1062 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

here is a perspective to read complete with video.  from sam sullivan.  

 

https://www.vancouve...allpox-bc-1862/

 

talks about how every single esquimalt and songhees member was spared small pox - zero deaths - in large part due to douglas having doctor helmcken inoculate over 500 local natives.  many if not most northern natives refused inoculations.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 14 October 2019 - 06:40 AM.

[Sparky]

Are you really that uneducated about a major event in BC history?

 

There's solid evidence local authorities deliberately spread smallpox among south island First Nations and then spread it into the interior. If that's not genocide I don't know what is.

 

Yes.

 

I look forward to reading about the solid evidence. 

[Sparky]

^^

 

"Governor James Douglas “recommended instant measures be adopted”, including reinstating quarantine of ships. The elected assembly refused. Douglas met with 30 local native leaders to convince them of the threat. With their support, 500 local native people were inoculated by Dr John Helmcken. The local Songhees and Esquimalt would be relatively unscathed. Douglas and Helmcken then sent vaccine around the province. A doctor spent a month vaccinating indigenous people along the Fraser and Nicola Rivers which Douglas reimbursed. A priest vaccinated dozens of communities in the Fraser Valley.

 

Anti Douglas settlers spread rumours that Douglas wanted to infect aboriginal people with blankets. This accusation continues today. It should be noted that Douglas had an aboriginal wife and children. The Germ Theory of Disease was only then being developed by Louis Pasteur. Most people believed smallpox was caused by bad air. The smallpox virus dies within 24 hours at room temperature with the relative humidity of Victoria.

 

Reverend Alexander Garrett and his assistant were the only ones to provide aid to the camp of Northern First Nations outside of Victoria. He lamented that “ they refused with few exceptions to be vaccinated”. Newspaper editor Amor De Cosmos, the champion of the Chinese Head Tax, criticized Douglas often for allowing native people to live near Victoria and in one editorial he accused the Governor of putting the City at risk. Later that day, while Douglas was in New Westminster, the police towed the Northerners to the ocean and sent them home. Many had smallpox and their return would create cascades of misery and death. Haida oral tradition recorded in Raven’s Cry credits Douglas for his efforts to prevent infection."

[amor de cosmos]

Chief Coun. Marilyn Slett of the Heiltsuk Nation says it's hard to put into words the excitement and emotion she feels at Sunday's opening of the first ceremonial Big House in the territory in modern history.

The last Big House in the First Nation's territory along the B.C. coast was destroyed 120 years ago and the community has been planning and fundraising to build a new one for decades.

The opening means the community now has an appropriate space for spiritual and ceremonial events like potlatches and the naming of babies, which had previously been held in a community centre, she said.

"It feels great, it feels surreal, it feels sometimes like a dream," Slett said in an interview.

https://www.cbc.ca/n...emony-1.5320212

[spanky123]

Yes.

 

I look forward to reading about the solid evidence. 

 

According to the History channel, there was only ever one documented case of the British discussing using blankets with smallpox and that was out East. Even then, there is no evidence that it was actually carried out or that it would have even worked if it was.

 

https://www.history....allpox-blankets

[Rob Randall]

This feature story by Don Wipond of Focus magazine is a good overview of the topic of the deliberate spread of smallpox in BC.

 

https://focusonline.ca/node/413

[Rob Randall]

Basically it boils down to a change in BC laws that encouraged settlement of "unoccupied" land. A 1862 trip through various stops in the interior by a party of officials shortly after the arrival of "patient zero" at Victoria coincided with smallpox outbreaks in those villages. 

[Victoria Watcher]

As the Cowichan tell it, before the arrival of Europeans it was they who commanded the Salish Sea. From their homelands in the modern-day Cowichan Valley, Cowichan canoes regularly crossed the Strait of Georgia to push ashore at what is now Vancouver International Airport, Steveston and Point Roberts.

 

“We were the most powerful tribe on the southern coast of what is now called British Columbia. We were the undisputed rulers of our territory,” reads the website of the Duncan-based Cowichan Tribes, B.C.’s largest First Nation.

 

 

 

 

https://capnews.ca/c...1b756-119762929

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 15 October 2019 - 05:25 AM.

[Sparky]

There was more than one smallpox decimation of indigenous peoples on the west coast. Here is what Captain Vancouver found on his arrival some 70 years before the outbreak that the San Francisco miner brought to town.

