Context: Nanaimo, Gabriola, history

Citations: Jean Barman, Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past, SHALE 8, pp.16–26, June 2004.

Copyright restrictions: Copyright © 2004: Gabriola Historical & Museum Society. For reproduction permission e-mail: [email protected]

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Date posted: May 14, 2014.

Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past Dr. Jean Barman

This is an adapted version of a talk presented to the BC Historical Federation Annual Conference in Nanaimo in May 2004 and it is reproduced here with the kind permission of the conference host, the Nanaimo Historical Society.

In my general history of British Columbia, directions. Most often we use our present- written over ten years ago now, I noted day understandings as our vehicle for briefly the Hudson’s Bay Company’s moving back in time. Far less often do we (HBC’s) relocation of their coal mining head in the other direction by taking the past operations from Fort Rupert at the north end on its own terms. When we do so, we are of Vancouver Island to Nanaimo in likely to encounter a lot of diversions and November 1852.1 I then went on to perhaps some dead ends. In other words, populate Nanaimo with the miners while the present leads rather easily into the remaining from the failed Fort Rupert past, or rather into the particular past toward enterprise, and with “some two dozen others which we choose to head, going from the and their families brought out from “actual” past to the present is a far more England” two years later on the Princess difficult undertaking Royal. When we dare to take back the past on its There are twenty or so subsequent own terms, we may well discover, in the references to Nanaimo in my book, all of much repeated opening lines of British which relate to the mining economy, and to writer Lesley P. Hartley’s novel The Go- the coalminers’ struggle for better working Between, published in 1953, that “the past is conditions. This is of course a topic that is a foreign country, they do things differently very pertinent to the labour relations and [there].” political climate in British Columbia today. The history of Nanaimo, or for that matter of What I had done was to construct any other community in British Columbia, Nanaimo’s history from a modern is, I suspect, not so neat and tidy as we perspective. would like, once we examine it as it was What I have since come to realize, and what rather than as we would have it be. Looked I want to explore here, is that the danger in at in this light, there are, I think, two this approach is that we may lose some important aspects of Nanaimo’s early aspects of the past, simply because they do history that may have faded from view—an not accord with our present-day interests. I excess of tradition and the erasure of am increasingly convinced that we need to diversity. take back the past as it was, not as we would By an excess of tradition, I mean that the have it be. We need to learn to drive in two societal values the Princess Royal families

1 brought with them from England were so Jean Barman, The West beyond the West: A firmly held that they became, over time, History of British Columbia, rev. ed., University of more of a hindrance than a help to their Toronto Press, p.55, 1995.

16 SHALE No.8 June 2004 Jean Barman Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past making their way in the new world. By Colville Town as it was named by the erasure of diversity, I mean that difference, H.B.Co. was about one hundred and twenty- particularly racial difference, was much five composed of Whites, French Canadians, more present in Nanaimo than the blip at the Iroquois, Kanakas [Hawaiians], and half beginning it is usually made out to be. Breeds, a motley crowd.”3 Each of these two propositions—an excess In this view of the past, written as we of tradition and the erasure of diversity— perhaps would like to see it unfold from the may sound contentious, but please bear with perspective of the present day, the Nanaimo me as I try to make my case. Bayley evoked was already giving way to another way of life on the model we Early Nanaimo associate with settler societies. The only element of diversity generally recognized as Early Nanaimo is usually conceived, as I continuing was Chinese miners. summarized in The West beyond the West, as Discriminatory attitudes toward them are having two stages. First the HBC; then the well known, as is their material legacy in Princess Royal. As Richard Mackie Nanaimo’s Chinatowns. reminds us in his book, Trading beyond the Mountains, by the middle of the century the What was celebrated from Nanaimo’s first HBC had long since diversified away from years, as is still proclaimed on the Nanaimo furs—they were “beyond the mere traffic in Museum website, was the “birth of the first peltries.”2 white girl, Margaret” to the McGregors on March 16, 1853, and then “the first white The HBC began mining coal at Fort Rupert boy born in Nanaimo,” Alexander in 1849 to supply Royal Navy ships plying 4 Dunsmuir, shortly after on June 2. These the Pacific coast. Three years later, mining first white children came from among the operations were moved to Nanaimo for a families who had arrived on earlier vessels variety of reasons including the higher bringing white women, as well as men, to quality of coal to be found there; disputes this distant corner of North America. with the northern Natives over who actually owned the coal; and the HBC’s The excess of tradition inexperienced and inept management of their first coal mining venture. The seminal moment for early Nanaimo is most often considered to be the arrival in It is generally accepted that the people of November 1854 of the Princess Royal. It Nanaimo were from many different was part of the agreement made in 1849 backgrounds up until the arrival of the between the HBC and the British miners and their families on the Princess government that, in return for proprietorial Royal in November 1854. Aboriginal rights to Vancouver Island, the HBC would people played a role in both the discovery of undertake to establish a settlement of the coal and its extraction in the early days. resident colonists. It was also in the The first school teacher, young Charles interests of the company to promote long- Bayley, recorded how, on his arrival in 1853, “the population of Nanaimo or 3 Charles Bayley, Early Life on Vancouver Island,

