In 1929 the old Hastings Mill Store building was towed by scow from
Vancouver's inner harbour to its present location near Spanish Banks in Point Grey. In
the following two years, the Native Daughters of British Columbia transformed the old
building in to a museum to preserve historical relics of the early days of Vancouver.
Their museum recounted pioneer histories of journey to, and settlement in, British
Columbia in order to celebrate European development of the region, promote
Vancouver's connection with the British Empire, and encourage future economic growth
in the city.
Today, the Native Daughters continue to operate this quirky and curious museum.
Their exclusive tale of European pioneer history has been preserved in its original form,
untouched by decades of museological change and post-colonial critique of cultural
representation. The thesis uses the Hastings Mill Museum as a case study in heritage
preservation in British Columbia. It claims that the museum itself is an artifact. It is a
material remnant of an important movement in local history when such groups as the
Native Daughters used the preservation of the past to address contemporary political and
social concerns.
Representing an idealized pioneer past provided an important source of political
and social power for the Native Daughters. Through the Hastings Mill Museum, the
Native Daughters helped its members - and the province's community of native-born,
Anglo-European - affirm their status as a genealogical and historical elite. The Native
Daughters used a variant of the North American "pioneer myth," a nostalgic
interpretation of local history that distilled the city's history into a simple narrative of
anglo-European settlement, sacrifice and development, to document their claim to the
region's political, institutional, and economic power. Their use of heritage preservation
as a source of power was shaped by gender. The Daughters used their position as
"guardians" and "nurturers" of the region's heritage in order to promote and strengthen
the position of their community of white, native-born British Columbians.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/12444 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Ellis, Cassidy Rose |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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