Quercus virginiana : degrees of separation

Vol.36,No.2(2010)

Theresa Kishkan

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/105058

PDF
Abstract
Charles Frederic Newcombe was a doctor, field ethnologist, and naturalist who arrived in Victoria, B.C. in 1889. As well as becoming B.C.'s first psychiatrist, he was a prolific collector of coastal First Nations artifacts for many North American museums; his acquisitions eventually formed the aboriginal collections for the Royal British Columbia Museum. As a child living in Victoria, I was taken with my Brownie pack to the home of an elderly man who had many Native artefacts. He lived on the Dallas Road waterfront. Years later I wondered who he was; I hoped he might have been Charles Newcombe or his son William, also a noted ethnologist. In "Quercus virginiana: Degrees of Separation," I attempt to find my way back to that house, to determine how much of my memory can be trusted, and to consider the ways in which the city of my birth and early childhood changed and didn't change. During my investigations, I discovered that another house I had known in my childhood, where I watched an ancient man at work on a totem pole, and had believed then to have existed in Thunderbird Park since the beginnings of time, was in fact an "authentic replica of a Kwakiutl house of the nineteenth century." This discovery contains a series of paradoxes, both territorial and cultural, which proves that nothing is as permanent as change and the shifting boundaries of how we remember the past. Using some archival materials, photographic and textual, the essay mediates between history and memory, the aboriginal context of the place that became Victoria and the colonial reinvention of that place.

Keywords:
autobiography; Charles Frederick Newcombe; trees; memory; Aboriginal peoples; Victoria; British Columbia

Pages:
81–99
References

Chaster, G. D., D. W. Ross and W. H. Warren (1988) Trees of Greater Victoria: A Heritage. Victoria, B.C.: Heritage Tree Book Society.

Cole, Douglas (1985) Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Duff, Wilson (1963) Thunderbird Park. Victoria, B.C.: B.C. Government Travel Bureau. Franklin, Douglas and Martin Segger (1996) Exploring Victoria's Architecture. Victoria, B.C.: Sono Nis Press.

Hare, Jan and Jean Barman (2006) Good Intentions Gone Awry: Emma Crosby and the Methodist Mission on the Northwest Coast. Vancouver, B.C.: University of British Columbia Press.

' Loss to British Columbia'. British Colonist. 1 November 1903. 3 January 2010. < http://www.britishcolonist.ca/display.php?issue=19031101>.

Jacknis, Ira (1990) ' Authenticity and the Mungo Martin House, Victoria, B.C.: Visual and Verbal Sources'. Arctic Anthropology 27(2), 1–12.

Nuytten, Phil (1982) The Totem Carvers: Charlie James, Ellen Neel, and Mungo Martin. Vancouver, B.C.: Panorama Publications.

Pliny the Elder (1991) Natural History: A Selection. London: Penguin Books. Ringuette, Janis (2004) Beacon Hill Park History, 1842–2009. 3 January 2010. < http://www.beaconhillparkhistory.org>.

' Canadian Aboriginal Artefacts'. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 13 January 2010. < http://www.kew.org/collections/ecbot/collections/region/canadian-aboriginal-artefacts/index.html>.

Swanton, John R (1979) The Indians of the Southeastern United States. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.

' The Quarantined Ship and Passengers'. British Colonist. 15 June 1872. 3 January 2010. < http://www.britishcolonist.ca/display.php?issue=18720615>.

Turner, Nancy J. (1999) ' Where Has All the Clover Gone? A Tribute to B.C. Botanist T.C. Brayshaw'. Botanical Electronic News (226). 5 January 2010. < http://www.ou.edu/cas/botany-micro/ben/ben226.html>.

Ward, Robin (1996) Echoes of Empire: Victoria and Its Remarkable Buildings. Madeira Park, B.C.: Harbour Publishing.

Metrics

6

Views

0

PDF views

PDF