This small undated pamphlet, 15 Favorite Recipes with Clover Leaf Pink Salmon, appears to be from the 1960s.  That’s a decade later later than the film footage we discussed in Part 1, but it carries on a similar tradition.  It is still possible today to pick up recipe sheets from grocery store displays, which is likely where this particular pamphlet would have been found.  I love the lurid pink colour of the paper, mimicking the flesh of the pink salmon it is promoting.  We can’t miss the connection between the paper colour, the words “pink salmon”, and the fish’s flesh.

Each of the recipes is clustered around a common carbohydrate: “Take a can of Clover Leaf Pink Salmon and _____”.  You filled in the blank with your choice of carbohydrate — biscuit dough, bread crumbs, pastry, potatoes, rice, cracker crumbs, or macaroni.  They are simple recipes with few ingredients, and they rely on processed foods such as canned vegetables, canned shoestring potatoes, and the (infamous) canned cream of mushroom soup.

I find the inclusion of the price per serving instructive.  Many of the dishes cost less than 25 cents per serving; the per-serving cost ranges from a low of 9 cents for “Salmon Potato Cakes” to a whopping 28 cents for the “Skillet Supper”.  The convenience of canned salmon, and the fact that cans could be stored safely without need for refrigeration, probably made the product attractive to the consumer.  I don’t know how many women would have prepared the more elaborate salmon dishes demonstrated in Part 1’s filmed cooking class, but my own experience in the early sixties attests to the fact that middle-class mothers really did make salmon fish cakes and salmon loaf as regular dinner offerings.

The recipes included in this pamphlet are far more practical than those presented onscreen in the film Silver Harvest.  The Salmon Potato Cakes, for example, were probably a standard reliable main dish on many Canadian dinner tables.  They were quick to prepare and cook, utilized a common leftover (mashed potatoes), and could easily be stretched to accommodate an extra person at supper. In my childhood, they appeared for supper with astonishing regularity.  While they weren’t my favourite dish, I knew that there were far worse horrors that could appear in their place.

When I worked in the archives’ reference room, providing access to materials like this little pamphlet, I always felt that a key value in our archival records was that they allow us to reconnect with the past.  Sometimes that past is a more general historical past — and sometimes is part of our own very personal past.

Generations of people have grown up at the Royal BC Museum. This includes the babies that come in strollers with their parents, the multitudes of youth that visit with their school groups, college students who find summer employment as camp leaders, tourists, parents and grandparents. Museums attract them all. Museums also attract insects. Vast collections of furs, feathers and textiles – on exhibit and in storage – provide a tempting food source for young larvae.

The adult insects arrive on the clothes of staff and visitors, through cracks in the walls and under door sweeps. Occasionally, these opportunistic interlopers find their way to collections, where they settle down to raise their families. Their needs are basic; a quiet place in the dark that is free of predators, a nice stable climate and an ample source of food. A bear skin rug, woolen uniform, or a cozy moccasin is move-in ready.

After they take possession of their lovely new home, the eggs are laid and not long after, the larvae hatch. The larvae create their very own receiving blanket, a sort of cocoon made of extruded silken material mixed with fibres stolen from the artifact around them. Larvae are hungry little beasts and waste no time beginning to feed … on their own home of all things! This is where the story gets scary. Those furs, feathers and textiles can be digested at lightning speed, leaving nothing behind but frass, or tiny fecal pellets. The damage is done, and often it is devastating.

Read more in Curious Magazine

Polystichum munitum

British Columbia’s moist and mild coastal climate provides ideal conditions for ferns to thrive, so much so that several fern species are obvious and characteristic features of the conifer forest floor. Most abundant of all these ferns is the stately and lush sword fern of the Wood Fern Family (Dryopteridaceae).

Sword ferns grow into a large perennial clump of leaves spreading out from a massive crown. This crown consists of a woody mass of rhizomes (root-stems) buried in reddish brown scales and dead leaf bases. Roots explore the soil outward from the rhizome. In a mature well-established clump the crown may stretch half a meter (20”) or more in diameter.

Dark evergreen fronds stand stiffly from the crown. Fronds reach as tall as 1.5 metres (60”) and up to 25 cm (10″) wide. The lower third of the frond consists of a den­sely scaly brown stalk, called a stipe by botanists. The upper two-thirds of the frond have numerous narrow, pointed and toothed leaflets. Near the tip of the frond the leaflets become progressively shorter. Young unfolding leaves are at first curled like a shepherd’s crook or crozier, then gradually un­furl and expand.

