouver: SFU History Dept., 1983), BCA.RS.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ran out or was not available the officerswould eat salmon with the rest of themen.

While provisioning was a year longtask the various supply activities fell intoa yearly cycle. Since the main stock ofprovisions was based on the salmon thecycle really began with the salmon run.The bulk of dried salmon was obtainedfrom late August to October. Often natives would keep their salmon en cacheand not trade until November or December. It was also in October that thelocal potato crop was harvested. Again,natives often stored their potatoes anddid not trade until later in the winter orspring. By the middle of the summersome salmon would begin to appear often making it possible to secure a dailyquota of fresh fish. By the late summerstocks would be low and the post wouldbe ready to resume the cycle once again.

Although the provisioning was primarily concerned with food it also involvedfuel. Just as collecting food supplies occupied much of the activity at the postso did the gathering of firewood. At alltimes of the year at least one labourerwas employed in the task of gatheringand chopping firewood. In winter threemen were engaged in this activity. Asthe wood immediately surrounding thepost was collected it became necessary totravel elsewhere for a good supply. Ohtaming enough wood became anincreasingly tedious task; Ted began toemploy natives from the area to maintain the supply; these workers wereusually paid in the form of tobacco.

The history of the fur trade in Canadahas produced a massive collection of literature. Much of this work has beendevoted to romanticization of the mostexciting tales of glory and adventure. Itis somewhat unfortunate that much ofthe popular conception of the fur tradeis based on these accounts. Many important areas have received only cursorytreatment or have been neglected altogether. The volume of solid academicwork is growing and should be takeninto account. Areas of the fur trade thatare seemingly obscure, such as the provisions trade in Kamloops, played animportant role of the development ofthe region. The provisioning of HBCposts is an area of study that cannot afford to be neglected.


UB. C ‘s Deans ofWomen

The older universities in Canada werefounded by religious bodies - RomanCatholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist. They were modeled onParis, Oxford, and Edinburgh, accordingto the nationality of their founder. Inthe western provinces of Canada provincial universities were established in the20th century. McGill was the parent institution of the University of BritishColumbia, having established McGillUniversity College of B.C., 1906- 1915.At this time in Canada, many personsfelt that higher education was beyondthe mental and physical capacity ofwomen. But educators fought for theequality of women to participate. Gradually universities which had been a maleprerogative began to admit female students. Among the early brilliant teachersat McGill College, was Isabel Maclnnes.She was first appointed to McGill University College of Vancouver in 1911.She struggled for status in a world ofmale scholarship and administration.Beside her teaching duties, she and thefaculty wives acted as chaperones at coeducational functions. Maclnnes wenton in 1915 to become Instructor at theUniversity of British Columbia. She wasthe first, and until 1921, the only woman holding a permanent appointment on

by Dolly Sinclair Kennedy

the teaching staff. When Isabel Maclnnes retired from UBC in 1948, withan Honorary Doctorate, she had forsome time been Head of the GermanDepartment, the first woman to holdsuch an appointment at UBC.

The first Dean ofWomen, Miss MaryLouise Bollert, was selected for the newly-created office of “Advisor to WomenStudents” in 1921. In 1922 she wasgiven the title of Dean of Women, andserved the university in this capacityuntil 1941.

Mary Bollert was born in Guelph, Ontario, and was a graduate of TorontoUniversity, with honours in ModernLanguages. She took her M.A. degree atColumbia University, New York, in Education and English. For several yearsshe was Instructor at Columbia, and atthe same time was lecturing in the NewYork Public Lecture Course under theDepartment of Education of New YorkCity.

During her residence in New York,Mary Bollert became very interested inthe large number of girls who were talcing University courses intending to gointo business afterwards. This research,begun in New York, and continued inToronto, led Toronto University to askher to lecture on the openings for worn-

Dr Margaret FultonDean of Women 1974-1978

All photos courtesy of UBC Special Collections.

en in industrial life.Canadian at heart, Miss Bollert could

not resist the call of service in WesternCanada, spending four happy and usefulyears organizing the Women’s Department at Regina College.

With the introduction of co-educationthe provision of a Dean of Women hadbecome a common response of the established universities. The word“Dean”, in general secular use, meantthe head or senior member of certainbodies: responsible for the selection ofcurriculum and instruction.

L.ee Stewart in her recent book, ft’sUp to You; Women at UBC in the Early Years, has pointed out that MaryBollert being appointed as “Advisor toWomen Students”, rather than Dean ofWomen, significantly lowered both herstatus and her salary. She was meant tobe a counselor to women in all mattersexcept those related to their chief reasonfor being at the university — their academic studies.

Dean Bollert was a strong and originalperson. When urged by the women’s associations in Vancouver, she ran andwas elected as a member of the University Senate, a position she retained fromJune 1933 until her retirement in 1941.As Dean of Women, Mary Bollert set

I

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Mary Louise Bollert Dr. Dorothy Mawd.cleyDean of Women 1922-1941 Dean of Women 1941-1959


up the student’s loan fund. She believedit was more difficult for women studentsto earn as much money during the summer months as did the males. Loansadded money they often depended on toaid them to complete their education.Vitally concerned with education, DeanBollert became involved with setting upthe Parent-Teacher movement in B.C.She was concerned with the inadequaciesof teachers’ salaries.

Dean Bollert was a woman of wide interests. She was a very visiblerepresentative of the University. Amember of the National Association ofDeans of Women of the United States; amember of the Women’s CanadianClub; for three years she was nationalconvener of the Committee on Education for the National Council ofWomen. In Vancouver she was active inthe Business and Professional Women’sClub. She was President of the University Women’s Club of Vancouver andPresident of the Canadian Federation ofUniversity Women. Under her leadership, CFUW urged the appointment ofwomen on boards and commissions ofthe League of Nations.

In 1934, Bollert was chosen as one ofthe 12 women in North America to tourJapan as guests of the Japanese YWCA.For several years she was president of thePan-Pacific Women’s Association.

Dean Mary Bollert died in Vancouverin 1945. Her life reflected her commitment to educational and social values.

Dr. Dorothy Mawdsley replaced DeanBollert in 1941. She possessed all the academic qualifications of the otherFaculty Deans.

Dorothy Mawdsley, Dean of Women, and Professor in the Department ofEnglish, was born in Florence, Italy.Her elementary and High School education was in the public schools of Ontarioand Saskatchewan. Before receiving herB.A. in Honours English and Philosophyat McGill, in 1920, she taught in ungraded schools in Saskatchewan andAlberta.

During her student days, Mawdsley received awards for debating and publicspeaking.

After graduating in 1920, she taughtEnglish and History at the High Riverhigh school in Alberta. From 1922 to1926 she taught English and French inthe Lethbridge Collegiate Institute,

Alberta.Mawdsley went on to take her MA.,

with Major English and Minor French,at the University of British Columbia,in 1927. Mawdsley became AssistantProfessor in the Department of Englishat UBC from 1927 until 1932 whenshe left for the University of Chicago tocomplete her PhD.

In 1933, Mawdsley transferred toKing Edward High School, Vancouver,and taught English until 1940.

In 1940 Dr. Mawdsley returned toUBC as Assistant Professor in the Department of English. In 1941 shebecame Dean of Women; and in 1945Dean of Women and Professor in theDepartment of English.

Publications: Mawdsley had articlespublished in the Alberta Teacher’sMagazine and the McGill News. Shewrote a Children’s book — Little CM!dren of Italy, published by Rockwell.In collaboration with her friend MissLeeming of the King Edward highschool staff, she wrote a textbook —

Modern Composition, which was usedin the B.C. schools.

Dr. Mawdsley devoted much of hertime as Dean, in appealing to the public for housing, jobs, scholarships,bursaries, and emergency funds forwomen students at UBC. In most instances her pleas were answered bywomen’s organizations in the city,whose vigilance kept issues concerningwomen’s education before the public.Mawdsley endeavoured to be aware ofall clubs, programs and off-campushousing for female students. For example, she came to dinner at the Girls Coop Boarding House at least once a year,where she was welcomed as if she was afavorite aunt.

Mawdsley had been familiar with andobjected to the segregated English classes for first and second year students atUBC, which was the custom at thetime at UBC.

Dr. Mawdsley believed that the lackof dormitory accommodation for women students was a serious impedimentto their access to campus facilities, particularly the Library. Women’s groupskept this issue before the government,and finally in 1951, a women’s residence on campus was finallyestablished.

The first two Deans at the University

had to define the role of Dean ofWomen. Dr. Mawdsley spent much of hertime legitimizing and expanding women’s place on the campus. Twobuildings on the UBC campus honortheir memory. Mary Bollert Hall isnow an office complex, while MawdsleyHouse is one of the Place Vanierresidences.

Dean Helen McRae was a member ofthe Faculty of the University of BritishColumbia for 23 years. She joined theteaching staff of the School of SocialWork in 1950, and was appointedDean of Women in 1959. She heldthis post until her retirement in 1973.Helen Dalrymple McCrae was born inGlasgow, Scotland, and educated inOntario. She received her BA. at Victoria College, University of Toronto in1929. As an undergraduate she wonthe Hamilton Fisk Bigger Scholarship,and the Prince of Wales Gold Medal.After completing a year at the OntarioCollege of Education in 1930, she began her teaching career in Lindsay,Ontario, and in Lindsay she marriedCharles H. McCrae. After his death in1942, she came to B.C. and enrolled inUBC’s School of Social Work, receiving her master’s degree in 1949. Shetook further graduate work at the NewYork School of Social Work and atSmith School of Social Work.

Helen McCrae’s work experience included that of Protection Supervisor,Child Welfare Division, British Columbia; Field Worker and DistrictSupervisor, B.C. Provincial Government; Commonwealth Fellow, RytherChild Centre; Winnifred Culis LectureFellowship, British American Associates. Helen became Field Supervisor,Casework teacher, and Director ofField Work, at the School of SocialWork, UBC.

Dean McCrae’s academic qualities ledher, in 1959, to being asked to serve asa consultant to the United Nations intwo roles; with United Nations Technical Assistance (Sweden) first as ChildWelfare Consultant, and later as Casework Consultant.

In an era of rapid change and growthat UBC, Helen worked quietly and effectively to ensure that the office of theDean of Women evolved to meet theneeds of all women students, includingmature students who wished to resume


their education.Her accomplishments at UBC includ

ed the establishment of a “NeedyWomen’s Loan Fund”, raising the money with the aid of Vancouver Women’sAssociations. Dean McCrae gained subsidized housing for single mothers. Shewas instrumental in establishing DayCare on Campus. She encouraged women students in residence to take office onResidence Councils to improve their administrative skills.

Dean McCrae was a member of theCanadian Task Force on the Status ofWomen in Canadian Universities. As amember of the Council of Deans andFaculty Councils, she gave women avoice in the highest administrative circlesat UBC. Dean Helen McCrae throughher personal qualities of diplomacy andgrace and her unfailing sense of humour,contributed immeasurably to the Statusof Women at UBC, received the AlumniAward of Distinction, the Association’shighest honor.

Dr. Margaret Fulton, the fourth andlast Dean of Women at UBC, was born

in 1922, in a small community, northwest of Brandon, Manitoba. In thatrural community, women could be educated as long as they became teachers,secretaries or nurses.

Margaret Fulton taught school inManitoba from 1942 to 1948. Shethen earned a diploma in physical education from the University ofMinnesota, and moved to ThunderBay, Ontario, where she taught schooluntil 1953. She obtained her B.A.from the University of Manitoba in1955. In 1960 she obtained her M.A.from UBC. Fulton received her PhD.in 1968 from the University of Toronto. Dr. Fulton returned to UBC in1974 as Dean of Women and AssociateEnglish Professor. During the nextfour years she encouraged the expansion of counselling services for women.She won equal pay for female professors, and she helped establish awomen’s academic association. Fultonwas one of the first mature women students to work their way up to adoctorate. She completed her doctorate

in Victorian literature.Dr. Fulton’s philosophy on education

can be gained from reading her addressto the University Women’s Club, Vancouver, in April 1981. The topic was“Women and Social Change”. I quote“The topic seems to imply two assumptions: one, that social change is needed,and two, that women can bring aboutsome kind of constructive socialchange”.

Dr. Fulton visited Copenhagen andChina. In 1975 and 1976 she was involved in two other United NationsWorld Conferences, that is, the International Women’s Year in Mexico City,and the Habitat Conference inVancouver.

She believes that if we are to breakour universities out of the mold inwhich they have been cast, it will require a courageous effort on the part ofa new breed of educators and leaders.She continues . . . “No area of societyneeds re-thinking more than education,unless it be economics.”

Margaret Fulton resigned from UBCin 1978 to become the first secularPresident at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, a position which sheheld for six years.

At present Dr. Margaret Fulton is anadjunct professor at UBC in the field ofeducation. She holds several honorarydegrees, and was given the Human Relations Award by the Canadian Councilof Christians and Jews plus the YWCAWoman of Distinction Award. She isan officer of the Order of Canada.

The Dean of Women’s Office was replaced in 1978 by the WomenStudents’ Office. In the 1970’s, femalestudents began to seek access to the faculties of science and engineering,traditionally dominated by men. Recent events on Canadian campuses havehigh-lighted our awareness of an unacceptable situation and reinforce oursense of responsibility to women inacademia.

