journal of the british columbia historical federation · 2013. 7. 30. · british columbia...

BRITISH COLUMBIAHISTORICAL NEWSJournal of the British Columbia Historical Federation

Volume 36, No. 2Spring2003

$5.00ISSN 1195-8294

Above: Port Essington on the Skeena. Page 6.

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ENCLOSED: subscriptionforms for (1) the PrinceGeorge conference, (2) freeworkshops prior to theconference, and (3) a free daytour to Fort St. James followingthe conference.

Murdered by a scab

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Summers on the Skeena

BC Tree Fruits challenged

A significant inspector of fisheries

The Orpheum celebrates 75 years

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BRITISH COLUMBIAHISTORICAL NEWS

Journal of the British Columbia Histor ical Federation

Volume 36, No. 2Spring 2003

$5.00ISSN 1195-8294

1BC HISTORICAL NEWS - SPRING 2003

“Any country worthy of a future should be interested in its past.”W. Kaye Lamb, 1937

2 A Working Man’s Dream: The Life of Frank Rogersby Janet Mary Nicol

6 My Skeena Childhoodby Eileen Sutherland

14 Was John Meares BC’s Most Successful Real Estate Agent?by John Crosse

16 A Palace of Entertainment:Vancouver’s Orpheum turns Seventy-Fiveby Chuck Davis

21 We Can’t Dispose of our Own Crop: Challenges to BCTree Fruits and the Single Desk Marketing Systemby Christopher Garrish

26 The Demolition of the BC Archivesby Reuben Ware

28 Alexander Caulfield AndersonAn Ideal First Inspector of Fisheriesby Rod N. Palmer

32 BOOK REVIEWS38 REPORTS

Peter Corley-Smith by Robert D. TurnerBC Sudies Conference by R.A.J. (Bob) McDonaldLardo vs. Lardeau by Greg Nesteroff

40 ARCHIVES AND ARCHIVISTSSchool Archives Program in Mission BC by Valerie Billesberger

41 STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND by Ted AffleckThe Saga of the Sternwheeler Enterprise

42 TOKEN HISTORY by Ronald GreeneThe British Columbia $10 and $20 Coins

43 WEB-SITE FORAYS by Christopher Garrish

44 FEDERATION NEWS

WANTED

The British Columbia Historical Federa-tion is looking for a volunteer to takeover as editor of BC Historical News start-ing in September.

Previous editing experience could helpbut more essential are interest in localhistory, sustained dedication, and a lot ofenergy and enthusiasm.

It’s the editor who creates the journal,sets its standards, and decides its contents.The editor needs imagination, judgement,vision, and the courage to make deci-sions.

This is a challenging task but also a re-warding and unique learning opportunity.

Interested? Call Editor Fred Braches formore information at 604.462.8942, orsend an e-mail:

KEEP YOUR SUBMISSIONS COMING &YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS UP TO DATE

Yes, there are uncertainties around theeditorship but that should not causeanyone to hesitate submitting manu-scr ipts for future publication, norshould anyone hesitate to extend theirsubscription.

We know that there will be a succesor.We only don’t know yet who it willbe. I am confident that a new editorwill be selected long before the fall,but I invite you, our readers, to helpfinding more canditates.

If you think that someone would beinterested or could be the one to dothe job, please let me know. Don’t bebashful submitting your own name.

Suggestions, enquir ies, and applica-tions will be kept confidential.

the editor

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BC HISTORICAL NEWS - VOL. 36 NO. 22

ON 18 April 1903, as a heavy rain fell, thelongshoremen’s union led more thaneight hundred mourners to the old citycemetery above the blue inlet and overlookingmountains around Vancouver. They came to buryunion organizer Frank Rogers, placing an anchor-shaped wreath with the word “martyr” inscribedat his grave. The funeral was the largest gatheringof trade unionists the city had experienced. Rogerswas only thirty years old when he was shot late atnight on a waterfront picket line a few blocksfrom his rented room. He died two days later inhospital. A strikebreaker hired by the CanadianPacific Railway was arrested for his murder butlater acquitted in court. Rogers’s murder remainsunsolved.

Many aspects of Frank Rogers’s life are a mys-tery. No photos exist of him, and details of hispersonal life are sketchy though his exploits as aunion organizer made the front pages of localnewspapers. His next of kin are not recorded inofficial documents and his funeral, which was paidfor by union members, was not attended by fam-ily.

Rogers immigrated from Scotland to theUnited States as a young man. He was a seamanin the American navy and merchant service. In1897 he followed hundreds of eager male adven-turers to Vancouver, most en route to the Klondikein the last great gold rush of the continent’s his-tory. Rogers chose to stay in the city, moving inand out of rented rooms in its oldest section,Gastown, and working seasonally at the BurrardInlet docks. Over the next six years Rogers helpedbuild the longshoremen, fishermen, and railwayunions. He appeared like a shooting star to thecity’s labour movement; his entrance coincidingwith a burst of new organizing and his death fol-lowed by its temporary collapse.

The working port attracted a diverse and un-conventional group of labourers: “all of that breedof men the world nails to its crosses,” observed ananonymous writer in a March 1911 British Co-lumbia Magazine article. These workers includingFrench, Swedes, Punjabis, Asians, and First Na-tions, “knew the harbor and its ships as a subur-

A Working Man’s Dream

This spring marks the100th anniversary of thedeath of labour organizerFrank Rogers

by Janet Mary Nicol

Janet Mary Nicol is ateacher, writer, andformer union organizer,living in Vancouver.

banite knows the houses on his own street.”Longshoremen formed a union in 1888 and hadbeen on strike ten times by the century’s turn, yettheir basic rights were far from assured. It was thisworld Rogers first entered at age 24.

A fedora shading his eyes, Rogers walked towork, we can imagine, along a wood-plankedsidewalk, dressed in grey pants with wide suspend-ers and a long-sleeved white shirt. Passing hotelsaloons, shooting galleries, and warehouses, heturned off Gore Street, crossed the CPR tracksand joined a long queue of men standing on thewharf beside a moored sailing ship. The head ste-vedore selected men for the day’s work at 35 centsan hour. If Rogers made the cut, he fell in withthe chosen gang, unloading cargo from the ship’shold, ropes and pulleys creaking. A foreman’s whis-tle directed the gang’s movements. The Alhambrahotel saloon, situated in Gastown’s oldest brickstructure still known as the Byrnes Block, was apopular place for waterfront workers after a ten-hour shift. Surely Rogers would be there, leaningagainst its bar, holding a beer, and talking union.

Longshoremen moved exotic, difficult, and dan-gerous cargo. They unloaded bales of silk off shipsfrom Asia to train cars heading for New York. Twoworkers were needed to lift a single sack of sugar.“There were a lot of men who couldn’t stand upto that kind of work,” according to retired steve-dore Harry Walter in an oral account, “Man Alongthe Shore.” “[Sugar] was worse than lead and leadwas tough too.” Handling sulphur could be haz-ardous and so was exposure to dust from wheat.“A lot of grain boys died from that wheat,” re-tired longshoremen Frank McKenzie remem-bered. “Used to use handkerchiefs around theirmouths and nose[s].”

“At first we had nothing,” Axel Nymen recalledof his time in the longshoremen’s union. “It was aship side pick.” The foremen arbitrarily selectedmen for a day’s work and assigned tasks unevenly.“We had a union with the general cargo people,”Alex said, “but it all went haywire when they shotthe president of the Fishermen’s Union [FrankRogers].”

SOURCESBOOKSArmitage, Doreen. Burrard

Inlet, a History. (MadeiraPark: Harbour Publishing,2001).

Bennett, William. Builders ofBritish Columbia.(Vancouver: BroadwayPrinters, 1937)

Griffiths, Hal. The EarlyPeople’s History.(Vancouver: TribunePublishing Company,1958).

Griffiths, Hal and G. North.A Ripple, a Wave: The Storyof Union Organization inthe BC Fishing Industry.(Vancouver: FishermenPublishing Society, 1974).

International Longshoremen’sand Warehousemen’sUnion, ILWU Local 500.Man Along the Shore: TheStory of the VancouverWaterfront, As Told By theLongshoremen Themselves,1860s-1975. (Vancouver:n.p., 1968).

The Life of Frank Rogers


Mike Vidulich was a young fisherman whenhe met Frank Rogers on the picket line in 1900.He described him to labour historian Hal Griffithsas “stocky” and “quite short but broad in the shoul-ders, with a strong, open face and dark hair be-ginning to grey at the sides.” “He was a goodspeaker, but quiet, not like Will MacClain [an-other strike leader] who used to shout and stormwhen he spoke,” Vidulich recalled. “Rogers wasan organizer, one of the best the fishermen everhad. The canners could never buy him.” Vidulichsaid Rogers wasn’t ambitious for himself but com-mitted to the rights of the rank-and-file workers.“He believed in unions and socialism,” he said.

Cannery employers took a different view, call-ing Rogers an outside agitator and socialist fromthe United States who wasn’t even a fishermanby trade. But their accusations were no match fora socialist’s passion.

Rogers was hired by the Trades and Labor Con-gress of Canada in the winter of 1899 to organizethe Vancouver local of the BC Fishermen’s Un-ion. When the salmon season opened the follow-ing July, fishermen voted to strike against can-nery owners for union recognition and a uni-form price on fish at 25 cents each. Rogers helpedunite more than four thousand immigrant Euro-pean and Japanese as well as a few hundred FirstNations fishermen in seven union lodges along

the rivers and inlets of BC. An old farmhouseserved as key union headquarters in Steveston,then a distant village from Vancouver on the FraserRiver.