Ferns are not flowering plants; they reproduce by spores which are microscopic pollen-grain like bits of plant tissue. Spores form inside tiny thin-walled sacs called sporangia. The sporangia of sword fern cluster in brown dot-like structures called “sori” (singular “soros”), which line the back of each leaflet of the frond. These many (= “polys” in Greek) lines (= “stichos” in Greek) of sori give rise to the scientific name Polystichum. The species name munitum (“armed”) derives from the numerous pointed teeth along the leaflets.

Sporangia split open and the spores drift to the ground where they germinate only if it’s moist. The spores grow into small delicate mini-plants called gametophytes with only one set of chromosomes, half of the double set of the much larger and robust parent. Male and female struc­tures develop on the gametophytes and male sperm swim to fertilize the female egg. Once fertilized, the egg develops into a proper leafy fern plant.

In British Columbia sword fern is dominantly a coastal species, occurring more than two-thirds of the way to the Yukon border. The range extends across extreme southern B.C. and adjacent Washington and Idaho in moist climates in the southeast part of the province. The North American range extends along the coast from Alaska almost to the Mexican border. Generally sword fern thrives in the shaded humus of the damp to moist conifer forest floor. In very wet forests you may see it perched on a shady rock face. Sword fern forms a distinctive association with western redcedar (Thuja plicata) on nutrient rich seepage sites. Fern clumps completely cover the forest floor, in a manner some­what reminiscent of a lush tropical jungle. A stiffer narrow-leaved species of sword fern, called imbricate sword fern (Polvstichun im­bricans) grows among boulders and in rock crevices in dry, usually open settings.

Aboriginal British Colum­bians used sword fern for various purposes. In spring rhizomes were dug, cleaned and roasted in open fires or earth pits. Cooked rhizomes were then peeled and eaten usually with grease or salmon eggs. The fronds were used to line pits for cooking root foods and to line boxes and baskets. Fern fronds also provided a decorative motif for basket designs.

Sword fern is among the easiest ferns to grow in the garden. Since this fern is so ubiquitous in coastal lowland sites, many suburban building lots come with their own supply. If possible it’s best to leave the clump where it sits, making sure there is shade. However the plants transplant readily and many can be easily rescued from development projects. Sword fern is one of the more widely available of our native species. So ask the owner of your local garden centre or nursery to order it in if you cannot get it from a friend or rescue site. Spores spread about a moist and shaded site will yield even more fern plants in a few years.

For best results, choose a shaded to partly open damp setting. In the Native Plant Garden at the Royal BC Museum we have used it in a mass planting under trees between two buildings where it suits the poorly lit situation much better than a high care lawn. Sword fern is ideal for a woodland garden, providing a lush verdant framework for the garden’s further development. Once established, the only care the fern needs is the removal of unsightly dry fronds in winter.

Try ferns in your garden: many are well suited for those difficult shaded sites. Ferns also illustrate how less-advanced plants reproduce without flowers. Visit the Native Plant Garden at the museum and see luxuriant clumps of sword fern and other fern species.

Arbutus menziesii

The Heather Family (Ericaceae) is well known in Canada for its many shrubby species such as blueberries (Vaccinium spp.), salal (Gaultheria shallon) and Labrador tea (Rhododendron gro­enlandicum; previously Ledum groenlandicum). We in British Columbia are fortunate to have the only tree-sized member of the Heather Family in Canada, the distinctive and handsome arbutus (Arbutus menziesii) also known as Pacific madrone, madrona and strawberry tree.

Arbutus grows into a multi-stemmed shrub or tree with crooked trunks sometimes twisting their way up to 35 m (approxi­mately 120′) tall. The smooth reddish bark stands out from that of all other trees in our province. It flakes off in the late fall, being replaced by young greenish yellow bark from beneath as the trees begin to swell and grow with fall mois­ture.

Leathery, oval evergreen leaves cluster toward the ends of the branches. Above they are shiny green, but below they are pale. Typical leaves range from 5-15 cm (2-6”) long, Young shoots bear finely toothed leaves whereas those of mature shoots have no teeth.

Like bunches of grapes, great clus­ters of creamy or pinkish white, honey-scented flowers adorn the ends of the branches. Each small flower resem­bles a tiny white bell, pinched in at the mouth. The tips of the petals form five little teeth, a feature common to many flowers of the Heather Family. Within the flower nestle 10 stamens and a sin­gle five-parted pistil.