The writer is a longtime member oftheUniversity Women c Club. She met the

four deans at various meetings ofthatsociety.

CREDITS

The Universiiy Women’s Club, Vancouver, ArchivesLee Stewart; 1r’s lJpto You, Women at UBC in theEarly Ycass.The Courier, June 2, 1977.Suzanne Zwarun ftr her article in City Woman, Fail of1984.

Dean Helen McCrae (1959-1973) with her two assistants Mazgaret Frederickson (left) andKathleenJackson on the right. This picture was taken in the Dean of Women’s Office,

Buchanan Building, UB.C.


Conrad Kain. Mountain Man Par Excellence

by Mary Andrews

The Rocky Mountains attracted adherents to the sport of mountaineeringas soon as transportation became available upon completion of the railway.Shortly after opening the line in 1885,the Canadian Pacific Railway importedSwiss guides as part of their own schemeto attract tourists. The Alpine Club ofCanada, formed in 1906 by DominionLand Surveyor Arthur 0. Wheeler,made these mountains accessible tomany more tourists at annual summercamps. The participants at these campswere for the most part novices inmountain exploration; guides wereneeded to “show them the ropes.” Swissguides. loaned by the C.P.R, filled thisneed. Then one day in 1909 Wheelergot a letter from a Dr. Pistor in Viennainquiring if he could possibly use theservices of a guide in his early twentieswho had already become one of the bestin Europe, but whose pay was insufficient to support his large family.Wheeler’s affirmative reply was to makeConrad Kain God’s gift to Canadianmountaineering. With Kain as guide,not only did peak after peak of Canada’swestern mountains feel the impress ofhobnailed boots and ice axes, but blankson the map came to be filled and geographical riddles solved. Almost totallytranscending these accomplishmentswas his remarkable personality whichendeared him to all who benefited fromhis services. These included scientists,doctors, professors and statesmen, aswell as ordinary folk getting their firsttaste of the mountains. In every conceivable situation, he gave unstintinglyof himself

Conrad was born in 1883 in Nasswald, Austria, a village southwest ofVienna. His father, an iron miner, diedwhile Conrad was still in school. Theburden of supporting his mother and sixyounger siblings fell upon his shoulders.He had to leave school, and travel thecountry on foot to find work breakingstones. All too often, his feet sufferedfrom frostbite as he walked from one

job to another, finding sustenance insoup kitchens. When he did find work,the pay was too small to sustain him, letalone his family. On one occasion hefound himself stealing, not withouttrepidation, a loaf of bread from a ladywho had shown him hospitality. Onweekends he would put his life in danger poaching chamois on the Raxalpe,

the large mountain near his home, sothat his family might have meat. In doing so, he acquired the skills that wouldlater place him in the first rank ofmountain guides in the Alps, the Rockies and the mountains of New Zealand.

It did not take him long to realize hecould translate his agility on the Raxalpe into a livelihood. One Easter


Sunday, he showed his first party themountain he knew so well. The twenty-six Austrian kreuzers he earned wereprobably as much money as he had seenin his life. “By this money my motherand I were much helped,” he admits inhis autobiography Where the CloudsCan Go.’ From that day he acquaintedhimself with every nook and cranny inthe mountains of his native Austria.Clients flocked to him, won over by acharm undiminished by his not havinghad as much schooling as some, and byhis meticulous attention to safety. Oneof his steadiest clients was the aforementioned Dr. Pistor (referred to as Dr. P.in Where the Clouds Can Go), whomade it possible for him to travel beyond Austria into the French and SwissAlps, and who was later instrumental ingetting him work in Canada. There wasalso a “Miss B”, an enthusiastic but imperious person who believed that byaddressing a guide as “Mister” he wouldthereby become spoiled and think himself “God only knows what”.2 A morepleasant association resulted from a contract with a mother and two daughters,one of whom, Amelia Malek, became alifelong friend and whom he might haveperhaps married had circumstances notforced him to leave Austria. With theseand other clients he developed a keenunderstanding of human nature and aunique guiding psychology.

On his time off he sought — and found— challenges of quite a different naturefrom the rock and ice faces of the Alps.In reference to “going to the window”to woo attractive farmers’ daughters, hestates that “to overcome difficulties iswhat makes life and love sweet. Oftenit is a dog or a stick, or the farmer’swhip, or a bucket of water fromabove.”3

The year 1906, Conrad’s twenty-third, was an important one. Accompanying a client to Corsica in theMediterranean he accomplished his firstascent: the Capo Talfonato. From thenon he made so many he was hard put(like Don Giovanni with conquests ofquite a different nature) to keep countof them.

Two years later, after completing acourse which gave him formal qualification as a guide and having gone to

Vienna to be tutored in English by Dr.Pistor’s wife, Conrad paused to reflecton his life. Admitting its ups anddowns, he concluded that, so far, it hadbeen good, even “splendid”. He couldnot, however, go on living “from handto mouth”,4and he might be better off,certainly from a financial standpoint, ifhe were to leave Austria. So Dr. Pistor,doing him one of many good turns,wrote the Canadian Pacific Railway onhis behalf, about the possibility of hisbeing taken on as a guide in theRockies.

The Railway, already having at its disposal a “stable” of Swiss guides,responded negatively. Another letter toA.O. Wheeler of the Alpine Club ofCanada produced the desired result. Soin 1909, Conrad, with financial helpfrom his friends supplementing his ownhard won earnings, set out for Canada.He took with him a suitcase, a trunk, arucksack, two ice axes and a handful offlowers from the valley that had been hishome. It goes without saying the sorrow he felt leaving was echoed in thefamily and friends he left behind.

After the monotony of ocean and prairie, his first sight of the Rockies, withtheir covering of snow, filled him withlonging. Taken as he was with red andyellow flowers by Lake Minnewankanear Banif, cerulean lakes bleeding glaciers in the high country, and mountaingoats footing the crags, these beautiesserved only to remind him of what hehad left. In spite of his resolution to“fight out the battle”, the “heim-weh”(homesickness) he felt was never toleave him.

‘Wheeler, however, found plenty forConrad to do. At the Alpine Clubcamps his services as a guide were muchin demand. Mountains having workedtheir way into his being, he could bealive to their dangers without beingafraid. This inspired confidence in hisclients, regardless of experience. A.H.McCarthy, who participated in the firstascents of Mounts Robson (highest inthe Canadian Rockies) and Logan(highest in Canada) was quite happy tofollow in the steps Conrad cut withgreat skill into Robson’s icy face. Conrad took special care with women,“quieting” their nerves over rough spots

with stories, or a few harmless “love”gestures. He would pack extra pairs ofmitts (which on one occasion were usedas socks) for those who, underestimatinghow cold it could get in the mountains,neglected to bring their own. He couldalso be stern. When he observed onegentleman to be having more than heought to of difficulties, he told him inno uncertain terms to go easy on the cognac. Instead of turning againstConrad, the man chose to regard him asa friend. And back in camp (whereWheeler would have no end of choreslined up), instead of calling it a day,Conrad, when asked by clients to repairtheir climbing boots, would do so “witha smile” 6

One thing that impressed Conradabout the camps, and about Canada,was the prevailing democratic spirit. Hemarvelled that both men and womencarried their own gear. Back home inAustria, his client, Miss B., once madehim carry half a dozen pairs of herboots. When he led McCarthy andColonel W.W. Foster, Deputy Ministerof Public Works for British Columbia,to the summit of Mount Robson in1913, he was pleased with the thanksthey expressed, especially that comingfrom Foster, “a Canadian Statesman”.This would not likely have happenedhad the “statesman” been European.Most startling of all was the occasionwhen Conrad took his hat off to Wheeler and Wheeler replied: “You do notneed to take your hat off to me, for ifyou do it I shall have to also and I amnot accustomed to any such thing”.8

At the end of the summer, when Conrad received his first Canadian pay, hewas surprised at the number ofAustriankronen that could be squeezed out of aCanadian dollar. He went to his hotelroom, closed the door, and counted themoney several times. He admitted thatback home in Nasswald, the amountwould make him feel “just like a Rothschild”. 9 What did he decide to do withit? He would pay off a debt to a friend,then send some to his “dear” mother.

When camp was over, Wheeler putConrad to work on his surveys, both inthe mountains and in the Kamloops region. On one of his days “off’, Conradtook a notion to climb Mount Sir Don-

23 B.C. Historical News. Spring 1993

aid, a feat he claims gave him no difficulty.b0 While in the Kamloops region,he had occasion to observe the plight ofthe Indians. Aware of their alcohol ridden state, he noted that the whitetraders to whom they brought handicrafts and pelts paid only a tenth of thevalue. He pitied the women for beingtreated like slaves, but admired howthey “carried their children”.”

During his first winter he worked as acarpenter in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta.’2 There he found people going towork on Christmas Day, and afterwardmaking for the local bar, where theywasted no time getting drunk. A far cryfrom the inns of Austria, where the daywould be celebrated with singing anddancing.

In the course of this winter he and anIndian co-worker both suffered frostbite. He paid an Edmonton hospital forthe Indian’s treatment as well as hisown. Then he worked on a prairiefarm, finding himself having to wriggleout of a situation in which the farmertried to marry him off to his daughter.This made him decide that if he were tomarry, it would have to be to someonewho shared his love of nature. He hadleft one such person behind in Austria(Amelia Malek). Some years and manyadventures later he would find anotherin the Columbia Valley.

Glad to get back to the mountains, heaccompanied Wheeler on surveys to thePurcells and the Yellowhead region.While in the Purcells they glimpsed forthe first time the needle-like spires ofthe Bugaboos which, closely resemblingsimilar formations in the French Alps,would tantalize Conrad for the rest ofhis life.

While in the Yellowhead region, feeling boxed in on a day when weatherconditions precluded surveying, Conradset out alone to make the first ascent ofMount Whitehorn. When he got to thetop he found no evidence of anyonehaving been there before him, Aftercarefully constructing a “stone man”(cairn) and placing a note in it bearingthe date (August 10, 1911 — his twenty-eighth birthday) and his name he beganwhat poor visibility made a difficult descent. Feeling his way with his ice axe,he often found it to strike nothing butair. Then a flash of lightning showedhim the way to go. When his feet felt

rock under them he “yodelled with delight”.’ When he told Wheeler what hehad done, the latter would not take himat his word, there having been no companion along to back him up. Conradhad to wait two years to be vindicated,when a climbing party found his cairnand retrieved his note.

The following winter was the first ofmany he would spend trapping, living“a lonely, Walden like existence”4 incabins he would build during time offon Wheeler’s surveys. For food he wastotally dependent on animals that, alltoo often, could be obtained only withdifficulty. In the course of that winterhe got caught in an avalanche while pursuing a mountain goat. When it wasover and he found himself miraculouslystill alive, if somewhat the worse forwear, he happened to see the goat’s headsticking out of the snow. Apologetically, he killed the animal as it struggled tofree itself. A vegetarian would be hardput to survive the Canadian wildernessin winter. Of this life itself, despite itshardships, Conrad admitted a predilection for it. “Many wouldn’t spend asingle hour alone in a forest where thereare all sorts of wild animals . . . But Ihave always had a taste for it... Therecan be no finer life.”

With the year 1912 came an opportunity for travel, and a visit home. Azoologist, Ned Hollister, whom Conradmet in the Mount Robson region theprevious summer, asked him to accompany and assist him on a collectingexpedition to the Altai Mountains in Siberia. There Conrad found “snaringmice can be as exciting as hunting elephants”. ‘ The experience stirred up inhim a feeling that what he really wouldlike to have been in life was a scientist,or something that would have enabledhim “to do something good and great inthe world”.’7 He felt keenly his lack offormal education, and the circumstanceswhich brought it about. Afterward hemade his way to Austria and his family,to see both for the last time. Even whileenjoying “a jolly time, living my youthover again” 8 he found himself missing“the solitude that one finds in the Rockies; for the campfire and the carefreelife”.” Clearly, his feelings were split between his two worlds.

