It’s easy to forget that Pender Harbour holds a prominent chair at the table of BC’s coastal history. There’s been many a nod to its role in coastal settlement in BC literature but the story hasn’t really been told yet.
I’ve tried in vain to encourage a certain local author/publisher that he should take up the project of recording our history in book form. It’s not like the thought hadn’t occurred to him before but there’s just so much good stuff that it makes for an impossibly daunting task.
Would you include trivia like how Stanley Park’s Lumberman’s Arch came from Kleindale? Would you try to verify rumours that Tiffy Wray offered comfort to Elizabeth Smart, author of one of literature and Garden Bay’s greatest triumphs, "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept?"
Would including research into the heritage of pioneer families clear up confusion about genealogy or rekindle the popularity of inbreeding jokes?
The amount of research required could occupy an author for years and even if there was a supply of readily available sources to pull from, what would you cut in order to keep it thinner than the Bible?
Ultimately, whether the book gets written or not isn’t important. We have a responsibility to ensure that the history isn’t lost altogether so that if some future person needs to access our past, details will be available somewhere. Somewhere usually means a museum. Most people think that means a place with a curious smell where folks go to see old relics.
While that’s true, the most important role of a museum is archiving historical information. The part we see is just a showroom for some of the materials gathered. As old-timers pass on they’re taking their priceless memories and records of our heritage with them. Photographs end up being divided by family members who often don’t live here and maybe don’t appreciate the importance of a bunch of old "junk."
Pender Harbour needs a society committed to the adoption of a location where a part-time archivist could be employed to collect this material. A place where old journals could be digitized and preserved. Old photos scanned and archived. A place where people knew they could donate their precious family mementoes and trust they’d be taken care of and shared.
Faced with priorities of water treatment and soccer fields, we tend to forget about what came before because there’s an assumption that it isn’t going anywhere. The truth is that historical records are a fragile gift and with so much of it already having disappeared, we can’t afford to lose what’s left.
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