Rogers sensed which groups would withholdtheir labour, as reported in the Daily World: “Sec-retary Rogers said that there would be 1000 whitefishermen and all the old-time Japanese whowould not go out at all.” First Nations groupssupported the strike but the vast majority of re-cent Japanese immigrants, organized separately ina benevolent society, were less sure, knowing theyhad few employment options in a racially antago-nistic province dominated by citizens of Britishorigin. With the help of a translator, Rogersworked hard to convince Japanese fishermen towithdraw their labour.

During the first three weeks of picketing allwere united. Strikers in patrol boats carrying awhite flag with the number “25” in red, effec-tively cleared the Fraser River of strikebreakers.The canners in turn threatened to evict strikersin Steveston bunkhouses and withhold food. Theunion retaliated by organizing Vancouver shop-keepers to donate bread, potatoes, and tents. Japa-nese strikers were permitted limited fishing andthe union urged all citizens to purchase their catchas a show of support.

Jamieson, Stuart Marshall.Times of Trouble: LabourUnrest and IndustrialConflict in Canada, 1900-1966. (Ottawa:Information Canada,1968).

Leier, Mark. Red Flags andRed Tape: The Making of aLabour Bureaucracy.(Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1995).

Marlatt, Daphne, ed.Steveston Recollected, AJapanese-Canadian History.(Aural History, 1975).

McDonald, Robert A.J.Making Vancouver, 1863-1913. (Vancouver: UBCPress, 1996).

Phillips, Paul. No PowerGreater: A Century ofLabour in British Columbia.(Vancouver: BritishColumbia Federation ofLabour, 1967).

Working Lives Collective.Working Lives: Vancouver,1886-1986. (Vancouver:New Star Books, 1985).Newspapers

Left: Salmon Fishing onthe Lower Fraser. Rogershelped unite more thanfour thousand immigrantEuropean and Japanese aswell as a few hundred FirstNations fishermen in sevenunion lodges along therivers and inlets of BC.

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But on 20 July Japanese fishermen broke fromthe strike, agreeing to 20 cents a fish and return-ing to work. Asamatsu Murakami defended thisaction in the book Steveston Recollected, A Japa-nese-Canadian History. “We are settled fishermen,”he said, “and if we are left without any link withthe company, each family will be as helpless astroops without provisions.” Murakami said thosewho defied the union had their nets cut, sails torn,and their life threatened. “At 6 AM,” he recalled,“two white men came to the wharf and spoke toK. Maeda on his boat. He could not speak anyEnglish and they beat him up.”

The government agreed to call out the militiato protect the returning Japanese fishermen sothe canneries could re-open. This was the thirdtime in the province’s history the militia was usedin a labour dispute. It was likely no coincidencethat Rogers was arrested and jailed in Vancouverovernight on picket-related charges just beforethe militia arrived in Steveston on 22 July. As atestament to Rogers’s leadership, strikers were ata loss until he was released on bail the next dayand travelled the fifteen miles to Steveston by stagealong forest-lined Granville Street. The union stub-bornly continued negotiating for another weekdespite the show of force. They settled at 19 centsa fish and did not win union recognition, return-ing to work 30 July. Though their gains were in-tangible, for a short time a diverse group of workershad felt a collective strength. The union mem-bership elected Frank Rogers president.

No clues indicate a woman in Rogers’s life.Romance did find his political ally, WilliamMacClain. With Rogers’s help, MacClain was thefirst socialist to run (unsuccessfully) for office inBC in 1899. He married local woman Mary EllenDupont the same year. She volunteered byMacClain’s side as he helped lead the fishermen’sstrike—a role that cost him his job as a machinistwith the CPR. The couple left the province some-time after the dispute ended, possibly moving toMacClain’s previous residence in WashingtonState.

The next summer, union fishermen were readyto strike again. The canners pounced, arrestingRogers 12 July with eight other fishermen onpicket-related charges. The press noted with alarmsome of the accused men were well known in thecity and had families. Justice Drake was less sym-pathetic, calling all the strikers “thieves” and “rob-bers”, making special reference to one black andtwo Chilean strikers as “foreigners” not familiar

with “British ways.” While Rogers was in cus-tody the union settled and its members were backfishing 19 July, still without gaining union recog-nition.

Meanwhile, the Vancouver Trades and LabourCongress set up a defence fund and faithfullybrought food to the nine strikers in the NewWestminster county jail. Four months later all butRogers were tried, acquitted, and released fromtheir prison ordeal. Rogers was last to be let goon $10,000 bail with his trial held over to thenext spring, at which time charges were dropped.“I am going off for a week’s recreation now,” hetold a Daily World reporter after his release. Thereporter observed Rogers was as keen as ever inspeech but crunched up slightly in appearance. “Iam going to have a little sport shooting and thenshall come back to work here for the winter,”Rogers said.

Rogers returned to the rank and file of thelongshoremen’s union and kept a low public pro-file until the winter of 1903 when railway work-ers walked off the job 27 February after a clerkwas fired for organizing employees into the UnitedBrotherhood of Railway Employees. The CPRvowed to spend a million dollars to break thepicketers, employing special police and spies. Alsoundermining strikers were the railway craft un-ionists who refused to strike in support of lessskilled workers. But across western Canada, work-ers in other unions boycotted “scab” freight.Rogers helped organize a sympathy strike oflongshoremen as the dispute moved into spring.

The fateful night of 13 April began innocentlyenough. Rogers finished eating a late supper atBilly Williams’ Social Oyster and Coffee Houseand stepped out onto Cordova Street around 11:20PM, breathing in fresh night air cleansed by anearlier rainfall. Turning on Water Street, he metup with two acquaintances, also labourers, AntonioSaborino and Larry O’Neill. All were heading tonearby Gastown lodgings. As the trio approachedAbbott Street, they saw figures in the darkeneddistance beyond the railway tracks. Interested inthe CPR picket activity, the men decided to in-vestigate.

Less than an hour earlier a fist fight had oc-curred between CPR strikebreakers and strikers.The strikebreakers fled to the moored steamship,Yosemite, a makeshift sleeping quarter provided bythe CPR during the labour dispute. Two of thestrikebreakers had lost a hat and umbrella and werereturning to the tracks just as Rogers, O’Neill,

The British ColumbiaFederationist. VancouverTrade and Labor Council.(1911-1915).

The Independent.(Vancouver, 1900 -1903).

The Province. (Vancouver,1899 to 1903).

Vancouver Daily NewsAdvertiser. (Vancouver,1899-1903).

Vancouver Sun. (Vancouver,1978).

The Voice. (Winnipeg Tradeand Labor Council.1903).

Vancouver World. (Vancouver,1899 to 1903).

ARTICLESAnonymous, Picturesque

Vancouver, TheBeachcombers,Vancouver: BritishColumbia Magazine,March 1911, p. 206.

Griffin, Hal. The Story ofFrank Rogers, TheFisherman, 16 December1960, page 9.

Mouat, Jeremy. “FrankRogers”. (Directory ofCanadian Biography, 1901-1910, Vol. 13, pp. 889-890. University ofToronto Press, 1994).


and Saborino appeared. The men were accompa-nied by a pair of armed special police hired bythe CPR. Also in the vicinity was a lone strike-breaker in a small office shed, who spotted Rogersstanding near the tracks directly beneath a lightand pulled his gun. As shots rang out in the dark,the two special policemen responded by firingtheir guns several times.

Rogers was hit by a bullet almost immediatelyand fell to his knees. O’Neill and Saborino ranfor cover, then seeing Rogers fall, they rushed tohis aid and pulled him back to the street. Passersby helped them carrythe wounded Rogers tothe Great Western Ho-tel on Water Street.Rogers was laid out ona table until a hack ar-rived and he was drivento the old city hospitalat 530 Cambie.

Rogers survived thenight bandaged withthe bullet still lodged in his stomach. The nextmorning he told the police: “I did not have anytrouble or row with anyone that night, neitherdid Larry O’Neill, nor the other man who waswith me, that I know of. I do not know who shotme, but I think it must have been someone offthe Yosemite or some of the special police. I hadhad no trouble with anyone for some time past. Idid not see anyone else going down on to thewharf with us. When the shots were fired therewere others [people] who came running to theend of the street. I do not know where they camefrom.” Rogers told news reporters he would re-cover as he was young and strong. The doctorlater disclosed the wound was inoperable. Rogersdied the next afternoon, 15 April.

Members of the VTLC executive recognized“the high esteem in which the late brother washeld by organized labour in this city and that thecause has lost a useful and ardent worker and faith-ful champion of unionism.” They arranged a fu-neral service at the Labor Temple and burial atMountain View Cemetery. An anonymous “inti-mate friend” of Rogers told a Daily World reporter:“His was a daring soul, but he evidently was bornunder an ill-omened star, as he seemed to get intotrouble very early—and on a number of cases in-nocently.” And the editor of Winnipeg’s labournewspaper characterized Rogers as a “warm un-ionist.”

