ritish columbia historical news - ubc …s13 - c19 - rr1, galiano island, b. c. v0n 1p0 gray creek...

Officers

PresidentJacqueline Gresko5931 Sandpiper Court, Richmond, BC, V7E 3P8 ÊÊÊÊPhone 604.274.4383 [email protected]

First Vice PresidentPatricia RoyDepartment of History, University of Victoria, PO Box 3045, Victoria, BC, V8W [email protected]

Second Vice PresidentRoy J.V. Pallant1541 Merlynn Crescent, North Vancouver, BC, V7J 2X9 ÊÊÊÊPhone 604.986.8969 [email protected]

SecretaryRon Hyde#20 12880 Railway Ave., Richmond, BC, V7E 6G2ÊÊÊÊÊPhone: 604.277.2627 Fax 604.277.2657 [email protected]

Recording SecretaryGordon Miller1126 Morrell Circle, Nanaimo, BC, V9R 6K6 [email protected]

TreasurerRon GreenePO Box 1351, Victoria, BC, V8W 2W7ÊÊÊÊÊPhone 250. 598.1835 Fax 250.598.5539 [email protected]

Past PresidentWayne Desrochers13346 57th Avenue, Surrey, BC, V3X 2W8ÊÊÊÊÊPhone 604. 599.4206 Fax. 604.507.4202 [email protected]

Member at LargeAlice Marwood#311 45520 Knight Road, Chilliwack, BC, V2R 3Z2 [email protected]

Member at LargePatrick DuaneHistory Department, Malaspina University [email protected]

EditorJohn Atkin921 Princess Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V6A 3E8 ÊÊÊÊPhone 604.254.1429 Fax 604.254.2207 [email protected]

Committees

Historical Trails and MarkersJohn Spittle1241 Mount Crown Road, North Vancouver, BC, V7R 1R9ÊÊÊÊÊPhone 604.988.4565 [email protected]

W. Kaye Lamb Essay Scholarships CommitteeRobert Griffin107 Regina Avenue, Victoria, BC, V8Z 1J4 ÊÊÊÊPhone 250.475.0418 [email protected]

Publications AssistanceNancy Stuart-Stubbs2651 York Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V6K 1E6ÊÊÊÊÊPhone 604.738.5132 [email protected]

Writing Competition - Lieutenant-Governor's AwardHelmi BrachesP.O. Box 130, Whonnock, BC, V2W 1V9ÊÊÊÊPhone 604.462.8942 [email protected]

British Columbia Historical NewsJournal of the British Columbia Historical FederationPublished Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall.

Editor:John Atkin921 Princess Avenue,Vancouver BC V6A [email protected]

Book Review Editor:Anne Yandle3450 West 20th AvenueVancouver BC, V6S [email protected]

Subscription Secretary:Joel Vinge561 Woodland DriveCranbrook BC V1C 6V2Phone/Fax [email protected]

Publishing Committee:Tony Farr125 Castle Cross Road,Salt Spring Island BC V8K 2G1250.537.1123

Copy editing: Diana BretiProof reading: Tony FarrLayout and Production: John AtkinWeb master: Christopher Garrish

Subscription $15.00 per yearFor mailing outside Canada add $10.00Please send correspondence regardingsubscriptions and back issues to the subscrip-tion secretary in Cranbrook.

Single copies of recent issues are for sale at:

- Arrow Lakes Historical Society, Nakusp BC- Book Warehouse, Granville St. Vancouver BC- Books and Company, Prince George BC- Gibson Coast Books, Gibsons BC- Galiano Museum- Gray Creek Store, Gray Creek BC- Royal Museum Shop, Victoria BC

This publication is indexed in the CBCA,published by Micromedia.ISSN 1195-8294

Production Mail Registration Number 1245716Publications Mail Registration No. 09835Member of the British Columbia Association ofMagazine Publishers

Under the Distinguished Patronage of Her HonourThe Honourable Iona Campagnolo. PC, CM, OBC

Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia

Honourary PresidentMelva Dwyer

British Columbia Historical FederationPO Box 5254, Station B., Victoria BC V8R 6N4

While copyright in the journal as a whole isvested in the British Columbia HistoricalFederation, copyright in the individual articlesbelongs to their respective authors, andarticles may be reproduced for personal useonly. For reproduction for other purposespermission in writing of both author andpublisher is required.

www.bchistory.ca the Federation’s web site is hosted by Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC

Affiliated GroupsArchives Association of British ColumbiaNorthern B.C. Archives - UNBCHope Museum ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊLangley Centennial Museum ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWomen's History Network of British Columbia

Member SocietiesAlberni District Historical SocietyPO Box 284, Port Alberni, BC V9Y 7M7

Abbotsford Genealogical Society ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 672, Abbotsford, BC V2T 3C7

Anderson Lake Historical Society ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 40, D'Arcy, BC V0N 1L0

Arrow Lakes Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 819, Nakusp, BC V0G 1R0

Atlin Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 111, Atlin, BC V0W lA0

Bella Coola Valley Museum SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 726, Bella Coola, BC V0T 1C0

Boundary Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 1687, Grand Forks, BC V0H 1H0

Bowen Island HistoriansÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 97. Bowen Island, BC V0N 1G0

Bulkley Valley Historical & Museum SocietyÊBox 2615, Smithers, BC V0J 2N0

Burnaby Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ6501 Deer Lake Avenue, Burnaby, BC V5G 3T6

Chemainus Valley Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 172, Chemainus, BC V0R 1K0

Cowichan Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 1014, Duncan, BC V9L 3Y2

Craigdarroch Castle Historical Museum Society1050 Joan Crescent, Victoria, BC V8S 3L5

Delta Museum and ArchivesÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ4858 Delta St., Delta, BC V4K 2T8

District 69 Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 1452, Parksville, BC V9P 2H4

East Kootenay Historical AssociationÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 74, Cranbrook, BC V1C 4H6

Finn Slough Heritage & Wetland SocietyÊÊ9480Dyke Road, Richmond BC V7A 2L5

Fort Nelson Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 716, Fort Nelson, BC, V0C 1R0

Galiano Museum SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊS13 - C19 - RR1, Galiano Island, B. C. V0N 1P0

Gray Creek Historical Society ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 4, Gray Creek, B.C. V0B 1S0

Gulf Islands Branch BCHFÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊc/o S-22, C-11, RR # 1, Galiano Island, BC V0N 1P0

Hallmark Society ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊc/o 810 Linden Ave, Victoria, BC V8V 4G9

Hedley Heritage SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 218, Hedley, BC V0X 1K0

Hudson's Hope Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 98, Hudson's Hope, BC V0C 1C0

Jewish Historical Society of British ColumbiaÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ206-950 West 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5Z 2N7

Kamloops Museum Association207 Seymour Street, Kamloops, BCÊ V2C 2E7

Koksilah School Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ5213 Trans Canada Highway, Koksilah, BC V0R 2C0

Kootenay Doukhobor Historical Society112 Heritage Way, Castlegar, BC V1N 4M5

Kootenay Lake Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 1262, Kaslo, BC V0G 1M0

Ladysmith & District Historical Socieityc/o 781 Colonia DriveLadysmith, BCÊÊ V9G 1N2

Lantzville Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊc/o PO Box 206, Lantzville, B. C. V0R 2H0

London Heritage Farm SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ6511 Dyke Road, Richmond, BC V7E 3R3

Lumby Historical Society ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 55, Lumby, BC V0E 2G0

Maple Ridge Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ22520 116th Avenue, Maple Ridge, BC V2X 0S4

Metchosin School Museum Society4475 Happy Valley RoadVictoria, B. C.ÊÊ V9C 3Z3

Nakusp & District Museum Society ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 584, Nakusp, BC V0G 1R0

Nanaimo & District Museum SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ100 Cameron Road, Nanaimo, BC V9R 2X1

Nanaimo Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 933, Nanaimo, BC V9R 5N2

Nelson Museum & Historical Society ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ402 Anderson Street, Nelson, BC V1L 3Y3

North Shore Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊc/o 1541 Merlynn Crescent, North Vancouver, BC V7J 2X9

North Shuswap Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 57, Celista, BC V0E 1L0

Okanagan Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 313, Vernon, BC V1T 6M3

Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 5004, #15-1594 Fairfield Rd, Victoria BC V8S 5L8

Prince Rupert City & Region ArchivesÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 1093, Prince Rupert BC V8J 4H6

Princeton & District Museum & ArchivesÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 281, Princeton, BC V0X 1W0

Qualicum Beach Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ587 Beach Road, Qualicum Beach, BC V9K 1K7

Quesnelle Forks Museum & Historical SocietyBox 77 Likely, BCÊ V0L 1N0ÊÊÊhttp://www.wlake.com/hicks/hicks

Revelstoke & District Historical AssociationBox 1908, Revelstoke BC V0E 2S0

Richmond Museum SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ#180 - 7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond, BC V6Y 1R8

The Riondel & Area Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 201, Riondel, BC V0B 2B0

Salt Spring Island Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ129 McPhillips Ave, Salt Spring Island, BC V8K 2T6

Sandon Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 52, New Denver, BC V0G 1S0

Sea Island Heritage SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ4191 Ferguson Road, Richmond, BC V7B 1P3

Sicamous Museum & Historical SocietyBox 944, Sicamous, BC V0E 2V0

Silvery Slocan Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 301, New Denver, BC V0G 1S0

South Peace Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊc/o 900 Alaska Avenue, Dawson Creek, BC V1G 4T6

Steveston Historical Society ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ3811 Moncton St., Richmond, BC V7E 3A0

Surrey Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 34003, 17790 #10 Highway, Surrey, BC V3S 8C4

Terrace Regional Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 246, Terrace, BC V8G 4A6

Texada Island Heritage SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 122, Van Anda, BC V0N 3K0

Trail Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 405, Trail, BC V1R 4L7

Union Bay Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 448, Union Bay, BC V0R 3B0

Vancouver Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 3071, Vancouver, BC V6B 3X6

Victoria Historical SocietyÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPO Box 43035, Victoria North, Victoria, BC V8X 3G2

Williams Lake Museum and Historical Society113 - 4th Ave North, Williams Lake, BC V2G 2C8

Yellowhead MuseumÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBox 1778, RR# 1, Clearwater, BC V0E 1N0

Question regarding membership should be sent to:Ron Hyde, Secretary#20 12880 Railway Ave.,Richmond BC V7E 6G2Phone 604.277.2627 Fax [email protected]

British Columbia Historical FederationA charitable society under the Income Tax Act

Organized 31 October 1922

The British Columbia Historical Federation isan umbrella organization embracing regionalsocieties.

LOCAL HISTORICAL SOCIETIES are entitled tobecome Member Societies of the BCHistorical Federation. All members of theselocal historical societies shall by that very factbe members of the Federation.

AFFILIATED GROUPS are organizations withspecialized interests or objects of a historicalnature.

MEMBERSHIP FEES for both classes ofmembership are one dollar per member of aMember Society or Affiliated Group with aminimum membership fee of $25 and amaximum of $75.

Memberships for 2003 are now due.Please do pay promptly.

Return Address:British Columbia Historical NewsSubscription Secretary:Joel Vinge561 Woodland DriveCranbrook BC V1C 6V2

Canadian Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 40025793

Publications Mail registration No. 09835

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the Publications Assistance program (PAP), toward our mailing cost

2003

The British Columbia Historical Federation invites submissionsof books for the twenty-first annual competition for writers ofBC history.

Any book presenting any facet of BC history, published in 2003, iseligible. This may be a community history, biography, record of aproject or an organization, or personal recollections giving aglimpse of the past. Names, dates and places, with relevant mapsor pictures, turn a story into "history." Note that reprints orrevisions of books are not eligible.

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

The Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Historical Writing will beawarded to an individual-writer whose book contributes signifi-cantly to the recorded history of British Columbia. Other awardswill be made as recommended by the judges to valuable booksprepared by groups or individuals.

Winners will receive a Certificate of Merit, a monetary award andan invitation to the BCHF annual conference to be held in Nanaimoin May 2004.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS: All books must have been publishedin 2003 and should be submitted as soon as possible after publica-tion. Two copies of each book should be submitted. Books enteredbecome property of the BC Historical Federation. Please statename, address and telephone number of sender, the selling priceof all editions of the book, and, if the reader has to shop by mail,the address from which it may be purchased, including applicableshipping and handling costs.

SEND TO: BC Historical Federation Writing CompetitionPO Box 130,Whonnock BC V2W 1V9

DEADLINE: 31 December 2003

Contact Us:

BC Historical News welcomesstories, studies, and news itemsdealing with any aspect of thehistory of British Columbia, andBritish Columbians.

Please submit manuscripts forpublication to the Editor,BC Historical News,John Atkin,921 Princess Avenue,Vancouver BC V6A 3E8e-mail: [email protected]

Send books for review and book re-views directly to the Book ReviewEditor, BC Historical News,AnneYandle,3450 West 20th Avenue,Vancouver BC V6S 1E4,604.733.6484e-mail: [email protected]

Please send correspondence aboutsubscriptions toSubscription Secretary,Joel Vinge561 Woodland DriveCranbrook BC ViC 6V2Phone/Fax: 250.489.2490E-mail: [email protected]

Subscriptions: $15.00 per yearFor addresses outside Canada add$10.00

BC HISTORICAL NEWS - Vol. 36 No. 4 | FALL 2003 1

British Columbia Historical NewsJournal of the British Columbia Historical Federation

2. The Lone Man: Founding of Fort St. JohnBy Yvonne Klan

6. Baillie-Grohman’s DiversionBy R.J. (Ron) Welwood

12. The Buntzen Lake Project, 1901-06By Barry Cotton BCLS (Ret’d)

18. Meziadin River Fish LaddersBy Rod N. Palmer

22. Palmer’s CupBy Tom Wright

26. Token HistoryBy Ron Greene

30. Book ReviewsEdited By Anne Yandle

36. Website ForaysBy Christopher Garrish

37. Archives and ArchivistsEdited by Frances Gundry

38. Miscellany

Volume 36 No.4 Fall 2003

W. KAYE LAMB Essay ScholarshipsDeadline 15 May 2004The British Columbia HistoricalFederation awards two scholarshipsannually for essays written by studentsat BC colleges or universities on a topicrelating to British Columbia history.One scholarship ($500) is for an essaywritten by a student in a first-orsecond-year course: the other ($750)is for an essay written by a student ina third-or fourth-year course.

To apply tor the scholarship,candidates must submit (1) a letter ofapplication: (2) an essay of 1,500-3,000 words on a topic relating to thehistory of British Columbia: (3) a letterof recommendation from the professorfor whom the essay was written.

Applications should be submittedbefore 15 May 2004 to: Robert Griffin,Chair BC: Historical FederationScholarship Committee, PO Box 5254,Station B, Victoria, BC V8R 6N4.

The winning essay submitted by athird or fourth year student will bepublished in BC Historical News.Other submissions may be publishedat the editor’s discretion.

BC History Web Site PrizeThe British Columbia HistoricalFederation and David Mattison arejointly sponsoring a yearly cash awardof $250 to recognize Web sites thatcontribute to the understanding andappreciation of British Columbia’spast. The award honours individualinitiative in writing and presentation.

Nominations for the BC History WebSite Prize for 2003 must be made tothe British Columbia HistoricalFederation, Web Site PrizeCommittee, prior to 31 December2003. Web site creators and authorsmay nominate their own sites. Prizerules and the on-line nomination formcan be found on The British ColumbiaHistory Web site: http://www.victoria.tc.ca/resources/bchistory/announcements.html

Best Article AwardA Certificate of Merit and fifty dollarswill be awarded annually to theauthor of the article, published in BCHistorical News, that best enhancesknowledge ot British Columbia’shistory and provides readingenjoyment. judging will be based onsubject development, writing skill,freshness of material, and appeal toa general readership interested in allaspects ot BC history.

From the Editor

Correction:In the Spring 2003 issuewhich listed winners of theLieutenant Governor’sMedal, BC Historical Newsmispelled the name of the1987 winner, Lynne Bowen.Our sincere apologies toLynne.

Welcome to the Fall2003 issue of the BC Histori-cal News.

A few months ago Ireceived an e-mail suggest-ing that I might be interestedin editing this journal - notsomething I had ever consid-ered - but was intriquedenough to reply to my mys-tery correspondent and meetfor coffee. After severalhours of pleasant conversa-tion I found myself agreeingto, at least, consider theidea.

BC Historical News isone of those publicationswhich has always found itsway into my library over theyears. It joins an eclecticreading list which includesarchaelogical journals, buspreservation and shipping

history magazines to books onLondon, the Middle East, vol-umes of local history and, mypassion, nineteenth centurytravel.

It is interesting to seehow close we come to the pasteveryday. In this issue, W.J.Bowser, E.B. Hermon, F.S.Barnard, and JohannesBuntzen all get a mention. Mymodest house in Vancouverwas built by William SeamanMacDonald. He was a Vancou-ver alderman, ran provinciallywith Carter-Cotton and Gar-den - but he lost, worked forthe BC Electric Railway astheir power house foremanand appears in a photographwith E.B. Hermon. In the at-tic were twenty plus ledgersfrom the firm of Bowser, Reidand Walbridge. Bowser, ofcourse became Premier of theprovince in 1916. The pages

are covered in White Pigeonlottery tickets, which suggeststhe house was home to a num-bers man in the 1930s, thesame time it was owned byJohn Weart a lawyer who wasresponsible for finding thefunds to complete Vancou-ver’s lovely Christ Church Ca-thedral in the 1890s.

As I step into the rea-sonably large shoes left by theprevious editor, my goal is toproduce a journal which willcontinue to find space on yourlibrary shelf and on the cof-fee table. I have no plans torevamp and change things forthe sake of change. The mostnoticable adjustment in thisissue is the slightly wider mar-gins and the consisent topmargin and rule.

I couldn’t produce theBC Historical News without alot of help. Fred Braches has

made the transition veryeasy, Diana Breti hasagreed to copy edit, andTony Farr continues toproofread andChristopher Garrish putsit up on the web.

I look forward tothe next few years withgreat interest. Keep thearticles coming becausethe best part of my job isreading everything.

John Atkin

BCHF Awards | Prizes | Scholarships

2 BC HISTORICAL NEWS - Vol. 36 No. 4 | FALL 2003

Fort St. John’s earliest days have remainedhidden from scholars and fur-trade en-thusiasts alike. This is not surprising; therecord of its founding year—untitled, with

Pine River 1807, written in a corner of the first page—lies buried in a jumble of thousands of pages of docu-ments amassed by Lord Selkirk.1 The Pine River jour-nal is a copy of the incomplete original. Its twenty-one pages commence in mid-sentence 12 January 1807and end with the conclusion of the trading season, 2May 1807.

Historians speculated that Frederick Goedike,North West Company (NWC) clerk at Dunvegan, builtthe first Fort St. John in 1806. However a more likelycandidate would be A. Roderick McLeod2, who keptthe Dunvegan journal until mid-October 1806 andwhose writing style and attitude towards Natives wasremarkably similar to that found in the Pine Riverjournal. The writer had a good command of Englishwhereas Goedike’s mother tongue was French, andthough he had “received most of his education in theEnglish language [h]e is not master of this.”3

The Peace River was the highway to the fur-rich country beyond the Rocky Mountains.4 In 1792the NWC built Fort Forks near the junction of thePeace and Smoky Rivers as a staging area for Alexan-der Mackenzie’s 1793 journey to the Pacific Ocean.As Mackenzie paddled along the upper Peace he be-held a land “so crowded with animals as to have theappearance, in some places, of a stall-yard.”5 Thisbountiful country became the site of B.C.’s first in-land fur trading post—Rocky Mountain Fort, built in17946-- and here was written the first record of B.C.’sland-based fur trade, the 1799-1800 Peace River Jour-nal kept by an unknown clerk.7

The journal reveals that as early as 1799 theNWC was sending trading expeditions beyond theRockies where no forts yet existed, and in this jour-nal we meet for the first time The Lone Man, L’hommeSeul. Near the end of the season traders customarily“clothed the Chief” by giving European garments tothe leader they deemed most worthy of the honour.The high esteem in which the Natives held L’hommeSeul is evident in the entry for 1 April 1800:

The Lone Man:Founding of Fort St. John by Yvonne Klan

Yvonne Klan haspublished severalarticles on BC historyand is currentlyworking on abiography of JamesMurray Yale. She isthrilled by narrativesof high adventureunreeling from HBComicrofilms.

Fur Trade Posts along theUpper Peace river.Map by Cathy Chapin, LakeheadUniversity, Thunder Bay


Spoke to the Cigne [Swan] and his parents to cloth theCigne but when I offered it to him he refused and told meto give it to L’Homme Seul for that he was the most properin the Band … I told them that since they refused the Cignethat they should not have any Chief till next winter.

Early journals record interminable wars alongthe Peace. Cree Natives, empowered by arms acquiredfrom early European traders, pushed into Beavercountry, where firearms were not yet attainable. Astraders moved westward the Beaver, too aquired armsand drove into Sekani lands around the Rocky Moun-tains. Unending friction along shifting territorialboundaries ignited massacres which had to beavenged. Meanwhile the NWC were fighting rivaltraders who were making inroads on their lucrativePeace River trade. The ruthless, costly strugglespushed the competitors towards financial ruin untilthey agreed, in 1804, to merge under the banner ofthe NWC. Their resources were now put towards ex-panding trade beyond the Rockies and following Mac-kenzie’s Great River to the Pacific.8 In 1805 SimonFraser was ordered to undertake this task.

By 1805 Clerk James McDougall,9 had alreadymade excursions beyond the mountains. Now, to fa-cilitate passage of the anticipated brigades, he im-proved the twelve mile portage which bypassed thePeace River Canyon and built Rocky Mountain Por-tage House,10 near today’s Hudson’s Hope. RockyMountain Fort, in Beaver territory, was abandonedand all trade transferred to the new post situated inSekani country. This was a blow to L’Homme Seul, aBeaver Native who would now have to enter enemyterritory to trade, and he feared for his life. John Stuart,at the Portage House, recorded,

This evening a Beaver Indian arrived here and toldus that he had been with the lonesome man and left himon his way down to the lower Fort.11 That he had beenafeard to go with him on account of his relations. Thatthey would kill him if they would see him.12

L’Homme Seul led his people, twelve lodges in all,to Dunvegan where they traded with some success.Dunvegan’s clerk wrote, “L’Homme Seul having worked wellthis spring got a hat, a feather, and a shirt.”13 A subsequentvisit in June was less successful, illness having preventedthem from working. In July they returned to Dunvegan,again with little to trade,

…. consequently they were very ill treated,especially L’Homme Seul who gave us only 4-1/2 skins infurs. He was not kicked out of the fort and that was all. Inshort they were all treated like so many dogs and the mostsevere expressions that vexation and displeasure couldsuggest were made use of to abash them for their badbehaviour. To all this they gave no answer, only that theywere deserving of the treatment they met with … Theyleft us this evening after promising to work well.14

On their last recorded visit to Dunvegan in Sep-tember, 1806, the journal states,

We settled L’Homme Seul and band and they setoff. They are to be on the borders of the river, (oppositeto la Riviére d’Epinette [Pine River]) on the 20th October,at which place they asked to have a fort this fall.15

The NorWesters obliged and later that year be-gan building Fort d’Epinette near the junction ofBeatton16 and Peace Rivers, in Beaver territory.

The following extracts from the 1806-07 PineRiver Journal describe occurrences at the fort and theactivities of the fifteen men under the Clerk’s supervi-sion. It commences in mid-sentence in January, 1807.

(Continued) with the hunters, by them I sent theLittle Head, Collas’ Gun and _ Fathom Tobacco. Larivierewas chopping as usual. Prey 36 lbs.

Jan. 13. Cloudy, snowed a little this morning.Martineau plaster’d their house over with thin mortar inorder to white wash it. Beauchemin sent for wood to makea sledge for Martineau. Prey 56 lbs. 17

Jan. 14. Beauchemin made a Garret in the IceHouse – The Wood which he brought yesterday to make asledge not being good, Martineau went for more, he andBeauchemin worked at it the greatest part of the day, andturned the sledge this evening. Lariviere washed his shirt.

Jan. 16. Martineau white washed the chimney andone of the gable ends of my room, some parts of it are notwhite washed, the mortar not being yet dry, though it wasplastered almost two months ago. This morning came hereone of L’Homme Seuls sons with the Petit Garcon, this isthe fourth day since they left their lodges, it appears thatL’Homme Seul and those who are with him worked wellenough. I sent L’Homme Seul a little ammunition on credit.

Jan. 23. The Little Head killed a cow [moose] butas he could not dress it, it being almost night when hekilled it, he left the whole and the next day it was spoiled.The Little Head and his brother are sick, the latter beinghardly able to walk.

