Puberty

In the Paluxy River, in Glen Rose, Texas, they found human AND dinosaur footprints in the clay.

This crew was working on the Woolworth Bldg, NYC, in 1926. 

Baptism in the river. From "Appalachian Life" photographic study

A Normandy Beach landing photo they don't show in textbooks - Brave women of the Red Cross arriving in 1944 to help the injured troops, WWII.

Anthropologist, Homer Barnett, wrote in 1955 that "No one could raise a house or grave post or be married, or name his child and expect the matter to be taken seriously if his did not 'call his people' as witnesses. (Speaking of the First Nations on Quadra Island)

Sometimes guests were invited from outside the extended family to a potlatch to acknowledge the family's claims. Each guest received gifts - property and/or food. These were paid for through a complex financial system tied to the potlatch.

Barnett interviewed First Nations people in the region in the 1930's. He waaimpressed by the number of rituals the Salish people attached to life cycles.

This is what NYC looked like in the late 1800’s. 

A worker helping to build the Empire State Building in the 1930’s, during the Great Depression era.  No safety equipment used here and very dangerous work.

In desperation, the Nazis used child soldiers as fodder for front line diversionary tactics. 

The library cave. A hidden cache of 50,000 books

and rolls dating from ca. 500 to 1002 AD that were deemed heretical and hidden in the cave since the early 11th century.

When a young man's voice began to change, he would go off and live on his own in the forest for "as long as he could bear,". This was a time to seek the aid of a spiritual helper, supernatural being or animals that could bestow enhanced skills. These experiences may be repeated many times and developed courage and self-control.

It was thought that it was easier to access the spirit world at puberty than later in life. This is due to the theory that once a person became sexually active, he was no longer clean and the animals could smell him. The man could get rid of his 'human' scent by bathing repeatedly and fasting. 

"He had to dream of his spirit and receive its assurance a number of times before he knew it was his and before he dared to put faith in it," wrote Barnett "Every spirit bestowed a song as a token of the help it promised to give. It also conferred the cry of the animal...or left a feather or a scale."

A cool photo of the Eiffel Tower, Paris, in 1928.

Here is the way they parked cars in NYC during the 1930’s. 

A steel worker in the 1930's. No safety lines.

Atlanta in the Civil War before Gen. Sherman burned the city to the ground.

Salish girls also had rituals to follow once they started menstruation. They were secluded in a partitioned area in the communal house, on the sleeping platform. A female's power in this state was considerable and could be malignant. "The sight of her drove fish and game away," Barnett wrote. "A drop of her blood would quell the most powerful spirit and rive it out of its owner for good." 

As with some of the European cultures, marriages were arranged to bring social and political status to the families involved. The more important and wealthy the families, the more elaborate the dowry exchange. If the marriage failed, the bride could return to her birth family four years later, four being the sequence observed in rituals, from the number of times a dancer circled the big house to the sequencing of events in legends.

This photo, taken at the end of the war shows a young boy terrified by the sounds of battle. He even wet his pants!  You can see he is being told to toughen up!

No other family in American history has suffered a wartime loss like that of Waterloo's Sullivan family. The Sullivans lost five sons to the war.

On July 10, 1913, Death Valley, California hits 134 °F (~56.7 °C), the highest temperature recorded in the United States.  You remember “20 mule team Borax”?

New Orleans circa 1906. "Italian headquarters, Madison Street."  The streets were still dirt!

Thanks to the book The Quadra Story, A History of Quadra Island by Jeanette Taylor for the above information. And thanks to my Mom's friend, Wes, for the historical photos.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill

"Second Class Saloon...The saloon that Wyatt Earp and wife owned in Nome, Alaska between 1887-1901

Righting the overturned hull of USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor, 19 March 1943

lleta Sullivan reads a letter from the U.S. Navy. She received two letters from F.D.R. in February of 1943. The first informed her of the death of her five sons in the line of duty, the second sent later requested her presence at the christening of the destroyer U.S.S. Sullivans named in their honor.

The USS Ranger....the first Aircraft Carrier.  Just look at the Bi-Planes!

Vancouver's First Residents

This building was built in the early 1920s.

Anthropologists believe that the first humans to settle what is now known as Vancouver did so about 10,000 years ago. This would have been about the time that the Wisconsin Glacial Episode, the ice age, ended. However the scientists don't agree whether they came by sea or land.

Some argue that the first inhabitants moved down a deglaciating coast and then followed rivers formed by the retreating Cordilleran ice sheet into the province's interior valleys in the search of fish and game that populated the area.