“Everywhere they looked, there were corpses. Abandoned, overgrown villages were littered with skulls; whole sections of coastline strewn with bleached, decayed bodies.”

https://nationalpost...-of-a-holocaust

Here is my favourite read on the topic buy a UVic student that addresses some of the theories proposed by Swanky as well as others. It’s a good read...and it’s only 40 some odd pages.

https://www.uvic.ca/...cAulay 2017.pdf

“Tom Swanky has argued a radically different interpretation of the epidemic: that it was a genocide perpetrated deliberately by the Douglas government in collusion with a group of land speculators, including Doctor Helmcken. He asserts that smallpox was deliberately introduced from San Francisco, and that once the infected passenger landed he was conducted directly to the Songhees village in order to spread the disease there.”

[Rob Randall]

That Cowichan history is one hell of a story. The oral histories of the people that were there as children are fascinating. I had no idea the Cowichan had a Fraser River connection. 

 

There was more than one smallpox decimation of indigenous peoples on the west coast. Here is what Captain Vancouver found on his arrival some 70 years before the outbreak that the San Francisco miner brought to town.

“Everywhere they looked, there were corpses. Abandoned, overgrown villages were littered with skulls; whole sections of coastline strewn with bleached, decayed bodies.”

https://nationalpost...-of-a-holocaust

Here is my favourite read on the topic buy a UVic student that addresses some of the theories proposed by Swanky as well as others. It’s a good read...and it’s only 40 some odd pages.

https://www.uvic.ca/...cAulay 2017.pdf

“Tom Swanky has argued a radically different interpretation of the epidemic: that it was a genocide perpetrated deliberately by the Douglas government in collusion with a group of land speculators, including Doctor Helmcken. He asserts that smallpox was deliberately introduced from San Francisco, and that once the infected passenger landed he was conducted directly to the Songhees village in order to spread the disease there.”

 

There are some people that think Swanky is a bit ahead of his skis on this. That's why I linked Wipond's article. There's also a BC Bookworld review worth reading if you're interested. 

 

The fact that the colonial records from the period covering the Jim Taylor excursion into the interior are missing from Victoria, Ottawa and London remains very suspicious.

 

Page 3 of the June 13, 1864 Colonist has the Alfred Waddington allegations. That the account is contemporary (within a few months, anyway) is compelling. It could be false but you have to admit at that time there was a huge incentive to speed up the smallpox epidemic to unlock the settler's land claims.

 

https://archive.org/...p/search/taylor

 

Irony alert: Waddington died in Ottawa of smallpox.

Edited by Rob Randall, 15 October 2019 - 06:37 PM.

[amor de cosmos]

NANAIMO, BC: Behind every sustainable, thriving community is the guiding hand of a land manager tasked with balancing the needs of the people who live there with what needs to be done to ensure resources are protected for future generations.

Thanks to the expertise of Vancouver Island University’s (VIU’s) Master of Community Planning (MCP) program and the University’s extensive relationships with First Nations communities, Indigenous land managers will have access to professional training that was previously only available in Saskatchewan and Ontario.

The National Aboriginal Lands Managers Association (NALMA) has chosen VIU to deliver the first level of the Professional Lands Management Certification Program (PLMCP). The program ensures Indigenous land managers gain knowledge, stay current in the field and adhere to a professional code of ethics. VIU is the third institution to offer this training: the University of Saskatchewan and Algoma University in Ontario also deliver Level One training. Level Two is delivered by NALMA.

http://www.firstnati...-first-nations/

[Matt R.]

Chef Rich Francis is doing a chefs table luncheon as part of Cornucopia in Whistler next month. He’s pretty hot right now.

https://whistlercorn...is-from-the-red

Matt.

[Rob Randall]

Drawn From Poverty: Art Was Supposed to Save Canada’s Inuit. It Hasn’t.

Indigenous work is all the rage in the Canadian art world. But life in the North is as much a struggle as ever.

 

Hours before flying off to her debut show in Toronto, Ooloosie Saila, a rising star in the Canadian art world, was hiding in her grandmother’s room on the frozen edge of the Arctic Ocean, cowering in fear.

 

Between her and the future stood the man in the next room, a relative who was drunk and raging — again. She perched on the bed, terrified he would burst in. Then, she packed in a frenzy.

 

She threw the hand-sewn outfit she had chosen for the opening into a plastic garbage bag, pulled her two young sons out of bed, grabbed her art supplies and fled into the frigid night.