Jan. 25. The Little Head and the others intend togo and work Beaver and will no longer hunt for the fort.This morning three young boys came from Old Piette’s lodge[T]hey told me they killed two moose and asked for twomen to go for one of them; I sent them immediately andthey returned this afternoon with the meat of a doe moose,weight 371 lbs.

Jan. 26. Shemathush and the Slave Yuseday didnot bring a single skin. I told them everything I thoughtwould make them ashamed of their behaviour andthreatened them of abandoning the Fort in the Spring, aswell as beating, and using them like dogs if they did notwork better for the future. The only excuses they have isthat they were sick and could find no Beaver where theywent. Martineau having broke the sledge he broughtyesterday went for and brought wood to make another.Ross has a very sore hand which I am afraid will keep himsome time from being able to work at the fort or go formeat.

Feb. 20. This afternoon Mr. [A. N.] McLeod18

arrived from Dunvegan with [seven men and three women]

Notes and References

1 B.C. Archives, Selkirk Papers,Add. Mss. 1468, (MicrofilmsA00682-A00701) fos. 9371-9392.

2 The adventurous career ofAlexander Roderic McLeod (1782-1840) was outlined by GlyndwrWilliams in Dictionary ofCanadian Biography, Vol VII,University of Toronto Press.1991. p. 569

3 W. Kaye Lamb, ed. SixteenYears in the Indian Country. TheJournal of Daniel WilliamsHarmon. The Macmillan Co. ofCanada Ltd. 1957. p. 93

4 For an excellent historical/archaeological account of earlyupper Peace River forts seeBurley, David V., J. ScottHamilton, and Knut R. Fladmarkin Prophecy of the Swan. TheUpper Peace River Fur Trade of1794-1823. UBC Press. Vancouver.1996.

5 W. Kaye Lamb, ed. The Journalsand Letters of Sir AlexanderMackenzie. Macmillan ofCanada. Toronto. 1970. p. 266.

6 John Stuart, a Peace Riverveteran after whom Stuart Lakewas named, is best rememberedas Simon Fraser’s lieutenant. Hestated, “[We] encamped on thesite of the old Beaver [today’sMoberly] River Fort firstestablished in 1794 and whereten years afterwards I wintered.”“:Journal of Occurrences fromYork Factory … Oct. 12, 1823.Hudson’s Bay Company Archives,B.119/a/1.

7 Marion O’Neil published ThePeace River Journal 1799-1800 inWashington Historical Quarterly,Washington State HistoricalSociety. 1928. pp. 250-270. Thefort was situated near the mouthof the then Beaver River, knowntoday as the Moberly. Tradersusually referred to it as theBeaver Fort.


and an Indian whom he brought to hunt on the way and atthe R.M. Portage. He is going to see Mr. McGillivray.19

Martineau and Ross returned from the hunters and brought665 lbs. meat. D. Holmes and Beauchemin were plasteringtheir chimney which was nearly fallen down, and made ahearth in my room. Prey 110 lbs. besides 125 lbs. given forthe Dogs.

Feb. 21. Mr. McLeod sent off two of his men withthe hunter. They are to go and hunt above the old Fort atBeaver River20 until Mr. McLeod overtakes them. Mr. McLeodis going off tomorrow morning for the R. Mountain and Iam to accompany him.

Feb. 27. On the 23rd Inst. I left this for R.M.Portage with Mr. McLeod and all the men as well as thewomen who came up with him. We went on very slowlythe weather being extremely cold and the road filled upwith snow.21 We took three days to go to Grand River,22

about a days journey below the Portage, at which placewe found one of the hunters and the two men Mr. McLeodsent off last Saturday. They killed nothing and had beentwo days without eating. They told us they had seen twoof Mr. McGillivray’s men who informed them they werestarving at their Fort which obliged me to come back withthree men and two women, Mr. McLeod still proceedingwith the men he had remaining … ordered me to send twomen to meet him with provisions. On my arrival here Ifound David and Collas white washing my room and fourof the men were gone for meat. The hunters killed thirteenred deer since my departure, and the men hauled 1519lbs. meat.

Feb. 28. Very early this morning I sent off Rossand Beauparlant to go and meet Mr. McLeod and [gave]them besides their provisions to go and come, 200 lbs.fresh and 50 lbs. dried meat.

Mar. 1. Mr. McLeod and his people arrived here at11 o’clock a.m. They left Beaver River Fort23 aboutdaybreak this morning and found Ross and Beauparlant attheir encampment of last night, they having slept abouthalfways between this and the old Fort. In consequence oftheir laziness and negligence the provisions I sent up wereof no succour to Mr. McLeod, he therefore gave them avery severe reprimand, they were near getting more, forhe took hold of one of them by the hair and tossed theother from one side of the room to the other. Mr.McGillivray is still in great distress for living, several ofhis men came down with Mr. McLeod for provisions … hesent them back with the meat of two red deer … and theprovisions I sent up per Beauparlant and Ross.

Mar. 2. The Little Head is to set off tomorrow withDavid to go and carry a message to L’Homme Seul and allthe other Indians of this place. Mr. McLeod told himeverything he had a mind they should know, reproachingthem in the most pointed manner of their behaviour inhaving worked so little this winter, and at the same timethreatening with the most exemplary punishment such ofthem as shall dare to deviate from the instructions hesends them of the manner in which they are to behave forthe future.

Mar. 3. A little before daybreak Mr. McLeod leftfor Dunvegan. 2000 lbs. meat was put apart for the spring.

Mar. 7. The Pouce Coupe is preparing himself togo with the men to the plains and will be here tomorrow.His old Father in Law separated from him some days agoand is gone up in Pine River to live upon Rabbits, the women

were scraping skins as usual and Lariviere was chopping.Mar. 10. Lafleur, Cantaras and Martineau laid one

of the canoes upon the canoe bed and with three otherssewed part of it in the afternoon. Three men were part ofthe day employed clearing round the houses where theditch is to be made, and afterwards helped Lafleur &c tosew the canoe. Three others cut 180 pickets 18 feet long.

Mar. 11. Three men went & cut 120 pickets, threeothers cleaning about the houses. Holmes begins to digthe ditch for the stockades. This evening each of the menwent for four pickets and in all brought 24.

Mar. 12. This morning two young men arrived fromL’Homme Seul’s band. L’Homme Seul sent them for somepowder to fire on his arrival here, but I did not think itproper to send him any.24 As soon as they arrived I beganto harangue them, and told them everything I thought couldmake them ashamed of the scandalous hunt they have madesince they were here last. After abusing them as much asI possibly could with words I stepped to L’Homme Seul inorder to pull his ears, but he rising suddenly took hold ofone of my hands whilst his son and several otherssurrounding me held the other, without howeverattempting to do me any harm or injury. In the meantimeL’Homme Seul slipped out and took his arms, on hearingwhich I ordered him instantly back into the room, where Iagain abused him and all the others as much as ever withouttheir saying a word that might provoke me. At last I sentthem for what furs and provisions they had, an account ofwhich I took.

Mar. 13. This morning I settled all the Indians,that is to say gave them ammunition to go and work beaver.For all the skins and provisions they brought I gave themeach two measures powder and three of shot exceptL’Homme Seul who got three measures powder and four ofshot. They traded a few gun flints and awls for pack cordsand Castorium to the amount of 22 skins. They find it veryhard to be thus sent off without a ball or a pipe of tobaccoand I am afraid that some of them will not be much inclinedto come back here the 28th of this month which is thetime appointed for them to come to the fort. They did noteven smoak in the house, but were treated like so manydogs—none of them were beaten. I thought that deprivingthem of every other article but powder and shot waspunishing them enough for the present and told them thatif they did not work during the 15 days they are to huntthey shall be abused, beaten, and have their ears cut.

Apr. 23. Two of the men who went for meatyesterday returned, they found two of the animals thehunter killed almost eat up by bears and wolves so thatthey only brought about the half of each. The water ofthe rain and snow drops through the roofs of all the housesand there is not a dry spot to be found in any of them, sothat it is very uncomfortable to remain in them.

Apr. 24. As I happened to go into the store Iperceived that the beams of it were bent and almostbroken. I immediately ordered two of the men to repair itby putting posts under the beams but before they had begunwe heard a terrible noise over our heads and in an instantwere buried under the pieces of the roof, ridge pole andthe whole square of the building, we were very near beingcrushed to death by the timber and the prodigious quantityof earth there was on the store. I had the good luck toescape unhurt but it was not the case with Beauparlant &Pre. Lavigne who were with me; the former was about

8 “The distance to the Mouth of[the Great River] would be toogreat for me to go and comeback in the course of the season,particularly as my canoe was somuch damaged as to be unfit foruse … and that we had lost allour Bullets on which dependedour safety and subsistence … Ihave not the least doubt of thegreat River being navigable withcanoes and boats to its mouth.”Alexander Mackenzie’smanuscript journal quoted inG.C. Davidson, The North WestCompany. Russell & Russell. NewYork. 1967. p. 277

9 James McDougall, b. about1783, became an ApprenticeClerk with the NWC in 1798. Hehad been trading in the upperPeace since 1799 and wasprobably at Rocky Mountain Fortin 1802. He was considered byJohn Stuart to be “the father ofNew Caledonia,” and it wasthere he spent the remainder ofhis working days. Still a clerkand worn out by the rigors of thecountry and illness, he wassuperannuated in 1832. He diedin Montreal in 1851.

10 John Stuart, op.cit. “It was tohave [the Beaver and the RockyMountain Indians] separate andas a prelude to the establishmentof New Caledonia that I sent Mr.James McDougall to establish apost at the portage in 1804.”

11 Dunvegan, built in 1805.

12 John Stuart, Journal at theRocky Mountain December the20th 1805. BCA A/B/40/St9, 1A/3.

13 Journal of the DailyTransactions at Dunvegan, April28, 1806. Selkirk Papers, fos.8958-9002.

14 ibid. July 17, 1806

15 ibid. Sept. 18, 1806.


half an hour buried under a tremendous load of wood andearth and it was with great difficulty we got him out;however he is but slightly hurt. But Lavigne was severelyhurt in the side and I am afraid he will not easily recover.

Apr. 25. Four men worked at the store; theysquared 4 beams & 2 sablieres, besides several posts forthe doors, windows; and they put up the square of thestore. I. Hoole made a keg of gum which he brought sometime ago. Lariviere bored holes through the fort pickets.Martineau this evening took the varangues25 & lisses26 outof the old canoe to put into the new one.

Apr. 28. D. Holmes and Beauparlant plastered theroof of the store. Beauchemin and Jos. Lavigne finishedsetting the lices of the second side of the fort and fixed thepickets upon them. Ross and Collas cut the ends of such aswere too long, so that the two sides of the fort are nowready to be put up. Old Lafleur and Martineau gummed oneof the canoes inside & placed the lices and varangues in it.

Apr. 29. [T]here are already some mosquitoes andthey begin to be a little troublesome. Four men begin toput up the fort and fixed the pickets to three rails withpins; besides they put up all the posts and rails on thatside of the fort and the pickets have only to be pinned tothe rails and that side will be completely finished. Hoolecut 100 small pickets & afterwards worked at the fort withthe others. D. Holmes plastered the store and put the goodsand furs in order. Martineau and Lafleur finished bandingthe canoe which is now ready to be gummed. Beauparlantand Cantaras are still sick and cannot do anything. Lavignedoes not appear to get better. This morning L’Homme Seulwent off but not before he had his ears slapped; hepromised to work well this summer and was in a greathurry to be off.

Apr. 30. Early this morning all the Indians arrived.They have done but very little since they were here. The

16 Geological Survey maps of 1875and 1879 show today’s BeattonRiver as Pine River North. In1921 the Geographic Board ofCanada named it Beatton River.

17 The journalist gave a dailyaccount of the weather and theamount of game (“Prey”)consumed. These will beomitted from here on.

18 Partner Archibald NormanMcLeod, the senior officer on thePeace River, was headquarteredin Dunvegan. B.C.’s McLeod Lakewas named after him.

19 Clerk Archibald McGillivray washaving a miserable time asMaster of Rocky MountainPortage House. His untitled1806-07 journal is in the SelkirkPapers, fos. 9309-9327.

20 The abandoned Rocky MountainFort.

21 They would have beentraveling on the frozen PeaceRiver with sleds and snowshoes.

22 Probably today’s Halfway River.

23 The old Rocky Mountain Fort

24 It was the custom forprominent Indians to announcetheir arrival with volleys ofgunfire.

25 Canoe ribs.

26 Strakes of woodwork (planking;sheathing) put along the bottomand sides of the canoe.

27 Journal at Isle auxCompements, January 18, 1808.SP 9270

28 This journal has beenpublished in Prophecy of theSwan, op.cit, pp. 152-181.

29 mouth; mug; gob.

30 Prophecy of the Swan, op.cit.pp. 126-136.

Brasse D’Ecorse and his brother werea long while out of doors withoutdaring to come in until I sent for themand even then they but reluctantlyentered the room. I gave them asevere reprimand for not coming tothe fort when I desire it.

May 1. The men were busy as usualputting up the fort and finished oneside this evening so that the half ofit is up; but I am afraid will remainso for the summer as we must soonleave this to go down. There is butvery little ice in the river oppositethe fort.

May 2. This morning all the Indianswent off and are going to work beaveruntil the latter end of June at whichtime they are to come back to thefort. I sent two men for one of the

animals the Indians killed. [End of journal]

We don’t know who changed the name of thepost from Pine River to Fort St. John, or why. How-ever, in January 1808 a Peace River outpost receivedvisitors “from Pine River, now called St. John”.27

The next known journal, heretofore believedto be the first written record of Ft. St. John, covers 22October 1822 to 18 May 1823. The post is now a Hud-son’s Bay Company establishment managed by ChiefTrader Hugh Fairies, who does not record any abuseof natives or labourers.28 The Lone Man is now re-ferred to as the Old L’homme Seul. He is still the headof his band but it is his son, The Gross Gueule,29 whobrings the hunt to the fort and carries out trading ac-tivities.

Tensions continued to run high between Bea-ver and Sekani, and the Sekani requested that the postbe moved back to the old Rocky Mountain Fort. TheHBC agreed--a decision which infuriated the BeaverNatives and resulted in the massacre of the fort’s per-sonnel in 1823.30

Today the Peace River flows serenely past thesite of the long-ago fort. Its currents slowly erode itsbank and tug at the old foundations. Trees andunderbrush grow out of the ancient hearths whilefarms, highways, townsites and oilwells cover terri-tory where The Lone Man once roamed.

Interpretive Reconstruction basedon archaeological evidence andjournal descriptions inferred byKnut Fladmark.From Prophecy of the Swan, The Upper PeaceRiver Fur Trade of 1794-1823. UBC Press.Vancouver. 1996.

BCHF


Baillie-Grohman’s Diversionby R. J. (Ron) Welwood

R.J. (Ron) Welwood isPast president of theBritish ColumbiaHistorical Federationand is a memberNelson CommunityHeritage Commission.

Ron is also anafficionado ofKootenaiana.

In the Rocky Mountain trench of southeasternBritish Columbia lies a unique geological feature. It is an isthmus of flat land barely separating the Kootenay River from the headwaters of

the Columbia River. This narrow landmass is notedin both aboriginal and non-aboriginal records. TheKtunaxa creation legend provides a picturesque de-scription of how this land was formed1 and explor-ers’ journals contain succinct descriptions of the land’sprofile.2 This sliver of land between the two water-courses also was the focus of a canal diversion schemein the late nineteenth century. Adventurer-explorerWilliam Adolf Baillie-Grohman was so captivated bythe agricultural potential of the fertile floodplain southof Kootenay Lake, near present-day Creston, that hedevoted a decade of his life to promoting and devel-oping an engineering project to reclaim it. In theorythe scheme was straightforward: divert the KootenayRiver into the Columbia by constructing a ditch or

canal across the narrow isthmus separating the tworiver systems, at what is now called Canal Flats.3 Thisdiversion would then help to reduce the annual flood-ing of the flatlands south of Kootenay Lake.

William Adolf Baillie-Grohman was born inLondon on 1 April 1851, and was raised in a privi-leged environment where he was privately tutoreduntil he was 14. He tried working after leaving schoolat 18, but the lure of the outdoors was too great. Baillie-Grohman spent several years travelling, hunting, andmountain climbing in Europe. His first adventurebook, Tyrol and the Tyrolese, was published when hewas 24. In 1878 Baillie-Grohman made his first At-lantic crossing to hunt in North America and his thirdbook, Camps in the Rockies (1882), described his ad-ventures in Wyoming and Montana.4 For the next dec-ade Baillie-Grohman was totally engrossed in hisKootenay diversion scheme. This project dominatedhis life until 1893 when, disillusioned, he returned toEurope. By this time he had crossed the Atlantic “somethirty times, and the Continent of North America afew odd times oftener.”5 In the nineteenth century biggame hunting had become a fashionable pastimeamong British gentlemen. North American trophieswere particularly prized, and as Baillie-Grohman tolda Victoria reporter, “for the past five years I have beenvisiting the western territories, spending six or eightmonths every year devoting myself exclusively toexploration and sport.”6

In March 1883 he informed the British Colum-bia Provincial Secretary that after travelling throughthe northwest with some friends in 1880 and 1882, hebecame familiar “with certain localities in the south-eastern portion of British Columbia, the features ofwhich led us to have a more thorough examination.”7

This “thorough examination” commenced in 1882when he set out to hunt the elusive mountain goatnorth of Kootenay Lake. According to Baillie-Grohman this “mysterious beast” had been identifiedunder 13 different generic names, and he was the firstin Europe to publish a description of Haplocerusmontanus.8 Baillie-Grohman had planned his first ex-pedition to the Kootenay in the map rooms of theGeographical Society, Foreign Office, and BritishMuseum. He mused that early explorers had recordedthe geographical aberration at Canal Flats, but nonehad recognized the “importance of creating a navi-gable connection” between the two river systems. Heconcluded, on his “first visit to this then immeasur-ably remote spot,” that a canal project was “a veryfeasible one from an engineer’s standpoint.”9 Extant

Baillie-Grohman posingwith favorite stag trophyin his Schloss Matzenstudy. (below)BC Archives A-01974



1 At one time the Kootenay andColumbia Rivers were joined andinhabited by a rogue watermonster. To capture it, a giantformed a blockade in the river.

2 David Thompson (1807), JosephHowse (1810), Sir George Simpson(1841), James Sinclair (1841, 1854),Rev. Pierre Jean De Smet (1845),Captain John Palliser (1858) and Dr.James Hector (1859).

3 Canal Flats or Canal Flat has beenrecorded as “McGillivray’s Portage”(Thompson, 1807), “ColumbiaPortage” or “Lake Pass” (Palliser,1858); “Howse Portage” (Palliser’smap, 1863), “Kootenay City”(1885), “Grohman” (1888).

4 Mabel E. Jordan, The KootenayReclamation and ColonizationScheme and William Adolf Baillie-Grohman, British ColumbiaHistorical Quarterly 20 (July-October 1956): 206-207.

5 W.A. Baillie-Grohman, FifteenYears’ Sport and Life in the HuntingGrounds of Western America andBritish Columbia (London: HoraceCox, 1900), v.

6 Development of Kootenay: TheGreat Draining Scheme of anEnglish Corporation, Daily BritishColonist (Victoria), 11 July 1883:3.

7 Crown Lands Records. Victoria:British Columbia Archives. GR 1088Box 1 Files 7 & 8.

8 W.A. Baillie-Grohman, “AParadise for Canadian andAmerican Soldiers,” NineteenthCentury 83 (April 1918): 770 note;Baillie-Grohman Fifteen Years’, 86.

9 W.A. Baillie-Grohman, Travel andColonisation: Seven YearsPathfinding in the Selkirks ofKootenay, Field, the CountryGentleman’s Newspaper (11 May1899): 658.

10 Captain John Palliser’s BritishNorth American ExploringExpedition, sponsored by the RoyalGeographical Society, mapped theregion in 1858-1859.

maps were not complete, but the Palliser Expedition10

reports in London would have provided Baillie-Grohman with a good, general overview of both theupper and lower Kootenay valleys.11 Before return-ing to the Kootenay in July 1883, Baillie-Grohman out-lined his scheme to the Daily British Colonist in Victo-ria. The Kootenay River flatlands were annually in-undated with an average of 22 feet (6.5 m) betweenmid-May and mid to late July. To reduce this flood-water and take advantage of the excellent, rich allu-vial soil12 he

proposed two separate projects [firstly] by digging a waterditch of considerable length connecting the upper watersof the Kootenay river with the headwaters of Columbiawhich at this point is of slightly lower elevation, andsecondly, by widening the outlet of Lake Kootenay.13 Thefirst mentioned work will subdue the Kootenay waters onlyto a very limited extent; the latter will be far moreeffective.14

It should be noted that when this newspaperinterview took place, Baillie-Grohman was about todepart on his second trip to the Kootenay. Althoughhe had prepared himself by consulting maps andreading various reports, this would be his first ven-ture into the Upper Kootenay region. How was it pos-sible to conclude it was feasible to dig “a water ditch”to connect the Kootenay and Columbia “which at thispoint is of slightly lower elevation”? In order to initi-ate his grand reclamation scheme, Baillie-Grohmanapplied for various land concessions including a largeacreage south of Kootenay Lake. In 1883 this terri-tory was considered terra incognita, so before approv-ing Baillie-Grohman’s request, the government re-quired further information on the extent and charac-teristics of the lands in question. Messrs. Arthur S.Farwell and Gilbert M. Sproat were contracted tocarry out these duties.

Leaving Victoria on 16 July 1883, they took theNorthern Pacific Railway to Sandpoint, Idaho, whereBaillie-Grohman joined them and provided transpor-tation north. After reconnaissance of the Kootenaycountry, Farwell and Sproat reported to British Co-lumbia government officials in December 1883 andJanuary 1884 respectively. By 25 July 1884, Baillie-Grohman had submitted a formal proposal to the pro-vincial government “to acquire partially free grantsof the lands specified” totaling approximately 73,100acres (29,240 ha). The provisions and conditions ofthis proposal were approved and ratified on 7 Sep-tember 1885.15 It was then possible for Baillie-Grohman’s Kootenay Lake Syndicate to raise venture

capital from influential and wealthy acquaintances inEngland.

Much to Baillie-Grohman’s frustration, his pro-posed project became mired in government bureauc-racy. On 6 March 1886, thirty citizens from Goldenand the Upper Columbia valley submitted a petitionto Canada’s Minister of the Interior. They feared thatby diverting the Kootenay River into the ColumbiaRiver system, hay lands, railway beds, and town siteswould be inundated. Project permission from theDominion Government was obligatory and wouldonly be granted if the drainage canal was constructedas a navigable16 waterway with a lock. As compensa-tion, Baillie-Grohman was to receive from the BritishColumbia government a grant of 30,000 acres (12,000ha) in the Upper Kootenay valley, after the canal wasconstructed.17 On 29 July 1889, Baillie-Grohman’s ca-nal was finally completed and he cynically declaredthat “it was a job I can honestly recommend to thosedesirous of committing suicide in a decent, gentle-manly manner.”18

The complicated details of the entire project arewell documented in Mabel E. Jordan’s article, “TheKootenay Reclamation and Colonization Scheme andWilliam Adolf Baillie-Grohman.”19 Much of Jordan’sinformation was based on Baillie-Grohman’s publi-cations and other resources available at the time, buthow accurate were those records? Historical informa-tion is gleaned from either primary or secondarysources. Both are susceptible to error, but the likeli-hood of a mistake in the latter is greater. In his popu-lar book, William Adolf Baillie-Grohman candidlywrote that engineers “pronounced the idea I hadformed a practical one.”20 His dogged promotion ofthe reclamation scheme gave added credibility to thisstatement. Contemporary reports crediting him as theoriginator of the concept were never denied, so “theidea [he] had formed” became an indisputable fact.Subsequently, secondary sources flatly stated that hewas the first to “conceive” the idea.21

There is no denying that Baillie-Grohman com-mitted an inordinate amount of time and energy tothis project. This is evident from the plethora of cor-respondence, petitions, reports, and newspaper ac-counts. He was so consumed by this enterprise thathe spent almost a decade pursuing this dream. How-ever, the question still must be asked: Was he actu-ally the first to “conceive” this notion? To compre-hend how Baillie-Grohman’s contemporaries viewedhis tenacious and passionate commitment to thisproject would be helpful, if his habits and character-


11 The Upper Kootenay valley isthe Kootenay River area in theRocky Mountain trench whereasthe Lower Kootenay lies south ofKootenay Lake (also known as theflatlands or bottomlands).

12 The flatlands were estimated tobe 45,000 acres (18,000 ha) inBritish Columbia and 65,000 acres(26,000 ha) in Idaho. Arthur S.Farwell, Report in British Columbia.Sessional Papers, 1883-84. Reportof the Chief Commissioner of Landsand Works for the Province ofBritish Columbia for the YearEnding 31st December, 1883(Victoria: G.P.O. 1884), 256.

13 “were the outlet sufficientlylarge, the lake would not rise andthe valley would not beoverflowed.… The discovery Imade soon afterwards … seemedto corroborate the correctness ofthe above surmise.” W.A. Baillie-Grohman, Notes on the Upper andLower Kootenay Valleys andKootenay Lake, in Arthur O.Wheeler, The Selkirk Range, vol. 1(Ottawa: Department of theInterior, 1905), 252.

14 Development of Kootenay, 3.

15 Kootenay Reclamation andColonization, British Columbia.Sessional Papers, 1886 (Victoria:Queen’s Printer, 1887), 419.

16 Initially, Baillie-Grohmanintended to dig “a shallow ditchin 1883 when I first saw thespot….” Baillie-Grohman to GuyConstable, 14 Sept. 1918. FortSteele Heritage Town Archives.Mss 84.

17 Two vitriolic editorialsdenounced “The Grohman CanalSwindle,” Golden Era, 1 & 8 May1897. “Tommy” Norbury of FortSteele, wrote “Grohman’s uselesscanal is I believe finished so he nowowns most & all the good land ofthis country.” 29 July 1889 letterin Norbury Family fonds, BCArchives. Add Mss 877 Box 1File 4.

istics were even partially understood. Victorian writ-ers, particularly outdoor adventure writers, often useda florid and rather exaggerated style to describe thelandscape, its inhabitants, and the challenge itself.Baillie-Grohman certainly must have felt that his penwas a mighty force, for his communications delugedgovernment officials and sorely tested their patience.On 18 September 1890, W.S. Gore, Surveyor-Generalof British Columbia, directed the government recorderin Nelson to submit a full report on the KootenayValleys Company’s seasonal progress. This wouldprovide reliable information “as to whether the agree-ment is being carried out in good faith, or only in acolourable manner.”22 Just over two months later, theActing Chief Commissioner of Lands and Workswrote to Baillie-Grohman that,

The efforts made by you to carry out the covenants of theagreement being so far of a colourable nature,23 I mustpositively decline to accede to your request. I may addthat these small matters which seem to occupy so much ofyour attention do not tend to accelerate the large worksyou have undertaken to carry out with all diligence.24

The “small matters” that occupied Baillie-Grohman’s attention referred to his dispute with J.C.Rykert of Kootenay Flats. Among other things, Baillie-Grohman accused Rykert of trespassing and cuttingwild hay on his land concession. Rykert retorted, “Mr.Grohman has no idea of ever completing his contract,which every man in the West Kootenay can corrobo-rate,” and hinted that he was “simply trying a specu-lative scheme.” He also wrote that Baillie-Grohmanhad no intention to “benefit this part of the country,but just make believe, as he has done in everythinghe ever took hold of, so as to make something on apure wild cat scheme.”25

While in the Kootenay Lake area Baillie-Grohman also managed to become involved in a com-

plicated legal battle between Thomas Hammill andRobert Sproule, over a mineral claim. Hammill hireda lawyer, while an impoverished “Sprowle [sic] hadbut my help to get up his case—I knew absolutelynothing about law.”26 However, Baillie-Grohmanmanaged to win the initial trial before the residentGold Commissioner. Hammill’s lawyer appealed tothe British Columbia Supreme Court where Chief Jus-tice Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie’s decision (1884) notedthat,

It is impossible not to be struck with the fact that the wholeof this wearisome, expensive and mischievous litigation hasbeen caused and fostered by the unauthorized intrusion ofa stranger, who seems to have succeeded, before the GoldCommissioner, in raising such a cloud of irrelevantstatements and controversies, as to entirely obscure theofficer’s view of the material facts in each case.27

The reputation that Baillie-Grohman left behindwas that of a “disputatious, litigious bumbler.”28 Hewas considered “a better dreamer than an engineer.Furthermore, so pronounced was his propensity formeddling in everyone else’s business that he seemsto have ended up by interfering in his own.”29 Thus itbecomes apparent that this energetic and well-intentioned adventurer lacked the finesse required tosuccessfully complete such a grand reclamationscheme in the isolated wilderness. These uncompli-mentary comments also suggest that the original con-cept credited to Baillie-Grohman should be viewedwith skepticism.

Baillie-Grohman first saw the Lower KootenayRiver valley in 1882 while on his quest for mountaingoat trophies. Until that time his sole occupation wasthat of a writer with extensive experience pursuingtravel and sport. Other than receiving royalty pay-ments, his only apparent income came from his fam-ily.30 Perhaps this could explain why he focussed on

Richard (Dick) Fry.Bonners Ferry, Idaho(right)BC Archives HP091883

David McLoughlin.Porthill, Idaho. June 1899(left)Oregon Historical Society 49854via Creston Archives


18 Baillie-Grohman Fifteen Years’,264.

19 British Columbia HistoricalQuarterly 20 (July-October 1956):187-220.


21 Baillie-Grohman “Notes”, A.O.Wheeler notation, 255; FlorenceBaillie-Grohman, “Why the CanalWas Built Across the KootenayFlats,” Attached to undated letter(1922?) to Guy Constable, FortSteele Heritage Town Archives. Mss85; Jordan “The KootenayReclamation”, 187; Guy Constable,The History of Dyking and Drainagein the Kootenay Valley, in BritishColumbia Natural ResourcesConference. Transactions (10th),1957, 87; etc.

22 Correspondence: KootenayReclamation Scheme, BritishColumbia Sessional Papers, 1891(Victoria: Queen’s Printer, 1892),499.

23 Baillie-Grohman replied: “I begto give a most emphatic andindignant denial. You appear torest under some misapprehensionrespecting the personelle [sic] ofthis Company, so … before givingofficial expression to such anunwarranted aspersion … morereliable information … should havebeen collected.” Corres-pondence, 503.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., 496-497.

26 Baillie-Grohman A Paradise, 774.

27 “Kootenay Mining Appeals:Hammil [sic] v. Sproule,” in BritishColumbia Law Reports. Courts ofAppeal, vol. 1 pt 2 (Victoria: LawSociety of British Columbia, 1900),44.

28 Edward L. Affleck. Personalcommunication, 22 Nov. 2000.

29 Edward L. Affleck, KootenayLake Chronicles. (Vancouver:Alexander Nicolls Press, 1978), 68.

the reclamation project—it was an original wildernessadventure that could profit from a well-planned andexecuted scheme.

Although it has been stated that Baillie-Grohman formulated his plan after seeing the lowerKootenay Flats,31 it is highly unlikely that he couldenvision a reclamation scheme without visiting theentire Kootenay landscape. It is also difficult to be-lieve that an outdoorsman without related work ex-perience or agrarian inclination would be struck bythe agricultural potential of this alluvial floodplain.However, there may be a different explanation—theconcept, which had been floating around theKootenay for a number of years, had been suggestedto him. Thus Baillie-Grohman’s proclamation, “In1882, when this scheme first came up”32 would be fac-tual, albeit misleading. After detraining at Sandpoint,Idaho in 1882, Baillie-Grohman headed northward.With a small non-native population in the region,there is little doubt he would have been advised tocontact well-known Kootenay pioneers Richard(Dick) Fry of Bonners Ferry and David McLoughlinof Ockonook, Idaho. Both were very familiar with thecountry north and south of the border. There is evi-dence and reason to believe that he learned about theregion’s agricultural potential from these men.

Baillie-Grohman first visited Dick Fry’s smalltrading post to purchase basic foodstuffs. ThroughFry, Baillie-Grohman hired two native guides for hishunting expedition to the north end of Kootenay Lake.Since he was familiar with the Kootenay landscape,it is logical to assume that during the course of theevening’s conversation Fry willingly shared informa-tion with his overnight visitor. Fry, born in March1838, migrated westward from Illinois with his par-ents when he was eleven. Six years later, he left hometo serve in the military during the native uprisingsaround Walla Walla. He later struck out for the Co-lumbia River gold rush, but quickly realized moremoney could be made from trading than panning.Across the river from his trading post (now Marcus,Washington) was a Sinixt village where he met hiswife, Justine Soqu’stik’en. The Frys eventually settledat Bonners Ferry and maintained a ferry, trading post,and pack train business. During this period Fry alsotraveled around the country hunting, fishing, trap-ping, mining, and exploring.33 During the 1860s, DickFry maintained a trapline on Cottonwood and Forty-Nine Creeks just west of Kootenay Lake’s outlet, nearpresent-day Nelson. He also placer mined for goldon Forty-Nine Creek in the summers of 1867, 1868,

and 1869.34 On his trapping and mining excursionshe became more than familiar with the surroundingterrain, including the natural bottleneck located atKootenay Lake’s westward outlet. “Richard Fry knewthe Kootenay country probably better than anyoneelse”35 and, as with most pioneers, he would havebeen more than willing to share this information witha curious gentleman such as Baillie-Grohman.

Baillie-Grohman had arranged to meet Fry nearthe outlet after his hunting trip in July, 1882. Thiswould allow him to view Kootenay River narrows,the bottleneck that caused annual flooding atKootenay Flats. In an interview with the Daily BritishColonist in 1883, Baillie-Grohman outlined his plan toremove this obstacle and repeated this critical tacticin other publications. However, all the circumstan-tial evidence, albeit from secondary sources, pointsto the inevitable conclusion that Baillie-Grohman was


30 A remittance man who “cameinto an independent income uponreaching his maturity….” MarkZuehlke, Scoundrels, Dreamers &Second Sons: British RemittanceMen in the Canadian West.(Vancouver: Whitecap Books,1994), 39.

31 “The man who in 1882 firstconceived the idea of reclaimingthese flats” or, “in 1882 … hediscovered the Kootenay Flats andformulated his reclamationscheme.” Jordan The KootenayReclamation, 187, 207.


33 Clara Graham, Kootenay Mosaic.(Vancouver: Evergreen, 1971), 80-83; Norris Historic Nelson, 28-37;Van B. Putnam, “What Happenedto Richard and Alfred Fry,”Spokesman-Review (Spokane), 11July 1954.

34 Letter from Richard Fry, BonnersFerry to J. Fred Hume, 2 December1893, in Nelson Miner, 3 Feb.1894: 3.

35 Graham Kootenay Mosaic, 82.

36 Ockonook later, Porthill, Idaho.

37 Farwell Report, 257.

38 Lower Kootenay valley39 John Norris, Historic Nelson: theEarly Years. (Lantzville, BC:Oolichan Books, 1995), 101-104;Carle Jones, The David McLoughlinStory, British Columbia HistoricalNews 28(Winter 1994-95): 11.

40 Noticed by “old Hudson’s Bayfur traders who have lived in thecountry for twenty or twenty-fiveyears….” W.A. Baillie-Grohman,Travel and Colonisation: TwoSummers in the Kootenay Country,Field, the Country Gentleman’sNewspaper (25 April 1885): 526;Baillie-Grohman “Notes”, 252. Anindirect reference to McLoughlin?

not the originalvisionary of thescheme. Afterleaving Dick Fry’ssmall post, Baillie-G r o h m a nstopped over-night at DavidM c L o u g h l i n ’ swhere he madearrangements tostore some equip-ment. DavidMcLoughlin, sonof the Hudson’sBay Company’schief factor, Dr.John McLoughlin,was born around1818. Educated atFort Vancouverand Montreal,young Davidmoved to Parisabout 1834 totrain as an engi-neer. He then re-turned to NorthAmerica and be-gan work as anapprentice clerkfor the HBC. Aftersuccumbing togold fever andw a n d e r l u s t ,McLoughlin briefly settled in the Wild Horse Creekarea where he took as his wife Annie Ksooke (Griz-zly), the daughter of a Kutenai chief. In 1865, he es-tablished Fort Flatbow at Kootenay Flats and around1871, moved to Ockonook36 just south of the border.Here he built a log house that was both home for hislarge family and a trading post. David McLoughlin’sreputation as an authority on the Kootenay region waslegendary and he “cheerfully gave any informationon this subject.”37

In 1881, McLoughlin was sponsored by theNorthern Pacific Railway to address the PortlandChamber of Commerce about potential agriculturaldevelopment in the lower Kootenay valley. The com-pany had a vested interest in this region and was prag-matic enough to subsidize McLoughlin’s trip to help

promote this isolated part of northern Idaho, west-ern Montana, and southeastern British Columbia. On14 September 1881, a lengthy letter from “Mac”(McLoughlin) about “The Kootenai Country” waspublished in the Spokane Falls Chronicle. His vision-ary plan indicated,

It is here that the Kootenay river has always been regardedboth by government officers, and others, as the mostfavorable place for turning it into the Columbia river. Thework of turning the Kootenay river into the south channelof the Columbia, could here be done at nominal cost, naturehaving favored it, in all particulars. It would reduce thesurface of the Kootenay river several feet, therebyprotecting from yearly overflow the vast extent of theFlat Bow valley38, and reclaiming thousands of acres ofthe most valuable agricultural land in America.

Canal Flats, Kootenay andColumbia Rivers (right)Map by Cathy Chapin, LakeheadUniversity, Thunder Bay


41 Arthur S. Farwell, Report on theKootenay Indians, in BritishColumbia. Sessional Papers, 1883-84 (Victoria: G.P.O., 1884): 327.

42 Farwell Report, 256-257.

43 Baillie-Grohman Fifteen Years’,256-258.

44 In 1918, Baillie-Grohman wroteto Guy Constable, “I want to writesomething about him [McLoughlin],in his way he was one of the‘greatest’ characters I have evermet.” Fort Steele Heritage TownArchives. Mss 84. Was this agenuine or a backhandedcompliment?


46 “Widening these narrow placeswould no doubt materially assist inreducing the height of the water inKootenay Lake: but to thoroughlyreclaim the bottom lands … it willbe necessary to divert the UpperKootenay into the Upper ColumbiaLake.” Farwell Report, 259. “theadvantages of turning the uppercourse of the Kootenay into theColumbia would outweigh thedisadvantages” Gilbert M. Sproat,Report on the Kootenay Country, inBritish Columbia. Sessional Papers,1883-84 (Victoria: G.P.O., 1884),316.

This letter was published one year before Baillie-Grohman’s arrival in the Kootenay, and is the mostdamning evidence available.39 By 1883 it became theblueprint for Baillie-Grohman’s Diversion.

It is quite plausible that Baillie-Grohman heardabout McLoughlin’s letter and/or speech, either fromDick Fry or from others, while en route to theKootenay in 1882. The subject would have inevitablybeen raised with McLoughlin while Baillie-Grohmanwas making his arrangements for storage and solicit-ing additional information for his hunting trip north.Evidence of the rich “earthy deposit”40 was obviousfrom the bountiful crops which both McLoughlin andFry successfully harvested. According to McLoughlin,this productivity would be even more plentiful if theFlats could be relieved of annual flooding. For exam-ple, the natives had previously been supplied withseed “but the uncertainty of securing their crops,through the flooding of the land, so thoroughly dis-heartened them, that they gave up farming in dis-gust.”41 This fertile floodplain extended the full lengthof the wide valley from Bonners Ferry to KootenayLake. Farwell’s report indicated that the soil depthwas so extensive that when the river’s banks werefifteen feet (4.5m) high in mid-October, this soil qual-ity was consistent from the top of the riverbank towater level. He confirmed that,

A successful reclamation scheme would benefit the landssubject to overflow, to the south of the InternationalBoundary Line, as much, if not more, than those lying tothe north of said line. From Mr. McLoughlin, I learnt [sic]that the land near the lake is first submerged, and as thelake fills up the water gradually approaches the boundary,and so on up the valley, showing clearly that the contractedwaterway of the outlet is the main cause of the difficulty.42

Baillie-Grohman may have found it strange thatMcLoughlin, living in this isolated part of the world,had more formal education than himself. Thisanomaly probably would have piqued his interest andcuriosity. If Baillie-Grohman had not already seen theSpokane Falls Chronicle article, his host may have ei-ther shown it to him or, perhaps, even given him acopy—this is pure speculation. Nevertheless, Baillie-Grohman must have concluded that McLoughlin’s en-gineering credentials gave added authority to a the-sis that he soon accepted as his own. In Fifteen Years’Sport and Life in the Hunting Grounds of Western Americaand British Columbia, Baillie-Grohman’s commentsabout David McLoughlin were far from complimen-tary. He was bemused by this “interesting old char-acter who lived Indian fashion in a miserable hovel”near the Canada-U.S. border. According to Baillie-

Grohman, McLoughlin “had long relapsed into thedirt and savagery of Indian life, [but] one soon discov-ered that he had received the education of a gentle-man, was versed in three or four languages, and hadseen the world.” But “he and his large Indian familydwelt in all the unspeakable squalor and filth of sav-age life” in a “miserable pigsty.” Located adjacent tothis hovel was a large log structure that formerly servedas a trading post, and Baillie-Grohman considered itan ideal site to store some of his gear, so he offeredMcLoughlin one hundred dollars for its use. He con-cluded, “Poor, good natured Old Dave would not haveoccupied the sorry position I found him in had notwhiskey ruined his life; it had been his deadliest foe.”43

Why did Baillie-Grohman malign DavidMcLoughlin?44 Did he depict him as a ne’er-do-wellfor a reason? Immediately following his précis ofMcLoughlin, he launched into an overview of the di-version scheme. “The American and English engi-neers who examined into the feasibility of prevent-ing this overflow pronounced the idea I had formed apractical one. It was to turn the Kootenay river atCanal Flat into the Columbia lake”45 [emphasis mine]Was the American engineer David McLoughlin? Re-corded history can play tricks on the researcher whois deceived by misleading information. Baillie-Grohman’s social status, influential acquaintances,and impressive list of publications gave him a certainauthority that provided easy access to governmentofficials and a facility to raise venture capital. TheFarwell and Sproat reports to the British Columbiagovernment confirmed the project’s feasibility46 andreinforced his credibility. All of these factors gave hisdiversion scheme a measure of authenticity.

On the other hand, Dick Fry and DavidMcLoughlin lived in a remote, sparsely populatedregion of the western interior and, although ac-quainted with each other, they were relatively un-known to those outside the Kootenay. Since both menwere more than willing to share their knowledge withstrangers, it is only logical they would swap infor-mation on how to reduce the annual floodwaters atKootenay Flats. Thanks to Fry and McLoughlin,Baillie-Grohman captured an opportunity in a vision-ary scheme and he devoted almost a decade of hislife to make the concept a reality. By exaggerating thefacts to make himself look heroic, by glossing overDick Fry, and by portraying David McLoughlin to beof little consequence, William Adolf Baillie-Grohmancreated an altogether different type of diversion.

BCHF


Barry Cotton is aretired BC LandSurveyor and was amember of thepartnership whowere the successorsto the original firmof Hermon andBurwell. He is theauthor of First in theField, The PioneerYears of Garden,Hermon andBurwell, CivilEngineers in theProvince of BritishColumbia 1890 -1920.

The Buntzen Lake Project 1901-06Hydro-Electric Power For B.C.’s Lower Mainland

By H. BARRY COTTONBC.LS. (Ret’d)

The author wishes to thank thefirm of Hermon, Bunbury andOke for use of their old fieldrecords, and Mr. GeorgeBrendack of Special Collections,UBC Library for access to theBCER’s old files.

In British Columbia’s early 1900s, the use of water generated almost as many kilowatts of politics as it did of electrical energy. But althoughthe politicking and wheeler-dealing surround-

ing the advent of the Coquitlam/Trout Lake powerdevelopment has been written about several times inthe past, this article proposes to describe, for the firsttime, the activities of the men who actually built theproject—Johannes Buntzen and engineers Meredith,Hermon & Burwell.

Coquitlam Lake lay in the Railway Belt, an areaset aside for administration by the federal government.It is some six miles north of Port Moody, where it drainsa mountain watershed of approximately 100 squaremiles. In 1903 the average annual precipitation wasthought to be 150 inches—a close approximation (to-day the figure given is 145 inches). What was knownfor sure was that it was wet, as all workers on the powerproject would soon be able to confirm.

Trout Lake sat in a pocket in the mountainsabove the Indian Arm, west and a little south ofCoquitlam Lake, but with a 4000-foot-high range ofmountains between the two lakes. In the very earlydays of Vancouver it had been named Lake Beautifulby a group of hikers who, by taking one initial fromeach of the girls’ names in the party, formed the wordBEAUTIFUL. It was then, and is now, a very beauti-ful lake—although in the years from 1902 until 1912,when construction was rampant, I doubt if it wouldhave qualified for the name.

The Coquitlam Waterworks Company, incorpo-rated in 1886, the unsuccessful candidate for the Cityof Vancouver’s water supply, continued supplying theCity of New Westminster until 1889 when the Citytook over the company’s interests, and contracted tomanage the waterworks. Thenceforth it would beknown as the New Westminster Waterworks Com-pany. It consisted of a low weir and intake at the southend of Coquitlam Lake—“500 feet downstream fromthe first riffle in the river, where it gets over the rim ofthe lake.” There was a second intake lower down todraw water when the stream was low, and from theinlets a fourteen inch pipe ran south for twelve miles.The consulting engineer for the New WestminsterWaterworks Company was Mr. A. McL. Hawkes, C.E.,of Tacoma, Washington, an experienced and reliableman, who so described the workings in December 1901.

There was, of course, logging in the Coquitlamvalley. Timber Berth “O” was granted in 1897, mostof it in the vicinity of Trout Lake, and held by the Brit-ish Columbia Mills, Timber and Trading Company

(successors to the Hastings Mill). Their surveyor wasE. B. Hermon, of the Vancouver firm of Hermon &Burwell. It was without doubt this firm’s first intro-duction to the area, and they were not tardy in realiz-ing its potential.

In 1897, when the British Columbia ElectricRailway Company (BCER) rose phoenix-like from theashes of three earlier tramway companies, its policyhad been for the Board of Directors in Britain (ofwhom R. M. Horne-Payne was the leading light) tocontrol operations through a local manager in Van-couver. The first managing director, Frank StillmanBarnard, incorporated the Vancouver Power Com-pany as a subsidiary, which had in its terms of refer-ence the potential to generate hydroelectric power.This move had not been sanctioned by London, andBarnard resigned as managing director soon after-wards, although he remained a Board member.

His replacement, Johannes Buntzen, was a verydynamic and level-headed man. A Dane, he emigratedto British Columbia in the 1890s, originally workingfor Ross & Ceperley as head bookkeeper. As generalmanager of the BCER, Buntzen was both forward-looking and forthright, and quite prepared to pushthe Board into major decisions. He soon made hispoint—that the company must keep up with the de-mand for power, or be content to face competition.

Competition there was. The Stave Lake PowerCompany would be incorporated in 1901, for the pur-pose of selling power to the cities of Vancouver andNew Westminster. That company’s directors includedseveral influential persons, among them Sir CharlesTupper, K.C. Without adequate financing, however,they never got past the starting gate, although for thenext ten years they would waste no opportunity toharass their rival, the BCER.

As consultants for the Vancouver Power Com-pany, Hermon & Burwell were investigating the LakeCoquitlam area in 1898. One field book, badly waterdamaged, shows their first measurement of river flowbelow the New Westminster Waterworks pipe intake:26,000 miner’s inches, taken February 3, 1898. Hermonwent on to measure the flow monthly during that year,and in July ran a line of levels down the river fromCoquitlam Lake, setting twenty-six bench marks.

In these days of “high tech” and electronic dis-tance measurement, it is perhaps hard to visualize thelot of the surveyor of 1901. While today we still havemountain and bush—and that coastal rain—to con-tend with, there is seldom any difficulty finding abench mark (BM), even in a remote place. But at that


Vancouver PowerCompany’s Power Houseand Outflow c.1905BC Archives 24640

time, differences in elevation had to be found fromscratch, and any BMs set were carefully preserved forthe surveyor’s own reference.

To obtain the difference in elevation betweenTrout Lake and Coquitlam Lake was no mean feat atthat time. Hermon & Burwell started their networkat the Barnet wharf, where they set up a tide gaugeand connected their elevations to a Canadian PacificRailway (CPR) datum point near the Coquitlam rail-way bridge. Coquitlam Lake’s height above sea levelwas then obtained by another seven miles of differ-ential levels from the bridge up to the lake outlet. Thisline of levels was rerun in both directions to absoluteprecision in March 1902, before the final decision wasmade to construct.