Others make the case that the peoples travelled and ice-free inland route then traversed the rivers to the coast.

The Sto:lo people took their name from the Fraser River itself. They believe that their occupation of Vancouver began with the arrival of sky creatures who transformed into ancestral animals.

The Sto:lo people are bonded by a common language even though they are divided into distinct tribal groups. All speak variations of Halkomelem with those that had occupied the region of what is now known as Metro Vancouver speaking the Hun'qmyi'num' dialect. The Sqamish of North Vancouver speak a distinct language even though they are part of the Coast Salish group that includes Halkomelem speakers.

These two buildings are on East Broadway. The red house, 731, was built in 1925 while the larger building beside it was built in 1904.

The Squamish originally inhabited the region around the head of Howe Sound but by the mid-19th century had expanded into the Vancouver area.

Contact with the Europeans in the late 18th century was done by the Musqueam, according to what was recorded. They lived at the mouth of the Fraser River whiled the Kwikwetl'em resided on the Coquitlam River and Coquitlam Lake; the Q'eytsi'i - anglicized as Katzie - lived in the Pitt River watersheds; the Kwantlen lived around what is now known as New Westminster; the Skayuks were at the Stave Lake watersheds; the Mathekwi of Matsqui; the Q'o:leg: of Whonnock and the Sne'kwomes, or Snokomish lived around what is now White Rock.

Following European contact many of these populations moved. When a Hudson's Bay Company trading post was established at Fort Langley in 1827, the Qw'o:ntl'an, Katzie, Snokomish, Skayuks and Q'o:leq' moved closer to the fort so that they would be near the source of trade goods. Unfortunately this also led to a depopulation of the nations due to various introduced epidemics.

When the Europeans settled the area in the mid-1850s Vancouver was largely occupied by the Musqueam people. Their villages extended from the Fraser River Delta around Point Grey, False Creek, the West End, Stanley Park and along Burrard Inlet.

The preceding information was gathered from the book, The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver by the late Chuck Davis.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill, Vancouver, Commercial Drive, Musqueam, First Nations, Hudson's Bay Company, British Columbia

Marine and Masks

While I was at the Chinatown Festival I happened upon a display from the Vancouver Aquarium. UBC fisheries and oceanography professors Murray Newman, Carl Lietze and Wilbert Clemens formed the Vancouver Public Aquarium Association in 1950. On June 15, 1956, thanks to help from timber baron H.R. MacMillan, alderman and businessman George Cunningham and $100,000 from each of the three levels of government (City of Vancouver, Province of British Columbia, Federal Government of Canada.) the aquarium opened in Stanley Park.

The Vancouver Aquarium was the first public aquarium in Canada and has not only become the largest in Canada but one of the five largest in North America. It was one of the first aquariums to capture and display an orca whale. And in 1995 the Vancouver Aquarium was home to the first baby beluga to be conceived and born in captivity. A year later, in an agreement with the Vancouver Parks Board, the Vancouver Aquarium agreed to never again capture cetaceans- dolphins, whales and porpoises - from the wild for display.  They also agreed to only obtain cetaceans from other facilities if they were born in captivity, captured before 1996 or were rescued and deemed un-releasable after this date.

The first aquarium to be accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) was the Vancouver Aquarium in 1975. It has also been accredited by the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA) and in 1987 was designated Canada's Pacific National Aquarium by the Canadian Federal Government.

The Vancouver Aquarium was one of the first of facilities to incorporate professional naturalists into the galleries to interpret animal behaviours. The aquarium is also a place for projects for marine research, conservation and marine animal rehabilitation.

Here's an interesting fact. The aquarium is run by a self-supporting non-profit organization. The operation of the aquarium receives no government funding. The property is owned by the City of Vancouver and rented to the Aquarium for $40,000 a year since 1991 (prior to which it was $1 per year). Or at least that was true when the Wikipedia article I am getting my information from was written.

That was a little glimpse into the world of the Vancouver Aquarium. Perhaps another day I will write more.

I did go to the Robson Square Artisan Market and got a few shots.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I got there a bit early and things weren't totally set up. But, on the street level, I met a very interesting man.

Freddie Fencepost was more than willing to allow me to take photos of the masks he creates as well as entertain me with stories.

These masks all tell a story and have layers of meanings. Fables - derived from real life events - passed down through the generations are represented in each of these unique faces.

Any one of these would make an interesting addition to a home. And Freddie would be more than willing to tell you the story behind them.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill,First Nations, Vancouver,Vancouver Aquarium,Freddie Fencepost,Robson Square Artisan Market,History,Underworld