Four days and 1,425 miles found Ms. Saila at the Feheley Fine Arts gallery in Toronto, where the crowd sipped wine and gushed over her “bold use” of color and negative space.

 

 

If you don't want to read the paywalled article, the author has highlights and comments on her Twitter feed:

 

https://twitter.com/...774814788378624

 

It was enlightening experience for me as Canadian. We consider selves northern nation, but few of us go north - not only because it’s sunnier in Florida. The cost is prohibitive. I went to Cape Dorset 3 times for this story, and each trip cost $3,000 Cdn in airfare alone.  Plus, the only hotel in town charges $315 Cdn a night.

I expected that the hamlet’s history of art-making, since it was founded in the 1950s, would have shielded it from some of the north’s sad statistics. That’s not the case. Instead, Cape Dorset is among the poorest and most violent in the territory.

Edited by Rob Randall, 24 October 2019 - 03:17 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

now read some highlights of the 1400-person community this artist is from:

 

A handful of unnamed dirt/gravel roads (unpaved because of winter conditions) cross the village but do not connect beyond Cape Dorset. Cars and trucks are the main means of transportation and supplemented by snowmobiles and ATVs (all-terrain vehicles) during the winter. The people use boats and ships for seasonal travel to and from Cape Dorset when the Hudson Strait is ice-free. A taxi company, Tuniit Taxis, offer a range of vehicles.

 

 

The only secondary school in town, Peter Pitseolak School (PPS), was destroyed by fire set by three youths in September 2015.^[12]

Sam Pudlat School is the community's only elementary school; it has enrollment of 227 students. Attendance is good at the elementary school but quite poor at the high school.

 

 

The Fire Department is staffed by 25 volunteers and a pumper at a single fire hall. There is a lack of fire hydrants in the town, so each run has to be filled up at the water station.

Medical facilities are basic at the Community Health Centre with four beds.^{[citation needed]} Advanced medical care requires an airlift to the Qikiqtani General Hospital in Iqaluit. There is no ambulance in the town. Qualified doctors visit only occasionally. There is a taxi service but it is not consistently reliable.

 

 

No new family dwellings have been built in more than 10 years, so houses are overcrowded with as many as 17 people living in small quarters. TB or tuberculosis is active in the town. This is made more acutely dangerous as the overcrowding continues.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia...iki/Cape_Dorset

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 24 October 2019 - 03:34 PM.

[amor de cosmos]

For the first time in 73 years, the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation will hold a potlatch.

With the help of neighbouring nations, the Lheidli T'enneh are preparing to revive the tradition Nov. 29 in Prince George, B.C.

Traditionally, potlatch, or Balhats, was a spiritual and cultural ceremony integral to governing, sharing wealth and strengthening clans.

Fundamental to some Indigenous cultures, the potlatch was banned by Canada for more than half a century. It was a criminal offence to take part in a potlatch feast.

https://www.cbc.ca/n...eorge-1.5342833

[Jackerbie]

Not south island, but over on the mainland the Squamish FN (which is located in North Van, not Squamish) has revealed plans to develop the remnant of their downtown Vancouver reserve lands, which is at the foot of the Burrard Bridge. Planning for 3,000 units, most of which will be rental.

 

Kits is now scrambling with demands to be consulted, but Squamish FN effectively has a "get out of jail free" card, as the usual planning regulations don't apply on the reserve land I believe. Pockets of Kits are currently fighting against a 5 storey apartment which will "drop the ghetto" in the middle of "one of the treasures of the city." Quote via https://vancouversun...ng-in-vancouver

 

 

 

https://dailyhive.co...-vancouver-2019

 

Behind a Globe & Mail paywall unfortunately, but more details and some concept rendering for the 11 tower redevelopment have been posted. Notably, it has doubled in size from 3,000 to 6,000 units. The plan is still to offer the majority of units as rental apartments.

 

 

via https://www.theglobe..._medium=twitter (paywall)

Edited by Jackerbie, 05 November 2019 - 09:05 AM.

[Nparker]

High-rise Planet of the Apes architecture.

[Jackerbie]

More images skimmed from Twitter:

 

 

[Mike K.]

What in the world...

[Jackerbie]

High-rise Planet of the Apes architecture.

 

What in the world...

 

It's very Singapore meets Oakridge Centre