
‘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.
“In this increasingly digital age, you get to come in and you get to come really close to an incredible hand drawn map, with pencil crayon and notations. That physical presence is really valuable to any age, but particularly the younger generation who are perhaps more removed from the actual map making or being able to read a map in that physical presence. So I think again, like any art gallery museum, that opportunity to come face-to-face with actual documents, whether it’s an object or a printed matter, is really valuable as a personal experience.”
Bonnie MacDonald, who is one of the museum’s Directors and a member of the exhibition committee, added, “A lot of people contribute to the museum. They pay their dues, they pay when they come in. A lot of people have helped to build this museum. I think it’s really important that people on the island get to see the benefits of doing that. They get to see why they’ve contributed to our situation. They get to see some of the things that are in the archives, how well they’re preserved. I think its really important for people to see what we do and what we’re all about.”
CC: I understand you have a map of Klahoose traditional territories, which presumably could contain oral information that is centuries old. How did it end up at the museum?
MB: “It’s from 1998. It came out of a project engaging Elders to recall and document the place names throughout the traditional Klahoose territory.”
“One day Leah Phillips, the new Administrator at Klahoose First Nation, came in and said, ‘Hey, I think there’s this really cool map that you might want to see up at the multipurpose building.’ So I went there and met with Michelle Robinson and they kindly shared a copy of it, and I had it scanned and reproduced. So it has a really nice personal connection and going forward, we’re hoping to do some recordings and some more collaboration around that map.”

The oldest map in the exhibition grew out of the survey Captain George Henry Richards, of the Royal Navy, began in 1860.
BM: “We have a copy of that. We would never get hold of an original, but we don’t see it very often.”

This particular version displays Gorge Harbour, Squirrel Cove, and two post offices that opened in the mid 1890s. According to BC Geographic Names, the ‘Cortez Island Post Office’ opened on April 1, 1893, in what is now known as Mansons Landing. The postmaster was Michael Manson. The British Columbia Postal History Newsletter states Whaletown Post Office opened the following year.
BM: “We also have maps that were created by Doreen Thompson. One is of Whaletown with all the different property markers, all the different sections are made out. The people who owned them from the very beginning when there was preemption right up until the 1990s. Pictures of the old homesteads are attached to this map. It’s very beautiful.”
“Judith Williams has a huge canvas that she did, ‘Naming and Claiming Bute Inlet.’”

MB: “David Shipway came in with a big roll of maps, under his arm, of projects that he has completed in the past for the Cortes Community Forest. It was fantastic. Everybody crowded around. He had a four by, I don’t know, six foot map that he had done with letraset and acetate back in the day. Those were really fun to see. We photocopied, scanned and reprinted a series that’s up on the wall. He brought in a stereoscopic map reader which is really cool. You can see a 3D view over Manson’s Lagoon and so on.”
“The exhibition spaces design is opened up in a different way, and it’s perhaps more spare than in previous iterations of an exhibition.”

One of the exceptions is a display remembering Gilean Douglas.
MB: “We have a lovely reimagining of the writer’s cabin that Bonnie curated. It’s got a lot more little things in it, but the rest of the exhibition doesn’t have as much on the wall. We have a lot of things but it’s also quite open. It’s a nice contrast, so that might be something that people want to check out.”
BM: “That’s a nice feeling space when you walk in there. Another interesting artifact we have is a propeller that came off of I think a Cesna, or Esna?”
MB: “Cesna Aircraft, 1930s.”
BM: “They used to come into Mansons Landing regularly. Bob Langdon was one of the pilots that came in all the time and at some point he donated the propeller of his Cessna to the cafe that used to be down at Mansons Landing. On it are signatures, all over this propeller, of people who hung out at the cafe, pilots who used to come into Manson’s. We have some of his story and some of the story of how the propeller came into the cafe. That is on loan from Ken Summers who’s in Vancouver, but whose family are here.”

CC: What were the challenges and accomplishments in this exhibit?
BM: “One of the challenges was a lot of these maps come from our archival collection. So if something’s in the archives, that means that it must be preserved. Some of these maps are huge. They’ve been rolled up, but when you unroll them, they might be like three by three or four by five and you can’t just pin them up on the wall for people to see. You’ve got to preserve them somehow. You have to be careful of light. There’s many things that affect how you exhibit these things. Melanie met this challenge really well because she’s got a background in gallery work. She made all the frames and cut the glass.”
“Another challenge was that we worked as a group. Melanie was our curator, but she had help from our committee.”
MB: “The exhibition idea came from Nancy Kendel. Her thought, way back when, was ‘let’s have an exhibition that relates to maps.’ Bonnie McDonald, Donna Manson, Debbie Dragseth (also contributed). Jill Milton, our main archivist, joined the group for this exhibition. We had two fabulous volunteers who came forward. Monika Hoffman and Soma Feldmar really did a wonderful job both on the designing, writing and editing aspect. It’s been a great team.”

BM: “Working together to sift out all the ideas that came up and pick a couple was pretty challenging because everybody was pretty excited and all the ideas were flowing everywhere. What does it mean? And what are we going to say about these objects? That’s how we came up with the theme ‘wayfinding’ because they’re helping in wayfinding and then we have navigational instruments, and so forth to help explain the theme.”
MB: “Some great members of the community came forward with their own ideas, artifacts, maps to share. I love that people feel engaged but also welcomed enough to contribute and come up with their ideas. I think that was a real success. I feel like that was an accomplishment of the exhibition.”
BM: “I could also say that, except for Melanie, who has a very limited amount of time that we’re able to pay her for, most things that happen at the museum – it’s volunteers. Since December we’ve been meeting to try to tease out this exhibit and get it up on the walls and get it done. To me, the volunteer aspect of this thing and the whole museum. It’s quite outstanding and I’m really proud of that.”

CC: What’s happening at the opening?
MB: “It’s just going to be an open house, a celebration of the exhibition, a kickoff to our season. There will be refreshments. There won’t be any speeches, but there’ll be definitely the people who mounted the exhibition, the curators, and also the people, who contributed their stories and projects to the exhibition. Come out and meet them.”
“We’ve got a couple of weeks to really work on the opening event itself. Something particularly entertainment wise may come up, but at the moment it really is just open our doors and celebrate what we’ve got going on here.”
CC: Are you still on winter hours? Or are you going over to spring hours?
MB: “We’re still on the winter hours, which are Friday and Saturday from 12 till 4:00 PM, but this is Sunday, so it’s a special open day for everybody. Going forward, we do hope to have workshops, family oriented workshops, hands-on events, speakers and, that kind of thing.”
BM: “Jeanette Taylor will be speaking at our AGM, which is coming up on May 6th. She’s going to give a great talk about the fabulous history of the Twin Islands. Her book is now published, so that’s a big accomplishment for her.”
Top photo credit: Gallery view – Photo by Melanie Boyle
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