Brick-red berries form in the late fall and persist well into winter. Each fruit in the cluster is about a centimeter (0.4″) across and covered by tiny little bumps. Birds, especially grouse, feast on these attractive fruits.

The geographic range of arbutus hugs the Paci­fic Coast of North America from south­ern British Columbia to California. In our province, arbutus occurs on the southern two-thirds of Vancouver Island, especially the east side, and the adjacent Mainland almost to Knight Inlet. Rocky knolls and cliffs provide the classic hang-out for the species. The tree appears to wrest nu­trients from the bare rock itself. Arbu­tus grows extremely well in open dry Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) woodland and forest, where the soils are deeper. On these sites, trees can re­ach great girth and height at times forming “magical” groves. In Victoria arbutus trees and shrubs appear in boulevards and on roadside banks “inoculated” so to speak, by perching birds

Once established, arbutus makes a superb, undemanding garden and landscape plant. Evergreen leaves, exquisitely attractive bark, beautiful flowers and brilliant berries are out­standing features. The only draw­backs may be the cleanup of the leaves, particularly in the late summer, and the lack of frost tolerance. There is also a stem canker present in the re­gion which can kill branches.

The easiest way to have arbutus on your property is to leave and encourage already estab­lished plants. You can raise arbutus with relative ease from seed sown in the fall and covered lightly in a peat-potting soil-sand mixture. If you have a very dry south, or west-facing site, simply spread fruits collected in the fall, and you will be surprised at the rate of successful germination in places where you could never expect to plant a seedling. Arbutus plants lar­ger than 20 cm (8″) tall are almost im­possible to transplant and should ne­ver be dug up. Move only seedlings from waste sites with loose soils in the wettest part of the winter. Be sure to dig up the entire root and keep as much of the soil attached as possible. Occasionally, potted seedlings are available at garden centres and native plant sales.

Aboriginal peoples put arbutus to assorted uses in technology and me­dicine. Saanich people used the wood for spoons and gambling sticks. The Sechelt made keels and sterns for small boats from the hard wood. Dye from bark was used to color wooden utensils and camas bulbs in cooking pits. On the Saanich Peninsula, leaves and bark yielded medicines for colds, stomach problems, tuberculosis and birth control.

The dense hard wood is widely used for artistic carving, taking polish very well. It also provides hot slow-burning firewood.

The scientific name Arbutus is the same name as Romans used for a simi­lar and closely-related tree known as the Strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) The spe­cies name, menziesii, honours Archi­bald Menzies, Royal Navy botanist and surgeon, who collected many plants in our area in the 1780’s and 1790’s.

You can see and learn more about arbutus and many other members of the Heather Family at the Native Plant Garden of The Royal British Columbia Museum, 675 Belleville Street, in Victoria, B.C.

 

I ran across an interesting video of describing how a Museum is using its food offerings to integrate them with the rest of the museum experience.

The item appeared as part of “CBS Sunday Morning” food edition on 20 Nov 2016.

Here is the link.

The menu recreates historically famous items from around the world as taught to the staff by the chefs who created them.

This is the link to the menu.

The menu includes the name of the chef, the restaurant, city, and year of creation.

Be sure to click through the Lounge, Dining Room and Beverage tabs!

One of the dishes created there is Oops! I dropped the lemon tart.

Three-Michelin-star chef Massimo Bottura’s describes how the dish was created here.

Feel free to research the chefs, restaurants and recipes listed on the menu. Time well spent!

Antennaria rosea

The search for strong growing, attractive ground-cover plants is a major focus in the low-care gardening of the modern day. Many widely used ground cover plants are not native to British Columbia region and have the bad habitat of being aggressive invaders into our natural environment. Periwinkle (Vinca) and English ivy (Hedera helix) are good examples, and are now the target of removal efforts.

These non-native garden plants often do not thrive in the drier colder climates of inland British Columbia. Many native species spread widely and establish attractive and tough natural ground covers but are not nearly so invasive grow more vigorously in our inland climates. Rosy pussytoes (Antennaria rosea) is a widespread BC native species of the Aster Family that offers an alternative ground cover choice.