2 6−7, typescript in BC Archives (BCA), E/B/B34.2. Vancouver: University of British Columbia (UBC) 4 Press, 1997. [email protected]

SHALE No.8 June 2004 17 Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past Jean Barman term stability. Accordingly, the HBC An excess of tradition had very real recruited intact mining families in Britain. consequences for the second and subsequent Twenty-three men, twenty of them with generations. Thanks to Peggy Nicholls’ wives and over half with children, came on meticulous research on the Princess Royal the Princess Royal in 1854 to become, in the families, it is possible to get a fairly good words of early British Columbia’s leading sense of their priorities for their offspring.8 chroniclers G.P.V. and Helen B. Akrigg, It was assumed daughters would marry “the true founders of Nanaimo”.5 While young, and that sons would go to work even some of the arrivals briefly chased other younger. opportunities, in particular the riches to be The forty-two daughters of the first had from gold, none of them returned home. generation who can be followed into As one early resident enthused, “not one of marriage in the Nanaimo area wed between the passengers who came out on the 12 and 27 years of age. Some of the latter Princess Royal, and who were entitled to a were held back by virtue of having, as said return passage, in terms of their engagement, 6 about one of them, “to sew and to help care embraced the opportunity to go back.” for the seven babies that followed her”.9 Rather, the Princess Royal contingent put Even so, seven out of every ten daughters their backs to the task. Faced with Charles were wed by the time they were 18 years Bayley’s “motley crowd,” they had to old. scramble for authority, and perhaps for that Sons followed their fathers into the pits. reason may have scrambled doubly hard to While I do not have overall data, Peggy assert a way of life that was familiar to them Nicholls’ examples argue that they did so at from their lives in England. As John an early age, much as they would have in Belshaw argues in his recent book on England had they stayed there. The Ganner Vancouver Island coalfields, “the miners’ family arrived with two sons, to quote from identity as miners went beyond the business the correspondence prior to their departure, of work and was something that the miners 7 “aged respectively abt. 13 and 11 [who] themselves were engaged in fashioning.” have worked in the mines for some two or The priority given to recruiting mining three years”.10 Similarly, 10-y e a r -old John families of good character almost ensured Hawkes went to work underground in 1863, that they would seek to retain familiar ways. coupling coal cars to be hauled by mules to They followed these ways so fully in their the sorting bins.11 His friend, John Meakin, new setting that tradition became a trap. was given the same task a year later on

5 8 G.P.V. Akrigg and Helen B. Akrigg, British Peggy Nicholls, From the Black Country to Columbia Chronicle 1847−1871, vol. 2, p.78, Nanaimo 1854, 5 volumes, Nanaimo Historical Discovery Press, 1977. I am grateful to Barrie Society, 1991−95. Humphrey for alerting me to this reference. 9 6 Amanda Meakin in Nicholls, From the Black Mark Bate, Closing Chapters of History of Country…, 5, 1995. Nanaimo, Nanaimo Free Press (NFP), 18 May 1907. 10 7 Ganner family in Nicholls, From the Black John Belshaw, Colonization and Community: The Country…, 4, 1994. Vancouver Island Coalfield and the Making of the 11 British Columbian Working Class, McGill-Queen’s John Hawkes in Nicholls, From the Black University Press, p.212, 2002. Country…, 3, 1993.

