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!

The Seasons

Information concerning Quadra Island's history is limited due to the fact there has only been one comprehensive archaeological dig on the Island as well as the partial skeleton found at the Cape Mudge Village. The skeletal remains were found when a waterline was installed in 1986 and were of an adult male. Carbon dating places the age of the remains at two thousand years old.

In 1966, Donald Mitchell led an excavation at Rebecca Spit. It was on a rise at the first treeless opening and gave a small view into what life was like for the last people who lived there int he seventeenth century.  It was a place of shelter during war times. There were three or four small houses protected by a trench - 1.3 metres or 4 feet deep - and a partial palisade.

The dig also gave the explorers a look at what the ancient people ate. Rockfish dominated the diet but they also ate salmon and dogfish along with mammals such as deer, harbour seal and raccoon. Stone tools such as spear points, ground slate knives and mortars were unearthed along with wedges, harpoon valves and awls made from bone and antler.  A large clamshell bowl was found and it still contained red ochre - powdered earth, which was combined with oily substances like salmon roe to create paint.

The people who left these tools behind lived within an economy and social structure that dates back eight thousand years or more. They had a deep understanding of the plants, animals and cycles of the coast and that is reflected in every aspect of their lives. 

As spring descended on the area, the large groups that congregated for the winter, divided into extended family groups. They fished for herring on northern Quadra Island and tended clam beds at Waiatt Bay. 

The first residents of this area harpooned seals off the Breton Islands and in late summer they prepared their fish weirs and traps on the streams at Quathiaski Cove, Hyacinthe Bay, Village Bay and Granite Bay. At Village Bay, with its chain of lakes, they harvested cedar trees to make canoes that were later floated down a creek to the ocean. 

In the late fall, after the harvest was complete, the canoes were tied together with housed planks between them to transport smoked salmon, dried berry and seaweed cakes, roots and clams to the winter villages. Winter was the time to mark deaths or other live events.

Thanks to the book, The Quadra Story, A History of Quadra Island by Jeanette Taylor for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill

Middens and Charts

These photos are from my Mother's friend, Theoma. Thank you.

Entrance to Stanley Park.  The Lions Gate bridge was not yet built so there is no causeway through  the park. The Burrard Yacht Club building still stands  today.

Looking back  at English Bay beach  from a pier that existed then, the building where the Boathouse  restaurant  is still standing on Beach  Ave.

1925. Looking eastward towards the old Hotel Vancouver.

The site of the present day Cleveland Dam.

Prospect Point before the construction of the Lion's Gate Bridge. 

While at Menzies Bay, Archibald Menzies spent his time with a walk at Nymph Cove. "We visited two Huts in a small Cove," Menzies wrote, "close to our landing place, containing several Families to the Amount of about thirty people." Menzies asked the people to count their numerals. He found they spoke the same language as the people along the Strait of Georgia to the south.

The British later reached Johnstone Strait, which was well above Seymour Narrows, and Menzies noted the people spoke a different language. George Vancouver said they were "more variously painted than any of the natives our gentlemen had before seen. In those respects they evidently approached nearer to the character of the people of Nootka, than of any other we had yet seen..."

Vancouver was sure that his men were the first Europeans the Salish met but the people to the north were well armed with muskets and spoke "smatterings" of English.

Anthropologists suggest, based on these accounts, that the northern boundary of Salish territory ran from above Kelsey Bay in Johnstone Strait and across to Port Neville on the mainland, in 1792.

There were at least two distinct Salish groups. The Island Comox controlled Discovery Passage and north to Kelsey Bay and the Mainland Comox resided in villages from the Sunshine Coast to Bute Inlet. Residing north of them were the Laich-Kwil-Tach (Lekwiltok). Their language and customs were similar to the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) of northern Vancouver Island, the Broughton Archipelago and nearby mainland inlets.

Vancouver created charts on his voyage, which were remarkably accurate and were used for decades. However, they weren't perfect. He missed the narrow channels that separate Quadra, Sonora, Maurelle and Read Islands.

Because he missed the channels, Vancouver named what he thought was a large island, Valdes - in honour of the Spanish captain who also explored the coast in the summer of 1792. It wasn't until the 1860's that Read Island was discovered to be a separate land mass and it took another decade before the British surveyors identified three other separate islands.

The British only mentioned one village on Quadra Island but many archaeological sites on the island show evidence of widespread occupation. The depths of middens (refuse piles) in places such as Heriot Bay and Waiatt Bay show that these were sites of winter villages in use for thousands of years. There is a site in Kanish Bay - located at the northwestern entrance to Small inlet - which has a midden that is over ten feet (three metres) deep.

Thanks to Jeanette Taylor and her book The Quadra Story, A History of Quadra Island for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill