52.3 | Fall 2019

British Columbia History

Discover British Columbia’s Past!

British Columbia History2 min read
Letters from Readers
Really good story and well researched. Thanks Parker! Jan Peterson Via Facebook Well done Parker, a story that needed to be told with more background than usual! Great to have the story to share, too! Daphne Paterson Via Facebook The Centennial Lega
British Columbia History2 min readComputers
Digital Stories and Large Objects
British Columbia’s history is being told in websites, podcasts, movies, and apps. Behind the scenes at British Columbia History, we have talked about highlighting some of these other avenues for telling BC’s story and I am excited to announce that Ai
British Columbia History6 min read
Japanese Charcoal-Making on Salt Spring Island
Ever since humankind learned to make fire, charcoal has been in existence. In Wonderwerk Cave, an archaeological site in South Africa, there is clear evidence that ancestors of homo sapiens were using fire almost a million years ago. Later, fire coul
British Columbia History10 min read
The SS Catala, Union Steamship A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
I was five years old at the time of my first Union Steamship voyage on the SS Catala, but I remember it well. When I mentioned this to my eighty-seven-year-old aunt, Edith Nelson, she surprised me. “Oh,” she said, “I sailed on both the SS Catala AND
British Columbia History8 min read
Doctor by Chance, Mystic By Choice Surrey Doctor Treats the Physical, Inspires the Spiritual
Can you tell us about your home in Guyana? My parents were indentured labourers from India and were taken to Guyana to work on a British sugar plantation around 1910. My father was twenty-one years old and my mother was nineteen. Being indentured la
British Columbia History13 min read
Catherine MacPhearson MacDonald Hughes Kaslo City Councillor
The story of Catherine MacPhearson MacDonald Hughes (born January 1, 1863) and her husband Angus MacDonald (born about 1846) begins in the craggy western highlands of Inverness-shire and Argyll, the borderlands of Scotland around Loch Shiel. On Febru
British Columbia History6 min read
THE HISTORICAL Soda Creek Cemetery
The old steamboat landing at Soda Creek is one of the most interesting historical sites along the Cariboo highway north of Williams Lake. Standing on the bank of the Fraser River, it’s easy to imagine the excitement of gold-rush days when sternwheele
British Columbia History1 min read
Soda Creek First Nations
The boomtown of Soda Creek grew up in the 1860s in the territory of the Xatśūll First Nation (Soda Creek First Nations) located north of Williams Lake on the Fraser River, and the gold-rush economy of the river that depended on successful navigation
British Columbia History6 min read
Uplands Park A Magical Place
Apart from A.A. Milne’s One Hundred Acre Wood I can’t imagine a more magical urban wildwood retreat than Oak Bay’s Uplands Park in greater Victoria, especially its meadows of brilliant blue spring camas and long shafts of golden grass waving in the l
British Columbia History4 min read
Union Bay Historical Society
It’s the elegant star of Union Bay. A maroon coloured, three-storey Canada Post building occupies the heart of this coastal Vancouver Island village — and its citizens. When Public Works Canada decided to close and tear down the post office in the la
British Columbia History3 min read
Archiving a Trial Ethically, Responsibly, and Respectfully
The Vickers fonds is a collection of records, exhibits, and transcripts from the 2007 British Columbia Supreme Court case, Tsilhqot’in Nation v British Columbia (2007 BCSC 1700), considered to be one of the most important Aboriginal title cases in Ca
British Columbia History2 min read
Past Forward | Digital Bc History
https://meijiat150dtr.arts.ubc.ca/the-wildest-night-in-vancouver/ In September 1907, up to 500 people vandalized dozens of stores owned by Chinese Canadians and Japanese Canadians. Damage was estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars and one pers
British Columbia History12 min read
Hunting for History Books
I love walking into an independent book store. Munro’s Books in Victoria has shelves and shelves of books including a robust selection of BC history, all set a backdrop of heritage architecture. Even Chapters, with its indisputable tagline “Canada’s
British Columbia History2 min read
Wesley Ziegler’s Possum Supper By Greg Nesteroff
I was excited to see the postcard shown here for sale on eBay in January. Although he’s not identified on the card, the man is Wesley Ziegler, who was born into slavery in Alabama, probably in the 1840s or ‘50s. Little else is known about him before

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