HISTORY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

HISTORY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Instructor: Dan Hinman-Smith

E-Mail: hinman-smiths@mindspring.com

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The History of British Columbia is a course that explores the social, political, cultural and economic development of Canada's western-most province. We will trace the story of B.C. from centuries before James Cook's arrival in Nootka Sound to the present. Prominent themes will include the history of First Nations and their relationships with European newcomers (aboriginal people remained the population's majority until 1885); the importance of a resource--based economy to explaining the patterns of the B.C. past; the province's ambivalence towards the centre; and the development of a multi--ethnic society.

The class is designed to provide students with the opportunity to become active historians themselves, and thus to develop their research, writing, and analytical skills. A key goal of the course will be to engage classmates in a collaborative endeavour leading towards the posting of significant information about the history of northern Vancouver Island on the world--wide web.

BOOKS

Barman, Jean. West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1996.
Lee, Sky. Disappearing Moon Cafe. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1990.
Geddes, Gary. Sailing Home: A Journey Through Time, Place, and Memory. Toronto: Harper Perennial/Canada, 2001.
British Columbia History Coursepack.

ASSIGNMENTS AND EVALUATION

1. Lee and Geddes Comparison Paper 20%

2. Written Commentaries and Research For B.C. Seminars 25%

3. North Island History Web-Site 25%

4. Class Participation 10%

5. Final Exam 20%

For a model for the collaborative North Island History web-site, see , a project initiated by Dr. John Lutz at the University of Victoria.

PROPOSED CLASS SCHEDULE

UNIT I: PRE-CONTACT TO CONFEDERATION

1. Introduction: Totem and Taboo -- British Columbia History and Totem Poles

2. "We Have Always Been Here": The Aboriginal Peoples of "British Columbia"

3. VIDEO: "Tlina: The Rendering of Wealth" (1999) [51 minutes]

4. First Encounters, 1741-1825

5. SEMINAR #1: The Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt, Captive of the Maquinna. For an on-line scanned version of the 1816 edition of the Jewitt Journal, see:

http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/mtq?id=a0b1542fa2&doc=29581

Further Readings:

Peter Webster Oral History in Barabara Effrat and W.J. Langlois, eds., "Contact Period As Recorded By Indian Oral Traditions," Sound Heritage, 12 (1978): 54-61.
Jean Braithwaite and W.J. Folan, "The Taking Of the Ship Boston: An Ethnohistorical Study of Nootkan-European Conflict," Syesis, 5 (1972): 259-66.

Questions:

a) Was Jewitt someone who preserved for history ancient traditions or is instead someone who was witnessing the birth of a new society?

b) Why, according to the oral tradition, was the Boston captured? What other explanations are offered here? Which do you find most convincing, and why?

c) What other tensions exist between Jewitt's narrative and the oral accounts of this episode?

6. The Skin Trade Comes To Eden: The Trade In Furs, 1789-1849

Reading:

Cole Harris, "Voices of Smallpox Around the Strait of Georgia," Resettlement of British Columbia: 3-30.

7. Fort Victoria and Vancouver Island, 1842-1858

Reading:

Richard Mackie, "The Colonization of Vancouver Island, 1849-1858," BC Studies, 96 (Winter 1992-93): 3-40.

8. The Gold Colonies

See the excellent site, .

9. VIDEO: "A Forgotten Legacy: The Spirit of Reclamation" (2002) [48 minutes]

10. SEMINAR #2: NATIVE WOMEN AND THE COLLISION OF WORLDS

Readings:

Jo-Anne Fiske, "Colonization and the Decline of Women's Status: The Tsimshian Case," Feminist Studies, 17 (Fall 1991): 509-35.

Marjorie Mitchell and Anna Franklin, "Listen to the Silence: An Historical Overview of Native Indian Women in B.C.," A History of British Columbia: Selected Readings: 49-68.

David Peterson de-Mar, "Intermarriage and Agency: A Chinookan Case Study," Ethnohistory, 42 (1995); 1-30.

Sylvia Van Kirk, "The Role of Native Women," in Women's West, ed. S. Armitage and E. Jameson (Horman: Oklahoma, 1988): 53-62.

Elizabeth Vibert, "Real Men Hunt Buffalo: Masculinity, Race and Class in British Fur Traders' Narratives," Gender History, 8 (1996): 4-21.

Carol Williams, "Photographic Portraiture of Aboriginal Women on Canada's Northwest Coast Circa 1862-1880," SIGHTS: Visual Anthropology Forum Web Site (1999).

