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Travel Western Provinces

Stanley Park's Secret

The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch, and Brockton Point

by (author) Jean Barman

Publisher
Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
Initial publish date
Apr 2007
Category
Western Provinces, Pre-Confederation (to 1867), Post-Confederation (1867-)
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781550174205
    Publish Date
    Apr 2007
    List Price
    $32.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781550173468
    Publish Date
    Oct 2005
    List Price
    $36.95

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Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels

  • Age: 15
  • Grade: 10

Description

Finalist for 2006 BC Book Prize – Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize

 

Shortlisted for George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in B.C. Writing and Publishing

 

Each year, over eight million people visit Stanley Park, a 400-hectare (1000-acre) haven of beauty that offers a backdrop of majestic cedars and firs and an environment teeming with wildlife just steps from the sidewalks and skyscrapers of Vancouver. But few visitors stop to contemplate the secret past of British Columbia’s most popular tourist destination.

 

Officially opened in 1888, Stanley Park was born alongside the city of Vancouver, so it is easy to assume that the park was a pristine wilderness when it was first created. But much of it had been logged and it was home to a number of settlements. Aboriginal people lived at the villages of Whoi Whoi, now Lumberman’s Arch, and nearby Chaythoos. Some of the immigrant Hawaiians earlier employed in the fur trade took jobs at the lumber mills that dotted Burrard Inlet from the 1860s and settled at “Kanaka Ranch,” which was located just outside the park’s southeast boundary. Others resided at Brockton Point on the peninsula’s eastern tip. Only in 1958 was the last of the many families forced out of their homes and the park returned to its supposed “pristine” character.

 

Working in collaboration with descendants of the families who once lived in the park area, historian Jean Barman skilfully weaves together the families’ stories with archival documents, Vancouver Parks Board records and court proceedings to reveal a troubling, yet deeply important facet of BC’s history.

 

About the author

Jean Barman, professor emeritus, has published more than twenty books, including On the Cusp of Contact: Gender, Space and Race in the Colonization of British Columbia (Harbour Publishing, 2020) and the winner of the 2006 City of Vancouver Book Award, Stanley Park’s Secret (Harbour Publishing, 2005). Her lifelong pursuit to enrich the history of BC has earned her such honours as a Governor General’s Award, a George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, a Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing and a position as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She lives in Vancouver, BC.

Jean Barman's profile page

Awards

  • Winner, City of Vancouver Book Prize

Editorial Reviews

“Reading a book by local historian Jean Barman is like looking at the negative of a well-loved picture. By reversing the light and the dark, she forces us to tee the edges, the margins, the details pushed aside by the Technicolor myths of an accepted history.”

—Geoff D’Auria, Vancouver Review

Vancouver Review

"Jean Barman reveals the ‘secret’ past of Vancouver's greatest park in this engaging and well-written story of the families who lived within Stanley Park’s current boundaries. Barman shatters forever our idea of Stanley Park as a pristine wilderness carefully set aside for future generations."

—David Rahn, Western Mariner

Praise from the Western Mariner

"Stanley Park’s Secret offers another history, another way of seeing people, land and how the two intersect when interests conflict. . . . Drawing on oral histories and hundreds of documents, she gives voice to those who have been silenced."

—Candace Fertile, The Vancouver Sun

Praise from The Vancouver Sun

Librarian Reviews

Stanley Park’s Secret: The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch and Brockton Point

This book is about the inhabitants of Stanley Park who were displaced so that the City of Vancouver could create an urban oasis. Barman describes the life of Aboriginal peoples living at Whoi Whoi, now Lumberman’s Arch; immigrant Hawaiians who settled in Kanaka Ranch; and the mixedrace villagers who resided in Brockton Point. Oral histories, archival documents, Parks Board records, court proceedings, records from the Department of Indians Affairs and interviews conducted by the city archivist during the 1930s form the research basis to this examination of the history of the park’s creation.

Barman is the author of many books including The West Beyond the West.

Source: The Association of Book Publishers of BC. Canadian Aboriginal Books for Schools. 2008-2009.

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