Back in Canada in 1913, he was toperform the one feat that would make

•him an icon of Canadian mountaineering: leading the first officiallyacknowledged ascent of Mount Robson.Other peaks in the Rockies and Selkirkshe regarded as easy game when compared to the Alps. Not so Robson.This 12, 972 foot monarch of the Rockies, located on the British Columbiaside of the Yellowhead Pass and hoistingits castellated splendour above the Canadian National Railway line, he found“no baby to be fondled by everybody”.20Its loftiness making it a cynosure forweather, it hurled snow and ice, avalanches, rockfalls and difficult visibilityat all who dared challenge it. None ofthis deterred Conrad as on July 31 heled his “herren”: the aforementionedA.H. McCarthy and W.W. Foster, tothe cloud capped summit. The ice intowhich he cut steps fell off in showers ofglistening chunks. When they “arrived”, Conrad remarked: “Gentlemen,this is as far as I can take you.”2’All thewhile, he took time to observe “overhanging cornices fringed with longicicles glittering in the sun.”22 There wasalso a sunset and, needless to say, theview was splendid. These things meantas much to Conrad as having made thefirst ascent. He pitied those for whomclimbing meant nothing more than winning the race to the top. On reaching“terra firma”, Conrad must have felt, toquote his editor J.M. Thorington, “howgay the flowers, how bright the sky.”23

That same year Conrad travelledagain, this time to New Zealand, at thebehest of another mountaineeringfriend, Herbert Otto Frind. In 1914 hebecame head guide at the Hermitage, acentre for mountaineering in the MountCook region. In the course of three visits to the country during the WorldWar I years, he ascended over fiftypeaks, twenty-nine of them first ascents.Most notable was his traverse, in January, 1916, in company with a Mrs.Thomson of Wellington, a lady in hersixties, of all the peaks of the 12,349foot Mount Cook. To more conventional souls looking on askance atexposing a lady, and an elderly one atthat, to the dangers involved, Conradreplied: “When a lady wishes to go on, Inever turn back.” 24 In many instancesthroughout Where the Clouds Can GoConrad rates women’s climbing abilityas equal to that of men, and their capac


admitted this to be his mostdifficult Canadian climb.Later, he would attemptBugaboo’s neighbor, Snow-patch, to meet defeat on amountain for the first time.It was not beneath him tosend a photo of Snowpatchto Amelia Malek, and otherfriends, in Austria, labelled“The Mountain that ConradCould Not Climb”.28

Also during his Canadianinterludes Conrad, againwith A.H. MacCarthy,“knocked off’ a good number of the highest peaks (allover 10,000 feet) in the Purcells, the range facing theRockies across the RockyMountain Trench in Southeastern British Columbia.Among them was the highest, 11,342 foot MountFarnham, climbed in 1914.Thus Conrad eased himselfinto what might be regardedas the last phase of his life,when he finally found a ladyand made the Purcells his

1917 Conrad married Henri-quito Ferreira, nicknamed Hetta, a“quiet, interesting woman”29 of Portuguese descent and conversant in severallanguages, who had come to Canadafrom British Guiana in 1913. He mether at McCarthy’s ranch near Wilmeron Lake Windermere, where she wascook. Following their marriage, theybought a ranch in the same area. Conrad raised pack horses for hunting andclimbing expeditions and Hetta raisedmink, marten and chinchilla rabbits forfur. She is reported to have had a talentfor handling these animals. Philadelphia ophthalmologist James MonroeThorington, intrepid explorer and author of The Glittering Mountains ofCanada, testifies to her domestic abilities when he describes a visit toConrad’s ranch following a trip theymade to the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers in 1928:

his wife cooked us a dinner offried chicken and trimmings that noneof us have ever forgotten. We treasurethe memory of the white cottage, window deep in sweet peas and currant

bushes, with Conrad and his wife waving goodbye as we started homeward.The dusky foothills of the Rockiesspread a gorgeous panorama across theColumbia Valley: Lake Windermere isalmost below, and it is easy to see whyConrad had chosen it for his home.”°

On day he almost lost this home —

and Hetta. Taking his cue from “a mystical New Zealand lady” (Mrs.Thomson?”) he had guided, he soughtto induce in himself a trance like stateby gazing at a candle he had set at thefoot of his bed. When his spirit wasabout to “take off”, some hot candlegrease fell on his toe. In trying to putout the fire that ensued when thiscaused him to tip the candle over, he almost drowned Hetta in the roombelow.’ I can imagine she was none toopleased when confronted with the mess.

Hetta seems not to have shared Conrad’s love of wilderness and outdoor life.“She was too much afraid the whiteblankets would get dirry,”32 Conrad toldThorington. All the same, she seems tohave been a good companion to Conradand provided for his roving spirit anemotional anchor.

After he had married and set up hisranch, Conrad shifted from climbing toguiding and outfitting, mostly in thePurcells and around the Columbia Ice-field: Under Conrad’s guidance,Thorington, Eaton Cromwell and others in 1928 set eyes for the first time onthat jewel of mountain lakes, The Lakeof the Hanging Glacier, with the icebergs that had broken off the glacier“standing in the dusk like whiteghosts.” The following year theytraced Dutch Creek from where it discharges into Columbia Lake to its originin a mountain they called Tri-KootenayPeak. They established this as thesource of the Columbia River, ratherthan the Lake, as explorer DavidThompson gave the world to believe.This geographer of geographers musthave somehow missed the entrance ofthe Creek into the Lake, or was heldback from further investigation by timeor bad weather.

In the Columbia Icefield Conrad andfellow guide and outfitter Jimmy Simpson would entertain by swappingstories. Listening to these “was to knowwhere Munchausen left off”.3’ On allthese trips Conrad’s natural intelligence

Conrad on an Alpine Club aseent. c. 1921Photo courtesy of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.

ity to endure discomfort and pain, high- to marry,er. As for Mrs. Thomson herself, she home.was “ready to follow him anywhere in In June,the mountains.. . where the only view Ihad for what seemed like quite a longtime was the sight of (his) hobnailedboots”. 25

Beautiful and challenging as New Zealand no doubt was for Conrad, at theend of one of his trips he found himselfnostalgic “for the green woods and thebears” 26 of the Rockies.

In 1916, during one of his Canadianinterludes, Conrad, in company withA.H. MacCarthy, confronted the Bugaboo Spires. Located in the northernpart of the Purcell Range, these sharpquartzite peaks to this day are regardedas some of Canada’s most difficult andchallenging, and draw mountaineersfrom all over the world. They werenamed for a prospector who worked thearea to discover that what he found glittering therein was not gold. From amountaineering standpoint, Conradstruck “pay dirt”. In August 1916 he ascended the 10,250 foot Bugaboo Spire.Reaching a spot where there were nohand holds he “applied the vacuum gripand pulled himself up and over”. 27 He


made him a good companion. An avidreader as well as observer, he “could talkof many things from the history of Aus-.trian royalty to the intimate domestichabits of marten and muskrat, and therewas always something to learn fromhim”.

Conrad’s abilities with people also extended to animals. He would pet andspoil his horses and talk to them like afather to his children.

In off season, Conrad continued towander the country setting up traps, living in the little cabins he would buildfor himself. One gets the impressionthat beneath his charm, good humorand other marks of the extrovert therelurked a substratum of melancholy originating, perhaps, in the poverty of hisearly life and which made him want to“pull away”, even from Hetta. In a letter to Mrs. Thomson, the lady he ledacross Mount Cook in New Zealand, hedescribes the animals with whom heonce shared his trapping cabin: “a mostwonderful clever dog, sixteen mice. . . abig snake” to whom he would play music on his mouth organ, “The ugliestlooking toad you can imagine”, butwhom he loved “for his good naturedcharacter”, and a porcupine who stayedfor “hours” and whom he “lernt” toshake hands.36 He admitted to findingthem all “better friends as one doesamongst people”.7 On another occasionVictor Hugo’s Les Miserables kept himfrom going “insane” from loneliness.Throughout all Conrad’s “walkabouts”Hetta kept the home fires burning. She,too, must have been lonely.

With the onset of the Depression in1929 the dark angel of poverty, alwayspresent at Conrad’s shoulder, asserted itsmenace once more. While, thanks tothe farm, they could always feed themselves, the Kains failed to make a profiton their enterprises. Demand for theproducts of both farm and trapline hadfallen, and they had to give up the animals they raised for fur. Neither didConrad expect much from his outfitting. He made a point, however, of notgiving in to despair. In March, 1932 hewrites: “The robins, blue birds, crowsand geese have arrived here and thingslook a little more cheerful . . . I for onelook at thing with hopes that all will

come right again.”Then in February, 1933 Fate robbed

him of Hetta, his companion for seventeen years. After being rushed tohospital in Cranbrook for an intestinalobstruction, she died following surgery.Conrad felt her loss keenly. In a letterto Thorington dated August 30, 1933he admits: “ . . . my little place does notlook so nice as it did when my dear oldgirl looked after it in my absence . . . attimes I get so damnable lonely. I missmy old sweetheart more than ever.’°

Following his wife’s death friends report that Conrad, always negligentabout caring for himself, became evenmore so and took fewer precautionsagainst exposure. His health declinedand he came to find climbing difficult.On his fiftieth birthday in August, 1933— his last — Conrad, in company withfriends, climbed Mount Louis whichpokes its impressive finger into the skynear Banif, and whose first ascent hehad made some sixteen years earlier.On top, the event was celebrated with asmall cake and a candle.

Early in 1934, he too, was admitted toCranbrook hospital suffering from encephalitis lethargica. On February 2, hedied. Friends from Wilmer notifiedAmelia Malek with the request that shedeliver the bad new to his mother, stillliving in Nasswald, and to his brothersand sisters. A headstone was erected toConrad Kain, “A Guide of Great Spirit,Mt. Robson, 1913. Erected by hisfriends.” Earle Birney wrote in retrospect; “The glow of our rocks is richerby the life of an Austrian goatherd, ofConrad Kain the mountain man, ofConrad Kain the Canadian.”

Mary Andrews is libmrian at the Whyte Museum in Banff She won Best Article frr 1991with her story ofAlpine Club Summer Camps,voL 24:1

FOOTNOTES

1. p. 18.2. Kain, Conrad Where the Clouds Can Go. p. 152.3. Ibid p. 265.4. Ibid p. 198.

5. Ibid p.248.6. Letter written by Jimmy Simpson to J.M. Thoring

ton, March 23. 1934.7. Op. cit. p. 321.

8. Ibidp.212.

9. Ibidp.243.10. Ibid p. 230.11. Ibidp.234.12. Listed in Place Names of Alberta. Geographic

Board of Canada. 1928.13. Where the Clouds Can Go, p.286.14. Conrad Kain (unpublished article) Cohn

Monteath.15. op. cit. p. 279.16. Ibid p. 299.17. Ibidp.306.18. Ibidp. 301.19. Ibidp. 308.20. LetterfromKain to Mr. lindsay, March 15, 1929.21. Where the Clouds Can Go, p.3l7.22. Ibid p.316.23. Ibidp.313.24. Recollections of Conrad Kain by Mn. J. Thoonon

p.2-3 Thorington papers 1.196).25. Ibid p.2.26. Where the Cloud, Can Go P. 305.27. Ibid p. 373.28. Ibidp.440.

29. Ibid p. 378.30. Ibid p. 404

31. The Glittering Mountains of Canada, James Monroe Thorington p. 224.

32. Where the Clouds Can Go, p.379.33. The Purcell Range of British Columbia, J.M.

Thodngton p. 54.34. Where the Clouds Can Go. p.415.35. Conrad Kain. 1883-1934. p.6 (Thorington papers,

1.186).36. Where the Clouds Can Go, p. 377.37. Loc. cit.

38. Where the Clouds Can Go. p. 380.39. Ibidp.410.40. Ibidp.440.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bimey, Earle Coming ofAge in Erickson, B.C.B.C. Outdoors September. October. November,December, 1980.

Dowling, Philip. The Mountaineers: FamousClimbers in Canada. Edmontort Hurtig, c1979.

Kain, Conrad. Where the aouds Can Go. 3d ad.New Yoric American Alpine Club, ci 979.

Thorington, James Monroe. The GlitteringMountains of Canada. Philadelphia: J.W. Lea, 1925.

Thorington, James Monroe. The Purcell Range ofBritish Columbia New Yoric American AlpineClub, 1946.

ARCH IVAL SOURCES

Thoringron. James Monroe. Papers, 1825-1974.Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies Archives,M. 106. (Originals housed at Princeton University,

NewJersey).Monteath, Cohn. Conrad Kain: article (ca 1975).

Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies Archives,

M. 343.Birney, Earle. Papers. 1896-1971. Whyte

Museum of the Canadian Rockies Archives, M. 201.


Captain Evans Represented the Miners

Years ago, RE. Reid and F.W. Lindsaypublished separate accounts of one of themost curious of British Columbia’s historical figures. Captain John Evansseemed the Don Quixote of the Cariboogold rush of the 1860’s.

His early life and experiences in no wayfitted him to be a pioneer in a roughWestern mining camp. He was born inthe village of Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire, in North Wales, on January 15,

Photo courtesy of 8CARS Cat. No. H P2876

1816, and grew up to manhood there.In 1858 and succeeding years, news

travelled throughout the world that inan unknown country, under the Britishflag, on the North Pacific Coast ofNorth America, there had been greatdiscoveries of gold, and that peoplefrom all countries were flocking thereto make their fortune. Some of thelucky people had come from Wales.Why should not others fare as well?

Evans would not have been true to hisWelsh blood if he had not longed foran adventure in the search for gold.

It was Mr. Evans who dreamed up theidea of the “Company of Adventurers,”as the group was called, but it was Hen-sy Beecroft Jackson who put up thenecessary money. He was a longtimefriend of Evans and both of them hadworked in the cotton industry in Manchester. But Jackson was a man wholoved to take chances, whilst Evans wasthe cautious type. At one time, indeed,both men had equal chances to takeover a cotton manufacturing plant inManchester. Evans considered the installment payments too big a risk.Jackson jumped in single-handed andmade a fortune. It was from this thatthe funds came to support Evans’ gold-seeking venture, though in all truth,Evans was no miner. His total knowledge of mining had been gainedthrough three years work in a Welshslate quarry.