18 SHALE No.8 June 2004 Jean Barman Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past reaching the age of 11,12 as was George the past seriously, on its own terms, we Sage in 1865 at the age of 10.13 quickly discover that this was not the case, Sam Thompson, who went to work in 1868, certainly not in a community like Nanaimo may have begun at the even younger age of bound to the traditions whence families 9 because his first job was to load coal cars came. The trap that tradition became for his father. Unlike the others, who earned precluded Nanaimo offspring from taking 75¢ for an eight-hour day, Sam recalled advantage of a public good intended to serve receiving only board and pocket money.14 all young British Columbians. Because another Princess Royal son, George Nanaimo families’ attitudes were evident Bevilockway, was considered a particularly from early on. The first head of education in good student, his entry into the mines was the province, John Robson, noted how on delayed until the age of 14 in 1871. He the day he visited the Nanaimo school in confirmed the worth of his additional 1872, just 11 boys and 16 girls were present schooling by soon becoming an assistant whereas the community likely contained manager.15 about 175 children of school age. Numbers If sons went to work young, they did not gradually rose, but twice as fast for girls, necessarily immediately follow their sisters and Robson noted somewhat wryly two years later how “there are probably as many into marriage. They tended to wait awhile. 16 The twenty-five sons who can be traced boys as girls in the town.” from the Princess Royal contingent wed The adherence to tradition gave Nanaimo between 20 and 37 years of age. Only half children little motivation either to go to of them were married by their mid-20s. school or to behave while there. Robson’s Once ingrained, the force of tradition was report from the mid-1870s read: “When the hard to break in Nanaimo. Attitudes toward school was visited, the senior classes in both schooling make the case. The new province departments were little advanced in their studies. The boys were noisy and of British Columbia created in 1871 was 17 determined to give children equality of disorderly.” Robson was well aware of the opportunity by making education free and reason. “A disposition on the part of many non-denominational. Viewed from the parents to send their children into ‘the pit’ at perspective of the present day, it seems an early age is exercising a prejudicial almost taken for granted that families would influence on the rising generation by make use of the opportunity. When we take depriving them of the advantages of free school education.”18

12 Cases of "truancy" were especially high in John Meakin in Nicholls, From the Black Nanaimo. In 1880-81, for example, 23 cases Country…, 5, 1995. were reported in the provincial capital of 13 George Sage in Nicholls, From the Black Victoria among 310 enrolled boys, whereas Country…, 4, 1994. Nanaimo recorded 70 cases among 148 14 Samuel Thompson in Pearl C. Reynolds, 60-Year- 16 Old Photograph Awakens Memories of Early Department of Education (DoEd.), Annual Report Nanaimo, Vancouver Sun, 25, Magazine, March 25 1874: 17. 1944. 17 15 DoEd., Annual Report 1876: 94. George Bevilockway in Nicholls, From the Black 18 Country…, 3, 1993. DoEd., Annual Report 1876: 94.

