A historian's call to 'chill out'

Daniel Marshall is one of British Columbia’s most-prominent historians, having spent decades chronicling the province’s past. His academic and popular histories have played a key role in shaping today’s understanding of the origins of British Columbia.

Marshall curated a 2015 Royal BC Museum exhibit on the gold rush and also co-hosted The Canyon War: The Untold Story, an award-winning documentary that brought new light to a pivotal conflict between Indigenous peoples and heavily armed American miners in the Fraser Canyon.

Marshall has now published a new book called Untold Tales of Old British Columbia. The Current spoke to Marshall about how the practice of history has changed over the last 40 years.

A changing history

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

FVC: You've covered the history of BC for decades, how have you found the public appetite for history to have changed over that time?

Marshall: I think the appetite has always been there. But history is become somewhat weaponized. Today, we're living in very polarized times and so I think, for the general reading public, perhaps I go so far to say, as a academic myself, that we've increasingly been really wanting to assist with a new, inclusive story for this province. But there's many people that are practitioners of history today, non-academic academics, too, and there's quite a bit of disinformation around. I think, as we grapple with this issue today… there's a real drive to create greater equity, certainly for Indigenous peoples, and to include the previously forgotten voices in history. I think there's an appetite for this.

But also, honestly, some of the moves amongst the public, you know, whether it's taking down statues, or these sorts of things, I don't think [the public] has really been kept in the loop fully on why some of these things are occurring, or how they're occurring. Indeed, I think there's some over lack of transparency, in terms of the government approach, whether it's the thorny issue of the Royal BC Museum, for instance, or what's occurring with the British Columbia archives today, and indeed at many of our heritage sites in the province also. So it's a delicate dance.

FVC: Do you feel like people don't grasp the fact that it can be seen that history is something that has happened and then the stories are told, but also the way history is told is itself an evolution that it seems is sometimes underappreciated. Do you do you think that there's the awareness of kind of how history and our perception of history changes, inevitably over time?

Marshall: I think we've got some work to do there yet, but you're absolutely right. History or the narratives that we've had in the past, the narratives that we grapple with today, is always changing. So we do have the serious issues of say, the whole notion of presentism: judging the past by today's standards—these are all thorny issues.

This is part of the ongoing debate we have today. Right? Can you let history speak for itself? Or do we need new evaluations, new interpretations? Well, clearly we do, in the sense of just from my own work, you know, a simple notion like this: the Gold Rush, when I was young, it was all about the romance of the Gold Rush, old mining saloons, paddlewheelers, all of that sort of story that was certainly popularized by Hollywood in the case of the California rush.

But clearly these old narratives did not include Indigenous peoples, for sure, you know. And in the case of the British Columbia story, the fact that it was not genuinely realized that it was Indigenous peoples who were the discoverers of gold in this province. That it was Indigenous peoples who were actively mining the resources with their old trade partners, the Hudson's Bay Company. That it was Indigenous peoples who were actively defending their gold resource, if you will. Very much so. All culminating in what had been an untold story, the Fraser Canyon War of 1858. Of course, that's a topic I started working on way back when, as part of my doctoral studies. It’s well-known today, since we came up with the Canyon War that ran on Knowledge Network and PBS, down south of the border. And now it's quite gratifying to see that, all this time later, that's become such a central part of the British Columbia story.

That's my concern. Yes, we need a new inclusive story for this province, that looks at other groups that participated, and the First Nations story is such a huge one, of course, to understand where we are today in terms of land claims, treaty-making these sorts of issues. Really, it all begins with the Fraser River gold rush up to ’58.

FVC: It’s interesting because what you're talking about there is—I think some people can see shifting views of history and think that it's driven by simply a desire for a certain perspective. But what you're kind of describing to is that it's also driven by just actually unearthing and finding and profiling these new things that just didn't make it into into previous history versions.

Marshall: Certainly there's much truth to that. For instance, one of my chapters in Untold Tales is with regard to the founding of Chinatown and Victoria. Now, I continue to do research, but it is really a case of getting into the archives. We have an unfortunate situation today, with the Royal BC Museum and the British Columbia archives, you may know that they're planning to move the archives from its present location in Victoria out to Collingwood. And when I was a young fellow, starting to do my bachelor's degree at UVic, the BC Archives was always full day and night, chock full with students and professors also.

It was almost a social venue in some ways, you know, studying, researching history, maybe going out to the pub, have a beer, but always they're always full, and working with actual primary documents. There’s always more things to learn, that BC Archives is full of extraordinary resources.

But there is a problem too since since you know, my young days as an undergraduate in the 1980s, I would say British Columbia history is not being taught sufficiently either in universities today, or or within the larger British Columbia school system. A lot of it is how, you know, how do we grapple with these outstanding issues, whether it's things like Indigenous title, is a good one. You know, here we are all this time later, it's still an outstanding issue that we grapple with.

