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Vancouver Island (B.C.) Text
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J.F. Prowse fonds

  • PR-1522
  • Fonds
  • 1852-1853 [Photographed 1965]

The fonds consists of photographic extracts from a log kept by Midshipman James Ferris Prowse whilst aboard the H.M.S. Thetis under Captain Augustus L. Kuper. There are 90 negatives (2 negatives per page) and 42 print copies.

The printed extracts are those which have any mention of any place or point near Vancouver Island or Queen Charlotte's Island (Haida Gwaii), or of any item which might be of interest. These items are marked in red pen on the right hard edge of the photographic prints. The period covered is from the arrival of the ship outside the straits of San Juan de Fuca on May 22, 1852 to the time it sailed from Esquimalt Harbour for England on January 22, 1853.

Prowse, J.F.

Scrip book no. 1

The item is a script and claim book for the lower mainland area. The left hand side of each page in the volume lists the issuance of script including entry number, acreage, date, person to whom script was issued and nature of work done. The right hand side of each page lists land claims including entry number, acreage, date, person and situation of land. There are also loose pages listing Vancouver Island claims.

Douglas Land District land register

  • GR-2632
  • Series
  • 1864-1865

This series consists of a Douglas Land District land register from Range 1, Section 1 to Range 8, Section 20 on Vancouver Island. Entries date from 1864-1865. The registers record the land in numerical order and records the alienation of land from the Crown (by purchase, preemption, lease, etc.). Information may include the name of the purchaser, dates and numbers of certificates issued (including Crown Grants), dates and amounts of payments, and reference numbers to correspondence files and field books. The volume contains an alphabetical name index.

British Columbia (Colony). Lands and Works Dept.

Cert. of purchase : no's 1 to 44

The item is a a volume of certificates of purchase for lots on Vancouver Island and the mainland, numbered 1 through 44 and dated from 1870 to 1871. Each certificate lists the district, the lot information, the purchaser, the price and information about payment. The volume is indexed.

Applications to pre-empt

The file consists of applications to pre-empt parcels of land on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands from 1871 to 1872. Many are accompanied by sketch maps of the lots claimed and correspondence. The applications are in chronological order and have lands file numbers written on the first page. These file numbers have been crossed out and replaced with pre-emption numbers P1 to P238.

Photograph album of Mrs. A. H. Maynard, 1872 - 1892

File is a family carte de visite album with a brown leather cover and metal clasps containing photographic prints, the bulk of which are card-mounted studio portraits that document the Maynard family, in particular the Albert Hatherly Maynard and Adelaide Maynard (nee Graham) family. The album is attributed to Adelaide Maynard, and appears to have been a gift to Adelaide Graham (1859-1892) from Albert Maynard (1857-1934). Photographs depict Adelaide Maynard’s domestic life before and after her marriage through primarily portraits, as well as a few snapshots and other materials that document her circle of family and friends of her and her husband, her role as a wife and a mother, and the domestic life of a Victorian family. The bulk of the photographs are credited to photographer Mrs. R. Maynard (1834-1918) but there are also works of other commercial photographers including Ontario based W.A. Cooper and JAS. Egan’s New Photographic & Portrait Gallery. The album includes popular Maynard family images that appear in other Maynard family albums.

The family album consists of 100 photographic prints, including sepia toned albumen carte de visites, plus other portrait forms such as tintype miniature portraits inserted in twenty-five pages. There are annotations found on some album pages and also on the verso of prints. Information largely consists of names and occasionally the age of the subject or the price of the print. There does not appear to be dates or associated photograph numbers for the original negatives present on album pages or prints. Mounted cards, carte de visites, often contain imprints on the verso noting the name and studio location. On nine of the pages prints appear to have been removed. There are also several prints housed loose within the album. Other materials include a few hand-painted photographs, a business card and several seasonal greeting cards which do not contain photographs.

A.H. Maynard family members are represented in individual and group studio photographs. The album includes individual and group portraits of Albert Hatherly and Adelaide Maynard, several mother and child portraits of Mrs. A. Maynard and child, as well as individual portraits of their infant children including John Ridgemen Maynard (b.1879). The album also includes portraits containing the following names in their associated captions: "Bob Liddell," "Mary Vipond," "Jack Kirkup," "G Anderson," "Frank Graham," and "J. Carter." Some of these captions refer to photographs which are missing from the album.