Evans was delighted to accept Jackson’s offer, and set to work withoutdelay to select his men. Some he chosefrom the residents of Carnarvonshire,the balance were taken from Flintshire.Among the former was Taliesin Evans,the Captain’s son. All the men selectedwere of good standing in the communities in which they lived. Theyaddressed Evans as “Captain” out ofdeference.

Twenty-six Welshmen, bound for thegolden Cariboo, landed in Liverpoolthat December 1862. Liverpool, withits Naval yards and Her Majesty’s shipsanchored out in the roadstead. Liverpool, bleak and snowy and windy, withthe salt air blowing in off the ocean, almost as bleak a land as the Cariboo wassaid to be. Now there was the urgentbusiness of finding a ship called TheRising Sun, lucky omen, for it was onthis vessel, sailing three days beforeChristmas, that Mr. Evans had madearrangements for the passage to Can-boo of the Company of Adventurers;

by Lloyd Bailey

Captain Evans and his son Taliesin.


first stop Victoria, British Columbia, byway of Cape Horn.

It took the Company of Adventurersalmost six month to reach Victoria onthe sailing ship. John Evans, taking afaster vessel and crossing the Isthmus ofPanama instead of the long and fearsome journey around the Horn, hadbeaten the Adventurers to Victoria bytwo months. But his passage was notwhat you would call luxury travel. Inhis diary, he describes part of this journey and also tells how he spent thosetwo months of waiting for the men, inan even more rugged exploratory trip upthe Fraser River to look for a suitable location where claims could be staked.

The Adventurers stayed five days inVictoria. Victoria, in 1863, saw ‘49ers,from the played-out California gold-fields, returnees from the recentAustralian gold rush and Cariboo miners, fresh from new strikes on Williamsor Lightning Creeks, milling about thebooming tent-town. Thugs, gamblersand the off-scourings of the worldwatched each incoming boat for gold-laden miners and each Fraser river-bound craft for future victims. Butsomehow, the 26 Welsh Adventurers appear to have come through unscathedand innocent. On the 16th ofJune theyboarded the Elizabeth Anderson for thetrip across the Gulf of Georgia to theFraser River, then up the Fraser to NewWestminster, jumping-off place for thegolden land. Here they changed to asmaller craft which would take themfurther up river, into Harrison Lake andon to Port Douglas at its head.

Before he left Victoria with his men,Evans had a long conference with Governor Douglas and his advisors as tomining matters. The discussion wasmainly directed to the mining laws ofthe Mainland colony. Under the law asit then stood, no one could mine onCrown lands unless he were the holderof a Free Miner’s certificate issued by aGold Commissioner. Any one holdingsuch a certificate could stake a claim onunoccupied Crown lands and minethereon, but by law no person couldhold more than two claims at the sametime.

This he pointed out to the Governor,and suggested that, if this remained thelaw, it would be difficult to obtain English capital for mining development, for

under these circumstances, the investorwould be at the mercy of his workmen,as they could sell what really belongedto the employer, no matter what agreements had been made. He showed theGovernor the contracts with his men sothat it could be seen that no advantagewas being taken of them.

The Governor requested Evans towrite him an official letter, and assuredhim that his suggestions would receivehis careful attention. In collaborationwith Mr. Rhodes, Evans “concocted,”as he says, a letter setting out his views,and delivered it to the Governor beforeleaving Victoria. Notwithstanding hisaggressive attack on the mining laws,no amending legislation followed.

What Evans did when he reachedCariboo, therefore, was to look aboutfor ground in a favourable location notalready taken. He had a warm welcomefrom those operating on LightningCreek. They were anxious for him andhis party to remain there, and by readjusting the abandoned claims and thosebeing worked, they were able to securefor him 2,500 feet on the creek, clear ofany claims. Evans thereupon appliedfor a lease for five years of this territory,including the water rights thereon andthe hillsides, and this was granted.

Here they remained mining for twoyears, at the end of which they had recovered gold to the value of $450 at anexpense of over $26,000. The expedition then disbanded. Some of itsmembers went back to Wales, some remained in British Columbia.

Hardly had the Adventurers got settled in Van Winkle, when CaptainEvans was requested to run as candidatefor the British Columbia Legislature.The first election in the Crown Colonyof British Columbia (the Mainland wasthen a separate colony from VancouverIsland), was held during the winter of1863. The Legislative Council, as itwas then called, consisted of fifteenmembers: five Government officials,five magistrates, and five memberselected by the residents of five electoraldistricts. Cariboo was allowed tworepresentatives.

In Cariboo as in Wales he was still thesame old stalwart Puritan. By preceptand example he preached the religionand morality of his faith. He did all inhis power to better the conditions of his

new home. Especially he watched overhis fellow Welshmen in Cariboo. Asearly as 1866, he had induced a few ofthem to gather together a few dollarsand build a small hall in Barkerville, tobe used for religious and literary purposes, on a lot granted for that purposeby Gold Commissioner Cox. This wascalled “Cambrian Hall,” and religiousservices were held therein until it wasdestroyed in the fire of 1868.

According to Welsh Adventurer Harry Jones’ records, Captain Evans wasalmost a religious fanatic. Here in thenew country, he would allow none ofhis men to travel on a Sunday. Andeach evening his stalwart crew of 26knelt in a circle while the good Captainintoned his sonorous prayers. It mayhave been irksome to some of theWelshmen, but it proved a stellar attraction to the Indians who happenedby. Indeed, the sight of these menkneeling and praying in a language thatwas neither Chinook, Shalish, Englishor French, must have been mystif54ng —

even terriiying to those Indians whodid not speak Welsh.

The completion of the miners’ contract with Captain Evans and HenryBeecroft Jackson was rapidly approaching. For two years they had workedlike slaves, faced insuperable odds andgained nothing but experience. Onevery side they had seen men, some asgreen as they were, dig fortunes fromthe gravel. True to their contract, theyhad obeyed Captain Evans, but now itdawned on them that the Captain, despite his honesty of purpose, despite hisintegrity and regardless of his organizing ability, was a losing proposition.

It is quite possible that the Welshmenmight have stayed with him for anotherseason under a modified contract, hadthe Captain agreed to hire just one experienced Cariboo miner and put himin charge of operations. The difficultiesof mining on Lightning Creek were atleast twofold those of Williams andmost of the other creeks. And althoughthe Welsh miners did not know thisthen, they were getting nowhere underEvans’ guidance. They were anxious tolearn how to improve their methods,for they must think of their own futures. Many had families back inWales.

From the old records available con-


cerning the Welsh Adventurers, underCaptain John Evans, it would appearthat the whole expedition was compounded of a tragedy of errors,insufficient capital, over one for Carl-boo East, and the other for CaribooWest, in which were situated Stanley,Quesnel, and Van Winkle, where theWelsh Adventurers were living.

Van Winkle was a typical pioneerplacer mining camp, the like of whichcould be found throughout the WesternStates north into British Columbia. Itconsisted of the inevitable saloons, miners’ shacks, a store and several flophouses. About a hundred men wereworking Lightning and Van Winklecreeks, which joined waters at thispoint. Lightning was one of the richestcreeks in Cariboo. But it was cursedwith “Cariboo slum”, that bane of allplacer miners from that day to this.Cariboo slum is a pea-soup mixture ofsilt and water which swallows mine timbers, equipment, and men.

At Van Winkle, where Evans wasknown, the vote was overwhelmingly inhis favour: Black 3, Evans 50, Nelson

But what happened at Quesnel? LetEvans himself tell the sad story:

When the news came up from theMouth (Quesnellemouth) we fbund thatthe two men who were nominated myagents there got on a spree in going downand only reached there the evening previous to the election, so that they had not theopportunity of doing anything if theytriea much less had the electors, as it wasfound afterward they (the canvassers) werebought over by Dr. Black with drink.Ony 4 votedfrr me there, who on& cameto know of my being a candidate in theafternoon. Dr. Black polled 127 but Mr.Cox, who is the returning Officer, struckout all the votes ofChinamen.

As the official record shows Dr.Black’s majority was 69, and CaptainEvans’ figures show a majority of 76,the Chinese votes struck out must havenumbered 7. So ended Captain Evans’first appearance in the political world.

At Barkerville, on Sunday, gambling,swearing, and other vices reigned unchecked. Of course, there were otherswho deplored the condition of things,but they were too few to force a change.This state of affairs is not to be won-

dered at when we consider conditionsin other mining camps in the West atthe time. Of all these camps, Barkerville was the most isolated fromcivilization. In it a heterogeneous massof humanity had come together fromall parts of the world. Even in such surroundings Evans never faltered in hisstubborn pride and his attempts to keepcosts down. According to Harry Jones,there were at that time many experienced miners on the creeks of Caribooand practically any one of them wouldhave been glad to advise the Welshmenin the fine art of sinking a shaft, drifting into gravel or even timbering in themine. Jones said that none of theWelshmen had any knowledge of thesethings, least of all about coping withthe infamous “cariboo slum” or the implacable waters of Lightning Creek,which flooded so many shafts andbroke so many miners. But Evans wasdetermined to demonstrate to all interested onlookers the superiority of hismethods and of his crew.

And somehow, by sheer guts and tenacity, the Welshmen did manage tosink a shaft some thirty feet before thewater came in. The log pumps wereput to work, sans iron bands, but wereof little value between splitting andclogging up. So the iron hand-pumpwas brought into action and the mentried to bail out the shaft by bucket andwindlass, working in relays of two,night and day. Pump and bail; pumpand bail. No time for sleep, or decentfood, or even prayers. Without propertools or dry clothes, they labored whilethe water crept up. For LightningCreek is a sizeable stream and neitherCaptain Evans’ determination, nor theunremitting toil of his men could master its flow.

Nor did Evans feel it was a necessaryexpense to purchase steel with which totip the men’s picks. Thus, when theywere working in gravel or hard pan, thesoft point blunted in a short time. Sodesperate were the men that they usedtheir spare time and Sundays to searcharound deserted mines and old shafts,picking up any bits of steel they couldfind from which their blacksmith “OldPritch,” could make serviceable pointsfor their most important tool. After thefailure of this venture Evans remained

in Cariboo, seeking riches in the mines.Like so many others, he felt that hewould sometime strike it rich in one ofhis claims.

In 1872, he was working on a groupof claims on Antler Creek, east of Barkerville. By 1873, he was beginning tofear that they were not going to turnout as he had anticipated, and that hewould lose the $1,600 he had expendedon them. However, he had otherclaims on Davis Creek, a tributary ofLightning Creek, and he was sure thatthey would be all right, “some day.”The last we hear of his mining claims isin November, 1875, when he says thathe has several claims, but he does notknow whether they will turn out to beanything or not. Evidently, his fearswere well founded.

A failure he may have been as a miner, but the “gray-headed old man,” ashe called himself, kept the affection andesteem of the people of Cariboo. In1875, at the first election in British Columbia where the voting was by ballot,he was again nominated as a candidatefor the Legislative Assembly of theProvince, in company with the Premier, George Anthony Walkem, andA.E. B. Davie, later also Premier. Thistime there were no accidents as in1863, and he was elected.

He was very proud of his success,both for the compliment which thepeople of Cariboo had paid him byelecting him as their member, and alsofor the monetary reward which accompanied it, which, no doubt, he neededvery much at that time. He attendedthe three sessions of the Assembly in1875, 1876, and 1877, and took an active part in the proceedings. The votesshow that he supported the WalkemGovernment until its fall in April,1876. Mr. A.C. Elliott then becamePremier. Although Walkem was afterthat time in opposition, Evans remained loyal to him and continued tovote with him until the dissolution ofthe House in 1878.

The Legislative Assembly was dissolved on April 12, 1878, and a generalelection held in May. Evans was againa candidate with Mr. Walkem and Mr.George Cowan, a miner of ConklinGulch, as his associates. All were elected. The Elliott Government wasdefeated and Mr. Walkem was again

29 B.C. Historical News. SprIng 1993

Premier. In the first and only sessionheld thereafter in his lifetime, Evanscontinued to be Mr. Walkem’s faithfiulsupporter.

But the Captain was growing old. Hewas not feeling well and began to complain of the state of his health. In June1879, he writes to his children that he isfeeling very well except for rheumatism,which had been troubling him for sometime. He says that “It is in the nervesand called Sciatica.” On August 25,1879, he died at Stanley of inflamma

tion of the bowels and kidneys, after anillness of only two days.

Years later, when reminiscing aboutthe old days, Harry Jones told of theWelshmen’s departure. “As we wereleaving, the Captain came to say goodbye. I was the last one out of thehouse.

“I am sorry to see you go Harry,’ hesaid, taking my hand and looking intomy eyes. “I wish you better luck thanyou’ve had with me.” With that hequickly dropped my hand and turned

away, but not before he had pressed atwenty dollar bill into my palm. I managed to stammer my thanks, but thatwas about all. I hurried from thehouse. Taliesin followed and walkedpart way down the trail with me.”

The author lives in Comox where he ic a Teacher-Librarian.He has an MA. in Canadian History and an M&L from theUniversity of Victoria.

The Baileys ofColonial British Columbiaby Lloyd Bailey

Philip James Bailey, the Americanpoet, 1816-1902, once remarked that“the worst men often give the best advice.” As a bona fide Bailey, I no doubtquali5’, albeit Lloyd James Bailey, occasional historian. A more germanedictum comes from William Shakespeare: “‘What’s in a name? That whichwe call a rose by any other name wouldsmell as sweet.” I am not writing a history of the “Rose” family but the pointis well-taken.

Rather, this is an attempt to identif,rearly settlers in colonial British Columbia who bore the Bailey escutcheon.Why? Perhaps contemporary Baileyslike myself should search for rootsamongst these possible ancestors.There is an old Australian adage, “Toknow a country, you must learn itsmemories.” To know British Columbiawe might tap our genealogy. The British Columbia Archives and RecordsService can provide procedural details.

The surname Bailey is of French-Norman origin, designating a bailiff orlord’s agent. His castle premises cameto be known as the “bailey” or “courtyard” or “castle walls.” The venerableOld Bailey stands today as a courtyardof justice in London, England. Medieval England abounded in castle baileysand baileys as officers of the manor.

Being an occupational surname likeSmith and Cooper, metalworker andbarrelmaker, there is a much wider possibility of Baileys not being related.Geographical surnames are the best fortracing family origins.

Aristocratic pretensions must be satisfied with the family name, Bailey, ofthe Barons Glanusk of Northumberland, England. There are virtually nofamous Baileys, if one exempts minorcelebrities like the late American television host, Jack Bailey, and popularsongstress, Pearl Bailey.

My own family interest goes back to1910 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Mygrandfather, Henry Townsend Bailey,joined his brother Richard from Barnoldswick, Yorkshire, in the employ ofthe Canadian Northern Railway, he asa policeman, his brother as an expressclerk. World War One witnessed bothBaileys enlisting in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1914 and sufferingsevere gassing and other wounds atVimy Ridge during that terrible conflict. My grandfather returned toCanada only to gather his family ofwife, Rachel, and sons, Harold andJames, for a return trip to a small business in Yorkshire. Daughter Maudehad died of pneumonia on her originalvoyage to Canada in 1911. My great-

grandfather, John “Jacko” Bailey, amerchant farmer, paid trans-Atlanticfares several times as my young father-to-be, Harold, developed chest congestion which demanded a dry, Canadian,prairie climate.

In the early 1920’s, Henry Bailey andhis young family tried valiantly to farmin central Saskatchewan near Saskatoon. One winter they survived largelyon a diet of donated turnips. War injuries never really healed. By 1927, theBaileys had moved to Victoria, buying alarge house on Scott Street. Grandmother Rachel fought with RoyalCanadian Legion support for a smallgovernment pension for my incapacitated grandfather. Henry died of theeffects of mustard gas poisoning in1929.

Son Harold worked in local sawmills,educated himself and gained Victoriaprominence as a sports figure and associate of Archie Mackinnon at theY.M.C.A. After twenty years as an official of the Pacific Lumber InspectionBureau, he retired with his wife, ThoraMathisen, to Sooke, B.C. Haroldpassed away in 1974.

Younger son, James, went from theSaanich Fire Department to the Victoria Machinery Depot as a supervisorduring World War Two. The postwar


building boom saw Jim Bailey prosperin subdividing many Shelibourne andLansdown area housing units. He retired to his apartment complex inEsquimalt, leaving the widow, EleanorAnderson, in 1987. John and Carolynare surviving cousins.

Richard Bailey returned in 1919 tothe Canadian National Railway, retiringin Vancouver in 1949 where he was survived by his son Ronald and daughterStella, now Mrs. Norman Johnson ofQualicum Beach, B.C.

In colonial British Columbia no Baileys worked for the incumbentHudson’s Bay Company which had established interior posts from 1805 andcoastal posts from 1827. Few settlerswere found either on Vancouver Island

or the mainland before 1858, year ofthe gold rush. The limited immigration to the crown colony of VancouverIsland after 1849 numbered no Baileys.The year 1860 saw over 30,000 population in the new colony of BritishColumbia. Fort Victoria experiencedan economic boom. Charles AlfredBayley (alternate spelling) opened Bayley’s Hotel that year. He went on todevelop a grocery business at two siteson Yates Street before expanding toFort Street in 1868.

There were sixteen other known Baileys in the pre-1871 colonial era. JohnBayley led Victoria’s nascent policeforce as superintendent in 1860. U.F.Bailey lived on Meares Street and hewas a stonemason in 1863. That year

Leslie Bailey boarded at the St. JamesHotel on Government Street. ThomasBailey had no fixed address.

Benjamin Bailey came to British Columbia a gold-seeker, led a miners’protest against arbitrary conduct byYale magistrate, P.B. Whannell, in1860, and graduated to auctioning government property in 1866. Thereafter,he resided in Victoria.

Nicholas C. Bailey too sought gold in1858, first on the Naas River and laterin the Queen Charlotte Islands. Residing in Victoria on Langley Street, hemoved to the Star Hotel on Fort Streetin 1863 and then to the rural Parson’sBridge Hotel in 1871. He applied toColonial Secretary W.A.G. Young for aposition with the new Gold EscortCorps in 1863.

Of these pioneers, John Baily of Comox has left the most traces. in 1862,he departed the sidewheeler Shannonfrom Southampton at St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. After a train trip to SanFrancisco by way of Panama, Bailysailed in the steamship Oregon for Victoria, arriving on July 18, 1862. Heand three English companions, all fromSomerset, initially sought Stikine Rivergold. Instead, they pursued Indiantales of fertile lands and on August 10,1862, began clearing the first farms inthe Comox Valley. They were followedlater that year by sixty purchasers ofHudson’s Bay Company lands, offH.M.S. Grappler.

As Comox Road Commissioner, JohnBaily was the first elected municipal official on northern Vancouver Island.He proved aggressive in that positionand also augmented his holdings to 310acres. After ten years, Baily returned toGlastonbury, Somerset, to take up themanagement of a large flour mill inherited from his father. He became mayorof his hometown in 1880. Baily refused to sell his Comox farm, insteadrenting it with its substantial house andbarn. Just before his death on May 12,1916, his lawyer son sold the land toDr. C. Denton Holmes of Victoria. Ofthe three surviving children, Mrs. S.S.Gardner lived in Everett, Washington.

Murray Bailey arrived in Victoria in1862. Son of a London merchant, hecame with sterling references and a desire to gain government employment.Governor James Douglas found no

Benjamin Bailey who brought hisfamily to Yalefrom San Francisco, 1858. He moved to Victoriawhere he belpedfound St. Barnabas Anglican Church. Photo courtesy of BCARS - Cat. No. HP4798


place for him. More employable wasMadison F. Bailey, a plasterer, and helived on Meares Street from 1868 to1871.

The last of the island Baileys would beJames Bailey, farmer, resident on EastRoad in the Lake District or Royal Oakbetween 1864 and 1869. A community-spirited fellow, James donated onequarter acre of his land for a school siteat the corner of Elk Lake Road andNorth Saanich Road in July 1864.The colonial government felt the lot tobe too small and requested a largerdonation.

Four Baileys sought mining claims orpre-emption land grants on the mainland before 1871. William Baileyworked at Lightning Creek. Odo Bailey lived near Richfield. Albert Baileypre-empted land in the central Cariboo.And Robert Bailey farmed along theFraser River above New Westminster.Bailey and Lawrence were general merchants at Yale in 1871.

The most ambitious Bailey in colonialhistory never arrived in British Columbia. Formerly of Her Majesty’sColonial Land and Emigration Office,C. Stuart Bailey served as secretary andchief spokesman for the Emigrant andColonist’s Aid Corporation Limited,headed in 1870 by one Irish duke andthree members of the British Parliament. Its board of directors counted sixaristocrats, four high military officers,five territorial officials and one insurance company executive.

C. Stuart Bailey espoused the GibbonWakefield scheme of government-assisted, farmers-proprietors. The colonial government responded with a visitto London of Chief Lands Commissioner J.W. Trutch in July 1870. TheBailey proposal involved a huge landgrant to the Corporation along with theissuance of long-term colonial bonds.Five hundred families would immigrateto 100 acres each of crown land. Alltransportation and settlement costswould be administered by the Corporation, the colonial government needspend no money, only float 76,000pounds of funding bonds for the first400 families and allocate 40,000 acres.The Corporation would receive 10,000acres to settle another 100 families asthey saw fit. Redemption of the bondswith interest and collection charges

would have cost 157,500 pounds in1884. Neither C. Stuart Bailey nor hisambition could be afforded by the colony, itself in economic doldrums.

It is said that Napoleon despised hisfamily. Perhaps they knew each othertoo well. Such is not the case with thepioneering Baileys of colonial BritishColumbia. Much more needs to beknown and the adventure of discovering an historical connection should bepursued.

Photo courtesy of BCARS - Cat. No. HP61 584.

The writer, who has been instructor at Ma1a-spina College and the University of Victoria, hasrecently completed requirementc for his PhD. atColumbia Pacfic University.

James Bailey - resident ofRoyal Oak 1864- 1869.


Roiin Art Centre ofPortAlberni

by Catherine (Lord) Kean

Tucked away on the corner of EighthAvenue and Argyle Street in the heart ofPort Alberni stands a relatively modestbuilding, now Rollin Art Centre. Shaded behind a protective screen of largeevergreen trees and a row of sturdy fencing which encloses each of the centre’sthree distinctive community gardens,many people would not immediately acknowledge the 1914 heritage home. YetRollin Art Centre, once the house of theyoung married couple Fred and EllenRollin, has its own tale to tell of the history of the Alberni Valley, and of theachievements of Fred Rollin.

Frederick Benjamin Rollin was borninto an English family in April, 1890,and his life began with an adventurousvoyage to Canada at six months of age.The three member family landed in Victoria, significantly “at the same time asthe Empress Hotel was being built andthey were driving piles to put the building on.” Fred’s father, James Surfleet

Rollin, established a small butcher’sshop on Government Street, and became renowned as a “specialist in porksausages.”2

After several successful years in thisoccupation, and the birth of a secondchild, Dorothy Victoria, James sold hisbutcher shop and became an owner andoperator of a hotel in Victoria. Yet thetales of the gold discoveries in the interior of British Columbia which driftedback to Victoria convinced him to relocate, and in 1898, James moved toLake Bennett to assume ownership of alocal hotel. His wife Helen, Fred, andDorothy followed later that year.

The prosperity of the gold fields wasnaturally short-lived, and the boomrapidly shifted to Dawson Creek andWhitehorse. The family left Bennett ayear later in February or March, 1900,and returned briefly to Victoria. Laterthat year, they relocated to Port Alberni, at this time “a world of stage

coaches, miners, early settlers, high button shoes, trailing skirts and little girlsin pinafores.” While separated intotwo distinct towns until 1967, Port Alberni was just beginning to emerge as aconsiderable settlement, partly due tothe presence of the Alberni PacificLumber Company, the fledgling company of what is now MacMillanBloedel. James became the proprietorof the Armour Hotel, and the familyran this business until 1908, when theyconstructed their own establishment,the King Edward Hotel. The grandopening of this premises was celebratedwith a dance, and a “general and cordialinvitation”4was extended to the peopleof both Alberni and New Alberni in theDecember 7, 1907 issue of the AlberniPioneer News.

It was through his parents’ businessthat Fred met the young and talentedschoolteacher, Ellen Ohlsen, withwhom he would eventually share theEighth Avenue home. She was thedaughter of a Victoria family who hadrecently immigrated from Europe. Herparents owned the Oaldand nursery inVictoria, which specialized in exoticplants and shrubs. Many of these werelater transplanted to the Rollin gardens.

Ellen’s school teaching career beganin the valley at John Howitt School,which was established about 1900. Shealso taught classes at the school in thebasement of the Watson Building,which opened in 1903, and at the NewAlberni Public School which was established about 1906. She continued toteach until she and Fred were marriedin 1913, in Victoria.

Fred and Ellen returned to Port Alberni after their wedding, and after atemporary residence moved into thehome built on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Argyle, now Rollin ArtCentre. This 1914 white shingled, onestory home, built by Warnock and Co

Fred and Ellen Rollin on the steps oftheir new home in Alberni, 1914. Photo courtesy of G. White.


chrane, contractors, for Mr. Lthter, the local jeweler, was the second of threeidentical homes built in the Valley. 6 Photographs from this period show thehome to be a pleasant construction ofthe period, surrounded by a fence composed of poles of wood.

Ellen’s school teaching career did notlong surpass her marriage. She retiredfrom the public school teaching system,but this encouraged her to devote hertime to teaching what she loved most-music. An accomplished concert pianist,Ellen had studied music in Dresden,Germany, when a young girl; upon herreturn to Victoria, she gave a performance at the prestigious Empress Hotel.These accomplishments no doubt fostered the rumours amongst friends thatshe was “high society.”7 Ellen gave lesSons in her own home on her grandpiano, which had been shipped roundthe Horn from Germany. Apparently,she had many, many local girls-and boys,too-taking music. She took them at ha(fhour lessons, twice a week. Lessons costabout $5 per month.

During this time, Fred was employedas a boom man with the Alberni PacificLumber Company. He worked on thebooms for a number of years, until poorhealth forced his early retirement. Hehad suffered from asthma from the ageof eighteen, and his frequent falls intothe water on the job merely aggravatedhis heaLth problems.

