Meetings Record

Feb. 14 meeting - BC Archives
In attendance: Dan, Taryn, and Scott

Our first big visit to the archives saw us combing through the catalogues and finding aids to get a preliminary picture of what was available. Unfortunately, we were unable to find the 'blue books' of statistics, and could not get any help since Wednesday is a partial service day. However, we were able to find many promising leads, such as the McKenzie family papers, correspondence regarding HBC farms, and the PSAC. At the end of the meeting, Scott was assigned to type up the bibliography, Dan and Taryn were assigned to look into materials at the UVic library, and Dan was to continue communicating with The Land Conservancy regarding a visit to Craigflower. Subsequently, Dan also wrote the rough draft of our "about the project" blurb on the bibliography, which was then fine-tuned by Scott and Taryn.

SM


Feb. 19 meeting - BC Archives
In attendance: Dan, Taryn, and Scott

We continued gathering citations for evidence to begin looking through at a later date. With the help of an archivist, we were able to find the microfilms of the blue books of the 1860s, which Dan had an introductory look through. Meanwhile, Scott and Taryn worked their way through a finding aid for colonial correspondence and discovered many promising leads referring to land title, prices, sales, etc. Taryn also came across clippings of old families and homes of Victoria from a series in the Colonist in the 1940s and 50s, and she (with some help from Scott) worked through these, noting pages containing useful photos or information. For example, there was a mention of the Melrose Diary, from a resident of Craigflower, which the author insists no student of Victoria history can go without reading. Dan and Scott looked through photos - originals and digitized. Scott also did some searching for materials relating to various farms and came across a few fonds from farming families which will be worth investigating.

At the end of the meeting, Dan was to attempt to finalize a meeting with the Craigflower archives for Wednesday, Scott was going to set up the blog and write this week and last's meeting record (which you are now enjoying), and Taryn was to transfer the preliminary bibliography to the blog, after which all three of us could add to it so that we can keep a running list of what we have looked at and not and the outcomes of those looks. We agreed that following the completion of that list, we would attempt to divide up responsibility for examing the materials therein, hopefully leading to a subject-based specialization for each of us during the coming weeks.

To conclude, this meeting was very productive, despite Dan's continuously running afoul of the archivist with his outrageous behaviour.

SM