The Gabriola Museum opens for the season this weekend, on Saturday, May 19th. (10 am to 3pm.) Their events page introduces the new exhibit: More Than Just Clay and Mortar: The story of the Gabriola Brickyard and the workers and their families For more than five decades until the early 1950s, the Gabriola Brickyard was [...]
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Jean Barman is coming to Gabriola, and you’ll want to be at her multimedia presentation this Wednesday evening. The topic is Early Settlers on the Gulf Islands. Pause at the VIRL to see the list of Jean’s books in the library’s collection. Peek in at Amazon to see more of her books and perhaps get [...]
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From the Tyee: Did Ancient Drifters ‘Discover’ British Columbia? …no one knows what to make of the evidence hauled up from the wreck that lies 16 kilometres off Pachena Bay in almost 150 metres of water, or the two wrecks that are purported to have yielded strange artefacts from beneath nearby Clayoquot Sound. For all [...]
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Feel like going into Nanaimo on Tuesday April 3rd? Here’s what will be happening that evening: 6:30 p.m. Snuneymuxw Chief Doug White will be discussing the Douglas Treaty of 1854 at the Nanaimo Harbourfront Library, 90 Commercial St. Prior to his discussion the Snuneymuxw dancers will perform in Diana Krall Square and then dance up [...]
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More on the history of sleep from the BBC: The myth of the eight-hour sleep. We often worry about people who lie awake in the middle of the night – but it could be good for you. Scientists have been saying for 20 years that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural, and historians increasingly are [...]
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Every once in a while, Iain Lawrence’s blog comes to life again. I always notice; Iain’s writing is worth noticing. Tonight you should go look at his most recent blog post, The Fallen.
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We visited the Nanaimo Cemetery a while back, and came across George Taylor’s grave. Does his name ring a bell? George was a Gabriola pioneer, and Taylor Bay is may have been named for him. Here’s a photo of his tombstone:
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Did you know that there’s an official manual published by the BC government, explaining how to identify and describe culturally modified trees? (If you’re not sure what those are, see Gabriolan’s past post on the subject, Gabriola’s culturally modified trees.) You can download the guide (as a honking big pdf of more than 38 megs, [...]
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Here’s news for anybody interested in Gabriola’s history. Nick Doe writes: I’ve been researching Gabriola’s ice-age history this last summer and have come up with a few surprises, but none greater than this. As yet it is not clear whether this leg bone is from a mastodon or woolly mammoth; and we don’t know yet [...]
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The University of York has published an article about the dog hair the Coast Salish used in weaving: Researchers from the University of York have produced the first clear evidence that textiles made by the indigenous population of the Pacific coast of North America contained dog hair. In recent years, scientists have hotly debated whether [...]
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This old stump stands out back of our house. I photographed it late this summer, when the surrounding greenery was in full intensity; it’s duller now, although there are still tasty evergreen huckleberries on the bush at the right. This tree was felled a long time ago, when fallers worked two men to a tree [...]
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You’ve seen some of the huge trees in the Elder Cedar (S’ul-hween X’pey) Nature Reserve, and perhaps elsewhere on the island, too. Maybe you’ve crowded inside one of Gabriola’s hollow old trees or stumps with your friends while someone snapped a photo. Did it ever occur to you that the base of some old-growth trees [...]
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What do you do when the power goes out (as ours did yesterday — yours too?), and you’re left with no electricity for the evening? We’ve got a propane stove, so cooking dinner is easy enough. We eat by candlelight, enjoy the fire for a while… and then go to bed, way earlier than we [...]
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If we’d lived on Gabriola 100+ years ago, I bet we would have learned a few words of Chinook Jargon. The Yinka Déné Language Institute explains what Chinook Jargon is: Chinook Jargon is a trade language that was used extensively in the nineteenth century and first part of the twentieth century for communication between Europeans [...]
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You’re free on Tuesday night? If you’re interested in local archaeology, you might want to drive down to Victoria for Intertidal Archaeology in the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve. QMackie has details. He writes: Next up for the local (Victoria) branch of the Archaeological Society of B.C. is a Tuesday, October 18th talk by Daryl [...]
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You’ve read other blog posts about the Atrevida, Gabriola’s first ferry. Here’s an account of the Atrevida’s more recent adventures. Sheila Gibbs wrote to say:
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Were you on Gabriola in 1992, when there was much concern about the Weldwood property and what should become of it? I wasn’t, so all I have to go on is the accounts of others. Here’s what Paul Grignon has on his website: Not What We Thought It Was? – Weldwood, 13 Years After. As [...]
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What would your occupation have been if you’d lived on Gabriola — or in Nanaimo — 100 years ago? For help imagining occupations of the past, see Lines of work in BC, 1860 and beyond at The Hook blog.
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