Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives
Museum Hours  
​Tuesday - Saturday      
10:30am-4:30pm     
​
  • Collections
    • Photograph Collection
    • Newspaper Archives
    • First Nations
    • Fishing for a Living
    • Marine Transportation
    • Telecommunications
    • George & Charlotte Gibson
    • Helen McCall - Early Photographer
    • Beachcomber Relics
    • Farrell Family
    • Early Logging
    • Early Agriculture
    • Inglis and Woodsworth Families
    • Howe Sound Cooperative Cannery
  • Learning
    • Podcast Features
    • Education Kit
    • Genealogy >
      • Cemeteries
      • Churches
      • Genealogy Links & Records
      • Places of Research
      • Schools
      • Societies and Support
    • Museum at Home
    • Museum School
    • School Classroom Visits
    • Historical Videos of the Sunshine Coast
  • Blog
  • News/Events
  • Shop
  • Sunshine Coast
    • Gibsons
    • Roberts Creek
    • Sechelt
    • Halfmoon Bay
    • Pender Harbour
    • Egmont
  • About Us
    • Contact Us!
    • History & Mandate
    • Museum Services
    • Make a Donation!
    • Membership
    • Employment
    • Volunteer
    • Staff & Board of Directors
    • Links

Different Histories: Helen McCall

7/25/2014

0 Comments

 
As any historian would explain, there is no one historical truth. Even the oft-repeated phrase “there are two sides to every story” falls flat when we deal with the past, because there are not just two sides; there are infinite “sides.” Despite being in a small community, the past is a web of perspectives that could offer a much more diverse version of history, if only we had access to each individual strand.Therefore, I would argue that museums do not deal with “history.” They deal in histories.

Yet so frequently we are presented with only one standardized model of history. For example, the twentieth-century North American schoolroom staple “Christopher Colombus discovered America in 1492” is obviously very problematic and ignores major historical complexities, power relations, indigenous groups, and so on. But that’s an entirely different issue that I won’t get into, lest I deviate from discussing the history of the Sunshine Coast. The history of European settlers in Gibsons Landing is fascinating. Can you imagine being George Gibson and his sons, swept into what would become Gibsons Landing as refuge from a storm? How about being the only physician on the Sunshine Coast, as Dr. Inglis was? Or experiencing the origins of J.S. Woodsworth’s socialist ideology? (All of these fun stories are on our website.) But Gibsons and Inglis and Woodsworth are not the only names of note in Sunshine Coast history, and it’s important that we include others who are talked about less. In April 2014, Kimiko Hawkes wrote an article that is on this blog and that was also published in Coast Life magazine. In her article, she writes about the internment of Japanese-Canadians, but even more so, the difficulties about recovering certain stories from the past.

Appropriately, my major at university is in history. One of my minors is women’s studies, which planted in me a desire to uncover the histories of the women, which are often hidden away. After all, women make up half of the population, and their stories should take up just as much space. One such figure was Helen McCall, whose photography is all throughout our archives. I recommend checking out the page Helen McCall: Pioneer Photographer on the website, as it provides some detail that we do not receive from a simple signature at the bottom of an archival photograph. Helen McCall was many things that could be addressed in any number of ways, but today she interests me in that not only was she a Sunshine Coast woman whose story we have, but she also documented early Coast life in invaluable ways. Without Helen McCall, we would be without many of the stunning archival photographs we have today. Perhaps even more fascinating is the way we can see McCall's life interweave with her work. The very fact that McCall was documenting rural life is a departure from the much better-documented urban lifestyle. Her craft reflected her rural living, as she produced her photographs in a basic darkroom with neither running water nor electricity. From her unique angles and perspectives, we see the influence of a youth spent in a forested environment. McCall's entire self-employment was as a result of necessity, since her husband was disabled from World War One. McCall's use of the postcard medium is indicative of her market and the Sunshine Coast's tourism market in general. She photographed things that were not always recorded, such as senior citizens and local events, thus creating a more comprehensive story of the Sunshine Coast.

Photographs are limited because unlike a diary or other written record, we cannot know the subject's inner thoughts or wishes. McCall's photography reveals, if not inner thoughts, what was of value to the early Sunshine Coast residents. She aimed to photograph things with meaning, and we can follow her work to identify what she, as photographer and a settler woman, found most important. Though she may have seen herself as simply making a living, Helen McCall had the immensely powerful task of shaping our historical memory.

