This thesis examines rural schools in British Columbia in the 1920s. Part I (Chapters I and II) discusses difficulties in reforming rural schools generally, and offers an overview of conditions teachers faced in the province's one-room schools. Part II (Chapters III and IV) is a case study of a region in north-central interior of the province. School conditions and the isolated communities in which the schools were located are studied, bringing to the fore the complexity of rural school reform. A wide range of sources was used, primarily Department of Education documents both printed and manuscript which were authored by officials, reformers, inspectors, and teachers. All of these documents are available in the Provincial Archives in Victoria. Local histories, Census of Canada, and a limited number of oral interviews with former teachers were also used. The rural schools in British Columbia in the 1920s were "inefficient." Pupil retardation in one-room schools was rife, and Department of Education officials saw the teacher, the manager of the schoolhouse, as responsible for the problem. Her unpreparedness for remote school work prompted officials to advocate the creation of "rural-minded" teachers who could readily adapt to rural living. This proposal was ultimately stillborn, seriously flawed by the reality of rural school teaching. The majority of teachers were young, single, female teachers placed in a working and living environment which required physical strength and stamina to meet hardship, as well as mental agility in sensitive inter-personal relationships with community members. The normal school had no hope for success in training teachers to overcome such obstacles. Reform was especially misguided because the remote communities in which the schools were located were often impoverished, scattered, and transient, and school conditions were greatly affected by the resulting lack of money and fluctuating pupil enrolment. The pervasiveness of these circumstances was largely overlooked by the inspectors whose brief visits to each school was for pedagogical supervision, and especially by officials viewing the province's hinterland from offices in Victoria. This thesis raises some important questions as to the lack of knowledge urban-minded administrators exhibited of economic and informal political activity in rural communities, and the many problems associated with implementation of Department of Education policies at the local level. As well, the role of community members is highlighted, in particular the influence of their actions on school conditions. Significantly, much of the thesis takes the perspective of the teacher. Her experiences give context to the study of school and community and demonstrate that the solution to the rural school problem was much more complicated than their merely becoming "rural-minded." / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Through the use of oral and written history, this thesis examines forces and factors contributing to key events and defining phases in the history of regional planning in British Columbia. Regional planning, which emerged in BC in the late 1940s in response to the need to address problems related to urban growth in the Lower Mainland, has taken on a number of forms over the past half-century. During this time the regional approach to planning has been introduced as a means of addressing land-use questions and servicing challenges in rural and urban areas, addressing conflicts over resource use and implementing sustainability objectives. This thesis divides regional planning in the province into three main phases. The first phase (1940s to 1970s) is characterized by the introduction of regional planning legislation, regional planning bodies and processes in response to rapid growth and development. The second phase (late 1970s to 1980s) is marked by the rescinding of regional district planning powers and other setbacks to the regional planning system imposed by the government of the day. The third phase (1990s) is a time of rebirth and redefinition of regional planning priorities and processes in the face of increasing challenges related to urban growth and resource management. While some links to exogenous influences are identified, analysis of key themes and trends in BC's regional planning history reveals the major roles the province's geography, economy, system of governance, politics, and the people involved in regional planning processes have played in shaping regional planning policy, process, and practice. Based on this historical review a number of recommendations for future research and direction are proposed. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The subject of this thesis is the nature of entre-preneurism in British Columbia from 187"+ until about 1905. The business affairs of one Victoria entrepreneur, Edgar Crow Baker, are used to examine the character of these men, their business endeavours and the society that they lived in. The era of the entrepreneur in British Columbia began with the Fraser River gold rush in 1858. It continued until about the turn of the century, when the era of the corporate entrepreneur was ushered in with the arrival of large corporations from outside the province that began to buy up the smaller local companies. Victoria was the principal headquarters for these entrepreneurs from 1858 until about the end of the 1880 ' s.i During the 1890*s, control of the province's business affairs passed from Victoria to Vancouver and by the end of that decade, Victoria was no longer a creative business force in the province. The change from an economy that was oriented on maritime lines, largely through the port of Victoria, to a continental system in