The elevation of Trout Lake was somewhateasier to arrive at, by measuring up from tidewater.Burwell set up a tide gauge down in the Indian Arm,with a BM and water gauge in Trout Lake, and bycorrelating the tide gauges with the CPR datum andtheir own many miles of levels, the partners deter-mined the relative difference in height between the

two lakes. So the project was born.This was, briefly, to put a low dam at the

Coquitlam Lake outlet (increasing the head and im-proving the intake for the New Westminster Water-works Company); tunnel through the mountain, di-verting Coquitlam Lake water into Trout Lake (whichwould also be dammed as a balancing reservoir); andrun pipelines down to a powerhouse on the IndianArm. The power would go via pole line to New West-minster and Vancouver, a well-devised scheme.

It goes without saying that the rights of the NewWestminster Waterworks Company would have to besafeguarded, so Buntzen went to work on New West-minster city council, pointing out the blessings thatwould accrue from the Vancouver Power Company’saspirations. In mid-October 1901, A. McL. Hawkesmade his report to the City, coming out in favour ofthe enterprise, and saying in part, “In my judgement.␣ .␣ . the construction of a dam would be a benefit tothe City’s water supply; and if the work could be car-ried out without any expense to the City, I would rec-ommend it.”


A Few Technical Terms

Water Recorder. In the early daysof B.C.’s development, mostresources could be applied for by“staking” - the posting of a noticeon the ground, usually followedby publication of a similar notice(of “intention to apply”) in anewspaper and the BCGazette,and then the official applicationto government. The WaterRecorder was the ProvincialGovernment bureaucrat whodealt with water licences claimedin this way.

Miner’s Inch is 1.68 c. ft of waterflow per minute.

Railway Belt. This was a strip ofland extending 20 miles from, andon both sides of the centre-lineof the CPR. It stretched from theBC/Alberta border as far as PortMoody, which until 1884 had beenconsidered as the westernterminus of the railway. At thetime of Confederation, politiciansof the day had agreed to conveythis corridor (containing some ofthe most valuable land in theProvince) to the DominionGovernment. It was returned toB.C. in 1930.

The Water Clauses ConsolidationAct was a massive Provincialstatute, with a special sectionapplicable to industrial power. Itsauthority in Railway Belt landswas challenged in 1906 by theDominion Government, and thematter of which government hadthe right to adjudicate waterresources was not resolved by thecourts until 1913.

In the report he made certain stipulations: thatthe dam should be five feet high (ten feet was even-tually agreed to); the intake should be extended be-yond the dam; and that the lowest level of the diver-sion tunnel be six inches higher than the intake pipe;all of which Vancouver Power Company were quitewilling to implement, and at their own expense.

Enough engineering data was now available forBuntzen to start action. He also had the backing ofhis Board in London, so after getting tentative agree-ment from New Westminster city council on 18 Octo-ber 1901, he was ready for the next—very important-—step. This was to obtain an official water record.Applications were made by the Vancouver PowerCompany under the British Columbia Water ClausesConsolidation Act on 23 August and 23 September 1901,for 5000 miner’s inches of water from Lake Coquitlam,and 500 inches from Trout Lake. The repercussionswere considerable.

By 4 December 1901 the spoils—5000 miner’sinches of water from Coquitlam Lake, and all thewater in Trout Lake, was issued to the VancouverPower Company by the Lieutenant Governor inCouncil (i.e., the cabinet). This was, of course, onlyhalf of the war—the provincial half. The other halfwould be waged with the Dominion government,who had hardly started to flex their muscles yet. Thiswould drag on much longer, although it did not re-tard the actual delivery of electric power.

Buntzen would continue to report regularly toHorne-Payne in England regarding events, and bigdecisions would always be made by the Board. Al-though the engineering reports were thus far favour-able, there was a lot of money at stake. Two moreeminent engineers visited the site in early 1902 andmade their reports: Wynn Meredith, of the firm ofHunt & Meredith, and Robert F. Dobie were both fromSan Francisco. The report of a third engineer, HughL. Cooper of New York, was made as late as July 1902,and served merely as corroboration, as by that timeconstruction was under way.

Part of Buntzen’s letter to Horne-Payne of 14March 1902 is quoted,

Before any of the engineers would give their final definiteopinion, they insisted on having the respective elevationsof Coquitlam Lake and Trout Lake determined with absoluteaccuracy .Ê.Ê. yesterday morning, at last Mr. Hermonsucceeded after two weeks of great hardship, in finallydetermining the elevation, and I am glad to say, found itbetter than we had expected, the difference in altitudebeing that Coquitlam Lake is 32 feet higher than TroutLake, making a splendid grade for a tunnel.

During the fall of 1901, Hermon & Burwell car-ried on with the mass of preliminary work required.Complete layout plans (showing lands required, tun-nel, dam sites, and powerhouse site) were made. Asearly as September 1901, the firm had made applica-tion on behalf of the Vancouver Power Company tothe Dominion Land Agent for the Crown land re-quired.

All the applications for rights-of-way and otherparcels of land were eventually approved except one.This was the parcel at the end of Coquitlam Lake thatcovered the proposed dam and new intake for theNew Westminster Waterworks Company. The appli-cation for this parcel bore the words “if not alreadydisposed of.” Controversy over this parcel, which theVancouver Power Company was determined to con-trol, will only be mentioned here briefly. It draggedon for several years. On 10 December 1901, Buntzenwrites of taking all necessary data, surveys, plans, andmeasurements furnished by Hermon & Burwell toToronto, to prove to the prospective debenture hold-ers the feasibility of the scheme.

The next step was the selection by the LondonBoard of a Chief Engineer. There were four applicants,among them Wynn Meredith and A. McL. Hawks.The job was offered to Wynn Meredith in a long letterfrom Buntzen, 30 April 1902. It said in part, “As youare no doubt aware, the power scheme originated withMessrs Hermon & Burwell of this city, and so far allthe preliminary work has been done by this firm, andwe feel in duty bound to give them a substantial shareof the engineering in connection with the develop-ment of the scheme.”

The firm of Hunt & Meredith, of whom WynnMeredith was chief engineer, were mechanical engi-neers specializing in hydroelectric design; and besideshaving had sole control of the Los Angeles systemsome years before, had handled the BCER’s firstproject, the plant at Goldstream on Vancouver Island.The BCER itself—in particular R. H. Sperling—wouldobviously provide the expertise in electrical matters.E. B. Hermon and H. M. Burwell were both civil en-gineers of considerable experience, and E. B. Hermonwas a graduate in mining engineering.

In May of 1902, Wynn Meredith arrived in Van-couver, setting up his office alongside that of Hermon& Burwell in the Inns of Court building. There can belittle doubt that their overall ideas were in agreement,the proof being that Meredith’s estimate of eighteenmonths to production of the first power was entirelyaccurate.


Vancouver PowerCompany’s tunnel c.1905.Standing on the left, H.M.Burwell. Holding thelantern, D.K. Campbell,contractor.CVA OUT.P.440,N155

Field surveying up to this point had been pre-liminary in nature; now the detailed surveys neces-sary for engineering design (required immediately),and also for construction control would start. Firstand foremost was alignment of the tunnel, for whichboth east and west portals had already been selected.

The partners cooperated on this tough assign-ment. Portals at the Trout Lake and Coquitlam Lakeends of the proposed tunnel were tied to triangula-tion over nearby Tunnel Mountain (so named in thenotes), after which the true line from portal to portalwas cut out over the top of the mountain and pre-cisely aligned. Maintaining alignment was no prob-lem; on the west shore of Trout Lake, and on the eastshore of Coquitlam Lake were alignment flags (thelatter being on what is today called Coquitlam Is-land—an island that came into being by subsequent

raising of the lake to present-day levels). The fieldnotes show that this work took six days. The partnersmust have had two things going for them—goodweather and big crews, because even with moderninstruments it would be hard to do it in less time.

Engineering parlance underground has its ownlanguage. For instance, the roof of the tunnel is knownas “the back,” and in it survey marks known as“spads” are set for controlling alignment and grade;they usually stay there unmoved, apart from the onenearest the face which might get hit by a flying rock.When tunneling, the sequence of events is simple—the miners drill and blast, followed by the muckerswho clear up the mess, ready for the miners again. Inbetween shifts, the engineer has to get in to set align-ment and grade; he usually does it after the muckershave finished, although miners working on contract


Water and Politics

While the surveyors weredoggedly working in the pouringrain, Johannes Buntzen wastrying to steer the waterapplications through thepolitical maze in Victoria. Hewas a man well aware of thepowers of political persuasion,as indeed were all the directorsof the BCER. No sooner had thewater records been staked,than the Honourable. W.C.Wells, Chief Commissioner ofLands & Works receivedBuntzen’s detailed letter. It wasan excellent letter, andattended to the only two reallyrelevant points - first that theCity of New Westminster (theonly prior interest) had agreedto the power company’sproposals, and secondly thatthe money was all there andready to be used (subject tothe granting of the 5000 and500 miner’s inches of water toVancouver Power Co as the solelicensee).

By this time, the Stave LakePower Co had become aware ofsuch happening, and also madeapplication for a water recordon the lake (of 10,000 miner’sinches); and if there was anyquestion of the ProvincialWater-Recorder using his owndiscretion in adjudicating thematter, it was promptlyoverruled by his superiors inthe Lands & Works Ministry. Infact, by October 23rd, theWater Recorder noted that threeother Municipalities had alsojoined New Westminsterin applying for water rights -Delta, Richmond and Coquitlam.He also reported that“opposition was developing”.

Opposition was a fairly mild wordto describe the bickering thattook place at the subsequentinquiry in which both E.B, Hem-ion and A.McL. Hawkes gavetheir expert opinions; but atleast all parties had a chance tosound off. It seemed that if theobject of the Stave LakeCompany was simply to delayproceedings, it was succeeding.Buntzen then sent another letter,

often resent the time taken, and are not averse tothrowing rocks at him to hurry up the process.

The tunnel was designed with a slight changeof grade at the halfway point to facilitate drainage,which is always a problem underground. TheCoquitlam tunnel was really no different from othertunnels but, let us not forget, there were no modernconveniences such as mucking machines, just a lot ofmen with shovels filling up the handcars to push backout to the portal, and all workers used carbidelamps—a temperamental device that often went outat the crucial moment. Special underground wordswere sure to be used on those occasions.

So much for that first tunnel from lake to lake.It was started in January 1903, driven from both ends.

The contract was given to Ironside, Rannie &Campbell, who employed over 175 men, and some-times as many as 300, probably housed at J. J.Nickson’s camp. They worked in eight-hour shifts—days, nights, and holidays. In April 1905, the two endsof the tunnel met in traditional fashion, with a clos-ing error of seven eighths of an inch in alignment,and 1 3/4 inch in grade.

The partners had divided their responsibilitieson the rest of the project, with E. B. Hermon lookingafter the Coquitlam Lake end—dam, clearing con-tracts, and tunnel, while H. M. Burwell undertookwork for the powerhouse, pipelines (penstocks), andTrout Lake Dam. This dam was an engineering projectin its own right, as drilling had to be done to bedrock


BCHF

Water and Politics continued

this time to the ProvincialSecretary, 9 November 1901,protesting the Stave LakeCompany’s delaying tactics.Altogether, governmentaldeliberations dragged on from 19September until 4 December of1901.

In fact the cabinet had littlealternative but to grant theVancouver Power Company’sapplication. The company hadpriority of staking (for what thatwas worth there was plenty ofwater, the money was in thebank, and the power wasnecessary for future of the LowerMainland. A.E McPhillips K.C.(who, as a director of theVancouver Power Company, washandling all their legal business)put the matter succintly inanother letter to the ProvincialSecretary, on 27 November, 1901;

It is apparent that the time hascome for the Lt. Governor inCouncil to act in the matter, toprevent retarding of actualconstruction of a large work,which will be of great publicadvantage.

Engineering Details fromthe Vancouver PowerCompany’s brochure.(this page)

Vancouver Powercompany’s Power Houseand Outflow c.1905(opposite page)BC Archives 31162

and thenthe entire over-

b u r d e n — s o m e20,000 yards—removed before

the forms could be set. Excavationmethods used by Burwell at the

damsite would certainly befrowned upon today (he washedthe overburden down the creek byhydraulic means), but it certainlysaved a lot of manual labour. So

did the tramline, which he de-signed from tidewater

to Trout Lake tobring up ce-

ment for thedam andpipes forthe west

tunnel por-tal. As 1903

p r o g r e s s e d ,Burwell was re-

sponsible for installa-tion of the four 1500-kilowatt generatingunits in the power-house, and he also

undertook the engi-neering for thet r a n s m i s s i o nline, which

crossed BurrardInlet at the nar-rows (Burn’sPoint).

The Van-couver Power

Company’s brochuregives credit to three men in particu-

lar for this undertaking: Mr. J. Buntzen, general man-ager of the BCER, Mr. R. H. Sperling, advising elec-trical engineer, and Mr. R. M. Horne-Payne, the chair-man of the BCER. In the last paragraph it names theengineers: Mr. Wynn Meredith of San Francisco, chief

engineer for the Company, and Messrs Hermon &Burwell of Vancouver, engineers in charge of construc-tion.

Power from the project was being received inVancouver by December 1903 (before completion ofthe tunnel), and in December 1904 the BCER’s oldsteam plant on Union Street in Vancouver was closedexcept for emergencies. It was without doubt a mostsuccessful and efficient undertaking.

It is interesting to quote some of the April 1905statistics. The Coquitlam Lake dam was eleven feethigh. The tunnel was nine feet square, and 12,775 feetlong. The Trout Lake dam was fifty-four feet high. Butno engineering work remains static; it is always beingimproved upon. By the time the original specificationshad been carried out, plans had already been made toenlarge the tunnel (it is now twice its original size) andraise the Coquitlam Lake dam. Today the lake level isat least seventy feet higher than in 1902.

Nearly all these improvements would be madeafter Johannes Buntzen had left British Columbia. Hehas been called the “grand-daddy of electricity in Brit-ish Columbia,” a label well earned. His services tothe BCER were recognized in April 1905, when he be-came managing director of the company. By all ac-counts, he was a modest and fairly retiring man. Onthe other hand, there was no doubt as to his popular-ity in the city and throughout the whole company aswell, to the extent that he was even made an honor-ary member of the International Brotherhood of StreetRailway Employees. There would be no labour trou-bles while he was at the helm. During his time in Van-couver he was a strong supporter of the arts in musicand literature, although this is less well known. Heeven had time to sit on a Royal Commission on Taxa-tion in 1905, together with F. Carter-Cotton, R. G.Tatlow and D. R. Kerr—all political gentlemen. Butthen Buntzen himself was also a political animal, andwithout his flair for politics his hydroelectric venturemight have had a rougher passage.

There are still fifteen other Trout Lakes in Brit-ish Columbia, according to the Gazetteer. JohannesBuntzen could not have received better recognitionfor his services than to have this one named after him.From a small beginning, the Lake Buntzen hydroelec-tric development was not slow to grow; even by 1911it was producing 15,000 kilowatts. It now boasts twopower stations and an output of over twelve times itsoriginal output. And the lake is still as beautiful as itoriginally was.



1 Much of the information for thispaper was found in the annualreports of the Commissioner ofFisheries of British Columbia forthe years1908 to1935 and theProvincial Fisheries Department forthe years1936 to 1944. Informationwas also found in the annualreports of the federal Departmentof Marine and Fisheries, 1906-13and 1923-30, Department of NavalService, 1914-22 and Departmentof Fisheries, 1931-33.

2 Report on ExploratoryReconnaissance of a Portion of theNass River Watershed, andHeadwaters of Skeena River.Bonney, P.S. 1913. Unpublishedtypescript. 82p.

3 Fisheries and Oceans Canada -Pacific Region. North Coast website - www.pac.dfo.mpo.gc.ca/ops/northfm/default.htm

Meziadin River Fish Laddersby Rod N. Palmer

Rod Palmer is aretired Fisheries andOceans, Canadabiologist and fisherymanager, with aninterest in the historyof fisheries researchand management inBritish Columbia.

He did fisheriessurveys onÊatMeziadin River andother Nass Rivertributaries in the 50’sand 60’s so theÊareais of particularinterest to him.

All photographs by theauthor

In 1913, the provincial and Dominion governments cooperated to construct a fish ladder overa waterfall on the Meziadin River, the majorspawning system for the valuable sockeye

salmon run to the Nass River in northern British Co-lumbia.1 These fish had long sustained the Nisga’aand other First Nations people and were harvestedfor the canneries as early as 1878. During some years,however, the falls presented a major obstruction tosalmon migrating to their spawning grounds. TheMeziadin River joins the Nass River approximately120 miles upstream from the estuary. The river, which

is less than five mileslong, flows fromMeziadin Lake, whichlies about forty milesfrom Stewart, B.C., adja-cent to the Stewart-Cassiar Highway.

Before the Stewart-Cassiar Highway andconnecting roads fromHighway 16 were con-structed in the 1960s, theNass River, one of the

major salmon-producing river systems in British Co-lumbia, remained isolated and largely untouched byhuman development. Human occupation was mainlyalong the lower sixty miles of the Nass valley, withNisga’a villages accessible only by water and foottravel or, in more recent times, by air. By 1912, afterthe railway to Prince Rupert was constructed, a fewpre-emptors had settled in the lower Nass valley butthese homesteads were largely abandoned within afew years.2 In the early 1900s, the Meziadin River areawas occupied by a few Native people—at least dur-ing the salmon season—but otherwise was uninhab-ited except for occasional trappers and prospectors.

A quarter of a mile from the confluence withthe Nass River, two waterfalls on the Meziadin Riverhave long been recognized as impediments to theupstream migration of salmon. These falls, separatedby 600 feet of rapids, have a combined drop of overthirty feet. At some time in the past, the falls wereinformally named Victoria Falls, a name still used onthe Department of Fisheries and Oceans Web site andin some publications.3 In earlier times the thousandsof salmon accumulating below the falls provided anideal fishery for Native peoples including the Tsetsaut,the Tahltan, the Gitanyow and the Nisga’a. Access tothis fishery was likely a factor in the frequent battles

among Native peoples for control of the Meziadin areaprior to the mid 1860s.4

Until the 1930s, when travel by bush plane be-came practical, access to the Meziadin River requiredoverland travel on rough trails, either some sixty fivemiles upriver from the head of navigation on the NassRiver or about forty miles from Portland Canal overthe Bear River Glacier. This isolated location did not,however, discourage proposals for elimination of theobstruction to salmon at the falls. As early as 1896,John T. Williams, who in 1904 was appointed Inspec-tor of Fisheries for northern British Columbia, had rec-ommended that something should be done to help thepassage of salmon.

In 1899, Indian Agent C. Todd wrote to A. V.Vowell, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, recommend-ing alleviation of the obstruction by blasting a chan-nel at the upper falls. He proposed sending in a “me-chanic” with five Native helpers and packers at a costof $500.5 When this proposal reached the desk of theDeputy Minister of Marine and Fisheries, he was ad-vised that the Nass River was not a very productivesalmon river and expenditures were not justified onthe relatively minor tributaries of the system. Thisadvice, given by E. E. Prince, a high-ranking officer inthe Department of Marine and Fisheries who had vis-ited the lower Nass River in 1894, illustrates how lit-tle was known about the upriver tributaries.6

No further action was taken until John Williamswas established at Port Essington as Inspector of Fish-eries for northern British Columbia. Williams now hadthe opportunity to follow up on his idea of remedialwork at the falls and, in 1905, appointed ReverendJames McCullagh to make a survey of the obstruction.

McCullagh had joined the Church MissionarySociety after service in the British army, and was sentas a missionary to the Nisga’a in 1883. Based in themissionary village of Aiyansh, he served the Nativesof the Nass valley until shortly before he died in 1921.The large church building and other constructionprojects that he initiated at Aiyansh illustrate the prac-tical engineering skills which would enable him tosurvey the falls at Meziadin.7

In September of 1905, he set off from Aiyanshwith three Native guides and packers. During this six-week expedition, McCullagh observed salmon move-ments at the falls and soon concluded that the salmonhad considerable difficulty ascending the falls andmany died in the attempt. In his report to InspectorWilliams, he presented a proposal for grading a pas-sage over the upper falls. He gave a cost estimate of


Old Meziadin Fish Laddersc. 1950s

4 Wilson Duff reported that “at anearly time, perhaps at thebeginning of the nineteenthcentury,” the Nassgotin Band of theTahltan displaced the Tsetsautfrom the upper Nass andestablished a fishing village onMeziadin Lake. They held thisvillage—“until about 1865, whenthey themselves were so reducedin wars with the Kitwancool andNiska that they withdrew to theStikine, leaving most of the upperNass in the possession of theKitwancool.” Wilson Duff,Tsetsaut. In Handbook of NorthAmerican Indians. Volume 6:Subarctic, ed. June Helm.Smithsonian Institute, Washington.1981. Also see Histories,Territories, and Laws of theKitwancool. Anthropology inBritish Columbia, Memoir No. 4.Duff, Wilson. Ed 1959. Note: Thecommunity of Gitanyow wasformerly known as Kitwancool.

5 Letter from C. Todd, Indian Agentto A.W. Vowell, Superintendent ofIndian Affairs, Victoria. September15, 1899. Public Archives ofCanada. RG23, Vol 291, File 2235,Part 1. 2p.

6 Memorandum from E.E. Prince toDeputy Minister of Marine andFisheries re: Removal ofObstruction, Nass River. October13, 1899. Public Archives ofCanada RG 23, Vol 291, File 2235,Part 1. 1p.

7 J.W.W. Moeran, McCullagh ofAiyansh. Marshall BrothersLimited. London 1923.

8 James B. McCullagh, Report tothe Inspector of Fisheries, PortEssington, B.C. 1905. PublicArchives of Canada. RG23. Vol 291,File 2235, Part 2. 7p.

$5,000 and offered to carry out the work during thelow water period of February to April.8 McCullagh’sreport was forwarded to Ottawa along with Williams’request for approval, but there it languished.

Williams continued to press for action in hisannual reports, and by 1908 he began to receive sup-port for his proposals from other observers. In thatyear, Provincial Fishery Overseer C. P. Hickman wasassigned to survey the spawning grounds of theMeziadin River. This was the first of twenty two an-nual inspections Hickman made of the Meziadin sys-tem and other upper Nass tributaries until 1932 when,due to financial necessity, the provincial governmentdiscontinued spawning ground inspections. Hickmansaw large numbers of sockeye salmon accumulatedbelow the falls and examined many dead unspawnedfish. In his 1908 report to the Commissioner of Fish-eries for British Columbia, he expressed the opinionthat the obstruction could be alleviated by the ex-penditure of a few thousand dollars. Hickman con-tinued to report losses of large numbers of sockeyeeach year, and both he and Williams repeated theirrecommendations for remedial work. Even thoughboth the provincial and Dominion fisheries manag-ers in British Columbia supported the proposal, therewas little response from Ottawa.

In the summer of 1912, Hickman was accom-panied on a survey of Victoria Falls by John PeaseBabcock, Assistant to the Commissioner of Fisheriesfor British Columbia.9,10 After observing the situationat the falls, Babcock addressed the need for remedialmeasures. He had some knowledge of fish ladders,

and in 1904 had designed and installed a fish ladderto move sockeye salmon over a dam on the QuesnelRiver, a tributary of the Fraser River. Based on hisobservations at Victoria Falls, he developed plans fora ladder over the difficult upper falls. Upon receiptof Babcock’s report and recommendations, Commis-sioner W. J. Bowser sent them to J. D. Hazen, Minis-ter of Marine and Fisheries in Ottawa, with an urgentrequest that work be undertaken during the comingwinter. The report from Babcock, a recognized fisher-ies scientist, finally brought a response from Ottawaand the Minister agreed to fund the project at an esti-mated cost of $14,000. As the Department of Marineand Fisheries engineer was engaged in work on theAtlantic coast, Hazen authorized the province to buildthe fishway using Babcock’s design with C. J.Gillingham, Road Superintendent, Stewart District incharge of construction.

During the autumn and winter of 1912–1913,materials and supplies were carried by pack horseover the Bear River Glacier to the head of MeziadinLake. By this time the provincial government hadconstructed a pack horse trail, complete with bridgesat stream crossings, from Stewart to Meziadin Lake.From the head of Meziadin Lake, the men and sup-plies were moved 15 miles by canoe down MeziadinLake and River. Included in this shipment, in addi-tion to tools and necessary supplies, were the two tonsof blasting powder and four tons of cement neededfor fish ladder construction.

