Category Archives: History

A Breed Apart: What was the Coast Salish woolly dog, and can we bring it back?

Editor’s note:  Salish Woolly dogs are believed to have been common throughout Coast Salish territories, so were most likely kept by the ancestors of the Homalco, Klahoose and Tla’amin First Nations. The oldest remains of this breed date back 4,000 years and were found in Puget Sound and the Salish Sea. Sheep wool is believed to have replaced dog wool in Indigenous communities after 1862.

By Mina Kerr-Lazenby, North Shore News, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

If you had been wandering the Coast Salish territories of British Columbia some 4,000 years ago, rambling dense woodland and visiting village longhouses, you would likely have spotted a number of small, white, flocculent pooches.

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Quadra Project: The Authoritarian Reflex

German social scientists who had fled from the Nazi domination of their country were, by the late 1940s, trying to understand the causes of the political events that had resulted in the rise of such an authoritarian regime. Theodor W. Odorno, who by then had become an American philosopher and psychologist, led a number of research projects into this intriguing subject. Why would people be so subject to Nazi propaganda and to the power of centralized control, hierarchy, compliance and loyalty?

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The Cortes Island Museum AGM, Upcoming Garden and Studio Tour & search for an Events Coordinator

The Cortes Island Museum just held its AGM. They have hired two summer students, plan to hire an Events Coordinator, and are gearing up for the Creative Spaces Garden and Studio Tour this summer. These are the topics that Managing Director/Curator Melanie Boyle discussed with Cortes Currents. 

The Museum AGM was at Mansons Hall, from 1 to 3:30 on Saturday May 6, 2023.

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Early Logging on Cortes Island and Vicinity: Local History with Lynne Jordan

Lynne Jordan has contributed to historical booklets available at the Cortes Island Museum and is currently researching the history of early logging activity in Whaletown.

In the course of an extensive 3-part interview, Lynne draws on original documents, archives, and oral histories to paint a picture of early settler loggers on Cortes — their equipment, their floating camps, the economy in which some prospered and some failed.

The logging community was always a really mixed bag… Much of the logging was done by hand. Some of it using horses.

Logging was not a good way to get rich.

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‘Wayfinding’ at the Cortes Island Museum

Wayfinding: Stories of Maps & Place’ opens at the Cortes Island Museum, between 1 and 4 PM on Sunday, March 26.

“I think wayfinding really touches on so many aspects of our current life.  We have a really fabulous series of maps and artifacts. It’s an opportunity to share that with the public for the first time on many counts. I think everybody, on some level, has a personal story to do with wayfinding. This is a celebration, and a reminder that we all have stories to tell of place and an evolving relationship to the landscape,”explained Melanie Boyle, Managing Director/Curator of the museum.

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