which Victoria did not occupy a strategic location, was the event that destroyed Victoria's business position. It was the Canadian Pacific Railway that brought about this change and Vancouver Island's isolation from it that caused the decline of Victoria as a business centre. Before the coming of the railway, British Columbia had no director rapid means of' communication with the principal areas of population and business in the western world, and this isolation was an important factor in determining the character of the province's early society. The long and dangerous sea or land trip required to reach the region acted as a deferent to the normal pattern of immigration, a screen that kept out less venturesome settlers. This was also true of California before 1869 and it was from this area that British Columbia drew the majority of its immigrants in the gold rush of 1858. These prospectors, entrepreneurs and confidence men had been attracted to California by the same force that now drew them to British Columbia. In every society there are a number of bolder and more materialistic individuals,- who respond to the opportunity presented by a gold rush; British Columbia in 185 8, and for several decades thereafter, found itself inhabited to a great extent by persons of this type. It was this situation that gave the province's early society such a large proportion of entrepreneurs and created an atmosphere conducive to entrepreneurism. The business and communications link that was thus forged with California gave British Columbia's society a second distinctive feature. This was its strong identification with California and particularly, Victoria's relationship to San Francisco. It is unlikely that the majority of British Columbia's immigrants from California were true Americans (like the government officials, many were British), but nevertheless, they brought to the province a strong belief in the American ideal. This ideal is perhaps the most significant factor in understanding this early era of entrepreneurism. It cast the entrepreneur in the role of a hero in the national epic: the opening of the frontier; the developing of resources and industry; the providing of urban services. Society honoured the successful entrepreneur by social recognition and the approval of his right to economic reward. The presence of an Anglo-American society in Victoria can be traced to the foregoing factors. The upper ranks of this society were more British than American or Canadian in composition and followed the social customs of the English gentry. But in commerce, it was the American tradition of entrepreneurism that governed the conduct of business, and equally as important, society's approach to these activities. Edgar Crow Baker arrived in Victoria from Halifax in 1874, a time when Victoria was well established in her role as the business, as well as political, centre of the province. With considerable determination and skill, he quickly became an accepted member of the upper ranks of the city's society, and after a short period of business setbacks, he began steadily to increase his involvement and influence in business. By these two means, he became either the friend or the partner of the majority of the province's most prominent politicians and businessmen; although, these men were virtually one close knit group. Baker, then, lived and worked with the leading entrepreneurs of the province. His life is the case study that reveals some of the characteristics of these men, illustrates the variety of their business interests and gives some indication of the nature of the society that supported them. Baker left a set of annual journals for the period 1874 to 1920, in which he describes his daily business affairs. It is these records that provide the principal means of analyzing the nature of entrepreneur ism in early British Columbia. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Problem: With a few notable exceptions, the history of adult education in British Columbia has received relatively little attention. What information there is, is often confined to somewhat narrow time frames, locations, or topics. A general overview of the history of adult education in British Columbia during the 20th century seems to be lacking. This study is a modest attempt to begin adding voice to this important but largely overlooked area. Conceptual Approach: The approach taken is one of historical review. The study, while to some degree quantitative, is much more interested in the qualitative aspects of the material examined. Newspapers, which the author suggests provide a unique historical record, serve as the sole source of data. Methodology: The B.C. Legislative Library Newspaper Index from 1900 -1999 is the source of documents for this study. A thorough reading of all newspaper articles (550+), cited as being related to adult education, was undertaken. Articles were grouped by decade and recorded. Within the decades certain themes were identified and also recorded. Two specific themes (lifelong learning and distance education) received special attention and were examined and recorded separately. Findings: There are a number of reoccurring themes that arise during the period examined. Many of these themes have a direct correlation to issues facing adult education today. These issues include, but are not limited to: • lifelong learning • distance education and related educational technology • duplication of services • libraries and adult education • defining/purpose(s) adult education. Since these and other issues are part of the current discourse about adult education, it seems reasonable that lessons learned/not learned in the past not be forgotten. With the benefit of historical hindsight, which includes sources that are not confined to potentially narrow interests, adult educators may become better informed by considering these issues. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Canadian interest in a vanishing rural civilization before the First War was epitomized in the Agricultural Instruction Act of 1913. Encouraging agricultural education, the Act provided funds, expertise, and national determination in the quest to regenerate the rural areas. In British Columbia the Federal and Provincial Departments of Agriculture, the University, and the schools all offered agricultural education. Spurred by the Act, the schools in particular rode a tide of increasing influence as the key educative institution in society. The programme in British Columbian schools, established by J.W. Gibson, was unique in Canada for its "district supervisors" appointed to rural municipalities as beacons of light and missionaries to the hinterlands. Gibson's programme focussed upon school grounds beautification, school gardening, and livestock. At first the most important concern was gardening. The long drought, summer care difficulties, frost, marketing problems, marauding, vandalism and infestations of mice and cut worms all weakened the gardening mission by 1920. Skilfully the supervisors reshaped the gardening reality into a more viable livestock mission. Featuring agricultural clubs, school fairs, and the Coast exhibitions, the new activity also provided opposition to pre-established interests and other expanding agencies of agricultural education. When the Agricultural Instruction Act was discontinued, the fate of the work fell to the province. Unhappily, economic depression and the costly failure of agriculture and rural settlement strained educational finance. Even before the province withdrew support, however, the school's regenerative mission was faltering. The failure of agricultural education was related to what other educational institutions were doing, to the characteristics of teachers, to the social class views of parents and children, to economic conditions, and to the ability of the populace to finance the innovation. Moreover, at the heart of Gibson's mission lay a myth of the land. Gibson's fixation on the character immanent in the soil and his opposition to vocationalism meant that schools could not concern themselves with the practicality of revitalizing rural life. Clearly the solution to the hydra-headed rural problem was more than the school could accomplish. By 1929 the school had actually worsened the rural problem by facilitating the movement from the land. As the school became increasingly important in promoting middle class respectability, upward mobility, and professional orientation, there was increasing public awareness of a hierarchy of occupations at the bottom of which lay farming. The disappearance of district supervisors, school gardening, and Gibson's high school programme signalled a new, educational configuration in the province. Halted in a relentless process of assuming more and more educative functions of society, the school withdrew and dealt more exclusively with what had always been a primary focus--academic knowledge for professional preparation. If Gibson's programme failed, it offered important commentary on the nature and purpose of Canadian schooling. Recent Canadian educational historiography has neglected the history of teachers and teaching, and a number of radical historians have stressed social control as the fundamental purpose of schooling. Contrasting with their emphasis on the malignant influences of social class, racism, sexism, bureaucracy, and the failure of the schools to achieve equal opportunity, the experience of Gibson and his missionaries stressed the constructive purpose of schooling, the delight in learning, the often enthusiastic interchange between teacher and pupil, and the concept of growth. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

This paper examines the hitherto neglected conservation movement in British Columbia after the Second World War. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the British Columbia Natural Resources Conference (BCNRC) and Roderick Haig-Brown were the province's most vocal and authoritative proponents of natural resource conservation. The BCNRC (1948-1970) held roughly annual conferences of leading bureaucrats, industry administrators and academics, who promoted scientific research and proposed resource management policies. Haig-Brown (d. 1976) was a well-known fishing writer and vocal conservationist who attended most of the conferences up to 1961 and wrote a popular book on natural resources for the BCNRC. Their activities generated public awareness of and concern for conservation during a period of rapidly expanding resource extraction. Although the common goal of prudent and rational resource use united Haig-Brown and the conference's managerial elite in the immediate postwar period, their conservation philosophies increasingly diverged after 1961. The ideals they articulated were rooted in the changing discourse about nature, which was deeply influenced in this period by the emerging science of ecology. However, ecological concepts led Haig-Brown and the BCNRC to different conclusions about how to deal with increasing resource use and environmental degradation. While the conference used ecology and economics to justify a regime of scientific resource management, Haig-Brown developed a critique of resource development based on humans' ethical responsibility for maintaining the integrity of ecosystems. This rift in conservation thought, and the public debate these conservationists generated, presaged the rise of environmentalism in the late 1960s.