Fred’s life after retirement centredaround his home and the outdoors. Atrue outdoorsman, Fred loved to travel,and he and Ellen undertook many hiking expeditions around VancouverIsland, including treks to Buttle Lake,Nahmint Lake, and the Golden Eaglemine. Fred’s nephew George (sisterDorothy’s son), often accompaniedthem. A good hunter, Fred often packeda rifle with him, and the 1930 trek to theGolden Eagle mine was commemoratedby several trophies, “the hides and headsof two black bear, one of them the largest ever known to have been taken inthis neighborhood.” The hides andheads together weighed 108 pounds.’°These mementos were displayed prominently on the walls and floors of theRollin home; a visitor to the house afterFred’s death commented that it wascrowded with the results of Mr. Rollin ‘c

success with a gun. A wolverine sharesspace on the back of an old fashionedcouch with various other variety of localwild lfè.”

Ellen’s grand piano was privileged torest on both bear and cougar rugs.

Fred also spent much time tendingthe large garden surrounding theEighth Avenue home. It was lush withrare plants and shrubs which had beengiven to him and Ellen by her parents,as well as an orchard of fruit trees. Every spring, the garden blossomed amyriad of colours as the various tulips,narcissus, and other flowers opened;400 tulip bulbs alone were planted tocommemorate his and his sister Dorothy’s birthdays in April.12 Some of theplants he collected during his hikes, forexample on his trek to the ForbiddenPlateau and Mount Albert Edward withhis friend W.H. Crowshaw. It was reported that the floral specimens broughthome were white and purple heather,mountain wal’flower and mountain daisies. Mr. Roiin now has these planted inhis Port Alberni garden, and is confidentthey will thrive there.”

Gardening became especially important to Fred after Ellen’s death. Shepassed away in Port Alberni on October27, 1944, at the age of 60, after suffering for several years from what wasrumoured to be cancer of the lung.’4

Facts surrounding the discovery of herillness are obscure, but one source indicated she collapsed on a hikingexpedition and was rushed back tomedical care in Port Alberni; her condition was quickly diagnosed. Aftertreatments in Victoria, and the realization that her illness was terminal, Ellenreturned to the valley home, where sheremained until her death.’ For Fred,the garden became a means of solaceand of refuge. Alone in the home hehad shared for so many years, his lifebecame haunted with memories of hisbeloved Ellen.

Despite his retreat into a world of isolation and loneliness, Fred tried tomaintain a link with his community.He donated money to many charitableorganizations in the valley, and investedin many businesses. He also establisheda rapport with teachers and many ofthe students of the neighboring EighthAvenue School. Often he would invite

teachers and students into the home forafternoon tea.’6 And, as George Whiteasserted, “in small ways he was alwaysvery generous to the kids when theycame around.” 17

Fred Rollin died in the home in March1976, at the age of 86. In his will, hebequeathed two of the four lots of landsurrounding his home to the City ofPort Alberni, to be developed into apublic park. The third lot was purchased by the city from an heir. Thefourth lot was left to School District#70, for the children of Eighth AvenueSchool to enjoy. After consultation withCity Council, the city lands were leasedto the Community Arts Council of theAlberni Valley. The aim of this institution was to restore the rather dilapidatedpioneer home and to develop it into acommunity base for the arts; recitals, exhibitions, workshops, and other specialevents would be held here. As well, itwould upgrade and maintain the gardens for the public to enjoy.

Extensive renovations were made tothe building in order to make this goalfeasible. Approximately eight cords ofdry wood were removed from the basement level, an incredible fire hazardwhich had gone undiscovered until thistime. As one newspaper reporter indicated of the state of the home, it waseasy to imagine Fred passing from roomto empty room during his last years of illhealth, freling the loneliness which ont)i theaged can know. . . Looking about me, Isaw oldfashioned lihtingfixtures hangingfrom soot-blackened wall and ceilings,beamed and panellea [and] the old woodfrrnace in the basement which had only adecayedplankfloor.’8

As well as general repairs, the entirebuilding had to be raised, a new cementfloor poured, rewiring completed, and anew heating system installed. The overgrown gardens were maintained to thebest of abilities by dedicated volunteers,but minimal funding seriously hamperedall efforts to keep them cultivated. Rollin Art Centre, the visible extension ofthe Community Arts Council, was established in 1977. Its name pays tribute tothe man who engendered its existence.

In 1988, with massive community support for what was named the GardenProject, the centre was able to renovatethe old gardens and make the home into


r

a popular tourist attraction. Many ofFred’s plants, trees, and shrubs had degenerated over the years, and the orchardno longer produced fruit. It was nolonger feasible to maintain the originalgardens. Following a plan envisioned bylandscape architect Arne McRadu, threedistinct gardens were created: the Macmillan Native Plant Garden, theMargaret B. Smyth Garden, and theChildren’s Garden, which is dedicated tothe children of School District #70 asFred would have wished. The officialopening of the new gardens was held onAugust 20, 1988.

With its newly landscaped setting andmodernized structure, Rollin Art Centrelooks very different to the building inthe early photographs of the young married Fred and Ellen, poised at the top ofthe porch steps over 70 years ago. However, this does not reduce its significancein the history of the Alberni Valley. Itsname recognized Fred Rollin’s contributions to the community, and perpetuateshis memory. With this in mind, it isclear that Fred, if he were to visit his former home in spirit, “would smileblithely with joy at a job well done.”9

Catherine Lord worked at Rollin Art Centreftr three consecutive summe,y while she studiedat the University of V7ctorra. She then took apost-graduate Works of Art diploma course atSothebyt in Englanet She was married in July1992 and the couple live and work in Orlando,Florida.

FOOTNOTES

1. Catherine Lord, Interview with Mr. Goorge White,Victoria, September. 1988. p. 1.

Ibid.

Ruth Roberts. Turn-of-the-Century Link Die, withFred Rollin, Alberni Valley Times, March 16, 1976.

4. Albemi Pioneer News, Saturday,December 7. 1907, P. 8.

5. Valley Heritage - 100 Years of Schooling in theAlberni Valley, 1887-1987, Alberm Valley Museum,pp. 2-4.

6. Roberts, 1976.

7. Catherine 1.ord, Interview with Mary Wood,Port Albemi, July 12. 1988, p.4.Ibid.. p. 1.

Port Albemi News, May 15, 1930.

Ibid.

Roberts, 1976.

Ibid.

Port Alhemi News, September 12, 1929.

Catherine Lord. Interview with Mr. Johanessen,July 14.1982.

Lord, White, p. 3.Lord, Johanessen. 1982.

Lord, White, p. 7.

Laura Evans, A Moment of Silence, Albemi ValleyTimes,Januaxy28, 1977, p.1.

19. Ibid., p. 3.

Some crests whichappeared on early

railway cars.

0ØNE-

Fred Roll.in with nephew George, Dolly White (Fredc sister) and Ellen I?ollin. c. 1914.Photo courtesy of G. White.

tMAUIANPACIFIC

2.

3.

CANADIANPAC IF IC

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.


NEWS & NOTESTHE NELSON CLUB

Ron Welwood’s story of the Nelson Clubin Vol. 26: 1 was on a disc — very carefullyprepared. The proof readers were soconfident that no typos could appear thatvigilance was relaxed. We were verychagrined to discover that the date “1896’in the title appeared as 1869.

NEW ACHIEVEMENT HONOREDDr. David Chuanyan Lai was awarded the

Commemorative Medal for the 125thAnniversary of Canadian Confederation. Hehas done a great deal of volunteer work andconsultation re restoration of Chinatowns inVictoria, Barkerville, Kamloops, andEdmonton. He has also written two verysuccessful books, one of which won aCertificate of Merit in the 1988 BCHFWriting Competition. His ForbIdden CityWithin Victoria, Orca Publishers, 1991 hasbeen on the best seller list for severalmonths.

STERNWHEELERSDid you know that at least 245 steamers

worked the inland waters of B.C. over theyears? E.L. (Ted) Affleck has tracked downinformation and registration from variousarchives. He has produced a compactlisting of those vessels with their originalspecifications at the time and place ofshipbuilding, and the routes they plied.This 50 page book All leck’s LIst ofSternwheelers Plying the Inland Waters ofBritish Columbia, 1858-1980 is availablefor $6 from Ted at#208 - 2250 S.E. Marine Drive,Vancouver, B.C. V5P 2S2.

MISSIONS TO SEAMENPictures Wanted!If any reader has a picture of any of the

buildings (interior or exterior), or the bus,that served as Mission to Seamen inVancouver will you please lend it to theeditor to illustrate a well written history tobe published in the Fall issue of thismagazine.

RESONANCEReaders particularly enjoy references to

people and places they have known. KenLeeming commented on many of those inthe list “Those We Have Honored” plus hismother’s friend Lady Gertrude Aylmer (Vol.26:1). Another faithful reader from WhiteRock wrote to state that she was born inthe Methodist Manse in Kaslo, shown in thepicture on page 15 of that issue.

[tit%Q;:;;Inuvil.• Fort McMurray to/ Kendall Island onMackenziethe Beautort SeaRiver —.-__ sat-’-

• The 3 235 km tripYellowknite took 2 months

Great Slave L.

Fort McMurray

PeaceRiver

Lachin.VancouverThunder (Montreal)Bay

UNITED STATES Winnipeg

Summer 1993• Peace River toMackenzie Rock• 2,000 km tripwill take 2 months

Summer 1991• Lachine, Que. toWinnipeg• 3,400 km triptook 4 months

RENEWALS AND ENQUIRIES

Summer 1992• Winnipeg toPeace River• 3,200 km triptook 3 months

We are now into Vol. 26, ie. 1993.Check the address label on the back cover.The number on the end of the cornerindicates which issue marks the end ofyour paid subscription, If it says, “26/2 italso says “That’s all Folks!” Send a chequefor renewal to the Subscription Secretaryor your local society treasurer. AND pleaseuse the same format in registering yourname. The computer sends out duplicatesif John Jones reregisters as E.J.Jones, orJohn E. Jones.

Also note — the Post Office Box inStation [,Vancouver, which has served ascollection point for the BCHF and BCHN forthe past ten years, is no longer applicable.Canada Post is divesting itself of Station E.The Post Office Box will vanish in everysense of the word.Please address any subscriptionpayments/inquiries/complaints of missingissues to Nancy Peter, SubscriptionSecretary in Bumaby. Any othercorrespondence re the magazine should goto the editor. ADDRESSES INSIDE BACKCOVER.

Following Mackenzie’s routeNine Lakehead University students artived by canoe in PeaceRiver, Alta. August 29. They are retracing the route taken byAlexander Mackenzie in his sea—to—sea journey across Canada.The expedition will end next July as the voyageurs reachMackenzie Rock exactly 200 years after the explorer’s amval.

.9(4=0

cc4).v=.(4

0

‘IItovin?Semi your cban2e 01

address to:

Nancy Peter,Subscription Secretary

#75400 Patterson AvenueBurnaby, B.C. V5H 2M5

II you have enloved thisma2azhle, why not Øve a 2111

suhscrtbn to a IrlelNi?$1LC() inside Canada, S11.C()

to addresses outsideCanada.

Send your cheque to ancy.(address above)


BOOK SHELFBooks for review and book reviews should be sent directly to the book review editor:Anne Yandle, 3450 West 20th Ave., Vancouver B.C. V6S 1 E4

Vancouver and Its RegionEdited by Graeme Wynn and

Timothy Oke. Vancouver,

University of British Columbia

Press, 1992, 133 p.,Illustrated. $45.00.

It would be hard to find a better bookabout Vancouver than this one. It isinformative, visually attractive, comprehensive and well-referenced. That itshould also be well written from start tofinish, given that at least eighteen authorscollaborated, is in itself some sort of miracle. Each author is a geographer. Thatmay be one key to the book’s cohesion. Itmay also account for the down-to-earthinterpretation of social facts.

Opening with a series of aerial photographs, subtle and striking at the sametime, modern Vancouver is captured in asetting recognizably linked with the distantpast.

From primordial times to the present,section by section the book progresses.Through the coming of the first human inhabitants, the impact of Europeans and therise of the city, to the state of the environment to-day, we are given up-to-date factssensitively interpreted. Each of the severalsections is an excellent compression of relevant information, yet each will yield somefresh intriguing fact or some unusuallyperceptive insight even to those of us already well-acquainted with Vancouver’sstory.

As a town planner, I was pleased byWynn’s own chapter on “the rise of Vancouver”, especially by his treatment ofBartholomew’s lasting work. As a municipal history buff, I was disappointed thatour longest serving, remarkable and influential mayor L.D. Taylor, was notmentioned, not anywhere in the book. Asa book user, I found one feature quite awkward: the book is hard to hold open for afull reading of the left hand page (becausethe generous margin allowance is asymmetrical — too little on the right). Butenough! Apt and unusual illustrationsgleaned from a great array of. sources addso much to this excellent book that I muststop carping.

Great credit is due Messrs Wynn, Okeand their colleagues from the U.B.C. Department of Geography. Fortunate is ourCity to have this set of understanding ob

servers. Lucky the students to have suchteachers.

