By Mark Forsythe

Photographs have a wonderful power to uncover long-buried memories. While scanning the Bulkley Valley Museum’s Collections Online portal I stumbled across a photo of the Smithers CNR train station that triggered an instant flashback.

The Smithers CNR Station beneath Hudson Bay Mountain. This is where the author first stepped off the train in 1974 — on a warm spring day.  (Bulkley Valley Museum P1038) 

It’s where I stepped off the train in 1974 for my first broadcasting job as; a frizzy-haired 19-year old from Ontario with one blue trunk and a guitar. I’d watched the Canadian landscape unfold from my seat thanks to a ticket purchased by my grandparents. Although my time in Smithers was brief — just six months — the town and surrounding valley have never left me. Indeed, the Bulkley Valley Museum’s digital collection allows me to return and learn more about this fascinating region near the geographic heart of our province.  

BVM curator Kira Westby reports that visits to Collections Online have consistently grown since its launch three years ago. Another uptick came with the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s all about facilitating community access. Having the site has been phenomenal for remote researchers, or for folks who are looking to learn more about the collection.”

Some 8,000 archival and catalogue records are banked online, thanks to financial assistance from the Library & Archives Canada Documentary Heritage Communities Program and the Wetzin’k’wa Community Forest Corporation. AndorNot Consulting helped develop the site.   

Hudson Bay Mountain reflected in Lake Kathlyn. Postcard circa 1930s.  (Bulkley Valley Museum P4309) 

Kira says the portal has produced other benefits. “It provides a great way for us to show donors that the items that they gave to us are available to the public. Especially for photographs or artifacts, the donors enjoy knowing that the items they gave are accessible, that people can view them, even if they aren’t immediately integrated into a traditional exhibit.”  

Bulkley Valley Museum, with its full- time staff of two, continues to upload new maps, plans, and documents. A PDF reader with the ability to search is a welcome addition: “That’s been a huge bonus for research, even sometimes revealing things to staff. For example, if we search the website for a specific name, and find out that they’re mentioned in a yearbook or newspaper we’ve uploaded, that’s new information we may not have known previously.” 

Searching through Collections Online let me revisit places I experienced 45 years ago, such as Glacier Gulch Trail with its jaw-dropping views of the Twin Falls pouring off Hudson Bay Mountain. It was my first hike as a newcomer.

A little further west at Widzin Kwah (formerly Moricetown), I had watched a young man gaff salmon; a thin rope tied around his waist was the only thing keeping him from being swallowed by the roaring Widzin Kwah Canyon. Little did I know that the Wetʼsuwetʼen people had fished in this exact spot for millennia. (Today, the Widzin Kwah Canyon House Museum conveys the story for visitors.)  

The Bulkley River is squeezed into a narrow canyon at Moricetown (Widzin Kwah) where Witsuwit’en have fished salmon for thousands of years. (Bulkley Valley Museum P1032) Written on the back of photo taken at Hagwilget:  “First bridge over Hagvilget canion Bulkley River; built by the indians, using telegraph wire from the Trans Sibirian Telegraph Line.”  Also known as the Collins-Overland Telegraph, the line was abandoned before  completion in 1867 when the transatlantic cable  successfully  linked North America with Europe. Part of the telegraph trail was later used for the Yukon Telegraph, an All-Canadian route built during the Klondike gold rush. (Bulkley Valley Museum P5241) 

Settler culture moved into the valley with construction of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1913. Smithers, a divisional point, was named after its chairman, Sir Alfred Waldron Smithers, a British financier and politician said to fish with an assistant at his side who baited his hook. The first GTR passenger train rolled through in March 1914, however, the railway went broke following the Great War, and was later absorbed by the Canadian National Railway. Much of the Smithers story is found in Lynn Sherville’s popular 1981 book, Smithers: From Swamp to Village, written to celebrate its 60th anniversary. It is now out of print, but available through Collections Online.  

Wetʼsuwetʼen people helped build the railway and clear the townsite. As Tyler McCreary notes in his BCHF Lieutenant Governor Medal-winning book, Shared Histories: Witsuwit’en–Settler Relations in Smithers, British Columbia, 1913–1973, “Wetsuwit’en [sic] have rarely been noted as town founders and often treated as interlopers.” The book reveals much about this often painful history, and the museum’s archives were critical to the story. 

Ned Charleson (second from right) ran packs trains into remote areas, including cabins strung along the Yukon Telegraph line. Charleson was killed during the Great War. The man on the far right is Charlie Sterritt, grandfather of Indigenous leader Neil Sterritt (1941-2020) whose book  Mapping My Way Home: A Gitxsan History  won the Roderick-Haig Brown Award and a BCHF book prize in 2017. This photo appears in the book.  (Bulkley Valley Museum P7087) 

Kira Westby says the museum gets about 90 requests a year for research assistance, but the connection to this project was deeper than most:  “Our archivist was processing a ten-year backlog of material that had never been catalogued, and was actively identifying new photos or document collections that were of interest to the project as it was developing. We were nominated for a BC Museums Association Award of Merit for Excellence in Community Engagement for our contributions.”  

There’s more to come, including a permanent exhibit and a growing relationship with the Wetʼsuwetʼen. “It is very important to us to reflect the diversity of our region, and we continue to build our relationship with the Wetʼsuwetʼen community, from acknowledging the territory at our events, to having Wetʼsuwetʼen representation on our board of directors.” 

Bulkley Valley Museum’s Collections Online presents the online explorer with many intriguing detours a.k.a. rabbit holes): There’s architect Francis Rattenbury’s land speculation in the Bulkley Valley, telegraph trails slashed through the bush to the Yukon, Cataline’s famous mule trains — even the invention of the egg carton by local newspaperman Joseph Coyle.  

Joseph Coyle was a  Bulkley Valley newspaperman who saw the need to prevent eggs from breaking during transport from a local ranch to the hotel, so he invented the egg carton. Photo: Coyle at the Los Angeles egg carton factory in 1924. (Bulkley Valley Museum P1539)

The current pandemic may restrict our travels to B.C.’s communities and museums, but the impressive evolution of digital resources like Collections Online gets us all a lot closer. Happy trails! 

Reproduction copies of images from the Bulkley Valley Museum’s collection are available for personal or publication use. Find Collections Online at https://bvmuseum.org