This study examines the growth of conservative Protestantism, or evangelicalism, in British Columbia from 1917, the beginning of open conflict with theological liberalism, to 1981. The period witnessed the development of evangelical institutions from rudimentary beginnings before 1920 to the rise of a complex network by the 1970's. Numerically, conservative denominations in British Columbia countered a national trend and nearly doubled their proportion of the population from 1921 to 1981. Towards the end of the period, weekly attendance at conservative churches surpassed that in mainline Protestant denominations. This study has a two-fold purpose. The narrative seeks to recount significant features of the denominational, institutional and numerical development of evangelicalism in British Columbia. At the same time, the crucial factors in its development will be analyzed, particularly those which explain its growth. Explanations which focus exclusively on socio-economic factors or American influences are rejected. Both played significant roles but neither are able to fully explain the growth and other factors must be considered in addition to them. Four are identified as playing particularly significant roles: 1. a loyalty to values and emphases which appeared endangered by modernism; 2. patterns of immigration which added relatively large numbers of evangelicals who soon identified with the wider evangelicalism, 3. larger than average family sizes and high rates of retention of children within conservative churches and 4. institutional factors, particularly the strenuous efforts spent in establishing large numbers of new congregations throughout the province. Common to all four factors is the sense shared by conservative Protestants that they were separate from the "world." Unlike religious liberals who sought to preserve Christianity by accommodating to modernism, conservatives were alienated by modernism and sought to preserve traditional evangelicalism in the face of massive cultural change. In British Columbia, which was characterized by an unusual degree of transiency, materialism and secularism, the conservative approach proved more successful. Neither branch of Protestantism grew as rapidly as the "no religion" segment of the population but, while mainline Protestantism declined proportionately, evangelicals evidenced a certainty and simplicity of conviction and action that appealed to an increasing minority of the population. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

This paper examines the hitherto neglected conservation movement in British Columbia after the Second World War. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the British Columbia Natural Resources Conference (BCNRC) and Roderick Haig-Brown were the province's most vocal and authoritative proponents of natural resource conservation. The BCNRC (1948-1970) held roughly annual conferences of leading bureaucrats, industry administrators and academics, who promoted scientific research and proposed resource management policies. Haig-Brown (d. 1976) was a well-known fishing writer and vocal conservationist who attended most of the conferences up to 1961 and wrote a popular book on natural resources for the BCNRC. Their activities generated public awareness of and concern for conservation during a period of rapidly expanding resource extraction. Although the common goal of prudent and rational resource use united Haig-Brown and the conference's managerial elite in the immediate postwar period, their conservation philosophies increasingly diverged after 1961. The ideals they articulated were rooted in the changing discourse about nature, which was deeply influenced in this period by the emerging science of ecology. However, ecological concepts led Haig-Brown and the BCNRC to different conclusions about how to deal with increasing resource use and environmental degradation. While the conference used ecology and economics to justify a regime of scientific resource management, Haig-Brown developed a critique of resource development based on humans' ethical responsibility for maintaining the integrity of ecosystems. This rift in conservation thought, and the public debate these conservationists generated, presaged the rise of environmentalism in the late 1960s. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

This project is a case study of the hairdressing industry in British Columbia in the 1920s. It argues that gender divisions persisted as consumerism became increasingly important to British Columbians, and that despite British Columbia's sometimes challenging engagement with international consumerism, the province's economy remained remarkably synchronized with international trends. It tells the story of the rapid expansion and feminization of hair services markets and businesses; examines the public and legislative debates about the importance of consumer services such as hairdressing and its customers; and reveals the persistence of gendered divisions in the early transition to a consumer services society. Using British Columbian newspaper reports, American and Canadian women's and union periodicals, city directories, national censuses, and government reports, the project looks first at the increasing pressures in the 1920s from business owners, advertisers, and magazine editors to adopt new, fashionable hairstyles and the sources of ambivalence among women about the new styles. It then turns to hairdressing as a business and source of employment, and after briefly reviewing the history of hairdressing in North America looks at the rapid expansion of hairdressing businesses in British Columbia during the 1920s; the demographic characteristics of hairdressing workers and entrepreneurs; and the feminization of the hair services industry. It also explores the connection between feminist ideals and women's entrepreneurship in the hair services field. Finally, the hairdressers' attempt to gain regulation from the provincial government is examined at the end of the decade, with a particular focus on how consumerism and hairdressing, its workers and customers, are characterized. The legislative and public debates about hairdressing regulation reveal anxiety about consumerism and persistent gender divisions as British Columbia began to shift toward a consumer-oriented society. It concludes that British Columbia, despite its primary resource economic base, remained remarkably in step with international trends, from feminization of services to regulation of those services, of which hairdressing was just a beginning. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Discusses the contributions made by the atlas to our understanding and appreciation of Coast Salish history and culture and its intertwined relationship with newcomer history beginning in the late 18th Century. / The complete published book with images is available from ebrary to those who have access. Smith's chapter appears on pages 241-268. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/usask/docDetail.action?docID=10512806