October 17, 2016

“The Indian children did not race up and down the beach, astonished at strange new things, as we always were. These children belonged to the beach, and were as much part of it as the drift-logs and the stones”

-          Emily Carr, Klee Wyck

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Carr’s comparison of human children to dead trees in the above quote is obviously problematic, but it does relate the point that beaches were central to the culture and lifestyle of many West Coast aboriginal peoples throughout Canada’s history. I knew before taking this class that historically, aboriginal residence in a given area was rarely considered valid by colonialists, and Victoria is founded on unceded land. Today I’m going to research the peoples that inhabited Willow’s Beach originally and find out when and why they were displaced from their land.

Returning to Willerton’s thesis, I found that the Willow’s beach village and her people were known by then name Si•čǝ’nǝł, and they spoke Lekwungaynung. At the “time of contact”, Straits Salish people like those found on Willow’s beach were only semi-nomadic, spending part of the year in their established beach village, living in multi-family wood plank houses. Salmon-fishing, woodworking, and basket making were the essential skills, and the Si•čǝ’nǝł kept small dogs with lots of long hair to use for yarn. Their spiritualty centered on shamanism. The report recognizes that information collected by the Europeans is flawed, as they altered such communities through disease and trade practices.  Most important to my research, however, are these two facts that Willerton includes: Firstly, the Si•čǝ’nǝł lived on the beach until 1843. Secondly, artifacts such as “cobble tools” “flaked stones” and weapons fashioned from bone found on the beach date back approximately 5000 years. (5)

I will deal with the first bit of information first. What happened on Willow’s beach in the 1840s?

I searched the BC archives online at http://search-bcarchives.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/ and found a photograph of a horse show that took place at an established exhibition ground on Willow’s Beach in 1895 (6). Not long after, the Willow’s Beach Fair Grounds were established, and a plaque commemorating these fair grounds remains in the small marketplace. Then I searched the archives of “Oak Bay” and found a photograph taken in 1891 (7) of children playing on “an Oak Bay beach” (the site doesn’t specify which beach exactly, but it does resemble Willow’s beach if viewed from its north-west point.) Both photographs contain evidence of European technology and architecture, but there remains a gap between the time the photos were taken and the time that the Sitchanalth village stood there. 

I then came across a page on the Cattle Point Foundation website which I first took for a historical article regarding Willow’s Beach. However, it is really an action plan for something called the “Salish Seafront Initiative”. This foundation made a plan last year to build a collection of houses, crafted and erected by “first nations youth to resurrect the old skills”, and name the site Sitchanalth in honor of the original village. The action plan is prefaced by some information on the history of the old village. It says the village existed for about 3,000 years, was destroyed several times during that period by tsunamis, and that the houses stretched across Willow’s Beach to Cattle Point, with the Chief’s house likely located at the mouth Bowker Creek. (8)

Today, I have not come across much more information regarding the transition from aboriginal to European inhabitance on Willow’s Beach in the mid-1850s. I found a short paragraph at oakbay.ca that focused mostly on the arrival of European explorers in the 1700s and the consequent establishment of Fort Victoria and the takeover of the beach by the Hudson’s Bay Company between 1840 and 1850.

However, (at risk of sounding insensitive), the information I gathered regarding the ancient history of the original Sitchanalth village overshadows that of the European contact period on the beach in terms of pertinence to my research. I am investigating where the line between wilderness and non-wilderness lies. It is evident that that line was not drawn by the European invasion of the aboriginal seaside village. The inhabitants of Sitchanalth had houses, professions, social and spiritual systems. Through research like Willerton’s, we find that people have been innovating and creating on sites like Willow’s Beach for millennia. In terms of defining wilderness, I do not think we should consider the longhouses that lined the beach thousands of years ago any more or less wild and natural than the modern houses that line it today. In my quest of a wilderness definition, I put these innovations together as equally separate from “true” nature.

Willerton’s research uncovered a bone tool created perhaps 5,000 years ago. Must I then deduce that Willow’s Beach has not been truly “wild” since that time? By that logic, surely no place on earth today remains wilderness, and I would guess most of it has not been so for many years. If human contact or lack thereof is the definitive element that determines a site’s wildness, then I have never known wilderness, and neither has any of my ancestors. Going back to Dr. Dean’s original question when I came to her with the intention of making this beach my subject: “Can Willow’s Beach even be considered wilderness?”

It is as wild as most any other place on Earth. Which is to say, not at all.