11. From Colony To Province: British Columbia and Confederation

Reading:

H. Robert Kendrick, "Amor De Cosmos and Confederation," in W. George Shelton, ed., British Columbia and Confederation (Victoria: Victoria, 1967): 67-90.

UNIT II: A RESOURCE-BASED ECONOMY

12. Castles From Coal: The History of Coal Mining On Vancouver Island, 1835-1918

Coal Miners, Nanaimo, 1909

For a short but interesting web-site, see .

13. Stumps of Enterprise: The Forest Economy

14. SEMINAR #3: PHOTOGRAPHS AND CARTOONS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES

We will use this seminar both to examine the photographs and cartoons of significant British Columbians and to begin preliminary research about North Island visual sources.

Resources will include:

SFU LIBRARY EDITORIAL CARTOONS COLLECTION

15. A Living From the Sea: Fishing and B.C. History

VIDEO: "Laxwesa Wa, Strength of the River: Fishing On the Fraser River," Episode 6 from First Nations: The Circle Unbroken (1997) [21 minutes]

16. From Granville to Vancouver: The Railroad, the Resource Economy, and the Making of the Lower Mainland, 1870-1918

17. SEMINAR #4 : Lee, Disappearing Moon Cafe.

18. B.C. Mining In Context

19. Organized Labor and the Resource-Based Economy (1871-1918)

20. SEMINAR #5 : NORTH ISLAND WEB-SITE WORKSHOP

Readings:

Gordon Hak, "British Columbia Loggers and the Lumber Workers Industrial Union, 1919-1922," Labour/Le Travail (1989): 67-90.
John R. Hinde, "Stout Ladies and Amazons: Women In the British Columbia Coal-Mining Community of Ladysmith, 1912-1914," BC Studies (Summer 1997): 33-57.
John Norris, "The Vancouver Island Coal Miners, 1912-1914: A Study of An Organizational Strike," BC Studies (Spring 1980): 56-72.
Bryan D. Palmer, "The Rise and Fall of British Columbia's Solidarity," in Bryan Palmer, ed., Character of Class Struggle: 176-200.

UNIT III: WHOSE B.C.?: A WHITE MAN'S PROVINCE?

21. "The Gates of Harmonious Interest": The Chinese and British Columbia, 1788-1939

Reading:

"THE ISLAND OF THE UNCLEAN: RACE, COLONIALISM AND CHINESE LEPROSY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA."

Gillian Creese, "Class, Ethnicity, and Conflict: The Case of Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1880-1923," Warburton and Coburn, Workers, Capital, and the State in British Columbia: 55-86.

22. VIDEO: "British Columbia and the West -- On This Rock, Blacks in B.C., " Part IV of Hymn To Freedom (1995) [58 minutes]

23. SEMINAR #6 : "Who Killed William Robinson?: Race, Justice, and the Settling of the Land."

Background: Three murders were committed on the north end of Salt Spring Island in 1867-68. Each victim was black; each murder was blamed on local natives. Two of the murders remained unsolved. An all-white jury found Tshuanashusset guilty. Your task in this assignment is to examine the evidence so that you can both offer very tentative opinions about whether he was indeed the killer and attempt to use this case as a way to open up analysis of race relations in mid-nineteenth-century British Columbia.

24. Missionaries, Anthropologists, Lawmen and Aboriginal People: 1871-1914

Reading:

Tina Loo, "Dan Cramner's Potlatch: Law as Coercion, Symbol, and Rhetoric in British Columbia, 1884-1951," Canadian Historical Review, 73 (1992): 125-65.
Robin Fisher, "The Missionaries," Conflict and Contact (Vancouver: UBC, 1977)

See also the web-site .

25. "She Who Laughs": The Invented Indian, The Imagined Emily, and the Search For An Alternative British Columbia

26. The People In-Between: The Sikhs and the History of British Columbia

27. SEMINAR #7: EDUCATION IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

Readings:

Jean Barman, "Schooled For Inequality: The Education of British Columbia Aboriginal Children," in Children, Teachers and Schools
Timothy Dunn, "The Rise of Mass Schooling In British Columbia," in Schooling and Society in Twentieth Century British Columbia
Neil Sutherland, "Reflections on A Century of Childhood," in Children, Teachers, and Schools
Neil Sutherland, "The Triumph of Formalism: Elementary Schooling in Vancouver From the 1920s to the 1960s," in Children, Teachers and Schools

Primary Sources:

We will be using the extensive resources of Homeroom: British Columbia's History of Education Website, an excellent web-site designed by historians at Malaspina College.

