52.2 | Summer 2019

British Columbia History

Discover British Columbia’s Past!

British Columbia History2 min read
Letters from Readers
Iona Campagnolo’s article about women accessing public office [52.1, Spring 2019] raised an interesting question about the first woman elected mayor in BC. Stella Gummow of Peachland holds the title. She served as reeve in 1943–44, following the deat
British Columbia History2 min read
Difference
Fear is a powerful motivator. The fear of difference. The fear of loss of power, money, influence. And fear coupled with greed is even more destructive. But, as I was reminded so eloquently by Laura Saimoto at her Vancouver Heritage Foundation talk o
British Columbia History14 min read
CONFLICTS WITH THE LAW Mennonites, Hutterites, and Doukhobors
Mennonites, Hutterites, and Doukhobors who emigrated to Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries faced challenges with federal and provincial laws that sometimes conflicted with their desire to practice communal living, educate their children in their o
British Columbia History1 min read
Sons of Freedom
The story of the Doukhobors is complicated by a breakaway group, the Freedomites (later known as the Sons of Freedom). In the early 1900s, British Columbian newspapers started reporting stories of naked protests in other parts of Canada. Towards the
British Columbia History7 min read
THE ORIGINS OF A HIGHWAY The Malahat
To the thousands of drivers who move north and south on Vancouver Island the Malahat is just another busy and dangerous route jammed with traffic. It is relatively easy now, traffic jams aside, but more than a hundred years ago it was very difficult
British Columbia History13 min read
The Adventures of Captain Jemmy Jones
Born in Wales in about 1830, James “Jemmy” or “Jimmy” Jones was “one of British Columbia’s most noted characters whose celebrity extended down to Washington, San Francisco, and Mexico.”1 He left Wales at an early age to search for his father who he l
British Columbia History7 min read
Seeing BC’s Past Through the Eyes of an Artist
A male driver in a flatbed truck loaded with oversized logs threatens all in his path, a sensation British-Canadian artist Sybil Andrews actually experienced on the Vancouver Island highway in 1952. “We met the great load coming up toward us, up the
British Columbia History11 min read
Tyhee Conomody, Atkiso, and Kwikwetlem First Nation
Through the late 1850s, readers of the Honolulu Advertiser would notice large, front-page ads by future Coquitlam River settler Stephen Atkins selling several thousand acres of volcano-side, farm-quality real estate to pioneer settlers. The world-tra
British Columbia History2 min read
HISTORICAL SOCIETY ENRICHES COMMUNITY MEMORY Henry Houston Scott Heritage Park
A line of apple trees on the grassy corner of 64th Avenue and 181A Street — recently named Henry Houston Scott Park — is all that’s left on the land to mark the life and work of a black pioneer family in Surrey. That the story came forward nearly fif
British Columbia History3 min read
The Vancouver Art Gallery Archives
Founded in 1931 as the Vancouver Art Gallery Association, the Gallery is a private, non-profit membership-based society that will celebrate its eighty-eigth anniversary on October 5, 2019. The founders’ committee, led by local businessman Henry Athel
British Columbia History11 min read
On Vacation with BC History
Books on British Columbia’s history are summer sidekicks for many of us. Packed into suitcases and taken on vacation, tucked into a bag and carted off to the beach, or read at home without switching on a lamp in the sunny evening hours. I usually sta
British Columbia History3 min read
Sunnyside Meats
Visitors to the charming Bear’s Paw Café in Wells, BC, population about 200, might wonder why there’s an enormous Gurney meat scale hanging behind the cash register. It’s an intimidating-looking bar of thick metal equipped with sharp hooks. The yello
British Columbia History5 min read
LYTTON A Tale of Two Museums
No matter how many times I drive the Fraser Canyon, by the time I reach the first tunnel at Yale, I’m gobsmacked. Boiling waters, sheer granitic skyscrapers, and so much history are compressed into this craggy corridor. The canyon has supported life

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