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Robert Brown and the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition (UBC Press, 1989)
Since the 1850s a variety of Scotsmen have explored Vancouver Island and later written about their work in detail. These include Governor James Douglas, the best known of the group; Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant, the Island's (and B.C.'s) first independent settler; Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, industrialist and writer; Alexander Caulfield Anderson, fur-trader and author; Eric Duncan, farmer, poet and philosopher; and William Downie, the first European to ascend the Skeena River. Scotsmen all; most as quick with a pen as with an axe or a walking stick. The curious reader following William Downie's trails will eventually discover the writings of his countryman, Robert Brown. Next to Sproat, he was the most active writer among these Scottish explorers.
Now, thanks largely to the efforts of editor John Hayman, for the first time in this century a book of Robert Brown's will be in print in Canada. Robert Brown and the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition (UBC Press, 1989) is based on the journal that Brown kept while he led the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition during the summer of 1864. The book also contains a collection of Indian legends and one of the earliest written accounts of a potlatch (held at Alberni).
Back in 1864 Victoria needed a gold rush. Due to the mainland gold rush moving further into the Cariboo and New Westminster becoming the natural centre of commerce, Victoria was sinking back into its original quagmire of silence. Gold cured everything on the frontier. So the city fathers sent Brown into the interior of Vancouver Island to find gold. To everyone's amazement, Brown was successful. The subsequent rush to the Sooke and Leech rivers lasted less than a year, but it gave Victoria renewed hopes. Meanwhile Brown led his men off into the sunset, unaware of the importance of the rush, and oblivious to the fact that few really cared what Brown's V.I.E.E. did with itself.
It now appears that Brown saw life through slightly out-of-focus lenses. As an explorer he was not highly important. But no brief commentary here can do justice to the complexity of Robert Brown's situation as a writer. He made some of the first literary attempts to transport the West Coast imagination from the local to the national and even further abroad. Brown was the first to fail at this, and he failed miserably. In the process he left behind B.C.'s first short story, and a posthumous edition of The Adventures of John Jewitt.
-- By Charles Lillard
[Spring / BCBW 1989]
Now, thanks largely to the efforts of editor John Hayman, for the first time in this century a book of Robert Brown's will be in print in Canada. Robert Brown and the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition (UBC Press, 1989) is based on the journal that Brown kept while he led the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition during the summer of 1864. The book also contains a collection of Indian legends and one of the earliest written accounts of a potlatch (held at Alberni).
Back in 1864 Victoria needed a gold rush. Due to the mainland gold rush moving further into the Cariboo and New Westminster becoming the natural centre of commerce, Victoria was sinking back into its original quagmire of silence. Gold cured everything on the frontier. So the city fathers sent Brown into the interior of Vancouver Island to find gold. To everyone's amazement, Brown was successful. The subsequent rush to the Sooke and Leech rivers lasted less than a year, but it gave Victoria renewed hopes. Meanwhile Brown led his men off into the sunset, unaware of the importance of the rush, and oblivious to the fact that few really cared what Brown's V.I.E.E. did with itself.
It now appears that Brown saw life through slightly out-of-focus lenses. As an explorer he was not highly important. But no brief commentary here can do justice to the complexity of Robert Brown's situation as a writer. He made some of the first literary attempts to transport the West Coast imagination from the local to the national and even further abroad. Brown was the first to fail at this, and he failed miserably. In the process he left behind B.C.'s first short story, and a posthumous edition of The Adventures of John Jewitt.
-- By Charles Lillard
[Spring / BCBW 1989]
Submitted on April 14, 2004 in By David.