Two log cabins were built at the work site tohouse the crew, and work on the fishway began in


9 John Pease Babcock, a salmonfisheries expert from California,was recruited by the provincialgovernment in 1901 to serve asCommissioner of Fisheries forBritish Columbia. He held thisposition until 1907 at which timethe position became political withW.J. Bowser appointed asCommissioner. Babcock remainedas Deputy Commissioner until 1911and then, after a year back inCalifornia, he returned as Assistantto the Commissioner. He held thatposition until he retired in 1934.See John Pease Babcock biographyin Cicely Lyons, Salmon OurHeritage. The Story of a Provinceand an Industry. 1969.

10 An interesting sidelight toHickman’s 1912 survey is that he“discovered” another large laketributary to the Nass River.Although this lake was obviouslyknown to the first nations people,no such lake was on record orshown on available maps. Since hehad seen sockeye salmon migratingup the Nass River above theconfluence of the Meziadin River,however, Hickman had concludedthat there must be other lakessuitable for sockeye spawning andrearing. Accompanied by twoexperienced woodsmen, Hickmantravelled north up Hanna Creek, atributary of Meziadin Lake. Afterten days of hiking in continuousrain over rough terrain with notrails, they came upon a fifteenmile long glacier-fed lake. Uponarrival at the lake, they built a raftand surveyed the entire shoreline.Although the water in this lake isextremely silty, the outflow ofclear water from several alluvialfans provides clean gravel wellsuited for spawning salmon andthey located mature sockeye inseveral areas. In his annual report,Hickman stated: “As the lake hasnot heretofore been reported tothe Government, I have the honourto name it Lake Bowser, after theHonourable the Commissioner ofFisheries, W.J. Bowser, K.C.”.William J. Bowser wasCommissioner of Fisheries forBritish Columbia during the period1907-15 and Premier of BritishColumbia during 1915-16.

late 1912. Work at the falls continued through thespring and summer of 1913 and the fish ladder wascompleted on September 27, in time to assist the pas-sage of some of the 1913 sockeye run over the falls.

The fish ladder was 126 feet long and twentyto thirty feet wide. It included five steps or pools,each with a rise of two feet, for a total elevation gainof ten feet. The pools were built with cross walls ofreinforced concrete, in a channel created by blastingand removal of 2000 cubic yards of rock. A wing damwas built upstream from the ladder to prevent de-bris from blocking the pools, and a log cribbing wasinstalled along the river bank adjacent to the ladderto prevent bank erosion. The project cost a total of$15,849.

Salmon arriving at the upper falls were able toeasily pass upstream through the fish ladder but, in

some years after construction, the fish were still se-verely impeded at the lower falls. This was especiallya problem during years of low water flows. In yearsof higher water levels the fish encountered little diffi-culty. In 1914, Hickman recommended that work bedone to relieve the obstruction at the lower falls, butno action was taken.

Inspector Hickman continued to monitor theannual salmon runs to Meziadin nearly every yearuntil 1932, when the provincial government discon-tinued salmon surveys. He was usually accompaniedby Dominion Fisheries Overseer J. Maxwell Collisonand, after 1922, by Fisheries Overseer A. E. Young.From 1932 onward, inspections were made only byDominion officers. While the fish ladder operatedlargely unattended, occasional repairs and debris re-moval were carried out and, in 1923, major repairswere undertaken, including replacement of the logcribbing along the river bank. Department of Marineand Fisheries Engineer J. McHugh reported an ex-penditure of $6,999.12.

Although the Meziadin system was inspectedin most years, there was little additional fisheries workon the upper Nass River during the 1930s or WorldWar II. The Nass system came once again to the at-tention of the federal Department of Fisheries in 1955,when Northwest Power Industries Ltd. was grantedauthority by the provincial government to survey theNass River for hydroelectric development. The elec-tricity-generating potential of the Nass River had pre-viously been studied in 1913 and 1929, but no powerdevelopments resulted from those surveys.13


12 Annual Report of the ResidentEngineer for 1923. J. McHugh,Resident Engineer to J.A.Motherwell, Chief Inspector ofFisheries for British Columbia,January 11, 1924. 6p.

13 P.S. Bonney 1913. (See note 2)and F.W. Knewstubb, 1929. NassRiver. Preliminary Report onPower Possibilities. B.C.Department of Lands, Water RightsBranch. Typescript Report. 7p.

14 Meziadin Falls Tagging Program- 1956. Department of Fisheries,Canada. Typescript Report. August1957. 7p. Meziadin Falls TaggingReport - 1957. Department ofFisheries, Canada. TypescriptReport. June, 1958. 8p. MeziadinFalls Tagging Report - 1958.Technical Report No. 2.Department of Fisheries, Canada.August,1959. 9p.

15 Kristopher Lam, An Ex-PostBenefit Cost Analysis of theMeziadin Fishway. CanadianManuscript Report of Fisheries andAquatic Sciences No. 1643. 40p.1982.

16 Fisheries and Oceans Canada -Pacific Region. North Coast Website (See Note 3).

The new Meziadin Fishwaybuilt in 1966 (opposite)

Meziadin Falls(upper left)

Old fish ladders (bottomleft)

BCHF

In 1956, the Department of Fisheries respondedby initiating major field studies of the Nass water-shed. Fortunately, by this time the department hadrecruited a team of biologists, engineers, and techni-cians qualified to carry out the work. The Nass Rivertrails had not been maintained for many years, butthe availability of reliable bush planes had eliminatedthe need for long, slow expeditions on foot or horse-back. However, for the surveys of the 1950s, equip-ment and supplies were restricted to items that couldbe fitted into or tied onto single-engine float planes.

The studies carried out from 1956 to 1959 in-cluded an assessment of salmon migration over Vic-toria Falls, which demonstrated that there were ma-jor losses of sockeye salmon in some years. Althoughthe estimated rate of loss was only four percent of therun in 1958, losses were estimated at thirty eight per-cent in 1957 and forty five percent in 1959. In 1957,there was a relatively big run of 185,500 sockeye tothe Meziadin River and 70,500 of these were killed atthe falls. Losses would have been greater, however, ifthe old fish ladder had not been in operation.14 Fortu-nately, the hydroelectric development proposal wasabandoned. Had the development gone ahead, thesalmon runs to the upper Nass would have been vir-tually destroyed.

With the threat of hydroelectric dams elimi-nated, plans were developed for a modern fishwayencompassing both falls, but construction was de-layed until the Stewart-Cassiar highway constructionallowed road access to Meziadin Lake in 1965. A ten-mile access road was pushed through to the falls and

the fishway was completed in 1966. This 670-foot-longfishway was built on the same side of the river as theold fish ladder and all signs of the old ladder wereobliterated during construction. The fishway includesseventeen pools over the lower falls and thirteen poolsover the upper falls, each with dimensions of eightby ten feet. The two sections are connected by fivepools, each seventy five feet long. A concrete weiracross the lower falls diverts the salmon to the fishwayentrance. The total cost of this project was $850,000.15

The fishway has virtually eliminated salmonmortality at Victoria Falls. Salmon moving throughthe fishway have been counted every year since 1966,and in recent years, sockeye salmon escapements tothe spawning groundsabove the falls have beenconsistently large. From1990 to 1999, an averageof 238,000 sockeyesalmon ascended thefishway each year.16 Bycomparison, estimatesmade between 1957 and 1964, before the fishway wasbuilt, averaged only 103,000 sockeye salmon andmany of those were killed at the falls.

The modern fishway can be reached by a shortgravel road which leaves Highway 37 just north ofthe highway bridge across the Nass River. The an-nual migration of salmon through the fishway occursmainly from July to September.


Tom Wright is a long-time resident ofSaltspring Island, aformer geologist andteacher, and PastPresident of the SaltSpring IslandHistorical Society.(Tom notes thedifferent spellings ofthe name of theisland reflect acontroversy whichhas gone on for 150years, and is still notresolved)

See the book reviews beginningon page 30 for furtherinformation on Lt. Palmer (Ed.)

Palmer’s CupA Memento of Colonial Days By Tom Wright

Palmer’s cup, which now sits upon my nearbyshelf, provides an engaging link betweentoday and that dynamic time nearly 150years ago, when the roads of southern Brit-

ish Columbia were being laid out and constructed byHer Majesty’s Royal Engineers. Here is the story ofLieutenant Henry Palmer and his silver cup.

In the Oregon Treaty of 1846, Great Britain andthe United States agreed that the 49th Parallel shouldbe the international boundary. The northward thrustof “manifest destiny” soon made the populating ofBritish territory an imperative. The presence of Hud-son’s Bay Company traders alone was not enough.

Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Secretary of Statefor Colonies in London, carried on a lively corre-spondence on this matter with James Douglas, Gov-ernor of the Colony of Vancouver’s Island, and de-termined to create a new mainland colony of BritishColumbia. His plan was to send a sizeable contingentof Royal Engineers to occupy, survey, build roads, andestablish a capital city for the new colony. Colonistswould follow. Bulwer-Lytton chose Colonel RichardClement Moody of the Royal Engineers to head uphis effort to colonize the territory, putting him incharge of the Columbia Detachment. James Douglaswas named interim Governor of British Columbia inaddition to his duties as Governor of Vancouver’s Is-land and Chief Factor of the Hudson’s Bay Companywest of the Rocky Mountains.

Meanwhile, in the spring of 1858 the FraserRiver gold rush had begun. Since Fort Victoria wasthe only port of entry by sailing ship or steamer, thehordes of miners (mostly from California) who inun-dated Fort Victoria had to find their own way acrossto the mainland. Others came across the unmarkedborder. This crisis situation vastly increased the ur-gency of Bulwer-Lytton’s plan.

In his letters to Governor Douglas, Bulwer-Lytton referred to the “superior discipline and intelli-gence of this force” and expressed his expectation that“they will be far less likely than ordinary soldiers .␣ .␣ .to yield to the temptation to desertion offered by thegoldfields.” He was confident in their ability to “pro-vide for themselves in a country without habitation.”1

Colonel Moody was charged with giving “im-mediate attention to the improvement of the meansof communication by land and water,” and reportingupon “unificaton of British interests on the Pacific.”He was also to report “upon the existence of all min-erals, especially coal, and on the fisheries, timber, soiland agricultural prospects.”2

In addition to Colonel Moody, the ColumbiaDetachment consisted of Captains J. M. Grant, R. M.Parsons, and H. R. Luard, Lieutenants A. R. Lempriereand H. S. Palmer, and Assistant Surgeon J. V. Seddall,along with 150 noncommissioned officers and men.Of the latter, thirty were married and allowed to bringtheir wives and children. Included were two men ofthe Royal Artillery and two Hussars, as the nucleusof either an artillery or cavalry corps should theneed arise.

Lieutenant Henry Spencer Palmer, the mainsubject of this piece, was born in 1838, gazetted Lieu-tenant of Royal Engineers at the age of eighteen in1856, and still only twenty in 1858. According to theLondon Times of 13 September 1858, “None but themost robust and skillful men among the Royal Engi-neers have been allowed to volunteer for this service,as the work they will be called upon to perform willnot only be attended with some degree of hardship,but will also require a great amount of skill.”3

A few days later, laden with telegraphic andphotographic equipment, a printing press, portableboats and tools, the supply ship Briseis set sail, onlyto be burned at sea. A replacement supply ship, theEuphrates, sailed in January 1859. Three advance par-ties sailed by the shorter route via the Isthmus ofPanama. These were Captain Parsons with twentymen, mostly surveyors; Captain Grant with twelvemen, mainly carpenters; and Colonel Moody and hisfamily accompanied by Captain W. D. Gossett.Gossett, a family friend, was to be treasurer of theColony and to set up an assay office and a mint. Themain body of the force, under Captain HenryReynolds Luard, sailed in the three-masted clipperThames City around Cape Horn. Captains Parsons andGrant, with their advance parties, were on hand atFort Langley in time for the Ceremony of Inaugura-tion of British Columbia on 19 November 1858. Colo-nel Moody and his family arrived in Victoria on theAsia on Christmas Day.

Meanwhile, the main party was still at sea. Dur-ing the voyage from England, Lieutenant Palmer co-edited (with 2nd Corporal Charles Sinnett) a weeklyshipboard newspaper, The Emigrant Soldier’s Gazette.Palmer also showed himself to be a good sport byperforming a comedy turn with Captain Luard andDr. Seddall one evening, as an entertainment for thetroops. The unfortunate Dr. Seddall was able to play“Mrs. Bouncer” to Palmer and Luard’s “Box and Cox”because his luxuriant beard had recently been shornas a tribute to King Neptune as the Thames City crossed


Lieutenant Henry PalmerR.E.BC Archives HP003966

Mrs. Henry Spencer (Wright)PalmerBC Archives HP003972

the equator. Thames City docked at Vancouver Island12 April 1859, after a stormy rounding of Cape Hornand six months at sea. The Euphrates, laden withstores, arrived a month later.

It should be noted that the Boundary Commis-sion, another group largely made up of Royal Engi-neers under Lieutenant Colonel J. S. Hawkins and re-sponsible for surveying and marking the 49th Paral-lel, though operating at the same time was not part ofthe Columbia Detachment.

Captain Grant quickly realized that the site cho-sen by Governor Douglas for British Columbia’s newcapital, Derby, was too close to the American border,and undefendable. Colonel Moody agreed to moveto a better site on the north bank of the Fraser River,which he wanted to name Queensborough in honourof Queen Victoria. She later expressed the wish that itbe renamed New Westminster. Thus began the busyand productive period from 1859 to 1863 duringwhich the Royal Engineers, popularly known as theSappers, explored, surveyed, and built the main roadsof much of what we now know as the Lower Main-land. A network of roads into the Interior was alsobuilt, including the Cariboo Road, the Hope-Similkameen Road, the Douglas-Lillooet Road, andthe North Road to Burrard Inlet. Maps were pub-lished, towns laid out, and churches and schools de-signed. A Lands and Works Department was formed,along with a Government Printing Office whichprinted the first British Columbia Gazette. Even a coatof arms and the first postage stamps were designed.

As well as acting as a police force to preservelaw and order, the force made many other very realsocial and cultural contributions to the young colony.In the spring of 1859, Lieutenant Palmer travelled overand reported on the Harrison-Lillooet route. Duringthat summer he surveyed the Dewdney Trail, a routefrom Hope to the new gold discovery at Rock Creek,travelling on as far as Fort Colville in Washington Ter-ritory. Judge Matthew Baillie Begbie (whose own fa-ther had been a Royal Engineer) travelled with himas far as Tulameen, on his way to the assizes atKamloops. At Fort Colville Palmer met another ex-plorer, Captain John Palliser, on his way to the coast.

The summer of 1860 found Lieutenant Palmerat Pemberton, at the head of Lillooet Lake, and in 1861he and Captain Grant were engaged in surveying,blasting, bridging, levelling, and building the roadup the Fraser and Thompson canyons. There theywere visited by Lady Franklin and her companion,Miss Cracroft, on their western tour.

Probably Palmer’s biggest challenge was inearly 1862, when he explored and surveyed the routebetween Bella Coola and the Chilcotin, to Fort Alex-andria on the Fraser River south of Quesnel.

A new route was needed to replace the near-impossible trails from Yale through Boston Bar to thenew-found gold fields of the Cariboo. Supplies hadto be brought in by mule train, a packer to each eightmules, and each mule carrying between 250 and 400pounds. The gruelling trip took a full month from Yaleto Quesnel, resulting in a price of a dollar per poundfor transported flour. Lieutenant Palmer, now twentyfour years old, arrived at Bella Coola aboard the HBCside-wheeler Labouchere in early July, 1862, accompa-nied by Sappers Edwards and Breakenridge and anobserver from the Legislative Assembly, LieutenantColonel Foster.

On July 9 the party, along with a packer andeight horses, started up the Bella Coola River trail.Eight camps later he was still only sixteen miles (25km) upstream. The baggage had to be carried by In-dian canoe as far as Stuie, forty three miles (69 km)upstream, before the vegetation thinned and the trailimproved enough to be able to load up the horses.Palmer described this country as “magnificent moun-tains with all the elements of grandeur imaginable,numberless waterfalls down their slope.”4 The trailwas still such that it took six hours to travel eight miles(thirteen km) with the loaded horses. Palmer de-scribed the desperate circumstances of the Natives,almost wiped out by smallpox. “Sick men and womenwere left, with a blanket and two or three salmon, todie. Sick children were tied to trees, and hideouslypainted, naked grey-headed medicine men howledand gesticulated night and day in front of the lodges.␣ .␣ . Poor creatures, they are dying and rotting awayby the score, and it is no uncommon occurrence tocome across dead bodies lying in the bush.”5

He had great admiration for the skill andcanoemanship displayed by the Native people, butsaw them as “extortionate, inconsistent, thieving ras-cals.␣ .␣ .␣ . The beggars have an insatiable affection forpannikins, knives, etc.␣ .␣ .␣ . one of them stole the in-verting eyepiece of the theodolite. I hope to goodnesshe will be frightened when he sees the world upsidedown.”6 It is not surprising that scuffles ensued be-tween the members of the party and the Natives. OnlyPalmer’s brashness in facing down half a dozen Na-tives with muskets cocked and levelled, while him-self unarmed, saved their lives.

On July 24 at the foot of the Great Slide, ninety



1 letter from Bulwer-Lytton to James Douglas,BC Archives

2 letter from Bulwer-Lytton to Colonel R. C.Moody, BC Archives.

3 London TimesSeptember 13, 1858.

4 letter from Lieutenant Palmerto Colonel Moody July 9,1862.

5 ibid.

6 ibid.

7 Daily ColonistNov 9, 1930.

8 British ColumbianNov. 15, 1863.

Akigg, G.P.V. and Helen B.Akrigg. British ColumbiaChronicle 1847-1871. (Vancouver,BC: Discovery Press 1977).

Hill, Beth, Sappers (Ganges:Horsdal & Schubart, 1987).

Swannell, Frank C. “LieutenantPalmer Makes a Survey.”(The Beaver. Outfit 292. Autumn1961) 33-38.

Wolfenden, Madge. “Sappers andMiners”(The Beaver. Outfit 288. Spring1958) 48-53.

kilometres from Bella Coola, Palmer decided to aban-don the horses and press ahead on foot. Understand-ably, he had great difficulty in persuading some ofthe local Chilcotins to help carry the baggage. Fromthe foot of the Great Slide at an elevation of 2,230 feet(680 m), the trail zig-zagged up through the cliffs andhollows along the Hotnarko River to the dreadedPrecipice, a crumbling mass of rock over 1,000 feet(300 m) in height. Scaling this, at mile seventy three(120 km) the weary travellers found themselves at analtitude of 3,840 feet (1170 m) on the high ChilcotinPlateau. The remaining 140 miles (225 km) as the crowflies—perhaps twice that with winding trails and de-tours—were relatively easy going, and Palmer’s partyreached Fort Alexandria on the Fraser River on 13August 1862. His report on the route was, understand-ably, not encouraging.

Two years later in 1864, a road crew trying tocut another way through to the Cariboo from ButeInlet, 170 miles (275 km) southeast of Bella Coola, wasambushed by Chilcotins, and 13 whites were killed.Perhaps Palmer was luckier than he realized. Thisroute too was abandoned, and in fact never built. Inthe event Palmer’s Bella Coola route was even worsethan the Fraser Canyon route, and the road wouldnot be put through to Bella Coola until 1955, nearly acentury later. The remainder of the 1862 season Palmerspent in the Cariboo gold fields, mapping and layingout several townsites. In 1863 Palmer’s crew wereworking on the Cariboo Road out of Spence’s Bridge.The Cariboo Road completion sounded the deathknell for the alternate Harrison-Lillooet route. Trafficdwindled away, and the town of Port Douglas, in-tended to perpetuate the memory of the Governor,was soon abandoned.

On Wednesday 8 July 1863, the Engineers onparade were told that for financial reasons their de-tachment was being disbanded. They could take theirdischarge in the Colony if they wished, along with aland grant of 150 acres. Governor Douglas had de-cided that the resources of the Colony were no longeradequate to finance the detachment. This decision waslikely helped along by differences of opinion betweenthe Governor and Colonel Moody. There is little doubtthat much more could have been accomplished hadthe mandate of the Corps been extended, but the foun-dations of the Colony, soon to become a province, hadbeen well and truly laid. The men had borne them-selves according to the finest traditions of the BritishArmy, and acquitted themselves well. It is hard tobelieve that so much was accomplished in so short a

time. At the breakup of the Columbia Detachment,only twenty five or thirty of the Sappers returned toEngland with the seven career officers. Most decidedto take up their 150-acre land grant, the Colonythereby gaining some of its most hardworking anddesirable new settlers.

In disbanding, the Royal Engineers left manygifts behind them. Colonel Moody’s house becameGovernment House. The 2,000 volume Corps library,which had been personally selected by Bulwer-Lytton,was placed in the Mechanic’s Institute, and later be-came the nucleus of the New Westminster Public Li-brary. Furniture, bedding, and a large bath were leftto the Royal Columbian Hospital built in 1862, thenonly a one-storey wooden structure. Dr. Seddall’s in-struments and medicines were also donated. Theprinting press and all maps and drawings were alsoleft behind. Not least was the military reserve whichhad been put aside by Colonel Moody, a cherishedgift to future citizens of Vancouver, now known asStanley Park.

Lieutenant Palmer found some time betweenexploring, surveying, and road building to meet andcourt Mary Jane Wright, one of the daughters of Arch-deacon Henry Press Wright, who had brought his fam-ily to the Colony in 1860. The last splendid social af-fair for the Engineers was the marriage of LieutenantHenry Spencer Palmer to Miss Mary Jane Wright atthe Church of the Holy Trinity in New Westminster.The ceremony was conducted by Archdeacon CharlesT. Woods. In 1930, forty years after LieutenantPalmer’s death, his widow recollected the wedding,and that there was,

no proper carriage available in the district, so we hadinstead a wagon covered in a white duck tarpaulin in whichI, the bride, and bridesmaids went to the ceremony. Buteven more exciting was our departure for the church. Theonly available conveyance was a high gig. It happened tobe a very windy day and when my husband and I mounted


The wording on the cupreads, “To the Rev.Charles T. Woods fromLieut. Henry SpencerPalmer R. E. October 7th1863.”Photo: Tom Wright

and took our seats, my veil flew wildly in every direction,while the horse sped along the road.7

The reception was held in the Royal Engineers’Mess, and Sapper Haynes conducted the band as itplayed the newlyweds away to their honeymoon inVictoria.

The silver cup presented by Lieutenant Palmerto Archdeacon Woods has been handed down throughthe years in the Woods/Bentley/Witherspoon fam-ily and, as it is my good fortune to be married to AnneIrene (Witherspoon) Wright, I have been able to takephotographs of it for this article. The cup contains anote written in 1953 by former B.C. archivist, the lateMajor Matthews, about Palmer, his wedding, and hisreturn home.

The wording on the cup reads: “To the Rev.Charles T. Woods from Lieut. Henry Spencer PalmerR. E. October 7th 1863.” The floral decoration is raised,so that it appears in inverse inside the cup, whichweighs about 230 grams. The hallmark of a bear andthe letters “V and Co” are accompanied by the words“Vanderslice and Co. S.F.Cal.,” suggesting that the cupis made of American silver.

Not long after the honeymoon, at noon on 14November 1863, the crowds gathered on the NewWestminster docks to see off Colonel Moody and hisfamily, along with Captains Grant, Parsons and Luard,on board the Enterprise. To the waving of handker-chiefs and hats, and five hearty cheers, the steamercast off and got under way. Sapper Haynes and the R.E. Band were once more on hand to play.

A little before one o’clock the Cameleon, carry-ing Lieutenant Palmer and his bride, Dr. Seddall, andsome fifteen of the Sappers,

came sweeping gracefully down within a cable of the levee,which was by this time lined with human beings. As shepassed the Pioneer Wharf, the order was given to “man therigging and give three cheers,” when up shot a hundred“bluejackets” as if by magic and out rang three heartycheers, such as only Her Majesty’s seamen can give, inresponse to which the crowd on shore cheered most lustily.The excellent Royal Engineers’ Band the while playing thosebeautiful and, under the circumstances, touching airs,“Home Again,” “Auld Lang Syne,” and “God Save the Queen.”In every direction, from window and balcony was to be seenthe waving of handkerchiefs and hats, accompanied by manya truant tear. But oh! the reaction. When all was over andthe bustle and excitement consequent upon leave-takinghad subsided, a feeling of sadness and gloom seemed topervade the whole community.8

After his return to England Palmer was, in 1866,promoted to 2nd Captain. He surveyed the Sinai Pe-ninsula for the Ordnance Survey in 1868. As a Major in

1873 he was astronomer in charge of a party observingthe transit of Venus in New Zealand. A period as aide-de-camp to the Governor of Barbados was followedby similar duties in Hong Kong, where he also actedas engineer for the Admiralty. Promoted to LieutenantColonel in 1881, he was lent to the Japanese govern-ment in Yokohama. He returned to England in 1883 asCommanding Officer of the Royal Engineers, then as aBrevet Colonel he returned to Japan in 1885. He re-tired in 1887, remaining in Japan until his death in To-kyo in 1890. He was then only fifty two years old.