So I look at, the historical record to quite some degree in this book. Now, this book isn't a typical academic work, obviously. I feel that I've tried to prepare a book that can whet people's appetites to make them curious to make them want to learn more. And to go beyond what has unfortunately occurred as we tried to, to correct some of the wrongs of the past—you know, in our attempts to create these new inclusive stories, we sometimes get saddled with the whole blame-shame game. It's important to clear the air, it's important to know what's happened in the past, but we're kind of caught in almost sweeping all of history out the door at times because it hasn't adequately focused on or given representation to these forgotten voices, if you will. I mean, the absolutely integral role that Indigenous peoples played in the gold rush, until recently, it just hadn't been in the story. So these correctives are absolutely needed.

….It's a delicate dance, I think the general move is to correct what we need greater equity for—I focus on Indigenous peoples in particular, because I've spent so much of my life and continue to on on these sorts of subjects. We need, obviously a province in which all peoples can feel good, proper, accepted, respected, right, acknowledged and feel part of something larger.

But I do have a concern that to put it simplistically, I don't know whether we should throw out the baby with the bathwater, if you know what I mean. And so often in in well, Canada more generally, but British Columbia. It's an aspect of living next door to the United States. You know, we all we so often get tagged or pulled into the American narrative, or the issues that are deemed important to their particular nation and their history.

Marshall cited migration of Black people and those of Chinese origin who came north to escape persecution in the Western United States.

Why were they coming? Because in British Columbia, there was this guarantee of equality before the law for all. This was not the case south of the border and that story needs to be told.

I try to give a little bit more evidence of this in the case of someone like Governor James Douglas, a mixed-raced individual himself, his wife also. They leave the southern half of Oregon. Why? Because they the ascension of American numbers, having come over the Oregon Trail, ultimately they take over the Oregon Provisional Government. Ultimately, once American numbers become the majority, they start passing racist legislation such that mixed-race people, people of color, could not give testimony in a court of law against white people. So this really is such important context for understanding BC, what had occurred south of the border.

So I'm endeavoring to share some of that, to get that story out, because at the moment, I think universities have kind of dropped the ball in terms of their engagement with the larger public, right. People just aren't reading academic books these days. They go on the library shelf, and they collect a lot of dust. So I thought I'd try something different, something new with this book.

FVC: I want to kind of bring a few of those threads together, because you talked about the lackluster amount of engagement in schools with BC history and then about the preoccupation with the South and then some of the ways in which our acknowledgement and understanding of history shapes public understanding of what this province is. And it seems like a few of those aspects are things that kind of relate to the fact that maybe the average person or kids or students or even teachers might not see British Columbia history as interesting or engaging in a way that I think you probably very much feel the opposite from. The more I learn about BC history, you see all sorts of things that are of the scale and interest that compared to a lot of the narratives and historical stories you hear from the south. So how do you think British Columbians, who are interested in history, can make history interesting to people in BC and help foster a greater understanding of the province’s history?

Marshall: From my perspective, BC is absolutely fascinating. It has got an extraordinary history. And and the more you dig into it, you find all of these amazing connections. It's not just a parochial backwater. There's all these connections to the larger world and amazing personalities that swing through this space.

That's the first thing. So how do you make it interesting? Well, by telling untold stories, and I think you can do that while at the same time being, being sure to show the participation, the key involvement of other groups… I mean, there would have been no fur trade without the active participation of Indigenous peoples, right. The Hudson's Bay Company, when they came out, grafted their company operations onto this huge pre-existing Indigenous trade wide network that ran all up and down the coast and even east of the Rocky Mountains.

So, yes, it's important to provide stories that that all people can feel they have a part in.

But I think where part of it is, clearly, starting in the 1970s and moving on from there, within academic circles, there was this real drive to start looking at these previously forgotten voices that had been left out of the larger narratives, the dominant narratives. And so we've had many decades now of, researching whether it's Indigenous peoples, or Asian peoples, or Black people, or Hawaiians—you go down the list, and we've come such a long ways.

But at this point, I think also for the general population, at times they get a bit turned off because the whole debate has been formed in such a way right now the again, it's about shaming and blaming, of what's happened in the past.

I mean, rightly so on many fronts and terrible bad things happened in the past. We all know that this point, but just the general public, and this goes back to the universities, the universities rightly sought to explore these forgotten voices, and pull them into the larger narratives.

So things like the old national narratives, what do we have in Canada? Well, the national dream, Sir John A. MacDonald. In this day and age we're living in what some would refer to as being post-nation state, so what is this new narrative going to be? You know, it's difficult to see at times. And as we bring in the forgotten voices, do we have to, you know, erase the other voices? The ones that got all the attention in the past? There has to be, I think—is it a compromise? I don't know whether that's the right word. But it's kind of a total history approach, you know, to bring everybody in.

But again, the pendulum at time swings a bit too far, and I think that's where we're at. Now, all we have to do is look south of the border to what's happening. And not to get too much into the current political situation but I think anybody can see just how polarized and how divisive it is. And in Canada's history, invariably what’s occurring in the states ultimately transcends the 49th parallel and comes here on these questions of, certainly, race, and gender, and so on. But again, our history is not the American story. So in Untold Tales, what it's really attempting to do is give the larger public more information on just what occurred—the larger context of how this place called British Columbia came to be, and just how different it is from the history occurred south of the border.

That's very important. It's very important, I believe, for this time; people need that information. So in some ways, I think it's just a call to everybody to take a bit of a deep breath and chill out a bit in this moment.