Tuesday night following the funeral, unionmembers and sympathizers crowded the old CityHall auditorium to protest Rogers’ murder. Speak-ers condemned the CPR and called on the gov-ernment to forbid employers from arming strike-breakers. The VTLC posted a $500 reward forRogers’ murderer.

Two CPR strikebreakers were charged. Onewas released and the other, James MacGregor, astrikebreaker brought in from Montreal by theCPR to work as a clerk, was tried three weeksafter the shooting in a New Westminster court.

Conviction dependedon a key witness, strike-breaker William F.Armstrong, who hadbeen one of the menreturning to the trackswith two special police.At the preliminaryhearing Armstrong tes-tified MacGregor ad-mitted to firing the fa-

tal shot from the office shed in the direction ofRogers. However at the trial, Armstrong changedpart of his testimony, which cast doubt on hisentire statement. MacGregor was acquitted by ajury 7 May, due to lack of evidence. A news re-porter observed the accused had not been theleast anxious throughout the trial. The CPR hadhired a top lawyer to defend MacGregor, and somesay the employer paid MacGregor to leave townafter the trial. The coroner’s report concludedRogers was “murdered by person or persons un-known.”

The union movement was outraged justice wasnot served. For a time, employers in the city heldthe upper hand and when the UBRE strike endedtwo months after Rogers’s death, the union failedto achieve recognition or employer guarantees tohire back strikers. Other unions involved in sym-pathy strikes were dismantled, including the long-shoremen’s.

Trade unionists acknowledge Frank Rogers’scontribution, hopeful the province’s first—but notlast—labour martyr will be remembered. In 1978a local labour history group placed a commemo-rative stone at Rogers’s grave. It reads, “FrankRogers / Murdered by a Scab / In Strike againstCPR / Died April 15, 1903 / Union Organizerand Socialist.” This epitaph tells us how Rogersdied. His life tells us what he dreamed for work-ing people.�

OTHER SOURCESDeath Certificate (Frank

Rogers); 1903/04/15;Age - 30, Reg.# 1903-09-119361, Microfilm #B13094 (GSU# 192712)

Henderson Directory ofVancouver. (1897-1903)

Marriage Certificate(William MacClain); 19August 1899, Vancouver.B11372, GSU# 1983529,1899-09-04611.

Ralston, Keith. “The 1900Strike of Fraser RiverSockeye SalmonFishermen.” (M.A. Thesis,University of BritishColumbia, 1965).

Vancouver Mountain ViewCemetery Records(Frank Rogers); recordsstate that Rogers died at30 years old, single, unionleader, American and that30 April 1978 acommemorative stonewas placed at his grave at33rd and Cambie; Home1, Range 2, Block 2, Plot18, Lot 11.

Vancouver Trade and LaborCouncil Minutes. See: 16April 1903. And 18February, and 18 August1904 where membersrefer to unpaid funeralbill.

Coroner’s Report, BCArchives, B2379, 46/03.Report by W.J.McGuigan, Coroner,dated 16 April 1903 statesin part, “Body wellnourished. Apparentlyaged thirty five.”

Jane

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THE Royal BC Museum in Victoria has aseries of displays commemorating the im-portant industries in BC—forestry, min-ing, and fishing. The fish cannery exhibit consistsof a small part of the processing line of a cannery,where the cans of salmon jiggle along on a con-veyor belt to have lids put on, and then go into asteamer box to be cooked and vacuum-sealed.The walls of the exhibit are rough boards, with afloor of planks. The designer could not replicatethe fishy smell, the slime on the floors, the colddraft that swept the whole building, and the con-stantly dripping water everywhere in an operat-ing cannery. However, for a visitor it is a goodindication of what an old cannery building hadlooked like. One wall of the exhibit has a smallwindow, and the painted “view” from it is of ariver, a couple of islands, and wooded hills be-yond: this was exactly the view over the SkeenaRiver from the windows of my childhood homein Port Essington.

In the early 1860s, Robert Cunningham, aformer missionary and Hudson’s Bay Companytrader, decided to start trading for himself. Thesite he chose was a historic Native camp called

Spokeshute (“a fall camping place”), where theEcstall River flows into the Skeena near its mouth.The upriver First Nations people came downeach year to meet and trade with the coastal tribes.Cunningham founded a settlement, which henamed Port Essington. He granted a portion ofthe land as a reserve for the First Nations people,in the hope they would stay and trade with him.The rest was divided into lots and sold to settlers.He built a store, and eventually a hotel and townhall, a cannery, a sawmill, and a sternwheelersteamship to carry goods and passengers upriver.A little town grew up with these structures at itscentre. In time, there were four churches, otherstores built by Japanese owners, and the cannerystores. Four canneries operated at one time, butonly one of them lasted into my childhood. Thiswas the Anglo-British Columbia Packing Com-pany (ABC), owned by the Bell-Irving family,who purchased the Skeena Commercial cannerywhen its own British American (BA) canneryburned down in 1926.

In its heyday, the turn of the century, Essingtonwas a lively, booming place, nicknamed the “Me-tropolis of the North.” The town stretched out a

My Skeena Childhoodby Eileen Sutherland

Right: At Port Essingtonthe Ecstall River (to theright) flows into theSkeena River.

Eileen Sutherland wasborn in Prince Rupert.She is interested in theauthor Jane Austen,social history, andarcheaology. From 1988to 1991 she waspresident of the JaneAusten Society ofNorth America(JASNA) and for 18years she was regionalco-ordinator of theVancouver group of theSociety.She has not been backto the Skeena fortwenty years or more,but still thinks of theNorth Coast as “home.”


couple of miles along the shores of the rivers.Since the land was mostly rock or muskeg, thestreets were boardwalks following the contoursof the land, built up on posts, sometimes ten totwenty feet high, other times just above theground. The “streets” were given pretentiousnames: Dufferin, Wellington, Lorne, and so on.There were several hotels by that time, a restau-rant, a pool room, a small hospital, and a perma-nent population of several hundred people. Inthe fishing season, this number more than dou-bled as fishermen and cannery crews arrived inearly spring.

It was in the winter, however, that most of thesocial events took place, as the people made theirown entertainment. House parties, dances at thetown hall, community concerts, a Christmas partyfor the children, and other amusements occu-pied almost everyone. At various times there werefour newspapers, but none lasted very long. Thetown was not incorporated, but a mayor andcouncil were elected (with great ceremony butno power); there was a parks commissioner, butno parks.

The coming of the Grand Trunk Pacific Rail-way just before the First World War was expectedto provide the final cap to Essington’s good for-tune. However, the ultimate decision sited therailway on the opposite side of the Skeena, andthe town’s prospects gradually diminished, asPrince Rupert became the major city of the northcoast.

By the time of my childhood, there was a var-ied ethnic population in the town. About halfthe “Indians” lived in permanent homes in thereserve area; the rest stayed in houses on the hillbehind the cannery for the fishing season, andreturned upriver to their home villages, Kispiox,Kitwanga, and Kitwancool, after Labour Day, forthe children to start school. The Chinese can-nery workers were contracted labour, with a“boss” who made all the decisions. They lived ina big dormitory building behind the cannery, withtheir own cook and mess hall. The Japanese weremainly men with families who lived in severaldifferent sections of town—around each store,and in neat rows of houses at our end of town. Ina small settlement ten minutes or so walk alongthe Ecstall River, a group of Finns had their homesand a steam bath hut. There was one Swedishand one Norwegian family, both with severalnear-grown up children, and quite a few familieswith British backgrounds. The “white” popula-

tion was divided between “town” and “cannery”and lived at opposite ends of the main street. Thesegroups did business with each other but didn’tget together much otherwise. There were nohousing restrictions in the town, but the groupskept distinctly to themselves, with no social mix-ing. I never heard of any fights, or racial slurs, orderogatory names. The segregation seemed to bevoluntary and mutually acceptable.

A few years after their marriage in 1917, mymother and father came to Essington, where Dadhad a job as bookkeeper at the ABC Packing Co.’sBA Cannery. They remained for over twenty years,at first year-round, when Dad had the job of care-taker during the winter months, and later, fromaround 1928, spending the winter in Vancouver,and the fishing season—about April to October—in Essington. I never went to school in Essington.My older brother Don was not doing well in thelocal one-room school. He and his special friendsdidn’t pay much attention and the teacher lackedstrong discipline. Mom and Dad decided to moveto Vancouver for good schooling for all of us. Wespent most of the year in Vancouver and the sum-mer in Essington—two entirely different waysof life. The boat trip north, at the end of May—Dad had gone earlier when the cannery opera-tions started—was like coming home, and wehappily took up our Essington amusements again.

Our house was built on the top of a little hill—a big, square, two-storey building made to seemeven larger by wide verandahs on front and side,and attached sheds and out-buildings at the backof one side. It looked down on the cannery prop-erty at the foot of the hill and beyond. The househad been built in the 1880s or 1890s for one ofthe cannery managers, and like the homes of allimportant people in town it was above and iso-

Above: Donald, Charlie,and Eileen Moore.

All photographs arefrom the author’scollection.


lated from all the others as much as possible.In our time the house was considered too big

and old-fashioned for the current manager, whochose instead the largest and highest of threehouses built on a hill behind the cannery build-ings. (The other two were occupied by the fore-man, Stan Kendall and his family, whose daugh-ter Fredda was my constant companion, and twobachelors, senior cannery employees). Our hillwas covered with tall evergreens, cedars, firs,spruce and hemlock, and densely overgrown withsalmonberry and blueberry bushes. A steep trailled down behind the house to the rocky shore ofthe Ecstall River, and one went down in anotherdirection to the Japanese houses below, and sev-eral floats for their boats. Fifty-two steps led upto the front entrance of the house. We went downthese stairs two at a time whenever we went out,and came up as fast as we could, but I could man-

age two at a time only part way up—and arrivedbreathless at the top.