Mary RawsonMa,y Rawson, a town pIanne,, isa member

of the Vancouver Historical Society.

Otter Skins, Boston Ships, andChina GoodsJames R. Gibson, Montreal,McGill-Queen’s University Press,1992. xii, ‘422 p.,Illustrated $39.95

In a nine page introduction, the authorof this excellent book defines the Northwest Coast as “one of the most distinctiveaboriginal areas of the continent”. He continues by establishing at the outset theunique character of the coastal area,stretching from the Columbia River to thewestern end of the Aleutian Islands.

Forty-five years prior to any British orAmerican commercial interest in theNorthwest Coast, the Russian expeditionof Vitus Bering and Alexsey Chirikov inthe St. Peter and St. Paul in 1741 obtainedhundreds of sea-otter skins (and resultedin the tragic loss of Bering and some of hiscompanions). The skins were in demandin China by the wealthy Manchu class,who paid handsome prices. Knowledge ofthis enticing development resulted in a“fur rush” across the Aleutian chain of islands to the Alaska mainland. “From 1743to 1800 one hundred ventures obtainedmore than 8,000,000 silver rubles worth” ofsea-otter skins.

In 1799 the Tsarist government charteredthe Russian-America Company, resultingin enormous profits to the franchise holder, the virtual enslavement of the Aleutiannatives, and the near extermination of thesea-otter. The latter, plus international anddomestic difficulties for Russia, encouraged the eventual sale of all of Alaska tothe United States in 1867.

The Spanish presence on the Alaskacoast antedated that of Russia (except forthe Bering-Chirikov expedition). However, Spain’s interest was mainly strategic,preferring to avoid foreign penetration asmuch as possible by keeping its discoveries secret. Any motivation to develop aSpanish fur trade was consequently almostnonexistent, although several feasibleplans had been offered. By 1800 Spanishinterest in the Northwest Coast north of

the Columbia River had almost completelyceased.

The attention of maritime fur traders(other than Russian) to the NorthwestCoast largely came about as a result of thepublished report of Captain James Cook’ssojourn in 1778 for nearly a month in Nootka Sound, repairing storm damage andreplenishing stores of water and firewoodin his two ships, Resolution and Discovery. Cook’s crewmen traded scraps of ironto the Indians for sea-otter skins to makewarm clothing in preparation for exploration of far northern waters. The betterquality skins were sold in Canton forastonishing profits.

Exploration of this unique area beganwith the British captain James Hanna in the60-ton Sea Otter, who sailed for NootkaSound in 1785. After five weeks in theSound, he procured a “valuable cargo ofFurs”, resulting in a handsome profit whensold at Canton the next year. Hanna wasfollowed by others, including the KingGeoige and the Queen Charlotte, skippered by members of Cook’s ownexpedition, Portlock and Dixon.

Despite this auspicious beginning and afew other notable successes, the Britishtraders suffered from restrictions imposedby the monopolistic practices of the EastIndia Company and the inactive South SeaCompany. A licence granted by the EastIndia Company imposed substantial restraints on British trading vessels. Therestrictions placed on British traders plusthe growing competition from Americanvessels, were among the major factorscausing the decline and eventual extinctionof British participation in the maritime furtrade on the Pacific Northwest Coast. Theauthor persuasively points out that Britishtraders, too, may well have been less ruthless, less resourceful, and less efficient thantheir free-wheeling Yankee rivals, althoughthe vaunted shrewdness of the latter mayhave been simply the result of their freedom from the former’s commercialconstraints . . . A Spanish commandantenoted early that “the English, and more especially the Amencans, give anything theyhave, or for which the natives may beg, inexchange for the skins of the sea otter”.And a Russian commander declared that“the spirit of commerce, is, perhaps, nowhere greater than in America”. “TheAmericans”, he continued, “avail themselves quickly of every advantage that isoffered to them in trade.”

37 B.C. Historical News . SprIng 1993

BOOK SHELF CONT’D

In closing, this reviewer has never encountered a more coherent, useful,enjoyable, and detailed account of the Pacific Northwest Coast maritime fur tradethan that offered by this book. It contains atotal of ten chapters, the first four of whichas mentioned above, deal with the Russian,Spanish, British, and Americans engagedin the trade. The concluding six chaptersgo into even more widespread and keenlydetailed examination of all possible aspectsof the trade, ranging from “The China Market” to “The Impact of the Trade”.

It is strongly recommended as the definitive work on the subject both for the casualreader and the dedicated researcher.

John Frazier HenryJohn Frazier Hen,y is author of Early Maritime

Artists of the Pacific Northwest Coast.

Ragged Islands:A Journey byCanoe through the Inside PassageMichael Poole, Vancouver,Douglas & McIntyre, 1991.

248 p. $26.95

This book holds something for everyone.Whether you tend towards tales of adventure, lean towards unusual sagas, like toread of strange places where you will never go, are an environmentalist, yearn toread about unusual lives and individuals,it is all in these pages.

Michael Poole paddled his canoe throughbut a portion of the Inside Passage, yetsuch is the terrain that it took him most ofthree months. He actually explored onlySeymour, Kingcome and LoughboroughInlets. Knight Inlet was bypassed, and hecrossed the mouth of Toba at the end of histrip. This is the area of the mainland coastin the vicinity of Queen Charlotte andJohnstone Straits, and the upper reaches ofGeorgia Strait.

Once I had reassured myself (by going tothe back of the book) that the canoe of thisodyssey was not an ordinary canoe, butone which contained flotation tanks andother safety features, I felt free to read incomfort.

There is a peculiar blend here; he finallygave in to the strange love-hate relationship the B.C. coast engenders, and startedhis long-dreamed-of solitary trip. As muchas anything else, it was a personal quest insearch of identity. it was with considerablerelief that I read at the end that the authorhad paddled the coast “out of his hair”,and had faced the fact that a life of isolation and hardship in a lonely, mountain-girt inlet was not for him.

If only because it takes us to an area we

are unlikely to actually visit, the days ofthe Union Steamship being long over, itmakes worthwhile reading. The awesomeloneliness, the awesome terrain, the brooding quality of the landscape, the always-lurking danger from the tides and narrowssuch as the Arran Rapids, or RoaringholeRapids, the winds sweeping down the inlets from the lofty peaks, hold theimagination. No benign zephyrs here; nowarm waters, due to the glacial run-off. Itis strange that a land so melancholy anddangerous casts such a spell.

We travel a land in transition economically: a land where loggers now fly in forbrief stints, then leave, a land where expensive yachts, mainly American, clog theinlets like floating luxury hotels during thesummer season, and fill up their freezerswith over-limit loads of fish, then leave atsummer’s end, a land where fish farms arethe latest industry attempting to provide aliving for residents.

We visit abandoned Indian villages, totally bushed individuals, isolated beachesand bays where it seems all is as it washundreds of years ago. Some of the peoplehe visited are not among those you wouldlike to cultivate as friends. It almost seemsthat a violent eccentricity is a must for anyone who remains up the B.C. coast —

interesting, certainly, but comfortable? No,no, and no.

Canoeists would find the hints he givesfor managing in the violent tidal rips andcurrents helpful. On the down side, thefact that one gets the impression he is cold,wet and anxious much of the time ratherlimits the enjoyment of going along withhim. Thrown in for good measure aresnippets of history and environmentalbroadsides. There is a predictable eyeball-to-eyeball encounter with a killer whale.My favourite page details the unusual experience of finding himself in the middleof a school of feeding dogfish. Unique!The whale-watchers, the whale chroniclers, the bushed, the idealists, those whocome to exploit and spoil, those who camewith starry dreams and are still trying tomake a life and a living, all are here. Michael Poole met them all, and paddled on,till he eagerly yearned for journey’s end atOkeover Inlet — an excellent read.

Kelsey McLeodKelsey McLeod isa member of the

Vancouver Historical Society.

The Dunsmuir Saga.Terry Reksten, Vancouver, Douglas&Mclntyre, 1991. 290 p. $29.95

In the history of British Columbia, perhapsno other family has attracted the intenseloyalty, despairing hatred, moral outrageor just simple interest that the Dusmuirfamily of Vancouver Island did in the late1800s and first decades of this century. Inchoosing to name her study of three generations of the family The Dunsmuir Saga,author Terry Reksten could not have selected a more apt title, suggesting as it doesthe rich history of that clan.

In The Dunsmuir Saga the author hassummarized, in a very readable and enjoyable form the complex story of the rise ofthe Dunsmuir family, from its humble origins, through hard decades, to its suddenemergence in a position of immense, virtually unequaled economic and politicalpower in British Columbia. It is a story ofparticular interest, especially when thereader stops to wonder why the dynasty,which had dominated the Pacific coast, hasnow disappeared from the public stage.Reksten’s rich narrative provides the complex answers, tracing the dissipation of thefamily position and fortune in the hands oflater generations. The author begins bytracing the hardworking, common Scottishorigins of Robert Dunsmuir, who emigrated to Vancouver Island as a coal miner in1851, settling at Fort Rupert where a coalseam had been located. She then examinesthe long lean years that Dunsmuir experienced before the dramatic discovery ofmassive coal reserves in the Nanaimo area,and then the rapid rise in the fortunes ofthe Dunsmuir family. By the 1880s RobertDunsmuir was the coal baron and railwaytycoon who controlled much of the economy of Vancouver Island. The book revealsthe driving business ambition that tookDunsmuir to the heights of power, but italso demonstrated his often very controversial relations with his employees.

This is, however, not the biography justof a prominent industrialist, but truly afamily history. Reksten also provides arich, detailed examination of the othermembers of the clan, including Joan, thematriarch who outlasted her husband andretained control of the empire well after hisdemise. It also provides an extended review of the colourful and often sad lives ofRobert and Joan’s two sons and eightdaughters. At his death, Robert Dunsmuirwilled virtually his entire estate to his wife,provoking a long and bitter feud betweenthe elder son James and his mother, as wellas no doubt contributing to the long termand steady decline of the Dunsmuir businesses and family fortunes.

While lacking the business talents of hisfather, James Dunsmuir eventually becamethe premier, and then the lieutenant-


BOOK SHELF CONT D

governor of British Columbia, either ofwhich positions would have been a remarkable achievement in itself. Youngerson Alexander Dunsmuir became an alcoholic. The Dunsmuir Saga providesvaluable glimpses into Alexander’s sad deterioration, and a particularly interestingreview of the costly and scandalous lawsuit that emerged from his will, a courtaction that attracted the interest of thepress from Victoria to New York.

The author describes in great detail thelives of luxury and adventure of the nextgeneration, the two sons and eight daughters of James and his wife Laura. Some ofthe most interesting material in the saga, inthe opinion of this reviewer, is to be foundin Reksten’s review of the lives of this generation. One son, for instance, ran awaywith the daughter of actress Lillian Russell,and died an alcoholic in Singapore. Thehope for this third generation, James,known as “Boy”, was tragically lost at sea,as a passenger on the Lusitania, which wastorpedoed and sunk, during the FirstWorld War. Elinor experienced a majorstruggle with her sexuality, Reksten’s recognition and treatment of the issue adding

• depth and value to this family history. Eli-nor also contributed to the dissipation ofthe Dunsmuir legacy, losing much of herfortune in Monte Carlo. Another daughter,Muriel, married a Parisian couturier, whoworshipped his wife but also had an interest in members of his own sex. DaughterKathleen lost much of her part of the fortune investing in early unsuccessful talkingpictures based in British Columbia.Daughter Dola Francis, who lived until1966, was a long time companion to Tallulah Bankhead. In the end, the fortune wasdisbursed, and little of the Dunsmuir legacy remained, except in the form of notablebuildings, such as Robert and Joan’s Craigdarroch Castle, Robert’s Esquimalt andNanaimo Railway, and James and Laura’sHatley Park residence, now the centerpieceof Royal Roads College on Victoria’s western perimeter.

Possibly The Dunsmufr Saga is the bestlegacy, since it places all of these artifactsin context, and has brought to the readingpublic a much richer understanding of theimportant place and colourful lives of theDunsmuir family in the history of thisprovince. I found the genealogical outlineof the Dunsmuir family, provided at thebeginning of the book, a valuable referencetool, as I followed Reksten’s narrativethrough several generations of a very complex family. The historical photographsalso added depth to the study. The bookprovi4es a very useful perspective on theindustrial and transportation history of

British Columbia. Terry Reksten has exhibited great dedication over the years inher persistent work on this project; the immense amount of detailed research hasresulted in a family history that is extensive, and shows the mundane as well asthe more colourful sides of her subject.She has produced a product that is not aglowing, uncritical review of her subject,but a balanced study that examines boththe positive and negative. Her style isvery readable, and follows the excellentform that she offered her readers in previous publications.

For anyone interested in learning moreabout one of British Columbia’s most important family dynasties, some of its richindustrial history, or just enjoying a veryentertaining account of the lives of some ofBritish Columbia’s “rich and famous”, Irecommend that you take the time to readThe Dunsmuir Saga.

Bill McKeeBill McKee, a native of Sechelt, currently

works for the Museum of Man, Ottawa.

