Tofino Chapter 8 notes

Setting Up Shop - Notes on Sources

Sources central to this chapter include the British Colonist, with its detailed information about early coastal traders, Walter Dawley’s papers, Fred Thornberg’s memoirs and letters. See also Douglas Cole, Captured Heritage; Horsfield, Voices from the Sound.

Quotations from Fred Thornberg come from his unpublished letters and memoirs.

For more on Norwegians in British Columbia see Eric Faa, Norwegians in the Northwest: Settlement in British Columbia: 1858-1918, and Cliff Kopas, Bella Coola.

“six blankets, some beans and molasses,” Jan Peterson, Journeys: Down the Alberni Canal to Barkley Sound.

“however much the old navigators’ names…” for Banfield’s discussion of place names, see Daily Victoria Gazette, September 3, 1858.

Information on Charles Stuart from Peterson’s Journeys; see also Andrew Scott, Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names.

“I remember being at the Lands Office in 1891…” “evidently was greatly respected…” These comments appear in a note written by John Grice, now in the Longstaff papers, BC Archives MS 46. Major Frederick Longstaff (1879 – 1961) collected a wide range of materials relating to the history of the British Columbia, especially naval and shipping history.

“Grice also stated…” from the Longstaff papers, in Longstaff’s essay on Clayoquot Sound, one of several typewritten essays (or chapters) on geographic areas along the west coast, possibly intended for future publication.

“The west coast was almost free...,” For quotations from Captain George Henry Richards about Chief Maquinna and concerning alcohol consumption, see Dorricott and Cullen, The Private Journal of Captain G.H. Richards.

“the trader and his wife and children…” from the obituary for Kate Elizabeth Guillod. Daily Colonist, November 19, 1933.

“two wealthy Englishmen…” and “not only to engage…” from British Colonist, October 18, 1889, British Colonist.

Information about the Evans family’s 1880s sojourn in Clayoquot Sound survives in a short memoir written by Mary Evans in 1959. See also the interview with Evelyn Sullivan, recorded by Bob Bossin in the late 1970s, some of which appears in Settling Clayoquot.

Most information in this chapter concerning the early trade in First Nations artifacts on the Northwest coast comes from Cole’s Captured Heritage. Walter Dawley’s papers contain a number of revealing and detailed letters from “curio traders” and private collectors. See also Ronald W. Hawker’s article “The Johnson Street Gang: British Columbia’s Early Indian Art Dealers,” BC Historical News: 22.1: 1989.

Descriptions of the curio businesses appearing within quotation marks all come from their own letterhead, on letters found in the Dawley papers, and from advertisements in the Victoria newspapers. For more on specific curio dealers in Victoria, see the letters to Walter Dawley from Mr. W. J. Clubb and from Mrs. Aaronson, some of which are cited in Horsfield, Voices from the Sound, p. 171 ff.

For more on the Smithsonian’s request for artifacts, see Cole, Captured Heritage.

“old dull colours….” and “It does only limited good…,” Edwards Ricketts’s diary, BC Archives. MS 2634.

“I have been out here on the West Coast…” Filip Jacobsen, cited in Faa, Norwegians in the Northwest.

Information about Dawley ‘s early days in Victoria is scant. Williams Illustrated Official BC Directory Part One, describes him as a bartender in Victoria, page 349.

“shipwrecked lumber from Schooner Cove…” undated scrap of memoir, handwritten by Walter Dawley, found in the papers of Father Maurus Snyder at Mount Angel Abbey Archives.

“I think you can imagine…” and other quotations from Mrs. Rolston concerning the Hera appear in her description in the British Colonist.

"keen appreciation of the gallantry and heroism displayed" Faa, Norwegians in the Northwest.

Detailed inventories of the contents of the two hotels (on Stockham Island and at Clayoquot) appear in surviving hotel ledgers in the BC Archives, among Walter Dawley’s papers.

“load the Chinaman to his destruction financially,” Brewster letter to Dawley, May 23, 1901, from Walter Dawley’s papers.

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