There was just enough flat land at the top ofthe hill around the house for a small yard wherewe played—a bar for swinging and chinning our-selves, a heavy rope hanging from a large sprucetree, knotted at intervals for climbing and with abig loop at the end for swinging. Down the bankbehind the house (we always spoke of “down thebank” instead of “down the hill”), a long—30feet or more—rope was fastened high up one ofthe big trees near the water. There was a loop inthe end, and the boys could take the rope up thehill to a place where they could put one foot inthe loop, hang on tightly, push off, and swingaway out over the rock and the river, gradually“dying down” until they came to a stop at thefoot of the tree. It looked wonderful, but I wastoo scared to try it.

Right: Two “collectors”towing fishing boats to thefishing grounds.

Below: Panoramic view ofPort Essington lookingaccross the Skeena. TheABCP Co takes centrestage.

Path leading to the houses of the “Indians” Kishimoto store Boiler house

ABCP Co. cannery building and wharf.

Cannery mess house


On rainy days—and there were lots of them—the wide verandahs made excellent places to play.Mum had clothes lines strung on the side veran-dah, but we could ride kiddie-cars and tricyclesback and forth for hours, and play on swings hungfrom the ceiling.

Three bedrooms were upstairs, all with a mini-mum of furniture. The walls were covered in old,faded, and in some places water-stained papers,and the floors were a dark oiled wood, with abraided rag rug beside each bed. Both the up-stairs and downstairs hallways had wood-burn-ing stoves, but I don’t remember them ever lit.What I remember is the downstairs rooms keptwarm, and the halls and bedrooms cold. Dad hadcut a hole in the bathroom floor over the kitchenstove and boxed it in with boards and wire screens,which provided a constant source of warm air.

When the house had been built, it was thefashion to have a fairly small parlour and a muchlarger dining-room. In one corner of the living-room was a cast-iron stove with an open front,the metal equivalent of a fireplace. Shortly aftermy parents moved to Essington, they were vis-ited by Henry Bell-Irving, the head of the can-nery firm. Somehow the conversation turned tostoves or heating, and Mum happened to say howmuch she liked a real fireplace. In a few weeks,this open stove was sent up to her by Mr. Bell-Irving. We all enjoyed it. Almost every eveningwe sat around reading, watching the flames, andsoaking up the heat. The room was furnished witha small square table in the centre—great for pil-ing up books and newspapers (we were all avidreaders) or playing crib or other card games. Thetable was also necessary because it sat under thelow hanging gas light and prevented anyone walk-ing into the lamp. We had no electricity and thisgas light was our main light. We also had half adozen coal-oil lamps that we could carry fromroom to room, and upstairs to the bedrooms.

Essential repairs were done to the house, butnot much in the way of decoration. It was anideal home for a family with children. We didn’tdo any damage, but we didn’t have to be toocareful—there wasn’t much that could be bro-ken or damaged. My earliest memories are of pro-cessions around the house—my older brotherDon on a large tricycle, my other brother Charlieon a scooter, and myself on a small kiddy-car—around the table in the middle of the living room,into the dining room and around the table there

Left: The company store atthe end of the wharf. Onthe hill to the left is thehouse in which the authorlived with her family.

Bunkhouse for workers

BA netloft at the left wih the dark roof.

BA store and office


a couple of times, into the kitchen and to thepantry at the back, in one door and out the other,and then back to start again, with appropriateloud noises. All the time Mum was busy tryingto get a meal, or clean up. As we grew older, wechanged to larger or more complicated vehicles,but it was a delightful game that kept on for years.Charlie was less than two years older than I, butDon was six years older—he was soon off withhis own friends rather than playing at home withCharlie and me.

The kitchen at the back of the house was longand narrow, with a big black stove at the centre,literally and emotionally. Fuelled by wood andcoal, and later by oil, the fire was kept going al-most all the time, banked down at night. The fireheated the oven at one side, the “warming oven”at the top, and a tank of water beside the stove.When we came in cold and shivering, we stoodwith our backs against this warm tank or sat infront of the oven with the door open.

We had good meals, although the foods avail-able lacked variety. Almost all fruits and vegeta-bles came from cans, except fresh root vegeta-bles, and apples, oranges, and bananas. A coupleof times a week we had a piece of salmon fromthe cannery, poached and served with an eggsauce. Every Friday, a butcher from Rupertbrought meat to sell in Essington. We had norefrigeration, but a “cooler”—a box nailed to thenorth side of the house just outside one of thekitchen windows—kept things fairly cool. Mumbaked bread, cookies, gingerbread, and other

sweets; there was always dessert, often sliced or-anges and bananas, or apple cobbler. I could pickenough blueberries from the bushes on our hillin half an hour, whenever Mum asked for themand blueberry pudding was always a favourite.

We drank evaporated milk mixed with waterand were quite accustomed to its taste, until wemoved to Vancouver and tasted fresh milk. Thatturned us against canned milk a bit. We madedelicious cocoa with undiluted canned milk, andhad melted butter and brown sugar on our break-fast porridge instead of milk. For a year or two aJapanese farmer kept cows a short distance downthe Skeena River. He brought milk into town tosell, in pails hung from a yoke over his shoulders.But the cows grazed in a meadow with skunkcabbage, and the milk had a strange taste, so wereally preferred the canned.

Across the back end of the kitchen was thepantry, a long narrow section with two doors usu-ally standing open. At one end were the sink andwashtub; at the other was a wall of open shelvesfor dishes, small staples, pots and pans, and all theother necessities for cooking. In the middle wasa work table, and on the floor beside this wereseveral sacks of sugar, flour, oatmeal, etc. It was inthe pantry one day that a calamity occurred thatturned into a hilarious story passed on to ourchildren and grandchildren. Mum was busy withpreparations for the next meal. Charlie and I, inour pre-teens, were hanging around, putting intime. He began to boast how strong he was, howhe could lift…could lift…that sack of flour on

Right: The cannery end ofthe main street. Thewindows on the right arefrom Kameda’s store. To theleft is the post office andthe three buildings behindare probably bunkhousesfor Japanese workers.


the pantry floor. It was probably 25 pounds, andI promptly said he couldn’t do it. He marchedover, grabbed the sack firmly around the middleand, giving a great heave, triumphantly put it overhis shoulder.

What we didn’t know was that the flour sackhad been opened, and the top edge folded backin place. There, before my eyes, Charlie suddenlydisappeared in a cloud of white. We were horri-fied. Mum took a deep breath, and very quietlyand firmly suggested we go and play somewhereelse. We scuttled outside, and got rid of most ofthe flour dust. It was a long time before we couldsee anything funny in what had happened, and Idon’t think Mum ever did get any amusementout of it. We knew it must have been a lot ofwork for her to clean up, but it was years laterwhen I realized that not only was there a pile offlour all over the floor, but on the open shelvesevery dish and plate, every glass and bowl, everysmall container and bag had to be washed cleanof dust—and without the help of a vacuumcleaner. But now we think it’s a funny story.

As we grew older, Charlie played with twoboys his own age, and I was with Fredda almostevery day. When the cannery was running, weusually began the day with a tour around it tosee how things were going. I can still remembermy child’s view of the cannery: very cold andwet at one end, very hot and scary at the other.We were surrounded by restrictions and cautions:“don’t get in anyone’s way, watch where you aregoing, look out, don’t touch.” Older and braver,we realized how fascinating it was.

We started at the far end of the wharf, lookingdown at a scow filled with fish. The fishing boatsstayed out on the fishing grounds for several days,and “collectors”—bigger boats with lots of stor-age space—brought in their fish each day to thecannery. Men with pike-poles (long poles with asharp, curved steel prong at the end) poked theprong into the gills of each fish, and flipped itonto a conveyor belt with mesh baskets. Wheneach basket got up to the wharf level, just beforeit turned over to start down again, it would tipthe fish onto the wharf floor. Often there wereso many they formed a big slithering pile. Butusually another worker or two with pikes liftedeach fish again by the gills and tossed it onto abench or table where each fish was guided, headfirst, into a noisy, powerful block of machinery,the “Smith Butchering Machine.” When it wasintroduced about 1905, it was so efficient that it

took the place of doz-ens of Chinese work-ers (who were givenother jobs in the can-nery), and was alwaysreferred to as the “IronChink.” The machinecut off the head, tailand dorsal fin of eachfish, slit up the belly,scraped out the entrails,and partially cleanedthe cavity.