Brother Twelve; The IncredibleStory of Canada’s False Prophetand His Doomed Cult of Gold,Sex, and Black Magic.John Oliphant, Toronto,McClelland & Stweart, 1991,384 p., $29.95

John Oliphant has provided us with afresh look at Brother Twelve, one of ournotorious British Columbians whose famegoes beyond our borders.

He has presented new information onthe background of Brother Twelve givingus insight into the man’s character. His religious parents belonged to one of themany new sects springing up in the 1900’s,the Catholic Apostolic Church; in the1920’s there was a branch in EastVancouver.

Brother XII apprenticed in the BritishNavy, where he became skilled in manytrades. Marriage and family did not alterhis restless nature, and he finally abandoned them to continue his travels and“ever seeking his Quest”. This quest eventually led him back to British Columbiaand the Cedar district, near Nanaimo andDeCourcy Island. Here he made the headquarters for the Aquarian Foundation andhome for his converts. Like many cultleaders, he made rules for the converts, butnot for himself. The converts toiled in hisfields while he spent his time writing andtravelling. Finally his uplifting words andlofty ambitions could not quell the

dissidents.The book contains excerpts from Wilson’s

publications. We can wonder why peoplegave up their jobs, homes and donatedthousands of dollars on the strength of hiswritings.

While my family were living on GabriolaIsland prior to the second World War, rumors were always circulating aboutDeCourcy. I remember looking acrossNorthumberland Channel and seeingBrother Twelve’s yacht and lookingthrough binoculars at the gun emplacements which he had built on DeCourcyIsland. Later, I met Mary Connally andMargaret Whyte, two of Brother Xli’s disciples, on a trip to DeCourcy Island for theVictoria week-end in 1935. Mary Connallyeventually sued Brother XII, recovering thewhole island for herself.

Peggy ImredyPeggy lmredy is a member of the


Sunny Sandy Savary;A History,1792-1992.Ian Kennedy, Vancouver, KennellPublishing, 2177 West 13th Ave.,Vancouver, B.C. V6K 2S2. 1992.l88p. $11.95

On July 1, 1792, Peter Puget and JosephWhitbey, of Captain George Vancouver’ssurveying team, camped on Savary Island,“in a delightful plain with a fine smoothbeach before it for the boats”. Diligentlycompleting their assignment, and exchanging courtesies with “a small party ofNative inhabitants”, they lingered just longenough to stock up on clams, “as many aswe could conveniently stow”. Then theysailed away, back to work, refreshed bytheir picnic on Savary.

For two hundred years — and more, asthe Native inhabitants attest, — people havegone to Savary Island to enjoy the delightful plain, smooth beach, and the clams.Since 1980, Ian Kennedy has been amongthese people, summering on Savary andrelishing the snippets of summers pastwhich appeared in the Savary IslandNews and in the books of Jim Spilsbury.The Vancouver Bicentenary spurred him togather Savary’s past into a chronologicalnarrative, beginning with the geologicaladventures which gave little Savary moresandy beaches, more sunshine, and warmer waters than British Columbia’s otherislands.

The first summer visitors, the Sliammonpeople, named the island “Ayhus”, a double-headed serpent. Vancouver named it


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“Savary’s Island”. No one has been able toidentify Savary, but Kennedy has fun speculating. He has even more fun with thestory of the island’s first permanent settler,John Green, sixty-nine years old in 1886when he arrived on the island to set up afarm and trading company. If this werefiction, a reviewer could take Kennedy totask for suddenly turning this idyll into alurid tale of Jack’s murder, and the pursuit,trial and execution of his killer, postscripted of course with a rumour of buriedtreasure.

By the turn of the century the island hada resident family, the Andersons. In 1910Savary was rediscovered by George John-stone Ashworth, crime reporter for theVancouver Province, who came in searchof the site of the Green murder and left in afrenzy of enthusiasm for the vacation potential of “the Catalina Island of thesenorthern seas”. His aggressive real estatepromotion interested some prominent Vancouverites, notably C.R. Townley andHarry McMicken Keefer. One could be appalled by their development tactics; theadvertising was misleading, the lots weretoo small. But their most significant saleswere to themselves and their like-mindedfriends. These developers recognized agood deal, but they also fell in love withthe island and stayed in love for the rest oftheir lives.

The story then becomes one of summercabins and Union Steamships, long friendships, family memories, and communityefforts — and people. The cast is varied; celebrities range from Jim Spilsbury makinghis first wireless in his father’s cabin in1922, to Margaret Trudeau saunteringdown the dock in a bikini in 1973.

Troubles plague paradise, exacerbated bydecisions made far away by bureaucratsunacquainted with the island and uninterested in learning. Kennedy tells how“improvements” in transportation andhighways increased the time and discomfort involved in travelling from Vancouverto Savary. He recounts the story of theRoyal Savary Hotel, built in 1927-28 by theAshworths, and finally defeated in 1983 byincongruous but inflexible governmentregulations.

But he does not belabor the troubles; thisis a sunny book. It is also a useful contribution to the history of our islands andrural communities. As a footnote to largerHistories, it happily reveals what Vancouver families did on their summervacations.

Phyllis ReevePhyllis Reeve is a resident of

Gabriola Island.

The Run of the River; Portraits ofEleven British Columbia Rivers.Mark Hume, Vancouver,New Star Books, 1992.205 p. $14.95

I waded into the Run of the River all unsuspecting. When I emerged,waterlogged, 205 pages later, I felt I hadsojourned in a surrealistic world inhabitedby beings entirely removed from reality.

This is a book not as much about elevenB.C. rivers as about protest — a book for thefanatical fisherman and the career environmentalist. The inhabitants of the world ofthe book are mainly male, see our habitatas a vast wilderness that should be kept forever so, in order that they can fish, white-water raft, watch fish and birds, etc. Thereal world of those who work in B.C., andpay taxes, of the logging, mining, pulp andpaper companies, the commercial fishingindustry, not to mention the ranchers, isviewed not as an economic necessity, butas a threat to this sacred and hallowedrecreation.

The government which created theW.A.C. Bennett dam, which brought electricity to thousands, jobs to thousands, islabelled as a “rapacious regime”. Government agencies are accused of mismanagingthe fishery resources, and slammed fromall angles. (These same governments funded this book with grants from CanadaCouncil and the Cultural Services Branchof the Province of B.C.)

The author is upset during his yearly“pilgrimage” to the Capilano fish hatchery(hatcheries are termed “technological fixes”,) because he finds the fish there have“blank” eyes. Yet he writes lyrically and atlength about the barbaric playing of asteelhead: “after fifteen minutes I began toache”. Meanwhile, a companion is “shouting out joyfully every time the fishjumped” to cheer him on. What this fish’seyes looked like when he finally landed itis not recorded, but he loosed the exhausted fish into the river, “to tell its story to theglacier”.

Ranchers who allow their herds to wadeinto rivers to drink are censured for fouling the river and damaging river banks.Yet a fly fisherman who takes a chain sawwith him and carves out an area of riverbank so that he can cast is lauded.Similarly, the white-water rafters are applauded for trudging off into the bushwith a roll of Delsey, and “burning the toilet paper” afterwards. One pictures therafting rivers ringed with blackened patches left by these stalwarts who have never

heard of leaves or moss — all this illogicgives one occasion to pause.

Perhaps part of the disquiet one feels onreading this book is caused by the unevenquality of presentation. After ploughingthrough pages of statistics, one is hurledwith no warning into sudden and inexplicable flights of fancy that strain towardsthe poetic. After hearing of the horrors ofdamming the Nechako, we suddenly findourselves flat out on a dry stream bed, gazing up through the non-existent water in astrange kind of trance. “I lie on the gravel.• . and dream of the Nechako passing overme. . . salmon hold in the current. . . some

have in their mouths the bones of theCheslatta people . . . “ Similar writingcomes at random moments throughout.

The sad truth is that economically we usethe rivers to survive; in the real world people work in the here-maligned industries inorder to survive — a fact that is apparentlya bagatelle in the lives of the so-calledsportsmen and environmentalists.

There are pages of statistics from everything about the different fish runs,numbers of fish returning to habitats, etc.,and all the data on the building of differentdams throughout the province. The storiesof the dams make interesting reading froma historical standpoint. There is an indexfor quick reference, and selected bibliography for those wishing to read further onthe subject. And, perhaps all this information will contribute to a solution beingfound between the extremes of viewpoint,which will in turn lead to a satisfying balance being worked out between fact andfancy, wish-fulfillment and reality.

Kelsey McLeodKelsey McLeod is a member of the



THE BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORICAL FEDERATION

Honorary Patron: His Honour, the Honourable David C. Lam, CM, LL.D.,Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia

Honorary President: Keith Ralston

OFFICERS:

President: Myrtle Haslam, P.O. Box 10, Cowichan Bay, B.C. VOR 1 NO 748-8397

1st Vice President: Alice Glanville, P.O. Box 746, Grand Forks, B.C. VOH 1 HO 442-3865

2nd Vice President: Ron Welwood, RR#1 S 22 C 1, Nelson, B.C. V1L 5P4 825-4743

Secretary: T. Don Sale, 262 Juniper Street, Nanaimo, B.C. V9S 1X4 753-2067

Recording Secretary: Arnold Ranneris, 1898 Quamichan Street, Victoria, B.C. V8S 2B9 598-3035

Treasurer: Francis Sleigh, Box 29, Deroche, B.C. VOM 1 GO 826-0451

Members-at-large Mary Rawson, 1406 Woodland Drive, Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3S6 251-2908

Wayne Desrochers, 8811 152 Street Surrey, B.C. V3R 4E5 581-0286

Past President: John D. Spittle, 1241 Mount Crown Road, North Vancouver, B.C. V7R 1 R9 988-4565

COMMITTEE OFFICERS:

Archivist Margaret Stoneberg, Box 687, Princeton, B.C. vox iWO 295-3362

B.C. Historical News Tony Farr, RR#3 Sharp Road Comp. 21, Ganges, B.C. VOS 1 EO 537-5398

Publishing Committee

Book Review Editor Anne Yandle, 3450 West 20th Avenue,Vancouver, B.C. V6S 1 E4 733-6484

Editor Naomi Miller, Box 105, Wasa, B.C. VOB 2K0 422-3594

Subscr4.#ion Secretaiy Nancy Peter, #7-5400 Patterson Ave., Burnaby, B.C. V5H 2M5 437-6115

Historical Trails & Markers John Spittle, 1241 Mount Crown Road, North Vancouver, B.C. V7R 1 R9 988-4565

Membershi Secretaiy JoAnne Whittaker, 1291 Hutchinson Road, Cobble Hill, B.C. VOR 1 LO 743-9443

Publications Assistance Jill Rowland, #5-1450 Chesterfield Avenue, North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2N4 984-0602

(not involved with Contact Jill for advice and details to apply for a loan

B.C. Historical News) toward the cost of publishing.

Scholarshir Committee Arthur Wirick, 2301 - 4353 Halifax St., Burnaby, B.C. V5C 5Z4 291-1346

Writing Competition(Lieutenant - Governor’s Pamela Mar, P.O. Box 933, Nanaimo, B.C. V9R 5N2 758-2828

A ward)

The British Columbia Historical News Publications MailP. 0. Box 5254, Stn. B Registration No. 4447Victoria, B.C.V8R 6N4

ADDRESS LABEL HERE

\

British Columbia Historical FederationWRITING COMPETITION 1993

The British Columbia Historical Federation invites submissions of books for the eleventhannual Competition for Writers of B.C. History.

Any book presenting any facet of B.C. history, published in 1993, is eligible. This may be acommunity history, biography, record of a project or an organization, or personal recollectionsgiving a glimpse ofthe past. Names, dates, and places with relevant maps or pictures turn a storyinto “history”.

The judges are looking for quality presentations, especially if fresh material is included,with appropriate illustrations, careful proof reading, an adequate index, table of contents andbibliography from first-time writers as well as established authors.

Note: Reprints or revisions of books are not eligible.The Lieutenant-Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing will be awarded to an individual

writer whose book contributes significantly to the recorded history of British Columbia. Otherawards will be made as recommended by the judges to valuable books prepared by groups orindividuals.

All entries receive considerable publicity. Winners will receive a Certificate of Merit, amonetary award and an invitation to the B.C.H.F. annual conference to be held in Parksville inMay 1994.

Submission Requirements: All books must have been published in 1993, and should besubmitted as soon as possible after publication. Two copies of each book should be submitted.Please state name, address and telephone number of sender, the selling price ofall editions ofthebook and the address from which it may be purchased if the reader has to shop by mail.

Send to: B.C. Historical Writing CompetitionP.O. Box 933Nanaimo, B.C. V9R 5N2

Deadline: December 31, 1993. LATE ENTRIES WILL BE ACCEPTED WITH POSTMARK UP TO JANUARY 31,1994, BUT MUST CONTAIN THREE COPIES OF EACH BOOK.

* * * * * * * * * *

There is also an award for the Best Article published each year in the B. C. Historical Newsmagazine. This is directed to amateur historians or students. Articles should be no more than2,500 words, typed double spaced, accompanied by photographs if available, and substantiatedwith footnotes where applicable. (Photos will be returned.)

V Please send articles directly to:The Editor, B.C. Historical NewsP.O. Box 105, Wasa, B.C. VOB 2K0

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