Likenesses of Albert Maynard’s mother (Hannah Maynard) and his siblings including Emma Maynard (1859 or 1860-1893), Zela Maynard (1854-1913), and Laura Lillian “Lillie” Maynard (1867-1883) are also featured frequently in individual and group portraits sometimes depicting domestic scenes and activities. Arthur S. Rappertie (1854?-1923) who worked for the Maynards in the 1870s to early 1900s is also present here. There are a number of unidentified prints of infants, babies, children and adults, including a number of male sitters, which may or may not relate to the Maynard family. There are several non-studio images, family photographs taken on excursions at the beach, at a group picnic, and outside a residence.

Portrait styles reflected in the album include headshots, side profiles, as well as mid and full-length likenesses that employ a variety of studio props. Several portraits of the Maynard children depict Mrs. R. Maynard’s use of side lighting techniques. Child and baby portraits, as well as those of toy dolls present in the album, are similar portrayals than those featured in Hannah Maynard’s annual “Gems of British Columbia" series of portrait montages of the 1880s and 1890s.

There are also portraits of other individuals and objects. These include commercial cartes of “Effie German,” as well as a number of portraits of children’s dolls including a tintype with the annotation “Mifs M.A. Morton” on the verso of the print. There is a business card of James F. Macdonald, the husband of Emma Maynard. The album concludes with two New Year's greeting cards: one addressed to A. H. Maynard and the other Mrs. Albert H. Maynard.

Maynard, Adelaide M.

Applications to pre-empt

The file consists of applications to pre-empt parcels of land on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands from 1871 to 1872. Many are accompanied by sketch maps of the lots claimed and correspondence. The applications are in chronological order and have lands file numbers written on the first page. These file numbers have been crossed out and replaced with pre-emption numbers P239 to P413.

Photograph album of the Maynard family

File is a large family photograph album with a yellow-green velour cover containing 69 card mounted photographic prints, the bulk of which are studio portraits that document numerous individuals and families, some of whom are members of the Maynard family. Many of the photographs are attributed to photographer Hannah Maynard of Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery, but there are also works of other commercial photographers and photographic studios including those identified as Washington based “Roberts & Kautz” and “Peiser’s Art Studio”/“Theo E. Peiser”(Seattle), as well as “A L. Jackson” (Tacoma). There are also works from photographers: “[Will] A. Peek” (Yaquina, Oregon), “Taber” (San Francisco) and photographic businesses “R. & H. O’Hara Photographers, BookSellers, Insurance Agents & c.,” (Bowmanville, Ontario). The album includes popular Maynard family images that appear in other Maynard family albums.

Photograph album of the A.H. Maynard family

The file is a family photograph album with a black leather cover with a metal clasp containing 32 card mounted photographic prints, the bulk of which are a selection of individual and group portraits depicting several generations of the Maynard family, in particular the Albert H. Maynard and Adelaide M. Maynard (nee Graham) family. Many of the prints feature portraits of infants, children, youth and adult members of the Maynard family including Albert H. Maynard, his mother Hannah Maynard and his siblings Zela Maynard, Laura Lillian Maynard and Emma Maynard, as well as his wife Adelaide. Laura Lillian Maynard and baby Richard James Maynard appear frequently throughout the album, either in individual portraits or group portraits together or with mother and grandmother Hannah Maynard. The majority of the photographs are attributed to photographer Hannah Maynard of Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery but there are also works of other commercial photographers including Washington based “Peiser” (Seattle) represented here. The album includes popular Maynard family images that appear in other Maynard family albums.

Official Administrator letterbook

  • GR-1821
  • Series
  • 1890-1895

Letterbook of correspondence outward from Official Administrator, J.C. Prevost, 1890-1895.