-Emma

0 Comments

Speak No Evil: The Mystery of the Jade Monkey

7/18/2014

4 Comments

 
Who was it that first discovered North America? This is a question rife with debate and often lacking in absolute, concrete, 100%-certain evidence. In fact, the very discussion of “discovery” ignores the civilizations that thrived on this continent long before the age of exploration. In what we today call Canada, it is agreed-upon that Norse explorers, such as Leif Eriksson, arrived on Canadian East Coast territory as the first Europeans. After briefly settling, they left, and beyond that, European presence on the East Coast is well-documented, as any Canadian history course can attest.

But here on the West Coast, I let out the stereotypical Western cry: “What about us?” Explorers (and, let’s not forget, exploiters) patrolled the West. Today I want to present an alternate history; that it was not Europeans who were the first foreigners to set foot on “BC” soil, but possibly the Chinese making their way Eastward centuries earlier. Of course, there is little evidence and most of it is shaky. We’ll need a healthy dose of imagination and a small jade monkey with a story.

The monkey we have upstairs was found under a large fir stump in May 1920. It was likely part of a set of three; its hands-over-mouth, “speak no evil” position suggests that it once had “hear” and “see” counterparts. The monkey in question is mentioned in a much-referenced, if outdated, book The Gibson's Landing Story, by Les Peterson, which is helpful because it provides more contextual detail than we have in our museum exhibit. He notes that the monkey was found under a stump, but only speculates on how it got there. He also references an anecdotal account of Eric Thomson, who went on a trip in the Stikine River area and recounted how a bag of Chinese coins was found on the banks dating to 1300 CE.  Peterson then speculates that within this greater provincial context, stone carvings could have conceivably been brought here as trade objects.

This could easily be all myth. These histories are foggy not just with time, but with our cultural understandings and biases. Yet, this small jade monkey helps to remind us that not everything is as it seems and that all histories should be critically analyzed.


-Emma

4 Comments

Collaborating & Just Keeping Going

7/17/2014

0 Comments

 
    A few weeks ago a man came into the museum to ask a very simple question. A former arborist, his quest began with a tree, a tree old enough, he believed, to be planted by the first settler in Gibsons.

            “I would like,” he said, “to know the exact location of Mr. George Gibson’s farm.” I thought that Gibson’s house would be an easy answer to give. While rightly much of our focus has shifted away from the European settler focus in history, I figured we would have detailed knowledge about the Gibsons Landing founder. Some areas of his life are chronicled in detail (and this is helped by technological advances during his later years), but some of Gibson’s life is shrouded in mystery. Take, for example, George Gibson’s naval history. Born in England, he ran away to the Royal Navy at the age of twelve, eventually retiring as a lieutenant. This explains Gibson’s love of the sea in his later years and his ability to immigrate to North America. Yet despite extensive research on the part of his family, there is no available record of Gibson’s naval past. Luckily, the inquirer was met with more success when it came to Gibson’s farm, but not without some internal resistance from myself. Like a frustrated elementary-schooler refusing to learn fractions, I resisted the fact that there was no clear-cut record. Our archival data did not appear to bring up much. The man was insistent. What would I do?

            Research is frequently a work of collaboration and endurance. I admit that I have not done much; during my employment at the museum I have had only a few requests, made easier by a large database from which to draw information. As a result, I have an intense appreciation for researchers who can draw answers from what appears to be nothing, and this blog is mostly about them. The collaboration of research comes in multiple parts: first, with the help of cataloguers who spent years amassing relevant information and inputting it into the archival database. Painstaking, confusing, and yes, sometimes dry, this initial heave is invaluable to museum researchers, who often use information from the archives as their first stop. This information comes from members of the community, both past and present. While archival photographs didn’t reveal Gibson’s original home, they did allow me to place his second home. The Gibsons Landing Story by Les Peterson is a much-referenced book here at the museum, and tucked in the back was a map of the old district lots and residences in Gibsons. Bingo.