The pussytoes genus (Antennaria) is not well known to gardeners, yet there are as many as 15 species growing in open and even lightly shaded situations in BC from the hot valley bottoms to the alpine heights. Typically these are low growing plants that hug the ground surface and spread by densely spaced rooting stems called stolons. Rosy pussytoes is typical of this form. It forms a dense interwoven mat with numerous fibrous roots firmly anchoring it to the soil. Numerous spoon-shaped to broadly elongate leaves cover the horizontal stems and persist through the winter. Their gray green hue provides a pleasing textural effect.

Leafy branching stems rise from the matted surface to a height of about 5-40 cm (2-16”) tall. Densely packed wooly hairs cover the stems. Stem leaves are mostly narrow, ranging from 0.5-3.5 cm long and end in a sharp tip.

Half centimeter tall flowerheads occur in tight rounded clusters at the tips of the stems, each flower head soft and firm like a kitten’s toe. The flower head consists of modified leaves called bracts that surround a mass of tightly packed individual flowers. The bracts are very hairy at the base hence the softness. They also provide the colour, in the case of Antennaria rosea varying shades of pink. The whitish, true flowers emerge somewhat from the surrounding bracts in an attractive effect.  A close relative and sometimes considered the same species, white pussytoes (Antennaria microphylla) has mostly greenish to white bracts and is also a good garden plant. Males and females are on separate plants and flowers appear from June to August.

Rosy pussytoes is a widely adapted plant growing throughout most of our province except the wet climates of Haida Gwaii and the central and north coast. The geographic range also extends to Alaska, Yukon and eastward to Quebec and southward to New Mexico and California. The natural habitat includes moderately moist to dry slopes, terraces along rivers, openings in forests, grasslands and dry sub-alpine meadows. It grows across a wide range of climates extending from lowland to high mountain elevations. We see rosy pussytoes occasionally during our expeditions to document the plants of BC’s northern mountains, where it appears on south-facing slopes just into the upper part of the subalpine zone.

The species is widely adaptable to uses in open garden settings. In the book by Wendy Mee and other authors Waterwise: Native Plants for Intermountain Landscapes (Utah State University Press 2003) rosy pussytoes is recommended for rock gardens, small spaces and borders. To this I would add small eroding banks with poor soils and in and around paving stones. It tolerates a modest level of foot traffic. Make sure the soil has good drainage. Plants can be propagated like strawberries from rooted horizontal stems, best in the early spring or fall. Plant on loose gravelly soil to get them started. Propagation from fresh fall sown seed is easy, with seedlings ready to plant out in 4 months after germination. Rosy Pussytoes is hardy to zone 2 and can be grown in most gardens in BC.

BC First Nations people of the southern interior had several uses for the plant. Dried roots were powdered, put into hot coals at winter dances and the smoke was believed to drive away bad spirits and revive passed out dancers. The leaves could also be chewed and swallowed to increase male virility.

Expand your choice of ground covers beyond the common and sometimes invasive foreigners. Try rosy pussy toes as a native alternative.

It’s a sunny November 14^th, 2016. Halloween is a distant memory. Remembrance Day is still fresh in my mind. And now comes the season where shops compete with dreary songs to get us into the shopping, I mean christmas spirit. I used to hate this time of year – the rustle of dry cattails in my favorite swamps, heavy frost, the puddles with their morning skim of ice, the crisp air, Canada Geese flying off like bomber squadrons over the English Channel… It all meant one thing – snow and cold.

Ah what am I saying, I live in Victoria now, we haven’t had snow in my neighborhood for two years now. Winter here is cool and wet, and on warm, sunny winter days you can still find lizards. Yes, the European Wall Lizard is active in winter as long as it is sunny. On November 14^th, there were almost as many Wall Lizards crawling around as in summer. They were intent on basking, and given how warm the bedrock was in the sunlight, thigmothermy must play heavily into their winter behavior. Homeowners along May Street in Victoria say that Wall Lizards poke their heads out of rock walls as soon as the sun comes out in January. Other reptiles here emerge by late February to early March; the amphibians of southwestern BC are active all winter. Elsewhere in Canada amphibians and reptiles hibernate until mid-April at the earliest.

As far as I know, the only month where we haven’t seen wall Lizards is December. Guess what my mission is this year?

Wall Lizards from Moss Rocks Park, collected about 12:40 – November 14, 2016. Cataloged # 2125 in the RBCM Herpetology collection

You guessed it – I am on the hunt for the elusive lézard d’hiver. I hope the solstice is sunny and warm… It’d be really fun to find lizards on the shortest day of the year.