The fish next wentalong another movingbelt between two rowsof “washers.” Thesewere mostly Nativewomen, wives of fish-ermen, who stood infront of tables andsinks, with constantlyrunning cold water, and thoroughly scrubbedeach fish inside and out. The women wore rub-ber gloves, oil-cloth aprons, boots, and heavysweaters to keep warm, and had their hair gath-ered up into caps or scarves. The cleaned fish wereput back onto the moving belt, and went throughanother machine, which cut them into sectionsthe same size as the height of the can. The nextstop was at the “fillers,” another group of women,mostly Japanese, again well wrapped up againstcold, and with long aprons to try to keep theirclothes clean. Since the fish were moving alongthe “line” at a steady rate, both washers and fillershad to work fast to keep up. In front of each fillerwas a stack of empty cans, replenished when theygot low, several chunks of salmon, and a pile ofcut-up pieces. So quickly it looked impossible,the filler picked up an empty can, jammed in asection of salmon, filled any spaces with the smallpieces, and pushed it all down firmly. Then thefilled can was put on a tray beside her. When thetray was full, a man punched her card and tookthe tray to the next stage. Washers were paid bythe hour, but fillers were paid per tray of filledcans and had to be quick and skilful to make agood wage.

The male worker, a “lineman”, took each trayand shook one row of cans at a time onto an-other conveyor belt. Here the cans were weighed,had a measured amount of salt added, and a coverplaced on top—all by machine. The cans then

Above: The company store.


jiggled along the belt into steam ovens—“retorts”(which we stayed well away from)—where theywere carried in a long sinuous path that tookthem several hours to finish cooking. As they werefinally spilled out at the far end, they went throughanother machine that crimped and sealed theirlids on; then into a cold water bath, and finallythe cans were labelled and packed in boxes. Thelabelling was another job that looked impossi-ble—a wad of glossy labels was fanned a bit toexpose the ends, which were swabbed with abrush of glue; a Chinese worker picked up a canwith one hand, a label with the other, and rolledthe can into the label, smoothed it down, andput the can into the box, almost faster than I cantell about it.

At the end of each day, the whole canneryarea, especially the front where the fish wereworked on, was hosed down and all the slimeand bits of fish were swept through cracks be-tween the boards, or down a hole left for thepurpose, into the water below. Flocks of scream-ing gulls snapped up each bit, and on the beachcrows salvaged anything edible that had comeashore. Twice a day tides came in and washedaway anything the birds missed. No matter howmany times we saw it all, it was fascinating towatch, and we spent a lot of time just wanderingthrough the cannery.

“Boat Day,” when the steamer arrived, was thehighlight of the week. The Union Steamships wasthe company that serviced the coast, callingweekly at logging camps, fish camps, private floats,and canneries all the way from Vancouver toRupert, and on to Alaska. The boat we knewbest was the Cardena. It was a challenge for thecaptains to get into the Skeena River and estu-ary. The one or two deep channels shifted as theriver changed course over the years. Captains of-ten had to “feel” their way, listening to sand scrap-ing against the hull; in fog they could judge theirposition using the whistle and listening for theecho: if they could hear the echo in three sec-onds, they were a quarter mile off shore. We chil-dren were severe critics of the landings: a goodcaptain could ease his boat (we never used theterm “ship”—all were boats) alongside the wharf;others got close, had lines thrown ashore, andpulled the vessel in. We were scornful of this, buthigh winds, swift tidal currents, and fog couldmake difficult conditions. Additional hazards werefishing boats and nets drifting in the river.

The boat usually arrived sometime on Friday.

She would broadcast approximate times of ar-rival at the half a dozen canneries in the Skeenaarea. The tides affected the order of docking. Aheavily loaded boat could manoeuvre into somedocks only at high tide, and had to get into theestuary, go to several canneries in turn, and getout again before the tide dropped too much. Ifthe boat arrived at night after we had gone tobed, it was a bitter disappointment. Otherwisewe were on the watch for hours. The first indica-tion would be the sight of the Cardena roundingthe point at the river bend. Then the Unionwhistle sounded—one long blast, two shorts, andanother long—and she would come steaming inand tie up. It seemed as if the whole town camedown to the wharf. Any man who was handytook the lines and fastened them to cleats at theedge of the wharf. It was interesting and excitingto watch the freight loaded on pallet-boards hungfrom the booms, winched out of the hold, andswung ashore. Boxes and barrels and bales of allkinds were sorted at once into piles—some forthe cannery store and the other stores, and oddsand ends for individuals. Then some freight wouldbe loaded on board. In no time, the whistle wouldblow, the gangplank be hoisted on board, the linescast off, and the boat would slowly and majesti-cally turn and sweep on her way. It was over foranother week.

One day Fredda’s father borrowed a rowboatand she and I went for a row. We sat side by sideon the middle seat, one oar each. We had bothrowed before and we soon got accustomed againto the rhythm. All went well and we were enjoy-ing ourselves, so we got ambitious and decidedto row out into the river and go in front of thecannery wharf before turning to shore again. Thetide was falling and we misjudged the strength ofthe flow. Rowing at our full strength we couldn’tmake any headway for several minutes, and if werelaxed for a moment we drifted quickly back-wards. To make matters worse, we had acquired asmall but fascinated audience at the end of thewharf, who shouted encouragement and laughedat us. At that, pride came to our aid, and with theutmost effort we got ahead, turned towards shoreand out of the force of the current, sheltered bythe wharf. Cheers from the group of spectators.We could then relax and take our time makingour way to shore, to tie up the boat. It was quitea little adventure—we had mixed feelings: wewere proud, but a little scared.

During my childhood, badminton was a popu-


lar adult game, played in the net loft of one of theJapanese boathouses. Young men connected withthe cannery, nurses from the hospital, and othersenjoyed playing in the evenings several times aweek. Mum and Dad played quite often and wewent to watch, and to take a turn playing whenthe grown-ups wanted a rest. In my early teens,we discovered badminton lines painted on theupper floor of the cannery, now no longer inoperation. Over them were skylights and the raft-ers in the centre had been raised. We were de-lighted to find this old forgotten court, and Dadagreed to move the fishing nets stored there. Ourgroup of five or six friends now played almostevery day; the game was especially welcome assomething we could do rain or shine. The ceil-ing was low, and we had to develop fast low servesand volleys, and a new rule: “If it hits the rafters,take the shot over.” Visitors had a hard time ad-justing to the low ceiling, but we found we werethe ones at a disadvantage in a regular court—the long high shots away over our heads were achallenge we weren’t used to.

Dominion Day, the first of July, was a big cel-ebration. The “Indian band” played rousing tunesas they marched from the centre of town alongthe main street to the BA Cannery store. Herethey had a rest and were treated to soft drinks,then played and marched back again. After thatthere were all sorts of races and contests for allages, a baseball game against a visiting team, andlater a dance in the community hall. During thenight we occasionally heard a late reveller hap-pily singing his way home.

Fishing was a favourite pastime for fine days.Our equipment was simple: we had a line, woundaround a stick to keep it from tangling, with ahook on a short piece of line tied to the end, anda lead weight. Bait was usually a small piece ofsalmon begged from the cannery. We fished fromthe big rocks behind our house, or from the can-nery wharf. We didn’t always have luck in ourfishing, but caught something just often enoughto keep us interested. The common catch waseither bullheads (small ugly fish with a big headand horns, no use to us and always thrown backimmediately), flounders (also thrown back untilwe found we could sell them to the Chinese cookfor a nickel apiece), and Dolly Varden trout. Wedidn’t catch the trout often, but they brought greatexcitement, and we took them triumphantlyhome. We learned early to clean and prepare themourselves, and then Mum coated them with

cornmeal and fried them in butter—they weredelicious.

Rainy days did not deter us. Dressed in rain-coats and rubber boots, we roamed around thetown, with five or six other teen-aged friends.Many days, at one home or another, we playedcard games for hours, with fierce competitionand great gales of laughter. There was always some-thing to see or do.

In the early 1940s, the BA fish camp and storewere closed, my family moved away, and our con-nection with Essington came to an end. Disastercame many years later. 1961 had been an excep-tionally dry year. Bright June sunshine glintingoff a broken piece of mirror set fire to one of thehouses. Strong winds whipped up the flames anddrove sparks to kindle new fires all through thetown, fed by stores of gasoline and ammunition,racing down the dry wooden sidewalks. Most ofthe men were away fishing and the women werebusy with children and chores. By the time helparrived, it was too late to save the town. In thelate evening it was all over—only a few isolatedhouses remained. The town could never recover.

A few years ago my brother Charlie hired aboat to go and see what remained. Buildings andboardwalks were gone. The site of the town wascovered with bush and young hemlock trees,perhaps thirty feet tall. The whole impression wasof lush growth, which had completely taken over.There were still rotting piles in the long curvedbay that had once held four canneries, but nosign of wharfs or buildings. Essington was gone,but not our thoughts and memories of lifethere.�

Above: After the fires.What was left of PortEssington.


IN THE spring of 1790 the fur trader JohnMeares landed from an East Indiaman at Port-smouth and hotfooted it to London. He hadan urgent mission to fulfil. Far on the other sideof the world a Spanish naval officer had seizedfour of his ships. Notified in Macau of this out-rage, he was determined to seek redress from theBritish government. He had powerful friends.Through Richard Cadman Etches he was soonpresenting his memorial to the British House ofCommons. The then prime minister, William Pittthe younger, in need of a campaign platform,called out the British fleet, and, in what becameknown as the Spanish Armament, cowed theSpanish government into submission.

Among the claims Meares made was that hehad been dispossessed of some land and build-ings at Friendly Cove in Nootka Sound, aMowachaht village now known as Yuquot. Mearesclaimed not only that he had been deprived ofthis property, but also of two other pieces of land,one at Tofino and the other at Neah Bay, on thesouth side of the entrance to the Strait of Juan deFuca. He demanded restitution.