SHALE No.8 June 2004 19 Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past Jean Barman boys.19 The relative proportions were one support themselves or assist their parents.”23 for every sixteen boys in Victoria; one for In the late 1880s, growing racism led to every two boys in Nanaimo. Chinese miners being prohibited from In 1876, written examinations were held for working underground. The school inspector admission into the new public high school lamented the consequence. “Owing to the established in Victoria, the first in the exclusion of Chinese from the mines, a great province. Whereas 54 out of 70 Victoria many of our boys left school to fill their places, and consequently deprived us of students who took the exam passed, not one 24 of the 26 who sat for it in Nanaimo did so. some of our best material.” The high The average score was 277 in Victoria, 139 school by this time contained 9 boys and 16 in the other principal city of New girls, whereas Nanaimo's elementary schools Westminster, just 53 in Nanaimo.20 A y e a r enrolled 430 children. later no one from Nanaimo even bothered to The only change came from the outside in sit the high-school entrance examination. the form of provincial regulations raising the The head of the provincial system again entry age for mining. The earliest restricted despaired: “It is a difficult matter to raise boys under 14 from working underground and maintain a high standard of attainment except with special ministerial permission. in the senior division [of the elementary Only after the turn of the century were boys school in Nanaimo] in consequence of under 14 completely banned from the pits. pupils being withdrawn from school at a Even then they could still do clerical work much earlier age than they ought to be. above ground. A school official Parents should not under any consideration admonished Nanaimo parents at length in send their children into the mines, or give 1893: “The great inducements held out to them employment above ground, till the boys of thirteen to fifteen years of age to before mentioned examination has been work in the coal mines naturally draws a creditably passed.21 Over time, some large number from the school every year, Nanaimo boys did sit for the exam, but very and place the senior divisions at a great rarely did the few who passed then bother to disadvantage. You will notice, by the list of go on to high school.22 pupils, quite a number of the boys of the age above mentioned have gone to work, thus In 1886, a high school finally opened in carrying off the material that should go to Nanaimo itself. Attitudes toward it the High School.”25 demonstrate the full extent to which the traditions put in place by the first generation This excess of tradition had unintended still held firm. Just twelve pupils enrolled. consequences. By the time Nanaimo parents The problem lay, school authorities realized the value of schooling, the damage explained, in many being “engaged in was done from the perspective of provincial pursuits by which they were enabled to authorities. Helen Brown has written about the enormous efforts made in Nanaimo during the 1890s to improve the quality of 19 DoEd., Annual Report 1881: 270-71.

20 23 DoEd., Annual Report 1876: 128. DoEd., Annual Report 1886: 144-45. 21 24 DoEd., Annual Report 1877: 19. DoEd., Annual Report 1888: 199. 22 25 DoEd., Annual Report 1885: 313. DoEd., Annual Report 1893: 542.

20 SHALE No.8 June 2004 Jean Barman Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past schooling, but by then no one much was on that basis inherently superior, they listening.26 Provincial officials had looked down on persons with darker skin despaired, among the consequences being tones. Aboriginal people were to be large class size. Nanaimo’s growth in disparaged, all others who were perceived as population exacerbated the situation. less white belittled. If not physically Fifty, sixty, and more pupils were crammed removed, they were at the least to be erased into a single classroom. The only solution, from view. the board decided in 1899, lay in having This perspective comes through loud and “one half of these divisions attend school in clear in the recollections of one of the morning and one half in the afternoon.”27 Nanaimo’s most prominent early residents, Near the end of the year, sixty elementary Mark Bate, who arrived in 1857 at the age of children were moved into the high school 20 on a subsequent voyage of the Princess building, which was still being underused.28 Royal. Within a dozen years Bate was By this time some secondary education had manager of the Vancouver Coal Mining and become the norm in urban areas of British Land Company, which in 1862 bought out Columbia, but not in Nanaimo. the Hudson’s Bay Company. As well as Peggy Nicholls suggests, astutely, that one running the company employing most of the factors eventually moderating the Nanaimo residents, Bate was mayor for situation would be local teachers from much of the time between 1876 and the end Nanaimo, who understood the familial and of the century. His reminiscences, published job pressures being put on students.29 in 1907, provide one of the most graphic portraits to survive of early Nanaimo. They The erasure of diversity give us unusual insight into how the dominant view of its history was constructed Not only an excess of tradition, but the by the men who had put themselves in erasure of diversity were fundamental charge. aspects of early Nanaimo’s history. Mark Bate’s perspective on diversity has Virtually all of the men and women who put two components. The first is his themselves in charge of settler society on determination to reduce the perceived Vancouver Island and across British contribution of the HBC employees who had Columbia shared similar attitudes toward built Nanaimo, quite literally, into diversity. Seeing themselves as white, and something of little consequence. Exemplary is his view of Narcisse Montigny, an HBC 26 Helen Brown, Binaries, Boundaries, and employee who arrived in Nanaimo in 1854 Hierarchies: The Special Relations of City Schooling or 1855. According to Bate, “Montigny was in Nanaimo, British Columbia, unpublished Ph.D. an Axeman who supplied the Poles for dissertation, UBC, 1999. House building, etc. etc. He was an 27 Nanaimo School Board, Minutes, meeting of 2 uncouth, gruff, customer, who used to have September 1899, also 2 December 1899, Nanaimo lively times with the Iroquois, and others of Archives (NA). his Tillicums. He left Nanaimo in 1858 for 28 30 Nanaimo School Board, Minutes, meeting of 28 Fort Hope.” Bate’s very visible sigh of December 1899, NA.

