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British Columbia: Land of Promises (2005)
Unlike beauty, history is not in the eye of the beholder. It's in the eye of the editor. Patricia E. Roy and John Herd Thompson take pains to make that clear in their new illustrated history, British Columbia: Land of Promises (Oxford University Press, 2005).
There's no Pauline Johnson, no explosion of Ripple Rock, no collapse of the Second Narrows Bridge. Instead they err on the side of sobriety, providing documentary-style images and cartoons that illustrate ideas and attitudes. It's downright educational. They're trying to make an original book, not merely a rehash of familiar photos, and that entails some critical-mindedness along the way.
The authors note that Terry Reksten's illustrated history of B.C., James H. Gray's history of the prairies, and Craig Herron's Booze: A History of Canada have all used the same photo of two women and several men outside Edd and Joe's saloon in Donald, B.C. This Glenbow Museum photo, according to Reksten, shows two 'fallen angels' from a bygone community (located north of Golden) that was a "gambling, drinking, fighting little mountain town."
Next in the museum's catalogue, there's a very different image of beautiful, downtown Donald--its police station. Rarely if ever published before, this second photo must have been taken on the same day as the first, likely by the same photographer, because the same man appears in both photos, but who wants to learn that law 'n' order was always just around the corner in our pioneer towns? As a result the exterior saloon image--showing two women who could have been the saloonkeeper's wife and sister--has been used three times to influence the public's imagination of the past.
Roy and Herd Thompson abhor this tendency to choose entertainment over content, to pander. They say historians who opt for aesthetics in their selection of photos are making "the equivalent of choosing to cite a written document simply because it was written with elegant penmanship on fine vellum!"
Roy and Herd Thompson are opting for higher ground. There are no photos of sports heroes, not even Percy Williams, or Miracle Miler Roger Bannister or Terry Fox. They concentrate on what social historians call 'high politics', seemingly taking some pleasure in finding fault with others in the process. Their refusal to titillate, combined with a predilection to debunk, is a welcome antidote to the slackness evident in more commercial undertakings, notably Charlotte Gray's recent The Museum Called Canada: 25 Rooms of Wonder (Random House, 2004), a bogus mega-book riddled with idiosyncratic fluff.
Whereas Gray has managed to credit The Guess Who's hit song "American Woman" to Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and claim the Spanish discoverer of British Columbia was Juan Joseph Perez Hernandez--when it was Juan Pérez, a different chap--Roy and Herd Thompson are sticklers for analysing iconic imagery and providing lengthy captions.
This is not British Columbia for Dummies. In their caption for an oft-used 1784 engraving of Captain James Cook by J.K. Sherwin, based on the 1776 portrait by Nathaniel Dance, Roy and Herd Thompson cannot resist adding, "The portrait is ubiquitous in histories of British Columbia, although the artist is almost never identified."
God is in the details. In their church, there are no cushions on the pews. They understand much of history is artifice, and they refuse to deploy trickery. In their introduction they quote Lewis Hine who said, "Photographs may not lie, but liars may photograph." The truth ain't pretty, and it mustn't be gussied up. But, like the turtle that is slow and steady, it can sometimes prevail in the long run. 0-19-541048-3
There's no Pauline Johnson, no explosion of Ripple Rock, no collapse of the Second Narrows Bridge. Instead they err on the side of sobriety, providing documentary-style images and cartoons that illustrate ideas and attitudes. It's downright educational. They're trying to make an original book, not merely a rehash of familiar photos, and that entails some critical-mindedness along the way.
The authors note that Terry Reksten's illustrated history of B.C., James H. Gray's history of the prairies, and Craig Herron's Booze: A History of Canada have all used the same photo of two women and several men outside Edd and Joe's saloon in Donald, B.C. This Glenbow Museum photo, according to Reksten, shows two 'fallen angels' from a bygone community (located north of Golden) that was a "gambling, drinking, fighting little mountain town."
Next in the museum's catalogue, there's a very different image of beautiful, downtown Donald--its police station. Rarely if ever published before, this second photo must have been taken on the same day as the first, likely by the same photographer, because the same man appears in both photos, but who wants to learn that law 'n' order was always just around the corner in our pioneer towns? As a result the exterior saloon image--showing two women who could have been the saloonkeeper's wife and sister--has been used three times to influence the public's imagination of the past.
Roy and Herd Thompson abhor this tendency to choose entertainment over content, to pander. They say historians who opt for aesthetics in their selection of photos are making "the equivalent of choosing to cite a written document simply because it was written with elegant penmanship on fine vellum!"
Roy and Herd Thompson are opting for higher ground. There are no photos of sports heroes, not even Percy Williams, or Miracle Miler Roger Bannister or Terry Fox. They concentrate on what social historians call 'high politics', seemingly taking some pleasure in finding fault with others in the process. Their refusal to titillate, combined with a predilection to debunk, is a welcome antidote to the slackness evident in more commercial undertakings, notably Charlotte Gray's recent The Museum Called Canada: 25 Rooms of Wonder (Random House, 2004), a bogus mega-book riddled with idiosyncratic fluff.
Whereas Gray has managed to credit The Guess Who's hit song "American Woman" to Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and claim the Spanish discoverer of British Columbia was Juan Joseph Perez Hernandez--when it was Juan Pérez, a different chap--Roy and Herd Thompson are sticklers for analysing iconic imagery and providing lengthy captions.
This is not British Columbia for Dummies. In their caption for an oft-used 1784 engraving of Captain James Cook by J.K. Sherwin, based on the 1776 portrait by Nathaniel Dance, Roy and Herd Thompson cannot resist adding, "The portrait is ubiquitous in histories of British Columbia, although the artist is almost never identified."
God is in the details. In their church, there are no cushions on the pews. They understand much of history is artifice, and they refuse to deploy trickery. In their introduction they quote Lewis Hine who said, "Photographs may not lie, but liars may photograph." The truth ain't pretty, and it mustn't be gussied up. But, like the turtle that is slow and steady, it can sometimes prevail in the long run. 0-19-541048-3
Submitted on February 8, 2005 in By David.