Thus was concocted the Nootka Convention,signed in Madrid in October of that year. In thisSpain agreed to restore to Britain the buildingsand land so precipitously seized in l789.

But what was this land, and what were thebuildings? Nobody really had time to check.Captain George Vancouver was dispatched fromEngland to find out and take possession. AndSpain for its part sent its commandant at San Blas,Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, to makerestitution.

All this took time and it was not until the sum-mer of 1792 that events started to unfold. Bodegay Quadra arrived early and had plenty of time tosettle in and make himself comfortable beforeturning his inquiries to the land claim. By thetime Vancouver arrived he had uncovered suffi-cient information to present Vancouver with someunpleasant evidence. To the best of his determi-nation, Bodega y Quadra could find no recordof a land purchase, and what building had beenerected was quickly demolished. Chief Maquinnaemphatically denied ever having sold Meares any

land. Bodega had also the testimony of Vianna, aPortuguese merchant and of two American furtraders, John Ingraham and Robert Gray, whohad been present at the time.

Vancouver, only just arrived, had no counter,and contented himself with affirming that he wasonly here to accept from Spain whatever landMeares had acquired. In vain Bodega y Quadraargued that Maquinna had never sold anythingto Meares. After a lengthy exchange of letters thetwo agreed to refer the matter back to their re-spective governments. Bodega y Quadra departed,and Vancouver made ready to leave.

Just as he was about to do so, there arrived inthe bay a Portuguese trader, the Felice Aventureyra,on board of which, as supercargo, was a certainRobert Duffin, who had been with Meares in1788 and also the mate on one of Meares’s shipsseized in 1789. Duffin told Vancouver a very dif-ferent story.

He averred that Meares had bought the wholeof the land that forms Friendly Cove for eight orten sheets of copper, and that the building erectedthere was a substantial one, consisting of threebedchambers, a mess room for the officers andproper quarters for the men. The building wasraised some five feet above the ground, the un-derpart serving as a warehouse and workshop.There were also several outhouses and shops, andthe buildings had been in good repair when theyleft. This building had been designed to housethe workforce required to build the NorthwestAmerica, a small schooner that Meares intendedto use locally.

Duffin made a sworn statement to this effect,but Vancouver apparently made no attempt tonotify Bodega y Quadra of this new, important,and conflicting bit of information. Had he doneso the outcome of the Nootka Settlement mightwell have been very different.

Both Vancouver and the British Governmentpooh-poohed Bodega y Quadra’s evidence, say-ing it came from unreliable Native, Portuguese,and American sources, and seized on Duffin’s evi-dence as being far more trustworthy. But werethey correct? Spain never had any opportunityto dispute Duffin’s claims. Bodega y Quadra was

John Mearesby John Crosse

Marine Historian JohnCrosse presented thispaper at the NorthwestCoast Fur TradeSymposium at FortLangley in August 2002.

Opposite page: JohnMeares. Detail of anengraving by C. Bestland.

BC’s Most Successful Real Estate Agent?


never notified of Duffin’s last minute additions, and therefore had no op-portunity to verify his statement. Bodega y Quadra, far out of reach on theother side of the world, was left ignorant of the new evidence being pre-sented by the British ambassador in Madrid. Had he known, Bodega yQuadra would have been able to counter Duffin’s assertions, for Duffinwas not quite such a reliable witness as Vancouver had assumed.

Duffin, as I have said, had been First Mate of Colnett’s Argonaut whenshe first arrived off Friendly Cove in 1789. Martinez had lured the Argonautinto port, but Colnett, smelling a rat, had given orders for Duffin to anchor.But Duffin did not do so, with the result that both ship and crew werearrested. Martinez claimed that under the Papal Bull of 1493 Spain hadexclusive right to all territories of the Pacific. Colnett, Duffin and theArgonaut and her crew were taken as prisoners to Mexico and only releasedafter nearly a year. Colnett blamed Duffin for all his misfortunes and neverafterwards had any use for the man. He refused to take him aboard againwhen he regained possession of his ship, and Duffin was left to find his ownway back to Macau via Acapulco and the Manila Galleon to the Philip-pines, fortuitously reappearing at Nootka at just the right moment, un-doubtedly well primed by Meares beforehand.

Bodega y Quadra would certainly have known of Duffin’s deficiencies,as they were readily apparent in his relationship with Colnett while at SanBlas. Had he also known of Duffin’s sworn deposition to Vancouver, hemost certainly would have forwarded his own appraisal of Duffin’s charac-ter to his government in Madrid.

In point of fact, all Duffin’s tale jibes ill with his boss’s own descriptionof Friendly Cove, written in Meares’s account of his voyages, published inNovember of 1790, i.e. only weeks after the Nootka Agreement was signed.Ample time indeed for any minister of state to read not only Meares’s verydifferent account from his memorial, but also before Vancouver could re-port back with Duffin’s wild tale more than two years later.

In his book Meares never says that he purchased any land from Maquinna,let alone the whole cove. Only that he was granted a spot of ground onwhich to build a house. This was in exchange for two pistols—somewhatdifferent from Duffin’s 8 or 10 sheets of copper, and very different fromDuffin’s “whole cove.” Duffin said Maquinna wanted to move his peopleaway and leave Meares’s shipwrights to build the little craft in peace. ButMeares specifically stated that he hired Indians to fell the timber and cutthe planks and that he paid them to do so. Maquinna must certainly haveagreed to this.

Meares’s description of his building is also different from Duffin’s. Whilethe ground floor is similar, his upper floor had only space for eating andchambers for the craftsmen. A breastwork to protect the site, with a cannonfor defence, surrounded the whole.

Ingraham and Gray’s evidence to Bodega y Quadra was that when Mearesdeparted at the end of the 1788 season, the cedar planks of the house wereloaded aboard one of Meares’s ships and the roof given to the AmericanJohn Kendrick for firewood.

George Vancouver could not permit himself the indignity of acceptingjust the tiny triangle of beach that was all that Bodega y Quadra wouldoffer him. But Spain was in no position to bargain. After a third round ofnegotiations the British flag was finally hoisted over Nootka in 1795. Thuswe are here today.�

BIBLIOGRAPHYHoway, F.W. (ed.), The Journal of Capt James Colnett

aboard the Argonaut, 1789-91, The Champlain So-ciety, Toronto, 1940. Facsimile edition, Green-wood Press, New York, 1968.

Ingram, Joseph, Joseph Ingraham’s Journal of the Brigan-tine Hope…, 1790-92, Imprint Society, Barre,Massachusetts, 1791. (For Robert Gray & JosephIngraham’s letter to Bodega y Quadra, 3 Augustl792, see pages 217 –222).

Lamb, W. Kaye (ed.), George Vancouver, A Voyage ofDiscovery …, 1791 – 1795, Hakluyt Society, Lon-don 1984. (Page 679 – Robert Duffin’s sworntestimony; on pp. 107-109 – Grenville, Dundas,Stephens correspondence 1793).

Manning, W.R., The Nootka Sound Controversy,American Historical Association Annual Report 1904(1905): 279-478.

Martinez, Estevan, “Diary of 1789 Voyage toNootka,” translated by William L. Schurz, unpub-lished typescript, Bancroft Library (Two copiesexist of this document in BC Archives and UBCSpecial Collections.

Meares, John, Voyages…, 1788-1789, Lographic Press,London 1790, Israel/Da Capo reprint 1968.

Mears (sic), John, Authentic Copy of the Memorial toW.W. Granville …, J. Debrett, London 1790, YeGalleon Press reprint 1986.

Norris, John, “The Policy of the British Cabinet inthe Nootka Crisis,” English Historical Review, LXX,1955,pages 562-580.

Palau, Mercedes (ed.), Nutka 1792: Viaje a la CostaNoroeste de la América Septentrional por Juan Fran-cisco de la Bodega y Quadra … Año de 1792,Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de España, Ma-drid, 1998.

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VAUDEVILLE was already dying whenOrpheum Circuit, based in New YorkCity, opened the New Orpheum Thea-tre in Vancouver on 7 November 1927. The forty-year-old circuit controlled more than fifty thea-tres across Canada and the United States, and hun-dreds, even thousands, of vaudeville performers.But now movies had begun to share the bill withthe singers, jugglers, magicians, acrobats, and com-ics that had made vaudeville so popular in bothcountries for more than fifty years. The advent ofsound in film, which had been around for a fewmonths but first caught the public’s imaginationin 1927—the same year the Orpheum openedwith Al Jolson’s feature “The Jazz Singer”—,pounded another nail into vaudeville’s coffin.

Vancouver’s New Orpheum, like thousands oftheatres around the world, began a transition to“photoplays,” and by the mid-thirties was virtu-ally vaudeville-free.1 The form hung on for a fewyears more: on 8 November 1935 a stage show atthe Orpheum, a Major Bowes Radio Amateursproduction, featured a group called “TheHoboken Four,” one of whose members was a19-year-old Frank Sinatra.

The Orpheum Circuit, like its counterpart thePantages Circuit, was known for the lavish styleof its theatres, but tickets into these palaces ofshowbiz were cheap: some 1,800 of the theatre’s3,000 seats were available to adults for 50 centsfor evening admission, or you could reserve oneof the remaining 1,200 seats for 80 cents. Andfor your 50 cents—or 25 cents in the afternoon—you got a movie and eight or nine vaudevilleperformances, some with very large casts. Chil-dren’s tickets were cheaper still.