Quesnelle Forks has a history which datesback to 1859 when the first prospectorsmoved into the upper reaches of theFraser River. By the end of the summer

they had moved up the Quesnelle River to the pointwhere the North and South Forks of the QuesnelleRiver met, which today are called the Cariboo and theQuesnel River respectively. In June 1860 Timoleon Loveobtained a ferry licence to cross the river at this point,which was called Forks of the Quesnelle, or QuesnelleForks. A competing ferry was established the same yearby John Tow some 16 kilometers (ten miles) furtherdown stream. Both ferries were made redundant whenThomas Barry and Sam Adler built a toll bridge acrossthe South Fork River in March 1861. The communityof Quesnelle Forks developed on the low lying gravelflats situated between the north and south forks of theriver. The trail led further into the Cariboo to KeithleyCreek and onto Williams Creek which was to becomethe site of the largest gold discovery of the period.

The community at Quesnelle Forks served asthe supply point for much of the prospecting andmining activity in the area for many years. After theinitial flurry of gold mining, when all the good claimswere staked, and the easy gold extracted, activity set-tled back. Many of the white prospectors left theCariboo but the Chinese who had been marginalizedand restricted to the less profitable diggings, contin-ued on. In the mid 1880’s William Stephenson, thegovernment agent, and John Barker, a blacksmith,were the only white residents listed at the Forks ofQuesnelle in what was otherwise an entirely Chinesecommunity. In 1891 there were only 212 Chinese and66 whites resident in the entire Keithley Creek/Quesnelle Forks area. A resurgence occurred in theearly 1890’s when money and better transportationbecame available to develop hydraulic mining.Hydraulic operations such as the Cariboo HydraulicMining Company developed at nearby Bullion re-quired a high capital outlay, but recovered gold fromvery low concentrations. The Bullion operationdepended upon miles of flume which brought thewater to the mining site from far off lakes such asPolley Lake.

A townsite was plotted at Quesnelle Forks in1893 and lots were sold 29 April 1895. We know whereJohn McRae’s business was located because a com-peting firm, Vieth & Borland, had complained thatWilliam Stephenson had promised that they wouldbe allowed to buy the lot [lot one] they occupied andthe adjoining lot [lot two] for potential expansion.

Token Historyby Ronald GreeneJohn McRae of Quesnel Forks

Stephenson denied any such promise and when thelots were auctioned in 1895 the firm was outbid forlot two by John Hepburn who bought the lot for$125.00. The Vieth & Borland letter enclosed a smallmap showing that John McRae owned lot three.Quesnelle Forks was renamed Quesnel Forks in June1900. A new section of wagon road built around thistime to Barkerville from Quesnel via Jack of ClubsLake diverted most of the traffic away from theQuesnel Forks route which relegated Quesnel Forksto a supply point for Bullion and Horsefly (Harper’sCamp) and that part of the Cariboo. By September1902 William Fleet Robertson, the Provincial Miner-alogist, said that the community was well on its wayto becoming a ghost town, there being only one hoteland bar, with a store in connection – this was JohnMcRae’s –and a branch store belonging to Vieth &Borland.

The population thus indicated is a sharp dropfrom the 300 estimated by the R.G. Dun and Companycredit listing of January 1899, or the ninety names, in-cluding four Chinese names, listed in the 1901 B.C. Di-rectory. The Dominion Census of 1901 lists 275 names,the majority of which were Chinese. The populationwould have peaked during the winter months whenmany of the miners left their claims and lived inQuesnel Forks over winter. In the summer of 1899 somesixty men were boarding at McRae’s Hotel, forty ofwhom worked for the Gold Point Company.

Today Quesnel Forks is a ghost town, with acemetery and only a few log cabins which have notcollapsed. The hydraulic mining at the Bullion Pitsome six kilometres (four miles) upstream on theQuesnel River washed so much gravel into the riverthat the river was forced higher and has washed awayparts of what had been the townsite. Marie Elliott,author of Gold and Grand Dreams, Cariboo East in theEarly Years, who has visited the site many times saysit is a magical spot.

John McRae, hotelier and general merchant

John McRae was born 1 June 1860 in Skye, On-tario, which is three kilometres (two miles) north ofDunvegan, Kenyon Township, Glengarry County.This county is on the north side of the St. Lawrence,bordering on Quebec, which might explain why hismarriage to Sarah Stewart, of Dunvegan, on 22 Octo-ber 1890 took place in Montreal. McRae was the firstson, and fifth child of Malcolm and Catherine McRae.In all he was to have one brother, Duncan, and sixsisters. John and Sarah McRae moved to Vancouver

Acknowledgements

We would like tothank Marie Elliott,who has been a greathelp in preparing thisarticle, generouslysharing her researchand interest in thispart of BritishColumbia anddirecting us to somesources we wouldn’totherwise have beenaware of. We visitedBeverley Woodburn,Florence’s daughter;Georgina Vernon,Maggie’s daughter,and her daughterElaine Price whowere very helpful,confirming familyrelationships, lendingus familyphotographs andgiving us some familystories. We haveused Les Hill’sexcellent rubbings ofthe tokens.


by May 1892 where their first daughter was born. The1892 B.C. Directory lists two John McRae’s, one a black-smith, the other a clerk for Tye and Company, a hard-ware company which curiously was not listed. If ourJohn McRae was either man, he more likely was thelatter, although as he has been variously reported assix foot four inches or six foot six inches tall, he couldwell have been the blacksmith. When John McRaemoved to Quesnelle Forks is not known for certain,we can only say that he had to be there by the date ofthe sale of the lots in April 1895. He is not listed in theR.G. Dun and Comapany credit listings prior to July1895 and mention of his name appears for the firsttime in the Ashcroft newspaper, The British ColumbiaMining Journal, in late June 1895, which mentions, “…Were it not that host John McRae has also imported aflock [of sheep], fresh meat might have run up to bigfigures.” and his first advertisement followed a weeklater. This first ad was for McRae’s Hotel, McRae &McRae, proprietors.

The other McRae in the partnership was AngusMcRae, who came from Prince Edward Island and isbelieved not to be a relative. The partnership was dis-solved as of 2 July 1897 and Angus returned to hisfreighting business , bringing some horses in from Or-egon, running pack trains, and even operating a liv-ery stable in Vancouver for a short period. Living theitinerant life of a packer, Angus has proven to be elu-sive target in our efforts to track him further. Angusmay have been considered the senior partner of thepair as the style was A. & J. McRae in subsequent ad-vertisements. In March 1896 A. & J. McRae advertisedas a Hotel & General Store. In February 1896 it wasnoted that John McRae and family had returned tothe Forks after a long trip to the coast, and that he hadspent the last three weeks “putting up a new storehouse, with a fine hall above it for public meetings ofbusiness or pleasure.” In the next month it was notedthat, “McRae’s hotel had added a wing and been oth-erwise improved, in anticipation of the spring trade,which the development work that will be done in thissection warrants. The house will be in good shape toaccommodate any one desiring quarters at the Forks.”

Like many others who lived and worked in themining districts John McRae dabbled in mining ven-tures. By April 1896 he signed an advertisement forthe Black Bear Creek Mining Company, as secretary-treasurer. In May 1899 he applied to the governmentto purchase 160 acres at Poquette Creek which flowsinto Quesnel Lake. The reason given that the land wasrequired, was “a hay ranch.” William Fleet Robertson’s

1902 report mentions that McRae et al had done 100dollars worth of work on their Bear Creek quartzclaim, which amounted to a five foot tunnel and afive foot pit but that prospects were uncertain. Nowork was being done on Poquette Creek, which thereport called Coquette Creek, another name for thecreek then, but no longer in use.

John McRae’s family had moved to QuesnelleForks by 1895. The family now consisted of three chil-dren, Katherine Margaret (Maggie), John Stewart andMary Belle, all born in Vancouver. Twins were bornat Quesnelle Forks on 10 May 1897, but the girl diedon the eleventh and the boy on the twelfth. Neitherchild was named and neither birth nor death was reg-istered. Not registering a birth was the norm for theMcRae’s as only Mary Belle’s birth was registered atthe time. The births for Maggie, John and Tena werenot registered until they were adults and needed someproof of birth for a passport or other purpose. Thebirths for the later children are still covered in thehundred year blackout period for the index. Proof ofthe twins’ births was found in the Bullion Mine Jour-nal and confirmed by entries in the family bible:

“Tuesday 11th May 1897. …Gabriel Rodoni, diedthis morning at 4.05, being attended by Ludworth, Schiefer,Morton and Hosking – Doctor Hearald had not returnedfrom the Forks, where he was detained all night inattendance on Mrs McRae = Twins.

He got to the mine about 6 a.m. …”

Christina (Tena) was born the following yearin Quesnelle Forks as was Joanna North (Annie) in1902, although it was now called Quesnel Forks. Thelast two children were born in Vancouver, Harriet Ann(Etta) in January 1904 and Florence Nightingale, ei-ther Dec 1907 or Dec. 1908 depending upon herdaughter or the family bible. Six of the nine childrenlived to become adults. Annie died in 1918 of heart

Partial plan of QuesnelleForks, 1893


failure, age sixteen years.Christmas of 1898 saw John McRae and another

pair of hoteliers, the Helgeson Brothers host a livelyChristmas party. McRae was the postmaster atQuesnelle Forks for seven months, from 1 April 1899until 4 December 1899. There hadn’t been a postmas-ter for the two years previously and there wasn’t tobe another until 1902. A note in the Ashcroft Journal inDecember 1899 told of John McRae and family pass-ing through Ashcroft. He was said to be going to NewYork City for the winter and the family would spenda few months in Scotland. We have no confirmationthat this trip actually took place and the members ofthe family to whom we spoke were unaware of anysuch trip. In accordance with the Liquor LicenceAct,1899, John McRae applied for a licence to sell liq-uor from January 1900. A renewal request a year laterdescribed the hotel as being sixty feet long and fortyfeet wide, containing a bar room, sitting room, din-ing room, store room, kitchen and twenty bed roomswith a stable for twenty horses.

However, having a liquor licence was not aguarantee of success and Vieth & Borland and JohnMcRae jointly complained to the Superintendent ofthe Provincial Police, F.S. Hussey, in January 1903about what they felt was unfair competition fromunlicensed Chinese merchants who were not at allparticular as to the proper running of their places, al-lowing all forms of gambling, and opium smoking

not to mention vice inother forms, etc. JohnMcRae, wrote againin May 1905 that itwas not fair that heshould have to pay li-cence fee and sellsmaller quantity ofliquor than the Chi-nese sell and also tohave to keep lodgingfor intoxicated menfrom “China stores”who do not keeplodgers.

The obviousbias against the Chi-nese was typical ofthe period. The LiquorLicence Act, 1899 heldspecific restrictionsnot allowing licences

to be issued or transferred to Natives, Chinese or Japa-nese. This Act was disallowed by the federal govern-ment 24 April 1900 and the replacement, The LiquorLicence Act, 1900, removed the formal restrictionagainst the Chinese and Japanese. But the provincialpoliticians were able to introduce an amendment tothe act in 1902 that restricted issuance of licences topersons on the provincial voters list which, of course,achieved the provincial government’s intention asneither Chinese nor Japanese had the vote. Howeverthe 1902 amendment had the unfortunate side effectof prohibiting single women from holding licenceswhich required an amendment in 1903 which ex-cluded the women from the voters’ list requirement.

This is not to say that John McRae was himselfbeyond reproach. He was far from that if we are tobelieve Al Stephenson in his 1907 letter to Superin-tendent Hussey. Al Stephenson was one of the sonsof Government Agent, William Stephenson. Hisbrother, “Gillie” was caught buying drinks on twooccasions from one of the Chinese merchants, QuowMow Lung, in a sting operation in July 1907 initiatedas a result of McRae’s complaints. Was Stephenson’sletter of a month later accurate or just sour grapes?He complained of McRae serving Natives, sellingdrinks to men already so drunk they couldn’t standup, and running the bar wide open on Sundays. Healso detailed an injustice to a Chinese member of thecommunity who won at poker and then was assaulted

The McRae Family(c. 1903Ê before Etta andFlorence were born) leftto right:Ê Ê Christina,John, John (jr.), Mary,Maggie (at back), Annieheld by Mrs Sarah McRae.photo courtesy of Mrs BeverleyWoodburn


and robbed of his winnings in McRae’s bar room.John McRae appears to have been involved in

mercantile partnership for a short while circa late 1902.The R.G. Dun and Company credit listing dated Janu-ary 1903 mentions that McRae was operating a gen-eral store and hotel in Quesnel Forks, “also McRae &Fitzgerald, [a] general store [in] Harper’s Camp.”

By 1904 Mrs McRae and the children hadmoved back to Vancouver. Undoubtedly the oppor-tunities in Vancouver to educate their children, or lackof them in Quesnel Forks, had much to do with thismove. Perhaps family available to assist in emergen-cies was also a concern as Sarah had a sister, Christie,living in Vancouver. She was married to a WilliamMcRae — unrelated to John — who was to becomethe Chief of Police in Vancouver in 1916. Once thefamily was in Vancouver, John McRae seems to havestayed in Quesnel Forks for long periods of time eachyear. He continued to renew his Quesnel Forks liq-uor licence until November 1908 for the first half of1909, but he opened a liquor store at 800 Powell Street,in Vancouver in 1908. George W. McAllister took overthe hotel licence as of 1 April 1909. From 1909 McRaemade semi-annual visits to Quesnel Forks, one in thespring, and the other in the fall. In May of 1909 hecame up to Quesnel Forks for a month. When the hotelburnt down in March 1911 it, “…was run by GeorgeMcAllister, and much sympathy will be felt for himin his loss.” Applications, as well as renewals, for liq-uor licences had to be advertised and John McRaeadvertised in October 1913 for the granting of a li-cence for the Cariboo Hotel, situated at Quesnel Forks,Lot Three, First Street, so it appears that he had re-built the hotel on the same site and called it theCariboo Hotel.

McRae ran his Powell Street liquor businessuntil 1912, but from that year the city directories donot show any occupation for him until 1916, when hewas the manager of the Highland Liquor Company ,located at 758 Powell Street. According to the com-pany records John McRae was not a shareholder inthe Highland Liquor Company which went out ofbusiness when Prohibition was initiated in October1917. John McRae was proud of his skill at blendingscotch whiskey and a brand, “Long John,” was saidto be named after him.

We don’t know what John McRae did duringthe period of 1913 to 1915. He may have been retired,or involved in developing some of his mining claims,but the Reports of the Minister of Mines are mute abouthim during the period. The Ashcroft Journal noted in

November 1913 that a new steamboat for QuesnelLake owned by John McRae and others had beenshipped from its Vancouver shipyard.

The New Cariboo Goldfields Limited NPL wasincorporated in October 1921. John McRae received anumber of shares in exchange for the rights to a placermine and he ended up with about one third of theissued shares. New Cariboo was succeeded by theHemlock Creek Placer Gold Company, NPL by May1922 a company of which John McRae was a director.The Report of the Minister of Mines for 1922 devotes apage to the company, but subsequentissues fail to mention the company.

Beverley Woodburn, Florence’s daughter, hasfond memories of her grandfather. She and her mothervisited him often. He would “allow” Beverley topolish his boots, for which he paid her in large scotchmints. She was permitted entry into his den, but shehad to be quiet there. He loved to play the bag-pipes,but realizing not everybody appreciated hearing theinstrument, he would play the chanter so as not tobother his neighbours.

The Hemlock Creek company’s annual reportslist John McRae as a merchant until about 1930 whenhe became a “gentleman” which probably indicatesthat he was fully retired by then. His death certificategave his occupation as an “Hotel and Store Opera-tor” and the date he last worked at this occupation as1918. John McRae passed away 5 May 1941at the ageof eighty, his wife having predeceased him on 5 Oc-tober 1938.

The Tokens

There are three denominations of McRae’s to-kens known, 25 Cents, 50 Cents and $1.00. They aremade of German Silver, which we would call NickelSilver today, and measure: twenty five millimetre,thirty one millimetre and thirty forty millimetre indiameter. While we do not know who made them theyare of a style more reminiscent of Chicago tokenmanufacturers, rather than Vancouver, or Seattle mak-ers. Since the name Quesnel Forks was used, ratherthan Quesnelle Forks, we can assume that the tokenswere issued after June 1900. One of the $1.00 tokens,Q9560e, has been counterstamped “VOID” whichmight indicate that John McRae had decided to re-deem any outstanding tokens and discontinue theiruse. Since he leased the hotel from April 1909 we thinkit is safe to say that 1909 was the last year they werelikely to have been used. All the tokens are rare.

BCHF


Book Reviews Books for review and book reviews should be sent to:Anne Yandle, Book Review Editor BC Historical News,

3450 West 20th Avenue, Vancouver BC V6S 1E4

Port Coquitlam; Where Rails Meet Rivers.Madeira Park, Harbour Publishing,, 2000, 204 p., $39.95hard cover.

Port Coquitlam; Where Rails Meet Riv-ers is an illustrated book describing the eco-nomic, political, and social development ofthe city in eight chapters. The author pro-vides a brief description of both contempo-rary and historical figures/groups such asthe Kwayhquitlum peoples and the work ofthe Royal Engineers who selected Mary Hillas a strategic vantage point during colonialtimes to protect the capital New Westmin-ster from an American invasion. The mostinfluential factor in the development of thePoCo was the building of the CPR and asouth running spur from New Westminsterin 1886 that led to the creation of Westmin-ster Junction. It was at this junction that thecity of Port Coquitlam emerged and grew.

The author provides great detail ofPort Coquitlam being “a microcosm of theBC economy” with highlights including theaward winning Colony Farms, known as the“best in the west” during the 1910s, theEssondale and Riverdale Institutions, andthe CPR freight yards. More recently, PoCohas prospered with the Hollywood movieindustry and T.V. series X-Files. Economicgrowth led to a population increase from1,300 in 1913 to 3,232 in 1951.

Davis retraces this sudden growth tothe completion of the Lougheed Highwayin 1951. More people settled in affordablePoCo subdivisions given that the LougheedHighway made commuting to Vancouverand nearby communities easier and faster.By 1961 the population was 8,111 and in 1996it reached 46,682.

Socially, there have been many well-known meeting establishments for PoCoresidents including the very popular WildDuck Inn that was built in 1912. The MayDay celebration tradition started as a one-day affair in 1923 and today, runs as a weeklong event. Port Coquitlam boasts moreparkland acreage per capita than any othercity in the Lower Mainland and the PoCo’sNatural Trail, fifteen miles in length encir-cling the city offers local residents and visi-tors places to relax, enjoy or to be active in abeautiful setting.

Politically, the successful creation of

and voting in PoCo in 1913 was only possi-ble once it was legally separated fromCoquitlam. From the myriad of importantPoCo politicians, Jane Kilmer was worthmentioning since she was the first womancouncillor in PoCo, who continues to be thelongest serving alderman in BC history, hav-ing served for thirty-four years.

Port Coquitlam, like many cities,faced more than its share of calamities thatincluded the 1918 influenza and the 1920fire. The Dirty Thirties, the 1948 Fraser Riverflood, the 1961 Port Coquitlam River floodand typhoon Freda in 1962 were other sig-nificant struggles PoCo residents faced.

My biggest criticism of this book is theabsence of maps illustrating the geography,demographic growth and even the ethnic di-versity of PoCo. Three minor errors werefound in the book. The first, on page 24,mentions the HBC Fort Langley moving in1839 to a new site thirty-five kilometres up-stream when it was only five. Additionally,on page 130 the author wrote “It was thefirst city in BC to complete its 1958 Centen-nial project (celebrating the hundredth an-niversary of BC’s union with Vancouver is-land as the colony of British Columbia)…”BC became a colony in that year and it joinedVancouver Island in 1866, not 1858. On thebottom of the page 176 the author leaves anincomplete sentence.

Chuck Davis does a great job makingconnections between the past and thepresent throughout the book. I really appre-ciated the format of the book and its layoutthat included a combination of sepia toned,black and white and colour photos, the his-torical footnotes (intriguing facts from theperiod) present in each chapter, and the his-torical and/or contemporary stories foundin sidebars that can make you either chuckleor raise an eyebrow.

Werner Kaschel. Werner Kaschel teaches social studies inthe Surrey school system.

Professing English; a life of Roy Daniells.Sandra Djwa. University of Toronto Press, 2002. 474 p.,illus. $55 hard cover.

Many years ago as a third year Eng-lish major at UBC, I enrolled in a course onthe works of the poet and essayist John

Milton. My choice of the course had little todo with my interest in Paradise Lost, SamsonAgonistes or Areopagitica. It had everythingto do with the reputation of the instructor,Dr. Roy Daniells, and to my own desire toone day teach. I was not disappointed.Daniells’ English classes were the best I ex-perienced in all my years at the university,and as a bonus I was rewarded with a life-long enjoyment of the works of Milton. AsSandra Djwa writes in Professing English: ALife of Roy Daniells , “he was emotionallyinvolved with his subject, loved to teach,and genuinely wanted to know what his stu-dents thought. He asked probing questionsand entertained answers (even foolish ones)kindly. Students went away from his classes,not just informed, but impelled by the urgeto discover more.”

As an educator and administrator,Roy Daniells had an enormous impact onthe teaching of English in Canadian univer-sities and, via the trickle-down effect, on theteaching of English in elementary and sec-ondary schools. It was Daniells who pressedfor consolidation of English as a universitydiscipline. When he arrived at UBC in 1946,the English Department was merely a serv-ice department offering a combined generalliterary and composition course for all firstyear students and a literary survey courseat the second year level. At the upper levelsstudents could concentrate on Shakespeareor the Victorian poets, but the only Cana-dian literature studied was covered in a fewweeks of “English Literature of the NorthAmerican Continent.” Daniells transformedthe department by developing both a strongundergraduate program and an effectivegraduate program and enlisting facultydedicated to both teaching and publishing.And he pushed not only for the study of Ca-nadian writing but for the development ofCanadian writers. His influence was felt bysuch luminaries as Margaret Laurence,Sinclair Ross, Adele Wiseman, and MargaretAtwood.

Unfortunately for the thousands of uswhom he taught at the University of To-ronto, the University of Manitoba and fi-nally the University of BC–most of whom


did not go on to become academics–MsDjwa’s Life of Roy Daniells will be disappoint-ing. While from time to time she does con-nect with Roy Daniells, the teacher, this as-pect of the man appears to be secondary toher interest in his religious and sexual lifeand his eternal sparring with poet EarlBirney. I cannot fault her research. She hasapparently unearthed every document heever wrote, every letter he ever received,every reference to him in the works of oth-ers, and has interviewed all his associatesand confidants. But in the end all this labourhas resulted in a 400-page report, not a bi-ography. Djwa fails to synthesize her find-ings, fails to direct the reader to the patternsand trends in Daniells’ development as ateacher, administrator, scholar and writer–which aspects are, in the end, far more inter-esting than his sex life. And while she chroni-cles his religious conflicts in exhausting de-tail, in the end the reader is left perplexed asto what he finally believed and exactly howthis influenced his career. It is good to get thefacts of this man’s contributions down onpaper but we shall have to wait for someoneelse to produce his biography.

Betty Keller. Betty Keller has written biographies ofErnest Thompson Seton, Pauline Johnson, BertrandSinclair, and others.

The Biography of Major-General Henry SpencerPalmer, R.E., F.R.A.S. (1838-1893),Compiled by Jiro Higuchi. [Yokohama, Jiro Higuchi] 2002.224 p., illus. Second ed.

