001 - How to Build a Time Machine

Midden - The Archivists

What Vancouver might have looked like approximately 18,000 years ago. At the end of the last ice age the region—and much of Canada—was locked beneath two-to-three kilometres of glacial ice.

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Welcome to The Archivists Podcast! It’s a place to unravel the DNA of locations by connecting with the people who have lived there. On today’s episode we discuss the origins of The Archivists, the early days of developing our interview format, and how we’ve used this interview format to travel back and forth through time.

Image: What Vancouver might have looked like approximately 18,000 years ago. At the end of the last ice age the region—and much of Canada—was locked beneath two-to-three kilometres of glacial ice.

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Our Research Drawer:

We’ve included a few items with this podcast episode from our initial research phase. We posted these items on social media over the past week because they all represent a stage of our process where the project began to coalesce.

1876: The New Westminster District

Image Credits:

Source: The City of Vancouver Archives

Reference: AM1594-: MAP 2

Item : MAP 2 - Map of New Westminster District, B.C. : Hon. Forbes G. Vernon, Chief Com. Lands & Works

New Westminster was once the capital of British Columbia and what is now known as Vancouver was referred to then as the “New Westminster District’. It’s also the place where we began unraveling the DNA of this project in 2012… Whether we knew it or not. This discovery arrived through a little help from Denim & Steel, The River Market, and The Network Hub … Whether they know it or not.

Image Credits:

Source: The City of Vancouver Archives

Reference: AM1594-: MAP 2

Item : MAP 2 - Map of New Westminster District, B.C. : Hon. Forbes G. Vernon, Chief Com. Lands & Works

1886: Fickle Colonialism and Restless Place-naming

Image Credits:

Source: The City of Vancouver Archives

Reference: AM54-S4-: Dist P8.2

Item : Dist P8.2 - [View of Granville looking west from Westminster Avenue (Main Street) and Oppenheimer (Cordova) Street]

Colonial place names had a restless life, sometimes moving around before settling down as lasting designations.

Take the name Granville. Before this area became what we now know as Vancouver it was informally called Gastown, then officially incorporated as Granville. The new name had a brief life before it was changed, again. But it could still be found on early survey maps, as the "Granville Government Reserve." The access to this reserve was along a track, called the Hastings-Granville Road. Trouble is, this “road” was nowhere near the present-day Granville Street. It was only later that city fathers agreed on the location and name of one of the city's most important commercial and transit corridors.

Location: Looking West from Westminster Avenue (Current day Main Street) at Oppenheimer (Cordova) Street

Image Credits:

Source: The City of Vancouver Archives

Reference: AM54-S4-: Dist P8.2

Item : Dist P8.2 - [View of Granville looking west from Westminster Avenue (Main Street) and Oppenheimer (Cordova) Street]

1907: The ‘University Endowment Act’ and UBC Point Grey Campus

Image Credits:

Source: City of Vancouver Archive

Reference: COV-S397---: LEG1362.03

Item : LEG1362.03 - Spanish Bank port terminals, foreshore at Point Grey, B.C. : lands applied for and staked for development, 1909-19

Before the University of British Columbia (UBC), there were nearly a dozen indigenous villages scattered along the shores of what we call Point Grey. Before that, the Musqueam people named the point of land Ulksen.

Before two theological colleges were built up on the bluff, there were orchard farms, and farther to the east, a government endowment land set aside as the future home of UBC. But early on there were competing visions for such a prime piece of real estate. Had development winds shifted a bit, the whole area might have turned into a port terminal. For a while it was touch and go.

Work on the university eventually got underway, then stalled with the outbreak of World War I. The fate of the site went into limbo until 1922, when 1,200 students, demanding action, sent a petition to government and marched from their makeshift campus up the hill to Point Grey. That protest became known as the Great Trek.

Image Credits:

Source: City of Vancouver Archive

Reference: COV-S397---: LEG1362.03

Item : LEG1362.03 - Spanish Bank port terminals, foreshore at Point Grey, B.C. : lands applied for and staked for development, 1909-19

1922: UBC students needing a new home take to the streets over government delays

Image Credits:

University of British Columbia Archives, Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library [UBC 1.1/1315]

By 1925, UBC’s new Science Building was opened and students got a taste of real classrooms, no longer crammed into the legendary “Chemistry Tent” at the make-do campus in Fairview. It could be argued that drafty, cold and wet learning conditions fuelled a protest over government’s failure to restart construction at the fledgling university’s new home on Point Grey. The students sent a petition to Victoria in 1922, then 1,200 went on a march, later dubbed the “Great Trek.” They hiked up the hill to the un-finished buildings and “swarmed” the shuttered construction site. Their action nudged things along, and in short order work was restarted.

Today, that original facility fronting on Main Mall is the gem of a sprawling multi-building and multi-era science complex that occupies an entire block at the university’s heart.

The building’s “Collegiate Gothic” design likely appealed to politicians and academics, because of the strong allusions to venerable institutions of higher learning back east and in Britain. The structure sports a granite facade, copper scuppers and downspouts, leaded windows, and corridors with detailed brickwork and woodwork. Only two buildings at UBC were completed in this neo-gothic style before more contemporary, and less expensive, designs and construction methods became popular.

Image Credits:

University of British Columbia Archives, Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library [UBC 1.1/1315]

1878-1970: Yeah, we like Vancouver’s first archivist, a man who was more than his uniform

Image Credits:

Source: City of Vancouver Archive

Reference: AM54-S4-: Port P11.5

Item : Port P11.5 - [Major James Skitt Matthews, V.D., 6th Regiment D.C.O.R.]

Major James Skitt Matthews was called lots of things during his life, and after: colourful, controversial, irritating, a military hero, entrepreneur and romantic, single-minded, a man of great intellectual curiosity, a compiler of invaluable historical material and a junk collector. Vancouver’s first archivist was all of those things. And it’s because he was all those things that we like him.

In 1924, after retiring from his scow and tug business, Matthews started a collection that would, over time, become Vancouver’s impressive archival collection. The venture had a modest start in his home. When that space filled up, he talked the mayor and council into giving him space in city hall’s attic.

The Major’s vision was fueled by a curiosity about parts of the city’s early history that most residents did not share. He threw a wide net and interviewed people who, from our 21st century vantage point, were marginalized by the cultural norms of the day. It’s because of his often ornery determination we have an account of Coast Salish elder August Jack Khatsalano’s life, and other glimpses into near forgotten moments of early Vancouver.

Today, you can’t put a price on what Matthews’ collected. His interviews and accumulated stories helps us weave a more nuanced, multi-voiced narrative about our city’s past.

Image Credits:

Source: City of Vancouver Archive

Reference: AM54-S4-: Port P11.5

Item : Port P11.5 - [Major James Skitt Matthews, V.D., 6th Regiment D.C.O.R.]

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Additional Resources:

• ‘Conversations with Khatsahlano, 1932-1954’, Major J. S. Matthews
• Paper delivered at the Copeland Colloquium, Amerst College, April 1980, ‘Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference’, Audre Lorde
• Point Grey Pre-University (Pre-1890), Emma Spenner Norman
• ‘Trek 01’, “The Great Trek: The student pilgrimage that came to define a university”, Chris Hives