There are more than 5,000 Frank Swannell photos in the Provincial Archives, and researcher Jay Sherwood has sifted through more than half of them for Surveying Central British Columbia, A Photojournal of Frank Swannell, 1920-1928 (Royal BC Museum/UBC Press $39.95), his second book about the remarkable surveyor.

Having spent three summers visiting the locales that Swannell surveyed, Sherwood has compiled a superb record of Swannell's vast contribution to the province during the 1920s when he was camping with his crew in an area stretching from Prince Rupert to the west, Smithers to the north, Prince George to the east, and Bella Coola and Williams Lake to the south.

Swannell followed Alexander Mackenzie's route to the Pacific, mapping the explorer's path in accordance with Mackenzie's journal, and photographing many of the landmarks that Mackenzie described. More importantly, his camera and journals have provided a lasting record of the cultures and people that he met, including some characters described in Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher's classic wilderness memoir Driftwood Valley.

Swannell's photograph of a nine-metre-high G'psgolox mortuary totem pole, carved in 1872, is one example of his unpaid sociological fieldwork. This historic G'psgolox pole, first erected on the banks of the Kitlope River near the foot of Gardner Canal, was commissioned by Chief G'psgolox of the eagle clan to give thanks for the fact that relatively few of his Haisla people died during the smallpox epidemics of the 1860s.

This pole remained in place as a geographic marker and cultural symbol for decades until the Swedish consul in Prince Rupert, with the aid of a local Indian agent, decided the Misk'usa village on the Kitlope River was abandoned.
At the time, Sweden was one of the few countries in Europe that did not already have at least one major totem from the Pacific Northwest, so they had the pole cut down in 1929 and sent it to the Folken Museum Etnografiske in Stockholm.
The Haisla instigated negotiations to have the pole repatriated in the 1990s. They carved two replicas of the pole. One was sent to the museum in Stockholm. The other replica was erected at the original site in Misk'usa.

Frank Swannell's three photographs of the pole were essential to the process of reclamation. In 2006, Sweden returned the original totem pole to the Haisla in Kitimat. It is, according to Sherwood, "the first totem pole repatriated from Europe to a First Nations community.";

Swannell's surveying work and photos prior to World War One are also featured in Sherwood's first book, Surveying Northern British Columbia (Caitlin 2004). "His photos appear in most books that cover the BC Interior in the early 20th century,"; says Sherwood, now a teacher-librarian in Vancouver, "yet he is seldom given more than passing credit.";

While maintaining his primary residence in Victoria, Swannell worked throughout most of British Columbia for at least 40 years, taking time to fight in World War One and join an anti-Bolshevik force in Siberia in 1919 where he was wounded in the shoulder. "To be an explorer was my great aim in life,"; he told the Daily Colonist in 1963. He died in Victoria in 1969.

Swannell's many summers in north-central B.C. are commemorated by the Swannell Ranges, Swannell River and Mount Swannell.

978-0-7726-5742-8; Distribution by UBC Press.

[BCBW 2008] "History"