Lt. Henry Spencer Palmer, an officerin the Royal Engineers, served in British Co-lumbia under Col. R. C. Moody from 1858to 1863. He was attached to the Survey Dept.under Capt. R. M. Parsons, where his du-ties included several exploratory surveys,laying out trails, supervising and inspect-ing road construction. Following his returnto Britain with the detachment, he had anumber of postings, serving as a surveyor,engineer and astronomer with the OrdnanceSurvey, the survey of the Sinai, the Transitof Venus, and in other places. He was in-vited to Japan to advise on a waterworks forthe city of Yokohama. In 1887 he retired fromthe Royal Engineers and established a suc-cessful practice in Yokohama as a civil engi-

neer, and was awarded the Order of the Ris-ing Sun. He died in Tokyo in February 1893.

The author is Palmer’s grandson. Inthe first quarter of this biography, Higuchihas summarised Palmer’s career “from hisbirth in 1838 to his arrival in Japan to su-perintend Yokohama Waterworks in 1885.”The next three chapters deal with Palmeras a technical engineer, as a journalist, andas an astronomer and a natural scientist. Thefirst is the longest section, dealing with theYokohama waterworks, the Yokohama har-bour works, and various other engineeringprojects with which Palmer was involved.Higuchi has gathered a considerableamount of information from governmentrecords, contemporary newspaper ac-counts, and other archival sources. Palmerwrote many articles for The Times as the Cor-respondent in Tokyo. In addition to numer-ous articles about the need for revision ofthe unfair treaties with the United Statesand seventeen European countries, he wroteabout Japanese culture, religion, spas, earth-quakes, volcanic eruptions and many othersubjects. He demonstrated his interest innature during the voyage on the Thames Cityto British Columbia in 1858-59 in his arti-cles in The Emigrant Soldier’s Gazette andCape Horn Chronicle.

The author published this biographyin January 2002, with a second edition inMarch. Both are limited editions. In the firstone all the plates are in colour, and thereare numerous textual errors with pasted-oncorrections. In the second edition the texthas been reprinted incorporating the correc-tions, the plates are all in black and white,and two plates have been added, increas-ing the number of photographs to thirty-eight. Six of the photos are of Palmer, andanother ten are of various family members,including his wife, Mary Jane PearsonWright, the daughter of the Reverend HenryPress Wright, first archdeacon of British Co-lumbia. Unfortunately the people in pho-tographs are generally not identified be-yond a name. There are only nine pagesdealing with Palmer and his family, and sixof those are copies of letters to his son andfrom one of his granddaughters. His widow

returned to British Columbia, as did theyoungest daughter and her family. Unfor-tunately there is no index.

Higuchi spent at least twenty years re-searching and writing about Palmer, from atranslation of Letters from the Land of the Ris-ing Sun, a history in various forms of theYokohama Waterworks, a biography ofPalmer in Japanese, and now this biographyin English. This is an interesting story of aremarkable man. It is a great pity thatHiguchi did not have an editor whose firstlanguage is English. The text is marred bythe use of incorrect words, or twisted gram-mar to the point of being difficult to under-stand at times. There are many blocks of textthat look like quotations. Frequently it is“the writer” giving us “the gist” of the arti-cle. Still, this book is worth reading for any-one interested in the people who exploredand helped to settle this province in its co-lonial days.

Frances M. Woodward Frances Woodward is theReference/Map Librarian at UBC’s Rare Book and SpecialCollections Division.

Great Canadian Political Cartoons, 1915-1945.Charles and Cynthia Hou. Vancouver, Moody’s LookoutPress, 2002. 232 p ., illus. $39.95 paperback.

Political cartoons are a valuablesource for historians. Long used by the printmedia either to inflame or to placate publicemotions, the themes of political cartoonstend to be selected for their relevance to theinterests of a specific audience. Presumablythen, political cartoons found in newspapersand periodicals distributed in Canadian ur-ban centres can be seen as reflecting issuesthat their readership felt affected the circum-stances of day to day living. In this reflec-tion, historians find evidence of contempo-rary attitudes and concerns.

In Great Canadian Political Cartoons1915-1945 Charles and Cynthia Hou haveprovided a superb collection of more than250 political cartoons drawn from 95 differ-ent publications across Canada. Each car-toon is supplemented with a brief contex-tual explanation. The range of subjects theyhave addressed provides a survey of currentevents in the era they selected. The book isstructured chronologically rather than topi-


cally, and the reader is soon aware of the con-tinuity of specific issues like labour strug-gle, political patronage, and Canadian-American relations in the images presented.As a gauge of public interest, these cartoonsprovide a unique window through whichto examine popular culture, and would ben-efit any study of Canada in the war-inter-war-war period.

As primary documents these cartoonsrepresent particular moments in Canadianhistory from distinct viewpoints. This waswell negotiated by the authors, and the con-tent of the book is indicative of the diver-sity of the Canadian political spectrum.Rather than providing a linear narrativedesigned to take the reader from somewhereto somewhere, Great Canadian Political Car-toons offers readers the opportunity to ex-amine contemporary social commentaryfrom the vantage point of the future. In otherwords, even though the reader may beaware of how events like the Winnipeg Gen-eral Strike of 1919 or Mackenzie King’s visitto Hitler in 1937 played out, he or she maybe unaware of the level of controversy andblatant animosity these incidents roused.Thus the reader is afforded a more layeredview of the past.

Like any historical source, politicalcartoons need to be viewed in a larger frame-work for their significance to be properly re-alized. There are some small editing errorsin the book; for instance, on page one Brit-ain’s declaration of war on Germany is datedto August of 1915 rather than 1914. How-ever, it is in the cartoons themselves ratherthan the commentary about them that thetrue value of this book lies. In that context,Great Canadian Political Cartoons is a thoughtprovoking archaeology of political criticismin popular media.

Tim Percival. Tim Percival is a graduate student in historyat the University of Victoria.

Heritage Hall: Biography of a Building.Marian Gilmour & Gail Buente. Vancouver: Heritage HallPreservation Society, 2002. 104 pp., Illus.. $21.95paperback.

Tackling a book about a single build-ing or structure is no easy task. Unless thesubject is of exceptional interest one can

quickly run out of significant material, andall too often such books descend to vanitypress or promotional fluff. Surprisingly,this well-produced book about HeritageHall avoids these pitfalls, and comes upa winner.

The building itself is a stunner, oneof the Grande Dames of the Edwardian era.When the Great Western Boom ended upbust, Postal Station C was marooned in apart of Mount Pleasant that never lived upto its touted potential. For years it sat iso-lated, so out-of-odds with its setting that foryears there were rumours that Ottawa hadmistakenly sent out building plans for alarger city. Started in 1914 just before theoutbreak of the First World War, it was fin-ished two years later, despite wartime short-ages of labour and material. It served foryears as a post office, then as other federaloffices—including the RCMP ForensicLaboratory—until 1976, when it was aban-doned. Sitting vacant, it was about to be soldoff as surplus, until a group of volunteer so-cieties, with assistance from the City of Van-couver, launched a heroic effort to rescuethe building for community use. Ledthrough many unexpected difficulties by theMain Source Management Society and itsfirst chairman, UBC architecture professorWolfgang Gerson, these groups were ulti-mately successful Opening day for thegrand room on the main floor was 20 No-vember 1983, although the roof still leakedand much work remained to be done. Thoseof us who remember how long it took to re-habilitate this grand structure will appreci-ate every one of the stories about delays, set-backs and lack of money. How fortunate forthe citizens of Vancouver that this army ofvolunteers persisted, and that this landmarkheritage building is still available for com-munity use today.

Of course it is the stories of the peo-ple involved who bring the book alive. Thispublication was co-written and edited bythe manager of Heritage Hall, MarianGilmour, who brings a wry sense of humourto the many anecdotes and personal histo-ries. A personal favourite of mine was theentry on the 1988 Tamanhous Theatre pro-

duction of Haunted House Hamlet - ”anexperience not to be forgotten for those whoworked in the building, acted in the per-formance or attended the show.” Amen!

Although I had a few quibbles withthe factual information (especially in thesidebar about the original architect, A.C.Hope), and I missed having an index, I canrecommend this book as a testament to whatcan be achieved by dedicated volunteerswith a passion for their community. Thebook is available through the Heritage HallPreservation Society. Just look for that redroof on Main Street.

Donald Luxton. Donald Luxton is a heritage consultant inVancouver and co-author of Lions Gate (Talon Books, 1999)and editor of Building the West (Talon Books, 2003).

On to the Sunset: The lifetime adventures of aspirited pioneer.Calgary, Fifth House Ltd., 2002. 166 p., $15.95 paperback.

Albert McCarty, a Methodist ministerand the original narrator of this book wasborn in 1870. An Irish immigrant, he led thedifficult and enterprising life of a pioneer inthe new world until his death at age eighty-seven. Stories McCarty told about himselfand other early Canadian settlers were re-corded by his youngest daughter and wereoriginally published in 1953. Ethel BurnettTibbits (founder of The Marpole-RichmondReview) presents those tales in this secondpublication.She allows the reader to travelwith McCarty “back over the long trailwhence he had come” while detailing ”pic-tures of his colourful past.”

The spirit of the citizens of this coun-try is engagingly captured in a series of vi-gnettes that portray the harshness, loneli-ness, humour, and diligence that were nec-essary to survival in Canada during the firstpart of the twentieth century. Two-thirds ofthe book chronicles early life in Ontario andthe prairies. Those anecdotes include“memories of his mother doing her week’swashing for a family of ten children at thebrook; rough stones serving in lieu of thenot-yet-discovered washboard.” Anotherrecollection is that of a thirteen-year-old girlwho loses her way while tending the cowson an Ontario homestead. After fourteenharrowing autumn days and nights in the


bush with only her dog for company, theexhausted child finds her way home. Oneof the more amusing tales is that of thepreacher who resorts to fisticuffs with somebullies and the “record has it that more soulswere saved after this display of ministerialfistic prowess than were harvested in a sin-gle season before.” The final four chaptersdetail the fortunes of McCarty and his fam-ily after they settled in BC in 1909. Includedare accounts of the rise and fall of the for-tunes of the McCarty Grain Company inVancouver on what was then WestminsterHighway, and a short stint at running a log-ging company on Narrows Arm. “A calami-tous blaze” burned the timber on the woodlot and the company’s equipment. At agefifty-nine, the staunch McCarty reportedlysaid, “Come Mother, let’s . . . get some sup-per—and some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll goback to town—and start over.” His final ven-ture, McCarty & Son, grew to a fleet of fivetrucks which delivered sawdust and coalthroughout the Vancouver area. This bookis an interesting remembrance of pioneer-ing days in this country and this province.

Sheryl Salloum. Sheryl Salloum is a Vancouver writer whoused to teach school in 100 Mile House.

The Geography of Memory: Recovering Storiesof a Landscape’s First People.Eileen Delehanty Pearkes. Nelson, BC: Kutenai HousePress, 2002. 95p. illus., maps $19.95 paperback(Available from Kutenai House Press, #6, 373 Baker St.,Nelson, V1L 4H6 or via email: [email protected])

After arriving in Nelson in 1994, MsPearkes’ curiosity about the Kootenay re-gion and its (invisible) indigenous peopleswas aroused. Her quest to satiate this curi-osity took five years. During that time shebecame familiar with the landscape, inter-viewed both elders and oldtimers and con-ducted research in various archives. Thispublication is a chronicle of that quest. AsPearkes states, the book “is neither a history,nor an ethnography, nor a series of natureessays, but a combination of all three.” It isthe story of the (Arrow) Lakes Natives orSinixt who were declared “extinct” in 1956.

Pearkes’ queries spurred her growingbelief “that landscape has a narrative of its

own, that places speak with a wordless cer-tainty of the past.” Thus her prose weavesthe fabric of the landscape and its inhabit-ants together so tightly that they are insepa-rable. Artifacts provide one link to under-standing, even when 140 (92%) of the total152 sites recorded on the Arrow Lakes havebeen destroyed. However, by piecing to-gether what evidence is available togetherwith an analysis of weaving, hunting-gath-ering traditions, oral history and snippetsof written documentation, the author hasmanaged to craft a fascinating story of theSinixt whose traditional territory was not in-hibited by an international boundary.

This publication exemplifies thought-ful attention to detail. The six chapters tothis small monograph each begin with anillustration of a stone artifact as a reminderof the landscape’s link to its first inhabitants.Pictograph images wallpapered on somepages also illustrate another link to this by-gone era. Each chapter includes a detailed,colour map of the Upper Columbia Basinlocates trail routes and five regional mapsindicate sites of seasonal or year-round vil-lages, fisheries, pictographs and burials.Archival and contemporary photographs,plus sidenotes of short quotations from avariety of sources complement the descrip-tive text. Detailed line drawings of tools,dwellings, traps and the subtle use of back-ground colour adds to the charm of thisbook e.g. purple for the myth, “MountainGoat and the Origin of Huckleberry” orlight ochre for a description of canoeconstruction.

Additional information is supplied inappendices: Some Common Wild FoodPlants of the Sinixt/Arrow Lakes Indiansincluding common names, botanical termsand Sinixt dialect; Pre-historical and Histori-cal Timeline, 10,000 b.p. (before present) -1989; a handy, basic bibliography; a list ofCredits (endnotes); and a simple index.

The Geography of Memory is an excel-lent example of what can be achieved withpersistent prodding. This monograph isskillfully crafted by a sensitive writer whocollaborated with cartographers, graphicartists and a sympathetic publisher. Indeed,

it provides a template worthy of emulation.

R.J. (Ron) Welwood. Ron Welwood is a former Presidentof the British Columbia Historical Federation.

Chasing the Comet; a Scottish-Canadian life.Patricia Koretchuk. Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityPress, 2002. 241 p., illus. $29.95 paperback.

This book is part of the Life WritingSeries, a most commendable project spon-sored by Wilfrid Laurier University Press topromote autobiographical accounts of livesin Canada. Chasing the Comet tells such astory, adding to the reservoir of social histo-ries which will enrich our knowledge ofCanada and its people.

Chasing the Comet tells the life storyof David Caldow, raised in the Galloway re-gion of Scotland, who never forgot his Scot-tish origins nor the sage advice of his father.His love of animals and good farming prac-tices learnt as a boy in Scotland were to servehim well during his life in Canada.

The story tells of David’s life inCanada from his arrival in Quebec, over theyears working his way west, and ultimatelyliving and working in British Columbia, ex-plaining to us his work experiences en route.David showed a sympathy for the under-dog throughout his life, most notably whenhe was relating the story of his life in asmelter town, where he worked for a shorttime. The incredibly bad working conditionsare well described—how the “Europeans”got the worst and most dangerous jobswhilst the British subjects had the preferredjobs at the smelter. It was not long beforeDavid left to travel west again, determinedto work out of doors in fresh air after expe-riencing the pollution of the smelter town.

Reference is made to some of the menlooking for work who went “stooking”, butunfortunately the author does not explainwhat it means. Anyone who lived on theprairies before the arrival of the combineknows it meant standing up six to eightsheaves of grain, supporting each other in atent-shaped “stook”, to aid the drying of thesheaves—but how many readers todaywould know this? Providing such detailswould have improved the book.

David’s involvement with the clear-


ing of land and farming in the Salmon Armarea and horse breeding in the Kamloopsregion during the Depression years providesa good description of the hard times. ButDavid and others, through hard work andinventiveness, eked out a living during the“dirty thirties”.

David Caldow’s history of working atthe Colony Farms in Coquitlam and otherlocations such as Tranquille near Kamloopswill be of special interest to residents of Brit-ish Columbia. Shortly after the SecondWorld War, while managing the farm atTranquille, he hired some Japanese as farmlabourers, and learned about the level ofracism which existed at that time against theJapanese. His working experience broughthim in contact with a wide variety of peo-ple, including a fellow Scot, AndrewHoustoun, President of McLennan, McFeely& Prior Ltd., for whom he worked at hisfarm at Hatzic, B.C. This relationship wasmore than employer/employee, but one ofmutual respect and confidence.

After retirement, when David wascontacted by the Canadian International De-velopment Agency to be a farm consultantin Tanzania, he and his wife started anotherinteresting adventure. Following two pro-ductive and happy years in Tanzania, theyreturned to British Columbia because of hiswife’s ill health. David credited his honesty,knowledge of farming, and his attitude toothers and to life, all to his father. We wouldsay he was a man with old-time standards -never in debt and proud of it.

The format of the book is attractivelyset out. Each chapter is introduced with aphoto (unfortunately not identified, al-though the reader can often guess the sub-ject) with an appropriate quotation fromRobert Burns under it. The book is writtenvery much in the first person, with manyquotations of David speaking; however, theunfortunate result too often makes DavidCaldow come across as a know-it-all and abraggart, which may be a great disserviceto the man. The author could have given thebook better balance by obtaining commentsfrom some of his conntemporaries. A nag-ging inaccuracy was the continued spelling

of “whiskey” (which is correct for Ameri-can or Irish whiskies) when writing aboutScotch whisky.

My picayune complaints aside, thebook is an easy read, and a worthwhile con-tribution to the Wilfrid Laurier UniversityPress’s admirable undertaking in their LifeWriting Series.

Ron Sutherland. Ron Sutherland is a strong supporter ofthe Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University.

The Journey; the Overlanders’ quest for gold.Bill Gallaher. Victoria, Horsdal & Schubart, TouchWoodEditions, 2002. $17.95 paperback.

The long, daring walk of theOverlanders across Canada’s trackless ex-panses to reach the Barkerville gold fieldsin 1862 involved hardships that defy atwenty-first century reader’s belief. An au-thentic account of these hardships and hor-rors is a major part of The Journey, a tough,suspensful narrative.

Here, as in his B.C. bestseller ThePromise, Gallaher uses the technique of his-toric storytelling that he has so effectivelydeveloped: from the archival journals andmemoirs of those who survived the 1862 trekinto British Columbia’s wilderness, he hasselected one central character to serve as thespecial focus of his exercise in “creative fic-tion”. The story’s horrific scenes ofOverlanders dying of thirst on a trackless,waterless prairie, of nighttime shelters sud-denly breached by Native invaders, and ofheavily laden and manned river rafts suckedinto the oblivion of rapids are all seenthrough the eyes of Catherine Schubert.

Gallaher has made a skilful choice ofthis character as his story’s focal point.Catherine Schubert, as the only woman whoaccompanied the expedition, met withstrong opposition from most of theOverlanders. No man of that tough, reso-lute band could have foreseen her steelydetermination or the major pioneer role thatshe would play in B.C. history. A tense, well-wrought drama (with an unexpected out-come) is built upon the conflict betweenCatherine and one opponent especially—themisogynistic James Sellar. One of the au-thor’s sources for this episode is an unpub-

lished diary of Sellar himself,preserved in British Columbia’s ProvincialArchives.

Is this sort of storytelling truly B.C.history, or is it fiction? Bill Gallaher ’scapativating tale deftly conceals the author’smediculous scholarship; yet bibliographyand extensive footnotes provide a glimpseof Gallaher’s method, in which every event(and even most of the dialaogue) emergesfrom journals, memoirs and letters of thosewho were actually there, among theOverlanders. It’s history, all right!

And yet The Journey is history so viv-idly told and so richly charactered that I won-der how long it will be before some Cana-dian filmmaker eyes its cinematic potential.

Philip Teece. Philip Teece, a retired Victoria librarian,admits that much of his own insight into B.C. history hasbeen acquired through 20 years of listening to BillGallaher’s wonderful folk music about our colourful past.

Voyages of Hope; the saga of the bride ships.Peter Johnson. Victoria, TouchWood Editions, 2002. 228 p.$17.95 paperback.

In 1862 the same thought occurred tothree different groups: the Columbia Mis-sion Society and the Female Middle-ClassEmigration Society, both based in London,and the Female Immigration Committee,newly founded in Victoria. These worthyfolk agreed in expanding Jane Austen’s uni-versally acknowledged truth, that a singleman, in possession of a good fortune, or nofortune at all, and especially if he is carous-ing about the west coast of North Americain search of a fortune, must be in want of awife. Shipping a supply of young English-women to the colony would bring order andfamily life to the rowdy frontier, while res-cuing the women from poverty and/or deg-radation.

Five “bride-ships” sailed to Victoria.But the women aboard the Marcella were allspoken for; the wives and fiancees of Colo-nel Moody’s Royal Engineers. The twentyfemales travelling on the Seaman’s Bridejumped ship in San Francisco; they wereconvicted prostitutes deported from Aus-tralia. At last the waiting bachelors were re-warded with the arrival of the Tynemouthand later the Robert Lowe and the Alpha. Pe-


ter Johnson pays most attention to the voy-age of the Tynemouth; a tall tale featuring in-nocent maidens lured by false advertising;a less than shipshape vessel; a motley crewwho mutinied three times betweenDartmouth and Esquimalt; grim chaperons,the termagant Mrs. Robb and the tyrant Rev-erend Mr. Scott, who kept the girls cordonedoff from whatever society or exercise theship might have offered and refused to al-low them to go ashore at their one stop, theFalklands; several epic storms; a young doc-tor despite whom one of the brides diedfrom possibly smallpox or probably foodpoisoning; an arrival marred by communi-cations gone astray, lacking a welcomingcommittee or facilities, and only rescuedfrom fiasco by the gallantry of Her Majes-ty’s Navy.

Once the Tynemouth sets sail, Johnsonlets his narrative rip and roar, but he takes awhile to leave the dock, bogged down inpurple promises of “miners and murderers,of racism and respectability, of family andfaith”, and comparison of the brides toMilton’s Satan, on a “a pilgrimage throughchaos”. He offers more than we need toknow of English social history, includinggratuitous speculation on the relationshipbetween Charles Dickens and AngelaBurdett-Coutts, benefactress of the Colum-bia Mission. His racy style stumbles oversome anachronisms as the girls tell eachother, “We’ll be fine” and the calm round-ing of Cape Horn is “a piece of cake”. Wewitness the organizing meeting of the Co-lumbia Mission Society bride-ships project,through the person of Eden Colville of theHudson’s Bay Company. As he reacts andobserves the scene, we come to knowColville quite well, we think, but when themeeting adjourns, Johnson abandons him,never to tell us what he thought of theproject’s outcome, or what became of thedaughters whose future he worried about.

We can find Colville readily enoughin the pages of Peter C. Newman’s Caesarsof the Wilderness, where he is not at all thewide-eyed social climber Johnson depicts.

The Saga of the Bride Ships needs nosuch padding. We know from Johnson’s pre-

vious book, Glyphs and Gallows, that he is ca-pable of following the evidence of the pastwherever it leads, using his personal expe-rience and informed imagination to castlight on history’s puzzles. The thrill of dis-covery which drove his investigation of therock art of Clo-oose and the wreck of the JohnBright is missing from this book. His inter-est in individual lives is hampered by sus-picion of the motives of the missionaries andphilanthropists who organized the bride-ships. He does not even trust the feminists.Social control or social change? Yet, whenhe traces the subsequent lives of the women,he finds that more of them than we thoughtpossible were rewarded with “adventureand material wealth”, “flexibility and free-dom of choice” and “richer lives” than theycould have enjoyed in their homeland.

Voyages of Hope is an entertaining in-troduction to a little known chapter in B.C.’sherstory.

Phyllis Reeve Phyllis Reeve has a small book business andreads a lot of history.

Noteworthy Books

At Home With the Bella Coola Indians; T.F. McIlwraith’sfield letters, 1922-4. Ed. John Barker and Douglas Cole.UBC Press, 2003.

The Canadian Rockies; early travels and explorations.Esther Fraser. Calgary, Fifth House, 2002.

Cis dideen kat (When the Plumes Rise): the way of theLake Babine Nation. Jo-Anne Fiske with the assistance ofBetty Patrick. UBC Press, 2000.

Dynamite Stories. Judith Williams. Vancouver, New StarBooks, 2003.

Eskimo Architecture; dwelling and structure in theearly historic period. Molly Lee and Gregory A.Reinhardt. University of Alaska Press, 2003.

Fields of Fire; the Canadians in Normandy. Terry Copp.University of Toronto Press, 2003.

Game in the Garden; a human history of wildlife inWestern Canada to 1940. George Colpitts, UBC Press,2002.

The Lake O’Hara Art of J.E.H. MacDonald and Hiker’sGuide. Lisa Christensen. Calgary, Fifth House, 2003.

Lost World; rewriting prehistory - how new science istracing America’s ice age mariners. Tom Koppel. NewYork, Atria Books, 2003.

A Man Called Moses; the curiouslife of WellingtonDelaney Moses. Bill Gallaher. TouchWood Editions, 2003.

Northwest Native Arts, Creative Colors 1-2. Robert E.Stanley. Surrey, Hancock House, 2003.

Sutebusuton: a Japanese villlage on the BritishColumbia coast. Mitsuo Yesaki. Vancouver, 2003.