British Columbia. Supreme Court (Victoria)

Studio register of Mrs. R. Maynard's Photographic Gallery, 1891-1899

Item consists of one studio register created by Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery that documents client orders from 1891 to 1899 and represents studio-based business transactions over a ten year period. It consists of 248 pages and contains entries for negative numbers 1025 to 6240. The record represents over 5,000 customer entries, likely referring to portrait orders fulfilled at several different locations of the Maynard Studio. Also included within the pages of the register is a small number of textual documents that refer to customer requests for non-portrait photographs that appear to have been furnished through the photographic studio. The author of the register appears to be either Mrs. R. Maynard or Arthur S. Rappertie, an employee of Hannah Maynard.

During this period, the studio was located at two different locations in Victoria, British Columbia. From 1874 to 1892, the studio was located on Douglas and Johnson Streets. In 1888, the studio is described in the publication The New West (Winnipeg) as having: “… superior facilities for executing all orders in the promptest and most satisfactory manner…” In 1892 until 1912, the studio was relocated 41 Pandora Avenue (renumbered to 717 Pandora ca. 1907). Many of Hannah Maynard's photographs after this date bear the address "41 1/2 Pandora Avenue near Douglas Street. Several employees worked for the studio throughout its existence. It is estimated that Arthur S. Rappertie (1854?-1923) worked for Hannah Maynard in the 1870s to early 1900s as either her assistant or photographer. Nicholas Herman Hendricks (1869-1946) was also employed by Hannah Maynard for a period. The signatures of both Mrs. R. Maynard and A.S. Rappertie are handwritten within the first initial pages of the studio register. The record does not note the corresponding Maynard Studio address alongside client entries, however orders are dated by the references to the year of the transaction, a date which appears at the top of selected register pages throughout the record.

By the 1890s, Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery already been a creator of conventional portraits in the popular carte de visite format and capturing the likenesses of gold miners and sailors, as well as Indigenous people whose studio portraits were commercially popular in and around Victoria during the early 1860s and 1870s. Children and family portraits were also a unique market provided for by the Maynard Studio, with photographic products including miniature portraits and composite images. In the period between 1891 and 1899, Hannah Maynard was producing experimental photographic works, including the "Gems of British Columbia" series of composite photographs. The montage works featured selected portraits of children and babies, largely Anglo-European subjects as well as a number of Chinese clients and Black families, photographed throughout the year were produced and sent as New Year's greeting cards to clients from 1881 until about 1895. In the 1890s, the studio facilitated the photographing of mugshots for prisoners for several years, when Hannah Maynard became the official photographer for the Victoria city police in 1897. Data on photographic orders noted in this record consists of date of order, number of negative, size and style of portrait (the bulk of which are carte de visites), quantity and price paid, and sometimes specific customization instructions of photographs ordered, as well as shipping information.

Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery clientele included the spectrum of the Victoria population including notable members of Victorian colonial society, temporary visitors, members of the navy, as well as pioneering Anglo-European, Indigenous, Black (including African American and Caribbean families) and Chinese individuals, families and communities. Client information frequently contained within register entries includes names, place of residence, family relationships, and occasionally identifiers for race or ethnicity for clients not perceived as Anglo-European. Customer names recorded within the approximately 5,000 register entries range from “Mrs. Bossi” and “Mr. Powell” to “Mrs. Alexander and 2 children (Clifford and Mildred Alexander),” “Tie Sue, Chinamen,” and “A Japanese, J Adachi,” to “Chief Sheppard and family,” and “George Alexander” of the HMS Ship Nymphe. Some clients appear multiple times throughout the record. In addition, the initials “CM” and "CL" repeat frequently and appear to relate to clients perceived to be of Chinese or Asian heritage (for examples see “CM Lee Hoo” on register page number 50, “6 C.M. Ah Hoye” on register page number 79 and “CM & C Lady” on register page number 93. Not all given and family names are recorded, as in the case of many clients perceived to be of Chinese heritage, whose entries are generic and general terms such as “Chinamen.” Stated places of residence for the Maynard Studio clientele represented in this record range across British Columbia from in and around Victoria, around South Vancouver Island (locations such as Sidney, Nanaimo, Chemainus and Comox), Salts Spring Island, Haida Gwaii (including Alert Bay), and on the mainland (including Vancouver and Lytton). The register also documents the orders of portrait clients with residences noted as at or near the naval base in the neighbouring community of Esquimalt. Locations such as the dockyard, naval yard or barracks appear listed in the record, as well as the names of British warships that visited the base not limited to: Egeria, Leander, Icarus, Imperieuse, Pheasant and Wild Swan. Many of these client entries are located near the rear of the register.