29 30 Peggy Nicholls, conversation with the author, Mark Bate, The Men Who Helped to Build 7 May 2004. Nanaimo, NFP, 26 March 1907.

SHALE No.8 June 2004 21 Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past Jean Barman relief that such persons departed and could number of Indian women were employed thereby be erased from Nanaimo’s history is carrying clay” to build the dam running the even more evident in his description of three first sawmill.35 Bate was especially Iroquois he names as Lazaar Oreasta, Tomo laudatory in his description of early work Sakiowatti, and Louis Oteekorie who, in his processes. “Coal was conveyed in canoes words, “left Nanaimo prior to the for shipment…thrown into a lighter made termination of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fast alongside a vessel, thence hoisted or regime.” 31 While acknowledging the shoveled on board. In this work of contribution of the trio, and also of their conveyance, the Indian women, as well as fellow Iroquois Tomo Aumtony to city the men were engaged—the former, as a building, just as he did with rule, earning the most wages, or goods.” 36

French Canadians, he emphasizes how But Bate’s recognition of Indian women Sakiowatti, for instance, was “a rather wild, went only so far. As with his need to erase quarrelsome fellow” who “was often mixed 32 the HBC link, he was determined to hide up with drunken carousals and brawls.” from view another aspect of Nanaimo’s Mark Bate took great pride how, in the first early history. A long time gender imbalance census taken in February 1857, all of the in the newcomer population across British 132 persons counted as living in Nanaimo Columbia encouraged relationships between were English, Scotch, and Irish, “excepting” Aboriginal women and newcomer men. The 5 Iroquois, 2 each French Canadians and 1857 census of Nanaimo counted 58 males,

Hawaiians, and 1 Norwegian.33 21 females, and 54 children. There were, in other words, 2 ½ men in the newcomer The second linked component of Bate’s population for every woman.37 The erasure of diversity relates to his attitude situation did not much change. In 1870 toward Aboriginal people. Bate sharply there were 395 newcomer men compared to differentiated between men and women 34 206 women, or twice as many men as among the “250 S’nenymos” who, women.38 Through the end of the nineteenth according to his calculations, lived in century British Columbia as a whole Nanaimo in the 1850s. counted two to three newcomer men for Aboriginal women Bate considered useful to every newcomer woman. city building, noting, for instance, how “a Mark Bate, like most of his contemporaries, would have none of this. The unions which 31 Mark Bate, The Men Who…, 1907. numerous men, in Nanaimo as elsewhere, 32 formed with Aboriginal women simply did Mark Bate, The Men Who…, 1907. To be fair to not exist, from his perspective. In his Bate, many of his observations echoed those of HBC published recollections, Bate gave wives to officials, as caught in their correspondence and journals. Bate had possession of the Nanaimo journal 35 at the time he penned his reminiscence. See Mark Bate, The Men Who…, 1907. Foreward to Nanaimo Journal, August 1855−March 36 1857, BCA, A/C/20.1/N15.2; and Nanaimo Mark Bate, Mr. M. Bate, Continues His Nanaimo Correspondence, 1852−53, BCA, A/C/20.1/N15. Reminiscences, NFP, 16 February 1907. 33 37 Mark Bate, Closing Chapters…, 1907. Mark Bate, Closing Chapters…, 1907. 34 38 Mark Bate, Reminiscences of Early Nanaimo G.P.V. and Helen B. Akrigg, British Columbia Days, NFP, 9 February 1907. Chronicle…, p.404, 1977.