Tlingit; their art and culture.David Hancock. Surrey,Hancock House, 2003.

Trademarks and Salmon Art: a brand new perspective.A collective study on British Columbian salmon canlabels, ca. 1890-1950. Richmond, Gulf of GeorgiaCannery Society, 2002.

“Whispers from the Shedrons”; a history ofthoroughbred racing in Richmond. A collection ofmemoirs and writings gathered by Gerry Gilbert, JackLowe, Geraldine (Dody) Wray.

Books for review and bookreviews should be sent to:Anne Yandle, Book ReviewEditor BC Historical News,3450 West 20th Avenue,Vancouver BC V6S 1E4 BCHF


WebSite ForaysChristopher Garrish

For this edition of Web Site Forays, Ihave decided to take a walk on thevirtual side. In doing this, I havebeen greatly aided by a decision

taken by the City of Nanaimo in Novemberof last year to add a new feature to their website; the Virtual Heritage Walk(www.city.nanaimo.bc.ca/d_heritage/#).This new site allows visitors to tour selectedbuildings in the city’s downtown core “in avirtual, 360 degree image setting.” The Walkis, indeed, as the City tells us, an “innova-tive on-line application” that complimentsthe existing heritage building database alsoaccessible through Nanaimo’s homepage.The idea for the Walk came out of a discus-sion between the City and Enviroscopics, alocal company (who also put the walk to-gether) about developing an on-line, inter-active version of Nanaimo’s popular Herit-age Walk brochure. The inspiration camefrom 360-degree interior images taken of thesanctuary in St. Andrews United Church (aheritage building located just outside ofNanaimo’s downtown commercial core, andnot yet a part of the Virtual Walk) thatEnviroscopics had taken.

The Walk is set-up to present visitorswith an interactive map of the Nanaimoharbour front (incorporating such streets asCommercial, Bastion, and Front, CameronRoad and Victoria Crescent). From here, it ispossible to select views of heritage buildings,360-degree street level panorama’s at six dif-ferent intersections which in turn will beginyou upon a tour of route “connections” (ie.Railroad, Coal and Harbour). After a coupleof hours of exploring the site, my spatial ap-preciation for downtown Nanaimo wasexponentially improved but, and I hate toadmit it, I did encounter some useability is-sues with the interactive map. This is notnecessarily a knock against the Virtual Walk,and may simply be a reflection of my abilityto follow directions, but I found that thereappeared to be a few “active” links (especiallywithin the Legend) that didn’t necessarilytake you anywhere. There were a few otherminor quibbles that I had, but these shouldnot dissuade anyone from taking a lovelywalk through our Harbour City.

In terms of buildings that can be vis-ited, there is a surprising selection. There areobvious inclusions, such as the Old Hud-son’s Bay Bastion originally built in 1853 andnow Nanaimo’s oldest structure and its mosthistoric landmark. To quote the site, the Bas-tion is “the last surviving structure from theHudson’s Bay Company colonization of theNanaimo area, and the last remaining forti-fied tower structure of the many that theCompany built on the West Coast.” What Ifound particularly interesting was that theBastion has survived several moves over theyears until it finally came to rest at its presentlocation in 1974.

A more unique and interesting struc-ture (more so for its use) is the ProvincialLiquor Store located on Cavan Street. Builtafter the end of the Second World War, thestore is explained as a modernistic buildingconstructed of cast-in-place concrete, withonly minimal detailing. The architect thatdesigned the store was Wilfrid Hargreaves,who had followed the railway boom westto British Columbia. In 1930 he became theAssistant Chief Architect for the B.C. Depart-ment of Public Works, the position he heldwhen the Liquor Store was built in 1949.

All in all, the future of the Virtual Walkis full of promise. Usually the only obstacleto improving on this sort of a site is the lim-its of technology and, of course, finances. Asit stands now, however, the buildings de-tailed on the Walk were compiled andposted to City’s web site on a shoestringbudget of a mere thirty-three hundred dol-lars. The Walk is also currently in the midstof a four-month update that will signifi-cantly enhance the tour by adding an addi-tional seventeen outdoor panoramic shots,and about eight indoor panoramic shots.The new and improved site should be live,barring any unforseen problems, by earlyOctober.

For those interested in what a budgetten times the size of Nanaimo’s can producein this field, visit; www.virtual-canberra.gov.au

The clickable map from the Nanaimo VirtualWalking tour

St. Paul's Anglican Church100 Chapel StreetJ.C.M. Keith, Architect1931 (top)

Provincial Liquor Store25 Cavan StreetL.W. Hargreaves1949 (bottom)

BCHF


Archives & Archivists

Fire Insurance Plans and BritishColumbia Rare Books andSpecial Collections Universityof British Columbia Library

Fire insurance plans are among themost popular maps in collections.Some of the plans, especially the isometric (three-dimensional) views,

are very attractive, but much more signifi-cant is the amount of information providedby the plans. They are of great research valueacross many disciplines, such as urban de-velopment, historical archaeology, historicalarchitecture, social geography, and indus-trial history. Today these plans are heavilyused by developers for environmental siteassessment.

UBC Library’s Rare Books and Spe-cial Collections (RBSC) has probably thelargest collection of plans for British Colum-bia municipalities. The newly publishedCatalogue of Canadian Fire Insurance Plans1875-1975 by the Association of CanadianMap Libraries and Archives will enable usto locate plans not available here.1

Fire insurance plans are detailedlarge-scale maps of cities, smaller munici-palities, and industrial sites. The maps werecompiled by the fire underwriters to assisttheir agents in assessing and controlling therisks of fire. Various symbols and coloursare used to indicate such things as the shapeand size of a building, the type of construc-tion used, the existence of fire protectionfacilities, and the use of the building (e.g.restaurant, hotel, laundry, store, dwelling,etc.). The plans were first drawn using ascale of fifty feet to the inch (relative scale1:600). Later this scale was reduced to 100feet to the inch (1:1,200), especially in resi-dential areas, and then to 200 feet to the inch(1:2,400). The plans were updated withpaste-on revisions printed and distributedby the Plan Department. Often insuranceagents made their own changes by hand.When there were sufficient changes on asheet, the Plan Department reprinted thesheet with corrections. Hence a volume oftwenty sheets originally printed in 1935 may

have revisions up to 1950.The earliest plans in British Columbia

were five plans issued in 1885 by theSanborn Map and Publishing Company, thepredominant fire insurance cartographycompany in the United States (the nameSanborn is synonymous with fire insuranceplans in the U.S.A.): Granville (the propername for “Gastown”, which became Van-couver); Nanaimo; New Westminster; Vic-toria and Yale. The 1889 the Dakin Publish-ing Company of San Francisco published aplan of Vancouver. In 2002 we were fortu-nate to acquire the sole surviving copy.2

About 1895 Charles E. Goad began publish-ing plans for places in British Columbia. In1917 the Chas. E. Goad Co. sold its Canadianinterests, and the British Columbia InsuranceUnderwriters (which went through variousamalgamations and name changes over theyears) produced plans for British Columbiauntil 1965 when the various regional associa-tions amalgamated as the Canadian Under-writers’ Association. In 1974 the Insurers’Advisory Organization (I.A.O.) took overproduction of Canadian plans. The follow-ing year production was discontinued.

UBC Library had acquired a numberof plans from various sources over the yearsbefore the I.A.O. Pacific Region office do-nated their records, working plans, commu-nity inspection reports and layout of watersupply, and unused stock in 1974. About thesame time were acquired a small collectionof B. C. plans from the I.A.O’s head office inToronto. Shortly after that we acquired a setof Canadian plans including more B. C.plans from the Phelps Publishing Companyin London, Ontario, that had come from theI.A.O. head office when its inventory wasdispersed in 1975.

The plans range from fifteen volumescovering the city of Vancouver to singlesheet plans, for such places as Boston Bar,Matsqui, and Westbank. It is interesting tonote towns that have shrunk, or even dis-appeared. Wells required six sheets in 1938-1940. If plans were being made today, itwould probably require no more that onesheet. In 1899 Sandon appeared on one sheet,but in 1901 a second sheet was added. The

Edited By Frances Gundry

Frances Woodward is the ReferenceLibrarian / Map Librarian, Rare Booksand Special Collections University ofBritish Columbia Library

The key to the 1885 Sanborn plan ofVictoria, BC


1 The Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archiveshas just published Catalogue of Canadian Fire InsurancePlans 1875-1975 (Occasional Papers of the Association ofCanadian Map Libraries and Archives, No. 6). Ottawa:ACMLA, 2002. ISBN 0-9695062-7-9.

2 Few Dakin plans survive. Many were probably lost in the1906 San Francisco earthquake.


two sheets were revised in 1913. Now it isalmost a ghost town.

We are reminded of how recent ur-banization is in the Lower Mainland. Whenthe Underwriters surveyed Burnaby in 1927,it was divided into five volumes with pro-vision for about fifty to sixty five sheets each.Of the five, key plans only were publishedfor two, and a third had only two sheets. By1950 there were still a total of only thirty ninesheets between the five volumes. Most of thedevelopment was in the northwest quadrantand along the Kingsway / BC Electric Rail-way corridor. In 1964 the plan of Burnabywas reduced to two volumes, with a total of131 sheets, which did not include residentialareas. There was no fire insurance plan forSurrey. A plan of Crescent Beach was issuedin 1940, and one of Cloverdale in 1943, withtwo sheets each.

The single-sheet plan of Granville in1885 gives us a picture of Vancouver less thana year before its incorporation, showing thebusiness area in “Gastown”, Hastings Saw-mill Co., and the Coal Harbour Fishery. The1889 Dakin plan of Vancouver in twenty onesheets testifies to the growth of the city in itsfirst four years. The 1925 plan of VancouverHarbour (Vancouver, volume A), is interest-ing with its piers, and industries, and lovelyviews, such as the B. C. Sugar Refinery.Barkerville remains much as it was in the goldrush era. The series of plans of salmon can-neries (Fraser River 1897, North Coast 1915,and both 1924) are as interesting for social his-tory as industrial, e.g. housing for the vari-

A portion of the 1885Sanborn plan ofVictoria, BC

ous ethnic groups in-volved in the fishing in-dustry. On other plans wefind the cheese factory inArmstrong, the fruit pack-ers in Vernon, the smelterin Trail, and so on. It is a

pity these plans are no longer being made.Numerical data in computer files do not pro-vide the same visual images.

Finding fire insurance plans in RBSC

Historical maps in Rare Books and Spe-cial Collections are catalogued, and may befound in the Library’s online catalogue atwww.library.ubc.ca/home/catalogue/welcome.html. There is an online Guide to FireInsurance Plans of British Columbia Cities issuedin Multiple Volumes at www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/fireins/titlepg.html. This guide de-scribes the boundaries of each volume bystreet, and lists the date of each edition or re-vision. The plans or maps, including the vol-umes in the Guide are all fully described inthe online catalogue. The easiest way to findthe plans is to search the subject “insurancefire a”. The result will be a list of all the plansin alphabetical order by place, fromAbbotsford to Zeballos.

Cartographic archives have fonds orcollection level entries in the online catalogue,such as the Insurers’ Advisory Organization.These entries are for the collection as a whole,and refer users to the inventory of the collec-tion to find the maps in that collection. If thereis an online inventory of the maps in a collec-tion, such as the I.A.O., there is a link fromthe entry to the inventory, which is availableon the RBSC website www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/cartog.html. Rare Books and SpecialCollections is located in the Main Library ofthe University of British Columbia.

by Ronald Greene

Miscellany

The King’s Oath or Chicken Oath

BCHF

I ran across this topic while reading Superin-tendent of Provincial Police Correspondence Inward(GR-0055) dating from 1891 to 1910, some 8.8 me-tres of records in all. It was one of those occasionally-encountered items that calls out for closer study.

Let us first look very quickly at oaths ingeneral.1 Although they are rooted in earliertradition, testimonial oaths were instituted byConstantine in the 4th century and later incor-porated in the Code of Justinian from whichthey were adapted, primarily through canonlaw, to all of European Christendom. Duringsuperstitious times, a person swearing a falseoath could expect the swift and certain venge-ance of an omnipotent god. But in time, aspeople grew less superstitious, the oath wasfelt more to have an effect on the mind andemotions of the witness.

At common law, initially only Chris-tians were deemed to possess the belief neces-sary to be sworn as witnesses. Others were notconsidered competent to testify. But with thedevelopment of international trade, the exclu-sion of non-Christians was no longer to Eng-land’s advantage.2 In time Jews were allowedto testify, and in the mid seventeenth centuryit was held that Jews who swore on the oldTestament had invoked sufficient obligationsto tell the truth.3 By 1744 a similar competenceto sworn testimony had been extended to othernon-Christians. It was still held that only thosewho believed in a god were competent, soatheists were still excluded.

Some Christian groups, such as theQuakers and Moravians, objected to swearing.Over a period of 140 years, starting with thegreater religious tolerance of William andMary and ending in an Act of 1838, they gainedthe right to affirm, a declaration—without ref-erence to divine authority—that the witnesswill tell the truth. The English Oaths Act of 1888finally eliminated the discrimination againstatheists. Generally the Statutes of Canada andBritish Columbia say very little on the formthat an oath should take.4

By the end of the eighteenth century, apolicy of swearing a witness by the particularmethod deemed most binding on his con-science had led to judicial approval of somerather bizarre forms of oath. One Chinese oath


The Yellow Oath11 (left) was similar in intentto the Chicken OathBC Archives, GR0055, Box 79, File 7 [Provincial Police,Superintendent, Correspondence Inward]

BCHF

included breaking a saucer or snuffing a can-dle at the witness box with the exclamationthat, should he not speak the truth, his soulwould similarly shatter or be extinguished.5

Hindus could assent to the interpretation ofthe customary English oath by touching thehand or foot of a Brahmin priest. But perhapsthe most bizarre oath was that called the“Chicken Oath.”

The Case of Rex v. Ah Wooey6

Ah Wooey was tried at the Westmin-ster Assize (New Westminster) in October 1901for being an accessory to murder.7 Upon thewitness Chong Fon Fi, who was not a Chris-tian, being called to the stand for the Crown,it was proposed to swear him in the mannergenerally in use in the British ColumbiaCourts: by writing his name on a piece of whitepaper and burning it, at the same time declar-ing that he would tell the truth. The consump-tion of the paper by fire signified his fateshould he fail to tell the truth. Charles Wilson,K.C., a Vancouver lawyer acting for the de-fendant, objected to the proposed form ofoath—the “Paper Oath”—and believed thatthere was another form of greater solemnitythat would be more binding on the witness’sconscience. He said that in British Columbiait was called the “Chicken Oath,” and askedthat it be administered. Justice Archer Martinquestioned the two interpreters in court, andafter they examined the witness they reportedthat the oath known to the Chinese as the King’sOath and to the whites as the Chicken Oath was

the more binding.8 The court then instructedthe witness to be sworn using the King’s Oath.After consultation, the wording of the yellowdocument was modified.9 Lampman’s reportgives the following translation:

King’s oath made by ___________________(Witness signs his name here)(Recites charge against accused and proceeds)

Being a true witness, I shall enjoy happiness and mysons and grandsons will prosper forever.

If I falsely accuse (prisoner) I shall die on the street,Heaven will punish me, earth will destroy me, I shallforever suffer adversity and all my offspring will beexterminated. In burning this oath I humbly submitmyself to the will of Heaven which has brilliant eyesto see.

The 27th year of the reign of Kwang Su,10 the16th day, the 9th moon. (witness signs here also)

The witness having signed his nametwice, and a cock having been procured, theCourt and jury then adjourned to a conven-ient place outside the building where the fullceremony of administering the oath took place.Near a block of wood, punk sticks—at leastthree—and a pair of Chinese candles werestuck in the ground and lit. The oath was thenread out loud by the witness, after which hewrapped it in joss paper, as used in religiousceremonies, then laid the cock on the woodenblock and chopped its head off. Finally, he setfire to the oath using the candles and held ituntil it was consumed by flames. Several Chi-nese witnesses were thusly sworn.

While this trial provided the last re-ported use of the Chicken Oath in British Co-lumbia, it was not the first use. In 1895 SimonLeiser & Co. submitted an invoice for severalchickens and a knife supplied to H. A. Simpsonfor a trial at Union, BC. The government au-thorities held that the police had not made aCrown prosecution and that Mr. Simpson wasacting on behalf of the prosecuting Chinese.The government therefore declined to paythe bill.12

And Ah Wooey’s fate? He was acquitted.


1 A much fuller discussion of the history is given in theReport on Oaths and Affirmations (1990) by the LawReform Commission of Ireland. The report is available fromthe Internet at www.lawreform.ie/publications/data/volume8/Irc_59.html

2 Heidi Rees, “Oaths and Affirmations,” Fillmore RileyReport 48 (Spring 2000). Available atwww.fillmoreriley.com/ne/pdfs/spring%202000.pdf

3 Report on Oaths, p. 6.

4 A survey of nine relevant acts from 1866 through 1985.

5 Report on Oaths, p. 7, gives an English case from the 20thcentury concerning a Chinese gang fight in which the lastwitness stood ankle deep in smashed crockery. In personalcorrespondence, Lily Chow explained that the breaking ofthe saucer was equivalent to destroying unity ortogetherness in the family, as round symbolizes union. Thesnuffing of the candle represented taking the breath of lifeaway, there being an old Chinese saying that when life isover it is like the burning candle extinguishes its flame.

6 Peter Secord Lampman, for the Law Society of BritishColumbia, The British Columbia Reports IX, 569–570 (1903).Lampman incorrectly gives the date as October 26, 1902.

7 British Columbian, October 21, 26, 28, and 29, 1901, p. 1in each case. Ah Quong was accused of killing three fellowChinese in Ladner in June 1901, and Ah Wooey wascharged as an accessory to the murders. With eyewitnesses to the murders, Ah Quong’s counsel said it wouldhave been the height of folly to attempt to deny that hisclient killed his countrymen, but stated that his defencewould be insanity. The jury found Ah Quong guilty.

8 The term King was used by the Chinese in a religioussense, and referred more to a higher being or authority, inthe sense of Almighty, King of Heaven, King of Kings.

9 British Columbian, Oct. 26, 1901, p. 1.

10 Kwang Su was the Emperor at the time (Guang Sui wouldbe the pronunciation in Mandarin).

11 Per Lily Chow, the significance of the Yellow Oath, whichwas printed on yellow paper, was that yellow was theImperial colour and thus the colour symbolized officialstatus or importance. When asked if the translation of theYellow Oath was reasonable, Ms. Chow replied that it was,except that the phrase “forfeit my future generations” doesnot nearly convey the impact of the original Chinese, as thephrase “is one of the darkest and most wicked curses in[the] Chinese language. It means that the subject (orwitness here) will have NO descendants in future, (childrenand grandchildren in the Chinese wording here) if he/shegives false evidence.” Also, the chicken being beheadedsymbolizes the highest form of Chinese punishment, whichwas beheading. The implication being “that if they werefound guilty of the crime or gave false evidence the endresult would be just like the chicken with its head beingchopped.”

12 Various parts of this affair were found in GR0055, box14, file 9; box 33, file L; box 34, file S; box 79, file 7.


Welcome New MembersLadysmith & District HistoricalSocieityc/o 781 Colonia DriveLadysmith, BCÊÊ V9G 1N2ÊQuesnelle Forks Museum &Historical SocietyBox 77 Likely, BCÊ V0L 1N0ÊÊÊhttp://www.wlake.com/hicks/hicks

Delta Museum and Archives4858 Delta Street,Delta, BCÊÊ V4K 2T8

Metchosin School Museum Society4475 Happy Valley RoadVictoria, B. C.ÊÊ V9C 3Z3

The Riondel & Area HistoricalSocietyBox 201 Riondel, BCÊÊV0B 2B0ÊSea Island Heritage Society4191 Ferguson RoadRichmond, BCÊÊ V7B 1P3http://seaisland1.home-stead.comÊSandon Historical SocietyBox 52 New Denver, BCÊÊV0G 1S0ÊSouth Peace Historical Societyc/o 900 Alaska AvenueDawson Creek, BCÊ V1G 4T6

Timms PhotographicCollection Online

Special Collections at theVancouver Public Library, withthe support of an IndustryCanada grant, has recentlyadded 1500 new images to theHistorical Photographs Data-base. These images are from thecollection of Philip Timms, awonderful photographer ofVancouver from its earliest days.

To find out more about

Voices From the Grave:Cemeteries OnlineLangley’s Cemeteries

As markers of our herit-age, cemeteries serve as impor-tant sources of information forgenealogists, historians and fam-ily members. The Langley Cen-tennial Museum website has sec-tions on the development ofcemetery and monument design,and a virtual tour of the Town-ship of Langley's two oldest cem-eteries, Fort Langley Cemeteryand Murrayville Cemetery,through an exploration of someof their most unique and beauti-ful grave markers. There is alsoa database of over 10,000 recordsfor the researcher.www.langleymuseum.org/heritage_cemetery_intro.asp

Mountain View Cemetery

Vancouver ’s MountainView Cemetery, established bythe City in 1886 has recentlygone online. Some of the web-site’s features include a full list-ing of burials, a list of notablepeople buried at the cemetery,including three Victoria Crosswinners, and a preview of themaster plan for the future of thecemetery. Visit them atwww.city.vancouver.bc.ca/commsvcs/

History Gathering Moss?By Phylis Reeve

Twenty-plus years ago,while researching the history ofthe University Women’s Club ofVancouver, I recorded a detail ofthe Club’s contribution to the1914-18 war effort: “A splendidopportunity to do somethingdistinctive came when a letterwas received from the presidentof the University Women’s Clubof Toronto, asking that our clubco-operate with them in securingmoss, to be used in surgicaldressing, instead of absorbentcotton. Advised by a botanist thatthe required moss grows abun-dantly on Lulu Island, the Uni-versity Women seized on this asa manageable contribution ofreal use which they, because ofgeographical accident, were par-ticularly able to undertake. Theywere delighted when the GirlGuides of Mission, B.C. offeredto assist in the moss gathering.”

Recently the GuardianWeekly (May 15-21 2003) re-ported the opening of a pavil-ion at Kew Gardens, whichwould explore the use of sphag-num moss to treat wounds inthe trenches. The Guardianadded parenthetically that themoss was later shown to containthe penicillium microbe.

Chagrined that I mighthave dismissed as quaint a pointwhich I should have investi-gated and explained, I foundthat my available printedsources considered the moss asa semi-folk remedy whichseemed to work. So I turned tothe Internet, which directed meto the relevant papers by A.Belanger et al (1988) and R.Tahvonen (1993), published sixto eleven years after I wrote theClub’s book.

I felt better, but once againrealized that one never ever com-pletely finishes every detail ofany piece of historical writing.

Nelson Museum ReturnsThe Nelson Museum, Ar-

chives and Art Gallery is look-ing "Forward to the Past". TheNelson Museum building wasre-opened to the public August15th, following a fire on May 4thwhich claimed a unique ForestService vessel and necessitatedpackaging, relocation and de-contamination of the Museumand Archives collection.

The "Forward to the Past"exhibition chronicles in stun-ning text and photos, the historyof Nelson’s Museum and thedevastating fire. A poignant se-lection of the Museum’s arti-facts is on display. Curator,Shawn Lamb, avows boxes con-taining the major collection willbe unpacked when the Museumgets the go ahead from munici-pal and regional voters in anOct. 18th Referendum. The Ref-erendum will set the schedulefor up-grading several recrea-tional facilities in the City, andas a consequence the Museum,Archives and Art Gallery wouldbe re-located to Nelson’s dis-tinctively Heritage City Hall.

Along with a new begin-ning for the Museum and Gal-lery, August 15 saw the Open-

the history of Vancouver see:Vancouver's Golden Years,1900-1910. Photographs byPhilip Timms, at: http://collections.ic.gc.ca/vancouver/index.html. You can also viewmore information about the His-torical photographs collectionsin Special Collections at:w w w. v p l . c a / b r a n c h e s /LibrarySquare/spe/photos/photoagree.html

Denise Dunbar Librarian, SpecialCollections, Vancouver Public Library

ing of "Pressing Words andBinding Books" featuring thetype sculpture and book bind-ing artistry of Peter Bartl andJane Merks, and the launch of anambitious technological experi-ment, The Virtual Museum ofthe Kootenays’. The Museummay be operating at less thancapacity, but on-line visitors caninteract with and exploreKootenay history at: http://kootenaymuseum.ca

ritish columbia historical news - ubc …s13 - c19 - rr1, galiano island, b. c. v0n 1p0 gray creek...

Documents