During the 1870s and 1880s, Hannah and her husband, Richard Maynard, took several working trips, and some they took together where they both practiced landscape photography. This included trips to Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii (then referred to as the Queen Charlotte Islands) and to Banff, Alberta. She used landscape views as well as studio portraits as source material for composite works, such as the blended “documentary” image of a field photograph depicting a view of community village scene and a studio portrait of an Indigenous women. In the early 1900s, Hannah Maynard supplied ethnographic documentary photographs of Indigenous people of B.C.'s Northwest Coast to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard in the United States. In addition to the recorded customer transactions for portraits relating to negative numbers 1025 to 6240, there are several other textual documents found inserted throughout the pages of the register that appear to refer to non-portrait photographs orders furnished through the Maynard Studio. One order handwritten on an excerpt of stationary from the final location of Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Studio on Pandora Street, contains the name and location of G.W. Lilly and Westholme, B.C. and lists the names of several British warships (Pheasant, Imperieuse, Icarus and Wild Swan). Another undated note addressed to Dr. Dorsey at the Field Columbia Museum in Chicago lists a small number of general descriptions noting field and landscape photographs described as depicting Indigenous lifeways and cultural material from communities on the mainland of British Columbia including Bella Coola and Knight Inlet. Finally, located near the beginning of the register there is a single record of correspondence written on The Colonist letterhead between F.A. Harrison and H. Maynard dated March 3rd, 1900 and referring to the return of photographs loaned in 1897.

Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery

William Law Ogilby fonds

  • PR-2208
  • Fonds
  • 1892

The fonds consists of an illustrated diary written in a school exercise book of William Law Ogilby's experience as a chainman on a survey of a portion of the western boundary of the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway Belt on Vancouver Island. A photograph, presumed to have been taken on the survey, depicts Ogilby and two other men at their camp at an unidentified location.

Ogilby, William Law

Letterbook of Constable R.B. Halhed and notes

  • GR-0398
  • Series
  • 1899-1903; 1912

Letter book of Constable R.B. Halhed, 11 July 1899 - 9 March 1903 (bound volume); correspondence inward and notes, 1912, re Chemainus lock up (folder).

British Columbia. Provincial Police Force (Chemainus)

Journal notes : Kwawkewkth Agency

The item consists of draft notes presumably prepared by a member (not identified) of the Royal Commission on Indian Affairs for the Province of British Columbia (McKenna-McBride Royal Commission). The notes are not dated by year, but are thought to have been written in 1914. The address for C.O. Marston in Alert Bay appears on the first page.

The notes refer to the Kwawkewlth Agency region (northern Vancouver Island) and refer to six tribes, which are not always clearly identified in the notes. Varying information is provided for each tribe and may include the name of the chief, population and demographics information, employment and economic activities, customs, acreage and reserve allotments, land use, and discussions relating to education, medical care, and relations with Indian Agents (primarily William May Halliday).

Macmillan Bloedel Limited. Alberni Pacific Division.

Schedule showing wages paid to apprentices, equipment operators, laborers, tradesmen, etc. at the Alberni operations of Macmillan Bloedel and its predecessors, 1930-1979. Includes wage scale surveys and nominal lists of Chinese, East Indians and Japanese employed at Great Central Sawmill, 1934-1941.

Loaned for microfilming by Harvey Dion, Macmillan Bloedel, Alberni Pacific Division, 1981.

MacMillan Bloedel. Alberni Pacific Division

Remains of an ancient civilization on Vancouver Island

The file consists of a report written by James Deans regarding evidence of early habitation on the southeastern part of Vancouver Island. The last page of the report includes several rough pencil sketches of artifacts found by Deans elsewhere on Vancouver Island in 1870 and 1874. Pages 21, 22, 25 and 26 of the report are missing.