Wages in 1927 were low, it’s true, but, to pickone example, the “lathmill men” who were soughtin one advertisement for 40 cents an hour “andbetter” that year could have attended an after-noon show in the new theatre for the equivalentof 38 minutes’ work.

The Orpheum was the biggest theatre inCanada when it opened. It was also one of themore opulent: paintings and hangings adornedevery wall; imported chandeliers dazzled the

A Palace of EntertainmentVancouver’s Orpheum Turns 57by Chuck Davis

crowds below. Ladies had their own lavish lounges,with attendants, while men lolled about in smartlyoutfitted smoking rooms.

Benjamin Marcus Priteca, the man who de-signed the theatre, was born in Glasgow, Scot-land, on 23 December 1889. He took architec-tural training in Edinburgh—beginning as anapprentice at age 14 and earning the degree of“Master Architect” by age 20—and received atravelling scholarship to study architectural formsin the United States. He decided to stay there.By July 1909 he had settled in Seattle, where heimmediately went to work as a draftsman witharchitect E.W. Houghton. (Priteca’s drawings aresuperb.) Then, in 1911, the 21-year-old Pritecamet Alexander Pantages, a Seattle resident andtheatre owner. The young architect was deliver-ing some illustrations he had made to a local ar-chitectural firm and met Pantages there. Pantageswas fuming over a theatre design he consideredto be inadequate, and that led to a discussion oftheatre design with Priteca.

Pantages was impressed by the superior qual-ity of Priteca’s drawings, and the stocky littleentrepreneur commissioned the young architectto design his next theatre, the San FranciscoPantages. The site presented challenges, but Pritecaovercame them, and the theatre opened in De-cember 1911. Pantages was so pleased with theresults he commissioned Priteca—now all of 22—to design all his theatres from that time on.2 ButPantages wasn’t the only source for Priteca’s thea-tre work. During his career he worked for fourdifferent theatre chain clients, and designed morethan 150—some say 200—theatres, includingVancouver’s Orpheum. When Priteca designedthe Orpheum he had been engaged in similarwork for more than fifteen years.3

Priteca referred to the elaborate style of Van-couver’s Orpheum and other theatres as “con-servative Spanish Renaissance.” But he borrowedfrom a dozen different places: the ornate ceilingof the Orpheum lobby, for example, is appar-ently based on one he saw and admired in India.The organ screens are Moorish North African;the ceiling arches in the auditorium are Gothic;

1 By 1928 there were fourtheatres left in theUnited States presentinglive variety only.

2 Oddly, Priteca venturedinto other design areas,too: he designed a bodyfor the Locomobile car,and crafted a raked grilland windshield for thePaige, forerunner of theGraham-Paigeautomobile.)

3 In fact, Priteca had beenin Vancouver before. Thenow vanished secondPantages Theatre onHastings Street wasPriteca’s first ventureinto Vancouver. That1,800-seat theatre, whichopened 17 June 1917,was later called theMajestic, then theBeacon, and finally theOdeon Hastings.Architectural writerMiriam Sutermeister saysit “was considered at thetime to be the mostrichly embellished andefficient theater of thePantages chain.” Itsdemolition in 1967outraged Vancouverites.The architect of theearlier 1907 Pantages,also on Hastings Street,which is still there andbeing restored, wasEdward EvansBlackmore.

Chuck Davis has beenwriting on GreaterVancouver historicalevents for 30 years. Heis the author of morethan a dozen books.


the ceiling itself and its dome and the chande-liers are Baroque, and the wall coverings imitatethose of nineteenth-century France.

The man who designed his theatres to bothdazzle and welcome was not lavish with his cli-ents’ money. “When Mr. Pantages asked me todesign him a theater,” Priteca once said, “he toldme that any darn fool could design a million-dollar theater for a million dollars, but that it tooka smart man to design a theater that looks like amillion dollar theater and cost half that much.”

We know, thanks to the 5 December 1926 is-sue of the Journal of Commerce, that Priteca was inVancouver on 3 December, with his associatearchitect F.J. Peters and an Orpheum vice presi-dent, to look at bids made by local constructionfirms. The winning bid was put forth by North-ern Construction Co. Ltd. and J.W. Stewart, theoldest construction firm in the city. We have alsolearned that because the bids were so much higherthan had been anticipated for that aspect of thework that Priteca and his associates decided toscale back some of the more elaborate featureshe had planned.

The 1927 cost of the Orpheum is difficult topin down. I’ve seen figures ranging from $500,000to $1.25 million. The man who put up the money

was a German-born Vancouver entrepreneurnamed Joseph Langer. Information on Langer isalso difficult to find. There’s nothing on him inthe City of Vancouver Archives, nothing in theSpecial Collections Division of the VancouverPublic Library, precious little elsewhere. We knowhe came to Vancouver in the 1920s and built sev-eral suburban theatres—the Victoria Road Thea-tre, the Kitsilano, the Windsor, the Alma, and theKerrisdale, then sold them to raise the money tobuild the Orpheum. The Orpheum Circuit, inits usual practice, leased the theatre from its owner.Most of what we know about Langer comes froma solid little booklet on the Orpheum’s historywritten by Doug McCallum (not the mayor ofSurrey) and published in 1986. Langer was, ap-parently, rather flamboyant and liked being takenaround the city in a maroon limousine driven bya chauffeur in maroon livery.

The magic of what Priteca created for thea-tre-goers in the Orpheum was captured poign-antly in a Denny Boyd tribute to long-timeOrpheum manager Ivan Ackery.4 In that columnBoyd paid simultaneous tribute to the buildingover which Ackery had presided for so many years.Boyd begins, with a comparison that would havemightily pleased the architect, by remembering

4 Published in the Sun, 31October 1985, the dayafter Ackery died.

Chuck Davis’s book TheOrpheum: A Palace ofEntertainment will be apicture-rich history ofthe theatre, along withmany stories con-nected with its 75years of actvity.The book will appearlater this year.

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his first view of India’s Taj Mahal and writes:I think the only other time I felt such a ham-mer blow of awe, was when I was seven and Iapproached the box office of the OrpheumTheatre for the first time with a King GeorgeV dime in my sweaty little fist. If you grew upin Vancouver through the mean, bleak ‘30s,movies were the common escape and a dimewas the key. If you lived in a 2 ½-room flat,your family on relief, that dime took you upthe lushly carpeted stairway of the massiveOrpheum foyer into the world of imaginationwhere animals spoke, Tarzan roared, childrensquealed with laughter and bad guys alwaysgot it before the closing credits.... The rose-redcarpeting led to the dramatic split stairway tothe upper foyer, light cascading down from thechandeliers and the wall sconces. There werebalustrades and ornate arches, pillars and col-onnades, coffered and domed ceilings....

During the Great Depression, with soundmovies and radio adding to its grief, the movieindustry had to redouble its efforts to fill its hugetheatres. The Orpheum, like many theatres inNorth America, was kept open by cutting staff,reducing ticket prices and bringing in doublefeatures. It even closed its doors for a time in1931.

Then in 1935 the Orpheum got a new man-ager who gave it new life. His name was IvanAckery. He was born “Ivor,” but said so manypeople called him “Ivan” that he decided to goalong with them. Movie theatre managers in the1930s were more than just administrators. Theyfrequently chose the films they would show, theywere expected to promote them—and, boy, didAckery promote them—, and they devised spe-cial attractions to make their theatres stand outand bring customers in. Ackery was so good atall of this, and he was good for so long (35 years),that it’s fair to say he is the single most influentialperson in the Orpheum’s history.

Bristol-born Ackery had his first taste of showbusiness 7 May 1921 as an usher in Calgary’sbrand-new Capitol Theatre. The Capitol was onthe Pantages Circuit, and was, like the others, anelaborately decorated and opulent show house.“The manager,” Ackery recalled in his autobiog-raphy Fifty Years on Theatre Row, “wore a tuxedoand the assistant manager a frock-tail coat; thecloakroom attendant wore a white uniform asdid the matron of the ladies’ rest room. Every-thing was spotless.”

The young Ivor was already beginning to be

influenced by the elements that would mark his later career: spectacularevents, lavish surroundings, elegantly attired staff, and personal attention.He had found his niche.

By 1923 he was the head usher at the Capitol Theatre in Vancouver. Fiveyears later Famous Players bought several theatres in Vancouver and Ackerywas made manager of one of them. “All the big shots’ sons were promotedto the management of these new theatres we owned,” he wrote in hisautobiography, “and I was the only ‘little’ fellow promoted from the ranks.I had been made doorman at the Capitol earlier in the year, but now was tomanage the newly-acquired Victoria Road Theatre at Victoria and 43rd ata salary of something in the neighborhood of $25 a week.” In 1930 he waspromoted to be the manager of a more prestigious theatre, the Dominionon Granville Street.

From the very beginning of his career as a theatre manager, Ackeryshowed a flair—no, a genius—for promotion. When his theatre was brokeninto and robbed one night, he dragged the little safe that had held the

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receipts onto the sidewalk, its door sagging open,and propped a sign against it plugging the thea-tre’s current movie, a crime picture.