22 SHALE No.8 June 2004 Jean Barman Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past all but one of the Princess Royal contingent erased Stove’s Aboriginal wife, just as he and to four other men who came out on did with the others. earlier vessels. These women he described The only person to get an acknowledgment in glowing terms. They were “faithful,”39 “a 40 from Bate as having a family by an good mother, a good house manager” “a Aboriginal woman was for the purpose of kind-hearted, generous woman who 41 ridicule. A Welsh miner named Thomas delighted in ‘doing a good turn’”. They Jones is described as “a run-away military were all white women. man from Uncle Sam’s domain” who died in In sharp contrast, at least three Englishmen, 1864 and “was father, by the way, of three from the Orkneys in northern Scotland, Azariah Jones, known in town as the a Welshman, a couple of French Canadians, ‘Dummy’”.45 and a couple of Iroquois who Bate mentions Bate effectively erased Aboriginal women at length, were described as if they were from the history of Nanaimo. They could wifeless when in reality they had Aboriginal 42 not, almost by definition, be faithful wives, wives. Bate could be enormously or indeed wives at all. What is absolutely flattering about these men. He characterizes clear is that the Nanaimo Mark Bate and Englishman William Sampson as building others erased did not disappear. Diversity up “a valuable Estate” on Saltspring Island, 43 was, rather, lost from view in the but as if he did so all by himself. With determination of the Princess Royal James Stove from the Orkneys, who contingent and others to construct the remained in Nanaimo, Bate described how Nanaimo of their aspirations. he, “with much steady, persevering labour, made himself a home there which is today, An early glimpse of the diversity that with its alluringly pleasant surroundings, as marked Nanaimo comes from February pretty a spot as one could wish for.”44 Bate 1860, when a Victoria newspaper reported that an Aboriginal girl aged 12, who had 39 Mark Bate, Sketch of Geo. Baker And Other supposedly “already been the victim of a Pioneers, NFP, 6 April 1907; also The History of the white man’s passions under the guise of Early Nanaimo Settlers, NFP, 4 May 1907. keeping house for him,” was found dead in 40 the home of a Nanaimo man named Mark Bate, More Sketches of old Time 46 Nanaimoites, NFP, 13 April 1907. Weston. Not only was she discovered 41 there, the article claimed that Weston’s Mark Bate, Sketch of Geo.…, 1907. “Indian woman” had been feeding the dead 42 Isbister Orkneys girl liquor in order to secure her 47 Martin English “possession” by another man. Bate S a m p s o n English recalled William Weston, almost certainly Stove Orkneys the same man, only as “the village Fortier French Canadian Paley Orkneys Iroquois a couple Jones Welsh 45 Monigny French Canadians Mark Bate, Closing Chapters…, 1907. Weston English 43 46 Mark Bate, The Men Who…., 1907. Information from Bruce Watson’s biographical 44 dictionary in process, used with permission. Mark Bate, How Chase River Came by Its Name, 47 NFP, 30 March 1907. To the Editor, Victoria Gazette, 22 February 1860.

SHALE No.8 June 2004 23 Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past Jean Barman