Who doesn’t love Lego^™? Lego^™ is one of the greatest toys ever imagined by the human brain. Kits range from fantastically complicated, to incredibly simplistic. But the underlying element of completeness is the same. The kit must be complete to be built as the instructions suggest, but that doesn’t mean a Lego^™ kit stays in its original configuration.

Sometimes pieces vanish – but you can easily find substitutes. The more changes you make, the more obvious those changes become.

It’s the same with nature. Ecosystems are incredibly complicated (such as the Amazon jungle) while others seem simple (the dune sea of the Sahara). Swat one gnat and you won’t see change in an Amazonian forest, remove a gnat species and you still may not see a change. Each missing species is far more obvious in relatively simple ecosystems. Fortunately, nature is resilient and has recovered from repeated perturbation and mass extinctions (the loss of many pieces (I mean species)) all the way to the present epoch (the Plasticcene ?).

When you replace missing parts in a Lego^™ kit, the final product will not be exactly the same, but will look reasonable and will hold together. You can look at the instructions to know what’s missing. You can swap parts from other kits (part 302126 is common to many Lego™ models). You can order replacement parts.

In nature there is no list of parts to identify exactly what’s missing, and once things are lost, there is no mail-order replacement. Once something biological is gone, it is irreplaceable. Given enough time though, nature will fill an ecological void and restructure an ecosystem, but the ecosystem will never be the same. A restructured ecosystem may look unchanged to our eyes, but it is different in both function and species composition. Fortunately for us, change is the only constant in nature. Our origin (and subsequent invention of plastic – and Lego^™) and our continued existence on this plastic-polluted-planet, is a direct result of nature’s resilience.

The loss of a Keystone Species changes the ecology of a region significantly. There are parts in each Lego^™ kit which are critical to the model’s integrity, and in this sense, they parallel Keystone Species. Lose one keystone piece and your model won’t be as structurally sound, but will still hold together if there is built-in redundancy – in nature, this could represent the death of one cell in a phytoplankton bloom. You’ll never notice its absence. Organisms die every day and populations muddle on as nature permits.

In this Lego™ model, there are several hinge parts per wing which keep the entire model together – the model has built in resilience. Imagine how the model changes as one by one, more of these hinge pieces go missing? Bit by bit, the wing joint weakens. Hinges have to interact with other pieces of the model to maintain the integrity of the entire population of Lego™ pieces. If the population of hinge parts is depleted, the wings will fall off.

In recent years, large numbers of dead alcids are not an uncommon sight in the eastern North Pacific Ocean. The warm north Pacific conditions from 2012-2015 have correlated with mass mortalities all along the North American west coast. Rhinoceros Auklets and Common Murres have washed up right here in the Victoria region – this is not someone else’s problem. This Common Murre was found this summer and was photographed by Allan Eppler. Wings have fallen from our skies.

The fishes that our alcids eat still exist along our coast – so why are marine birds starving? What piece of the ecolegological model is missing? The recent and rapid decline of plankton communities may be to blame. Phytoplankton feeds zooplankton, zooplankton feeds small fishes, and small fishes feed our alcids. These stumpy birds rely on small fishes like sandlance and herring, and in this way, are indirectly connected to phytoplankton (and so are we). Is the decline in phytoplankton populations having a trickle-down effect? Are local zooplankton and fish populations declining in concert with phytoplankton? Perhaps fishes have moved elsewhere (deeper? offshore?) to track phytoplankton and zooplankton blooms? Fishes may only be out of the range of diving birds at an energetically critical time in the bird’s year? Perhaps fishes are now less nutritious with changes in plankton communities? Is this a temporary change? What will be the feedback effect on the marine community if our alcids disappear? And is this the latest ratchet in our environment – a long-term trend in our coastal community creating the “new normal” for our grandchildren? All questions worthy of study.

Temporary and permanent absence of a species has its effect in nature. The long term decline in oceanic phytoplankton communities has gone largely unnoticed by the majority of people – until its impacts rippled up the food chain and hundreds of emaciated birds washed ashore. Dead plankton sinks into the abyss every day – no one raises an eyebrow. But when a beach is littered with dead birds, we sit up and take notice. Each organism, microscopic or not, is a piece in the ecological integrity of our region, and the loss of each piece changes BC forever. Perhaps a Lego^™ model is a poor analogy of the complexity of nature, but we failed to notice the loss of countless smaller parts, and only reacted when a continuing number of larger pieces washed up dead on our shores. I have to wonder what BC’s model will look like in 50 years. Have we already become unhinged?