By 1924 he was manager of the Strand, one ofthe city’s showcases. “It was a grand theatre, thethird largest in the city, and I was extremelyproud.” The first thing he did as manager of theStrand was to get Scott’s Cafe to bake a hugecake, a gigantic confection that stood as tall as aman, to celebrate the theatre’s fourteenth birth-day. Every patron was given a slice of cake dur-ing “Birthday Week.” The famed Fanchon andMarco shows, huge and elaborate productionsfamous in their time, were brought in and LilyLaverock booked the Ballet Russe de MonteCarlo into the theatre.

Ivan was edging into the Big Time. And in1935 he stepped into it. In the summer of thatyear he was informed he was to become man-ager of the Orpheum Theatre. “It was such a thrillfor me, and I can remember how excited mymother got.” His mom’s excitement was justi-fied: the Orpheum was the largest theatre inCanada, and her son was now running it. “I recallhow tickled I was because I’d be getting a $10 aweek raise!”

Famous Players was getting a lot for that extraten bucks a week. “At the Strand,” Ivan recalled,“I’d had to fill 1,600 seats and deal with a staff ofabout 25. At the Orpheum I was looking at al-most twice that number of seats and much morestaff, and I had two important obstacles to over-come—the Depression and the Competition.”

For the next 35 years Ivan Ackery was to provethat nothing could dampen his promotional fer-vour and his love of the Orpheum Theatre. Hewas the first Canadian to win the Quigley Award,given annually to the North American theatremanager who did the most for his theatre’s pro-motion. In one famous instance (of dozens) heparaded a cow down Granville Street with a bigsign on its flanks, marked with an arrow pointingto the cow’s udder. “There’s a great show at theOrpheum Theatre,” the sign read, “and That’s NoBull!”

In 1969 Famous Players, now controlled byGulf & Western Industries, a United States cor-poration, introduced a policy of compulsory re-tirement at 65. Ivan had turned 65 five years ear-lier, on 30 October 1964.

Overnight, he was out. After 48 years in thebusiness, and an unparalleled record in gettingcrowds into theatres, he was gone. “For me,” he

reflected eleven years later, “it came as a sorryand sudden end to the career I’d devoted my lifeto and expected to carry on in until old age andill health rendered me incapable.... There’s no jus-tice and little sense in putting a healthy, experi-enced individual to pasture just because he’s hada birthday.... Still, the company had been won-derfully good to me, and I was always proud tobe associated with it and with the fine men Iworked with over the years, who gave me so muchencouragement.” His last day was 28 December1969, two months past his 70th birthday. He diedat St. Paul’s Hospital 30 October 1989, the daybefore his 90th birthday.

He was still around, however, to take part inthe mid-1970s campaign to save the Orpheum.5

Famous Players had announced that it intendedto either sell the Orpheum or gut it and install amultiplex cinema as they had done earlier withthe Capitol. By December 1973 Famous Playershad granted the City an option to buy theOrpheum for $3.9 million. In return, the Citywould give the company permission to redevelop(i.e., convert to a multiplex) the Capitol. The es-timated cost of renovation of the Orpheum afterpurchase was $2 million.

A number of people, including RhonnaFleming of the Community Arts Council, im-presario Hugh Pickett (who had, at 14, been atthe very first show held at the Orpheum 7 No-vember 1927), and Vancouver’s mayor Art Phillipswere involved in the campaign to raise funds tobuy the theatre as a home for the Vancouver Sym-phony Orchestra.

The VSO, which had often appeared at theOrpheum, was ensconced in the Queen Eliza-beth Theatre, but had never been happy with theacoustics there. “The worst seat in the Orpheum,”said one musician, “is better than the best seat inthe QET [Queen Elizabeth Theatre], acousticallyspeaking.”

Tours of the theatre were organized, lotterieswere held, and benefit performances featurednotables such as Jack Benny and Buddy Rogers.Most events were well attended, and $432,000was raised. The campaign was successful, withfunds from the federal and provincial govern-ments, the City of Vancouver, and private andcorporate donors combining to buy the theatrefrom Famous Players.

The Orpheum remained closed for a year-and-a-half while Thompson, Berwick, Pratt directedthe renovations. Architects Ron Nelson and Paul

5 Priteca died at 81 inSeattle 1 October 1971,too soon to see that oneof his greatest creations,Vancouver’s OrpheumTheatre, would—unlikemany other of hiscreations—survive andthrive.


Merrick were in charge of the rehabilitation. Rec-ommendations were made to extend the stageover the orchestra pit (which resulted in the re-moval nearest the stage of more than 100 seats),remove the proscenium arch and install a perma-nent orchestra shell. Backstage, the stage loft (fromwhich backdrops could be lowered for shows)was to be abandoned in favour of two additionalfloors for rehearsal areas, dressing rooms, a loungeand a library. “It was assumed,” said a study at thetime, “that shows requiring a large stage, a stageloft or an orchestra pit could be accommodatedat the QET.”

After half a century, the Grand Old Lady ofGranville Street needed a lot of repairs. Therewas broken plaster to recast, gold leaf to be re-newed, carpet to be replaced, lobbies and otherpublic spaces to be repainted. The absorbentacoustic material that had been installed for mov-ies was taken out, unsuitable for a concert hall.New acoustic panels were installed over the stageto better reflect the sound of the orchestra.6 Oneof the most delightful stories associated with theredecoration of the theatre concerns an artistnamed Tony Heinsbergen, who was an associateof the original architect, Marcus Priteca. PaulMerrick had gone to Seattle to get more infor-mation on the late Mr. Priteca, and discovered tohis delight that Tony Heinsbergen, now in his

eighties, was still active as an artist in Los Ange-les. Merrick went to Los Angeles and askedHeinsbergen to get involved in the Orpheum’srehabilitation. He did. The next time you’re inthis beautifully appointed palace of entertainmentlook up to the huge mural surrounding the cen-tral chandelier. That’s Tony Heinsbergen’s work.7

The first performance of the VSO in the newlyshaped Orpheum was Saturday, 2 April 1977.8

But the orchestra is not the only user of the reno-vated theatre. It’s busy more than 200 nights ayear with special events, comics, speakers, andmore. The Vancouver Bach Choir, the VancouverChamber Choir, and the Vancouver Cantata Sing-ers all make their home there. And, in one of themore interesting of its features, the theatre is alsothe site of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame.Photos of more than a hundred artists, impresa-rios, management and the like are on display inthe StarWall, counterparts of the stars in thesidewalks out on Granville Street, the famousStarWalk.

Free tours of this gorgeous building are givenregularly. After 57 years the Orpheum is still busy,still beautiful and—most important—stillhere.�

6 It had been discoveredthat in some areas of thetheatre, particularlyunder the balcony,certain instrumentscouldn’t be heard.Someone sitting heremight not hear the piano,while someone overthere couldn’t hear thecellos.

7 That mural was painted,panel by panel, by TonyHeinsbergen in his LosAngeles studio. Then thepanels were shipped toVancouver and pastedonto the ceiling. Theorchestra conductorshown in the mural isarchitect Ron Nelson;the little cherubs inanother corner are PaulMerrick’s children (nowall in their 30s); and thetiger in the mural is anaffectionate nod toHeinsbergen’s wife,whom he called his“little tiger.” TheOrpheum’s largestchandelier, suspendedfrom the auditoriumdome, is a dazzlingmasterwork importedfrom Czechoslovakia forthe theatre’s opening. Alocal hotel recentlyoffered $65,000 for it,but was turned down.

8 The orchestra appears tohave missed theopportunity April 2002to mark its 25thanniversary at theOrpheum.

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TO read the records of the Royal Com-mission on the British Columbia Tree-Fruit Industry one must wade throughtwenty-two boxes and literally hundreds of filesat the British Columbia Archives in Victoria. Thesubject matter ranges from the mundane to thevery useful, yet, it is the files that deal specifi-cally with the upstart Canadian Fruit Growers’Association (CFGA), and its un-elected leader,Alfred Beich, that are the most interesting. It ishere that one is presented with some very can-did views from a significant cross-section ofgrowers in which personalities come to play asgreat a role as competing philosophies concern-ing co-operative marketing. It is the transcriptsof these meetings, at one time confidential, thatform the basis of this article and shed light on aper iod of great soul searching within theOkanagan fruit industry.

For Okanagan fruit growers, the first threedecades of the twentieth century had been char-acterized by economic turmoil, crises of pro-duction, and the paramountcy of the individualover the collective health of the industry. Thedynamics of this situation inevitably proved tobe both socially and financially harmful, as wellas unsustainable over the long run. With the wan-ing effectiveness of yet another marketingagency—Associated Growers1—in 1925-1926,growers found themselves forced to seek mar-ket stability in the form of provincial legisla-tion. It was believed that only legislation couldensure fairer treatment as a “single desk” and“orderly marketing” would check unnecessaryand cutthroat competition amongst local grow-ers, while directing the flow of produce to mar-kets in quantities that would avoid unnecessarygluts.2 Only in 1939, after a decade of courtchallenges, was BC Tree Fruits (BCTF) desig-nated as the sole selling agent for the Okanaganfruit industry. Although BC Tree Fruits’ author-ity was derived from the Tree Fruit MarketingScheme, an agreement negotiated under theNatural Products Marketing Act, the reality wasthat BC Tree Fruits was administered as a branchof the British Columbia Fruit Growers’ Asso-

ciation (BCFGA). It was, after all, BCFGA mem-bers who

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