Constable, Nanaimo’s first ‘bobby’”.48 For all of the attempts to ridicule and Clearly, Bate kept in contact with Weston, discourage such relationships, they for he described his death a couple of years persisted. The gender differential within the before Bate wrote in 1907. newcomer population virtually ensured that Another glimpse comes from a decade and a only some of the men at work in the mines half later, December 1876, when the British would find marital partners of similar Columbia Reserve Commission visited the backgrounds to themselves. The relatively Nanaimo area to confirm Indian reserves. older ages at which Princess Royal sons As Cole Harris documents in Making Native married than did their sisters testify to the Space, the commission’s principal goal was paucity of marriageable young women. to free up as much of the province as Girls as young as 12 were routinely courted, possible for newcomer settlement.49 Thus, and sometimes persuaded into wedlock. not unexpectedly, the three commissioners Numerous men working in Nanaimo opted first consulted with Mark Bate in his dual for Aboriginal women. Hawaiians and capacities as mayor and manager of the Iroquois did so as a matter of course, but so town’s principal employer, the Vancouver did at least four dozen English, Scots, Coal Company. The commissioners next French Canadian, and others who, in the met with local Indian chiefs, when, to quote language of the time, were white. The from the commission’s report, “the evils of records of Nanaimo’s St. Paul’s Anglican concubinage of their young women with the Church, Ebenezer Methodist Church, and St. white men around were specifically pointed Peter’s Catholic Church make it possible to out.” 50 trace marriages, as do colonial and The commissioners almost certainly provincial records. Because of their admonished the Indian chiefs at Bate’s survival, we gain an appreciation of how request, given no similar lecture was given men did not so much seek to prostitute to chiefs anywhere else on Vancouver Island women for the short term, as with the or on the lower mainland. In other words, Weston incident, but sought them out as life Bate was well aware of the diversity he was partners through church-sanctioned determined to erase and sought, via the marriages. commission, to persuade Aboriginal men to Some men persevered in Nanaimo, likely stamp it out through prohibiting their repeatedly made conscious of the way in daughters from taking newcomer husbands. which they had diverged from the accepted We can also glimpse the erasure of diversity life course. As just one example, 16-y e a r - from the perspective of the men themselves. old Orkney Islander James Malcolm was among the first group of prospective miners

48 brought to Fort Rupert in 1851 then Mark Bate, Interesting Early Nanaimo History, NFP, 11 May 1907. transferred to Nanaimo in November 1852. 49 Within the year he was living with a local UBC Press, 2002. Native woman named Emma. Their first 50 Alex C Anderson and Archibald McKinlay, Report child together was born at precisely the of the proceedings of the Joint Commission for the same time as the Dunsmuir son hailed even settlement of the Indian Reserves in the Province of today as the first “white” boy. The HBC’s British Columbia, Victoria, 21 March 1877, in head at Nanaimo informed his superior, Department of Indian Affairs, RG 10, vol. 3645, file 7936, C10113. James Douglas in July 1853: “Two births

24 SHALE No.8 June 2004 Jean Barman Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past have occurred in this Establishment since preponderance of early settlers fit both the Cadboro sailed in the cases of Mrs. categories.54 The first pre-emptor was Dunsmuir and the native wife of John Nanaimo carpenter Alexander McFarlane in Malcolm, labourer.”51 James Malcolm January 1863. He was followed two months married Emma in Ebenezer Methodist later by two and likely three Nanaimo Church in 1861. The Malcolms’ eight miners, Richard Chapple, Thomas Degnen, children suffered the consequences of and Thomas McGuffie, and over the next diversity, as with the Nanaimo school several years by at least a dozen men who, teacher’s equation in 1880 of the Malcolm like their predecessors, had families by sons’ behaviour with their skin tones. “The Aboriginal women. Some of these men Malcolms are half-breeds and it is more lived on Gabriola prior to taking up land, difficult to deal with them as they are not and numerous of them commuted to work in looked after at home and they take the other Nanaimo mines as they attempted to make boys away from school with them.”52 Given their Gabriola holdings self-supporting. the high rates of truancy in Nanaimo, it Other men with Aboriginal wives took other seems likely that the Malcolm sons were courses of action. Saltspring Island attracted only participating in a general phenomenon. a larger group of men with families by Numerous men responded imaginatively by Aboriginal women, including onetime erasing themselves. From 1859 it was Nanaimo resident Henry Sampson. Other possible to take up land on Vancouver men sought out an island of their own. Joe Island and the nearby Gulf Islands by Silvey pre-empted smaller Reid Island north marking out up to 160 acres, registering the of Saltspring. Although Portuguese Joe, as claim, taking up residence, and then paying he was known, never lived in Nanaimo, for a relatively small sum once the land was him, as for many other islanders, it was their surveyed. While Nanaimo was given over market town. For many years, Joe sold there to coal mining, nearby islands beckoned, the oil from dogfish he caught for use in including Gabriola Island, just three miles miners’ lamps.55 (five kilometres) away. By losing themselves from view, families on The men who settled Gabriola were islands gained greater opportunities to certainly not all from Nanaimo, nor did they manage their children’s upbringing. In the all have Aboriginal wives. But, at the same case of Gabriola, parents repeatedly made time, as June Lewis-Harrison describes in clear the value they attached to the school. her book, The People of Gabriola,53 and as I In 1874, the provincial head, John Jessop, detailed a couple of years ago in the described how there were “thirteen children Gabriola history journal SHALE, a in attendance, all half-breeds.”56 The designation was not, however, nearly as 51 Joseph William McKay to James Douglas, 54 Nanaimo, July 17, 1853, in Nanaimo Jean Barman, Island sanctuaries--Early mixed Correspondence. race settlement on Gabriola and nearby coastal 52 islands, SHALE 2, 5-14, March 2001. John Mundell, teacher at Nanaimo, to C.C. 55 McKenzie, Superintendent of Education, Nanaimo, See Jean Barman, The Remarkable Adventures of 18 March 1880, in BC Superintendent of Education, Portuguese Joe Silvey, Raincoast Monographs 1 Inward Correspondence, BCARS, GR 1445. Madeira Park: Harbour, 2004. 53 56 Frieson & Sons, 1982. Jessop Diary, BCA, GR 1468, 8 October 1874.