Collaboration also comes in the form of interacting with (gasp) real human beings, whose knowledge, though not written down and stored, is also invaluable. Like oral histories, this passed-down knowledge from Gibsons locals allowed me to corroborate information and narrow my search. One individual was a board member, and another was a former curator of the museum. Together, their thoughts narrowed my search: Gibson’s original house (as opposed to his second home, which is better documented) had to be between Molly’s Reach and lower Winegarden Park, which matched the map. This made sense, because the inquirer was convinced that Gibson would have lived near the sea. While this is a small example of a collaborative effort, it still remains that even the smallest of ventures is made simpler by working with one another.

As for endurance, well…quit whining and just keep looking :)

-Emma                                                                   
                                                                                              

0 Comments

Historic Wooden Rowboat Relaunched

7/3/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Dr. John McDowell is rowing Luoma Loon in the foreground, Burtt Fidler is rowing John's yellow fibreglass boat, and Doug Walter is rowing Verna Gregson's red fibreglass boat. The fibreglass boats were made from a mold created from Luoma Loon.
A restored little row boat with a history was relaunched Sunday, June 1, 2014 at the El Verano boat launch on Gabriola Island, sliding off its trailer into False Narrows like a fish returning to familiar waters. The story of this little boat began decades ago when the Luoma Brothers of Naniamo built it for use in the local row boat fishery. After decades of service, Steve Ellis and his brother Graham acquired the boat on Protection
Island and made it available to Wayne Gorrie of Mudge Island to use as a plug for making the mold used to make fibreglass double-ended row boats. After repairing the boat enough to use as a plug, the Ellis brothers decided to restore it and use it, which they did for many years before selling this little hand troller to Burtt Fidler.
​
Now, after many years of use in its second life, Luoma Loon has once again been restored to what is believed to be its original colours and configuration as a hand troller or hand liner fish boat. The original name of the boat is unknown, but when it was discovered on Protection Island years ago, it had a loon painted on it so it was called Loon. Burtt Fidler renamed it Luoma Loon, because he wanted to give credit
to the the Luoma brothers of Shack Island who are believed to have been the original builders of this boat.

Dozens of these boats were made by the Luomas between the 1920's and 1940's and these were considered to be the finest of row boats by the fishers of this area because of their handling characteristics and seaworthy
qualities.

Sunday's relaunch was a low key event. After a few brief words about the boat including a mention of the ones that were made using the mold that was made from it, Thomas Hardy blessed the boat and poured some homemade plum wine over her bow and the boat was relaunched. Those present took turns rowing Luoma Loon and two of the fibreglass boats that were made from the mold taken from Loon in the 1980's. These boats are owned by Verna Gregson and Dr. John McDowell of Mudge Island.
Larry Westlake of Sechelt, who did the work of restoring Luoma Loon, was present on Sunday as was Steve Ellis of Naniamo who initially rescued the boat years ago. Thanks to the efforts of these two men, this wonderful little boat will provide many more decades of joy and service to all who use her.
-Burtt Fidler

On that note, the museum is proud to host the 2014 Small Wooden Boat Festival! If you're interested in the boats as mentioned above, you'll love this festival. It takes place July 27, from 10 am to 4 pm in Holland Park in Gibsons. Click here for more details!
Our replica handliner will be in the Sea Cavalcade parade, while Hubert Evans' real handliner is in our museum! We also sell replica handliner plans in our gift shop in case you want to make your own.
0 Comments

    Categories

    All
    BC Historical Newspapers
    Black History Month
    Book Launch
    Borrowed Body
    Canoe Culture
    Canoe Journey
    Collaboration
    Community Building
    Digitization
    Exhibit Exchange
    History Of Racism
    Immigration
    Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
    Japanese Internment
    Konishi Family
    Newspaper Digitization
    Open Mic
    Peformance Poetry
    Peninsula Times
    Performance Poetry
    Squamish Nation
    Sunshine Coast
    UBC Library

    Archives

    December 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    January 2022
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    November 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    July 2018
    June 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012

    RSS Feed

     Home     |     Collections     |     Learning     |     Events     |     Gift Shop     |     News     |     The Sunshine Coast     |     About Us     

© Copyright 2022 Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives
716 Winn Rd., Gibsons, BC. (604) 886 8232


Donate Now Through CanadaHelps.org!