 

Who has a garden? Many of us do, and many nourish their gardens with manure. Each winter, my wife and I get a heaping truck-load of manure – a mix of sheep, horse and chicken excrement from our friend’s farm up in Central Saanich. Sure our yard is a bit fragrant for a day or two, but the manure matures in winter while our neighbour’s windows are closed. Manure as a source of fertilizer is nothing new.

Watch any nature show on Africa and eventually you see scenes of Hippopotami (Hippopotamusses?) revving their tails to 30,000 RPM to spread their manure in their respective territories. Talk about leaving your mark on a place. But all that manure feeds fishes and is excellent fertilizer to increase productivity in their habitat. Streamside plants grow and the hippos have a convenient salad. Nature wastes nothing – not even waste is wasted.

One of the RBCM’s curators also lives according to nature’s mantra – he wastes nothing. I bet by now you are wondering where this blog post is going.

Every few days Grant Keddie combs through his scientific journals and cuts out articles to distribute to museum staff. This week I received an article from Grant from the journal NewScientist (page 6, 22 October 2016). The photograph tells it all – a Sperm Whale off-loading ballast as it dives, leaving a hazy russet cloud in its wake. The NewScientist article goes on to detail the role of whale feces in pelagic ecology. We rarely think about whale excrement – you know the old saying – out of sight, out of mind. If whales lived on land, we’d probably pay more attention to their gastrointestinal performance.

Nutrients in the intestinal ejecta of cetaceans are a windfall to phytoplankton and perhaps zooplankton. Whale poop fertilizes the sea, boosting phytoplankton and zooplankton populations – I am assuming some crustaceans also are coprophagous (they eat poop particles). Plankton blooms feed krill and fishes, and these of course support a myriad of marine organisms. Krill is now a popular source of Omega-3 oils – hhhmmmm.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…

We’ve known for ages that most of the deep sea is dependent on a flurry of fecal matter and decaying organisms from near the surface. Only the deep sea hydrothermal vent communities live independent of such gifts from the surface. But it surprises me that we are only recently celebrating our largest neighbors colonic contribution to oceanic ecology.

The authors of the NewScientist article state that phytoplankton blooms supported by whale feces can help fight climate change (phytoplankton sequesters CO₂). That seems to be a bit of a stretch, but their other claim that whales can increase local productivity and enhance fisheries certainly is interesting. In some areas of the world today (Norway, Iceland, and Japan), and within my lifetime here in BC, we have killed whales for oil but also to avoid sharing the ocean’s bounty. Yes, we killed whales to limit their impact on our fish harvests. If whale wastes enhance fisheries, removal of whales starved our coastal community.

In John Ford’s handbook of Marine Mammals of BC, he states that 25,460 whales were killed in our waters in the 20^th century. I don’t have the global harvest estimates from the 1700s to present day, but whale losses run in the hundreds of thousands. In terrestrial terms, imagine trying to grow a garden without fertilizer? Now think how removal of a significant number of whales impacted the marine phytoplankton community. I have always wondered about the effect of losses of thousands of whales (and hundreds of basking sharks) on planktonic communities in BC, but the ecological joke is on me. I always looked at it from the top down, not the bottom up.

 

The Webster! Show on BCTV had several opening sequences through its nine season run.

The longest running version seems to tell a story:

Our intrepid reporter meets his long suffering assistant, Brian Coxford, to do a little bit of ambulance chasing. Having collected the film crew they head to the scene, and then visit the hospital to interview the victim and the people that saved his life.

Thanks to a visual cue and the information from a very helpful person, the scene can now be set.

The 1980 season added this master shot at the end of the intro.

Here is the screen grab:

Webster is standing on the corner of Hornby and Georgia.

Here is the discussion of the “tip” The Vancouver Art Gallery grounds are in the background.

And off they go to the scene of the accident.

Where the scene is set:

The police control the scene.

The patient is treated.

And taken away.

Afterwards, Webster interviews various people at the hospital.

But Where Oh Where was the scene of the accident?

My thanks to Greg Firth of Redden Net Custom Nets Limited who helped clarify things:

“Hi Bruno

Yes that is at 1638 W. third what you see in the background is the truck with the logo on it.

Best regards

Greg Firth”

He writes later

“That was Redden Net head office at that time. Truck was parked in the loading bay.”