SHALE No.8 June 2004 25 Lost Nanaimo—taking back our past Jean Barman judgmental as it might have been in All of these actions become comprehensible Nanaimo, for the superintendent found much once we take the past on its own terms. An to praise. “Second class reading & spelling excess of tradition caused Nanaimo families very good—All in first Reader last spring— to lose sight of the opportunities formal First Reading Class making fair education might offer their children. improvement…Children orderly & well Families marked by diversity were both behaved & making good progress.”57 Jessop erased by others and erased themselves. enthused how “Parents also (in great The direction in which families headed, contrast with other districts) are much whether in Nanaimo or on islands like interested in the school and careful to keep 58 Gabriola, did not necessarily lead down a up the attendance.” Unlike Nanaimo, straight road to the present day. As Helen parents took control of the school to the Brown has so well demonstrated, Nanaimo extent of complaining bitterly, a few years families had to work very hard during and later, about a teacher who did not meet their after the 1890s to join the educational expectations. As to the reason, the mainstream from the divergent path they had superintendent noted how he “Heard chosen for themselves in earlier years. In complaints of parents respecting the non- 59 similar fashion, it was only as negative improvement of their children.” Gabriola attitudes toward race moderated in the parents saw in the school the best possibility dominant society in the later twentieth for their children to acquire skills permitting century that families who hid themselves them to negotiate their diversity. away on islands, whether it be Gabriola, the Saltspring and Russell Islands of Maria Lessons learned Mahoi,60 or the Reid Island of Portuguese The very different attitude of Gabriola and Joe Silvey, could comfortably take pride in Nanaimo families toward the principal state their distinctive identities. institution of the day, the public school, By treating history, not as a reflection of makes little sense so long as we persist in ourselves, but as a foreign country, we viewing the past from the perspective of the acquire a greater appreciation of why it is present day. It is very hard to understand that individuals acted as they did. We need why parents would not take advantage of the to learn to drive in two directions. By doing opportunity for free education. Staying in so, we can take back the past on its own school a year or two longer would not have terms to discover that, yes, they did do lost Nanaimo daughters a husband, or sons a things differently there. ◊ job in the mines. It is equally difficult to comprehend why parents on Gabriola erased themselves from view rather than fighting for their rights, in line with today’s priorities. It does appear that, yes, the past is a foreign country.

57 Jessop Diary, 8 October 1874. 58 Jessop Diary, 23 March 1874. 60 See Jean Barman, Maria Mahoi of the Islands, 59 Jessop Diary, 11 February 1878. New Star, 2004.

26 SHALE No.8 June 2004