28. VIDEO: "The Pool: Reflections of the Japanese-Canadian Internment" (1992) [55 minutes]

Reading:

Barry Broadfoot, ed., "Angler -- Barbed Wire and Boredom," Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame: The Story of the Japanese Canadians In World War II (Toronto: Doubleday, 1977)

29. Dreams of Utopia

Reading:

John P.S. McLaren, "'New Canadians' or 'Slaves of Satan?': The Law and the Education of Doukhobor Children, 1911-1935," in Children, Teachers, and Schools
Jean Usher, "Duncan of Metlakatla: The Victorian Origins of A Model Indian Community," in Peter Ward and Robert McDonald, B.C. Historical Readings: 127-54.

30. FIELD TRIP: The Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria

Reading:

Gloria Jean Frank, "'That's My Dinner On Display': A First Nations Reflection On Museum Culture," BC Studies, 125 (Spring/Summer 2000): 163-78.
Alan Hoover, "A Response to Gloria Frank;" and Wendy Wickwire, "A Response to Allan Hoover," BC Studies, 128 (Winter 2000/2001): 65-74.

31. SEMINAR #8 : Geddes, Sailing Home.

UNIT IV: THE MODERN ERA

32. The Best and Worst of Times, 1914-1945

33. The Politics of Polarization: Making Sense of B.C. Politics, 1945-Present

Reading:

Terry Morley, "Politics as Theatre: Paradox and Complexity in British Columbia," Journal of Canadian Studies, 25 (1990).

34. VIDEOS: B.C. Times: "Coming of Age, 1959-1986," (1996) [24 minutes]; "Millennium Approaches, 1986-1996" (1996) [24 minutes]

35. SEMINAR #9 : VANCOUVER AND SOCIAL HISTORY

Readings:

Robert Campbell, "Managing the Marginal: Regulating and Negotiating Decency in Vancouver's Beer Parlours, 1925-1954," Labour/Le Travail, 44 (1999): 109-28.
Robert A.J. McDonald, "'Holy Retreat' or 'Practical Breathing Spot'?: Class Perceptions of Vancouver's Stanley Park, 1910-1913," Canadian Historical Review (1984).

VIDEO: "Skid Row" -- A 1956 documentary made by CBC that examines Vancouver's downtown eastside

36. Engine Fires on the Coquihalla Highway: Geography, Transportation, and B.C. History

Reading:

Cole Harris, "The Struggle With Distance," in Cole Harris, Resettlement of British Columbia: Essays on Colonialism and Geographical Change.

37. "Don't Make A Wave": Of Greenpeace, Clayoquot Sound, and the Environmentalism in British Columbia from World War II to the Present

Reading:

D. Salazar and D.K. Alper, "Beyond the Politics of Left and Right: Beliefs and Values of Environmental Activists in B.C.," B.C. Studies, 121 (1999): 5-34.

38. We're Still Here: Settler-First Nations Relations, 1914-Present

39. Of Pig Wars and NAFTA: British Columbia-American Relations, 1846-Present

Reading:

Robin Fisher, "Indian Warfare and Two Frontiers: A Comparison of British Columbia and Washington Territory During the Early Years of Settlement," Pacific Historical Review, 50 (1981): 31-51.

40. "Lotus Land?": Struggles For A B.C. Identity

Reading:

Douglas Cole, "Leisure, Taste and Tradition in British Columbia," in Pacific Province: A History of British Columbia (1996): 344-81.

41. COURSE WRAP-UP

USEFUL WEB-SITES

THE BRITISH COLUMBIA ARCHIVES: The home-page for the provincial archives, an excellent starting place for focused research or browsing about the past.
THE BRITISH COLUMBIA ARCHIVES AMAZING TIME MACHINE: A provincial site designed for children that is well worth visiting.
THE BRITISH COLUMBIA ARCHIVAL INFORMATION NETWORK: A Web portal maintained by the Archives Association of British Columbia.
BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS ONLINE : Links to photograph databases and galleries maintained by the Archives Association of B.C.
BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORY INTERNET WEB SITE: A portal to B.C. History web-sites compiled by David Mattison. This is an indispensable guide for anyone interested in B.C.'s past.
: A superb virtual exhibition.
: The City of Victoria archives.