The loading bay clue was the final piece of the puzzle.

Vancouver is renowned for its alleyways. The scene of the accident was not on West Third, it was in the alley between Third and Fourth!

And now, the present day scene.

Where the scene is set.

The police control the scene.

The patient is treated.

And taken away.

My Thanks again to Greg Firth.

According to Elisa Newton, another helpful person at this company, Redden Net has now expanded to three companies:

Redden Net & Rope Ltd.

Redden Net Custom Nets Ltd. (Vancouver)

Redden Net Custom Nets Ltd. (Vancouver Island)

Attending the Historical Thinking Summer Institute at the Museum of Vancouver was mind-blowing for me on several levels, least of which was that my youthful association with the location.

Back in the day, the site’s most prominent inhabitant, The Planetarium, was known far and wide to teenagers all over BC’s lower mainland as the place to see the ‘star show’, which entailed some kind of animated replica of galaxies projected onto The Planetarium’s ceiling. The entire experience was accompanied by Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

These days, The Planetarium operates quite independently of the museum and has been renamed H.R. MacMillan Space Centre  and the Museum of Vancouver stands on its own as an important cultural player in the life of Vancouver, despite  people like me who still associate it  with Pink Floyd.

But no more. After attending the Summer Institute, I can report that I now associate the site with more than Pink Floyd. I was at the Summer Institute to deepen my understanding of historical thinking concepts, a framework for teaching history and creating learning experiences about history, that we are already applying to programming at the Royal BC Museum.

 

What are historical thinking concepts?

Historical thinking concepts are essentially the framework that historians use to construct history, broken into distinct elements to help students think about the process.  Recently retired University of British Columbia professor Peter Seixas and veteran teacher Tom Morton have presented the historian thinking in their aptly named book The Big Six Historical Thinking Concepts.  The ideas in this book have been widely applied to curricula across Canada and particularly to BC ‘s new social studies curriculum.

The historical thinking concepts are:

• Historical significance: What and who should be remembered, researched and taught?
• Evidence: Is the evidence credible and adequate to support the conclusions reached?
• Continuity and change: How are lives and conditions alike over time and how have they changed?
• Cause and consequence: Why did historical events happen the way they did and what are the consequences?
• Historical perspective: What does past look like when viewed through lenses of the time?
• The Ethical Dimension: Is what happened right and fair?

(From: Thinking Historically Reference Guide)

Scientists use scientific methods to reach their conclusions. Historians use historical thinking concepts to reach theirs. Unlike in science education, in history classes there has been little to no emphasis on how historians work. Using historical thinking concepts shifts the focus from content, the events of history, to instead the process and issues that historians grapple with in their work.

Teaching history from this perspective brings history classes to life in a very practical way. Learning to think like an historian is about learning to think critically. Critical thinking skills are a key part of 21^st century learning, the foundation for BC’s new K-12 school curriculum.  As one of my classmates put it, historical thinking concepts are life skills.

During the Summer Institute we left the classroom for two enriching field trips. The first was to the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site and the second was a walking tour of Vancouver with John Atkin. Both excursions gave us the chance to see historical thinking concepts exemplified. At historic sites and in history tours, just like in creating museum exhibitions, decisions are made about which historical narratives to present. It was useful to experience the fieldtrips with the lens of historical thinking and discuss with classmates while we were deep in our exploration of the concepts.

On the final day of the Historical Thinking Summer Institute, we presented our group projects to each other. It was inspiring to be in a room with all that passion and brain power. One of my classmates, Vancouver teacher Craig Brumwell, posted about the Summer Institute on his blog here.

Back at the museum, there is much relevance to our work in the learning department. Programming ideas are percolating that will complement BC’s school curriculum and enrich online materials on the Learning Portal and for our new Digital Fieldtrips. The Summer Institute confirmed for me that we are on the right track with our Learning Portal and other online resources. Teachers want to use primary sources as historical evidence in the classroom. We already provide these digitally through the Learning Portal, 100 Objects of Interest and Transcribe sites. We will continue to add digitized copies of primary sources such as photographs and letters to these sites.  In the Learning department, we will continue to reach out to schools across the province to connect them with the learning materials and experiences they need.

Personally, I will reflect on the the historical thinking concept continuity and change and leave Pink Floyd out of it.

(The Critical Thinking Consortium has a series of short videos to introduce historical thinking concepts to teachers and students here.)