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The Boer War and Canada’s First Veterans The Vancouver School Board has voted to change the name of the Lord Roberts School. They claim Roberts ran concentration camps and targeted Indigenous people. They say renaming schools will help Reconciliation. But are they right? The first Vancouver soldiers to ever fight and die for Canada were led into battle against pro slavery forces in the Boer War by Lord Roberts. Local Black Africans worked with him and our soldiers. Mahatma Gandhi himself personally organized hundreds of medical support workers. Their victory saved countless people from slavery. The Truth and reconciliation Commission of Canada rejects what the Vancouver School Board is doing as ‘counterproductive’, and harmful to reconciliation. Let’s look at the facts together. Thanks for joining the Global Civic Think Tank on this voyage of learning. Tell us what you think about this renaming, and keep up with developments in this case. Global Civic loves British Columbia, our institutions, our traditions and philosophy of liberal democracy. They give us our prosperity and freedoms. Back at home, British Columbians waited daily, impatiently for word from the front. Under the intrepid leadership of Lord Roberts, our soldiers broke the Siege of Kimberley. British Columbia was so ecstatic that they named the town Kimberley BC in their honour. One of the people they liberated was Baden Powell the founder of the Boy Scouts. Would the Boy Scouts even exist today without the bravery of our soldiers? It was in this war that the first soldiers in Vancouver history died in combat. Of 17 soldiers from Vancouver, William Jackson and Fred Whitley died while Harry Niebergall and Clarence Thomson were wounded. Young soldiers from Cranbrook and especially Victoria took heavy losses. Sergeant Moscrop, a teacher with the Vancouver School Board,… Read More »Vancouver School Board and Lord Roberts

Vancouver School Board and Lord Roberts

This video was made to provide insights into the Métis people and their contributions to British Columbia. Western and Northern Canada had a unique political environment for 200 years. The Hudson’s Bay Company was the legal government according to King Charles II Charter. Parliament tried several times to overturn the Charter and open the vast territory to settlement but it failed. It was only in 1858 when the West Coast statutory grant expired and finally in 1870 with the purchase by Canada that settlement could proceed. But during those intervening years, the collision of the industrializing great Britain with the hunter gatherer societies of Canada created the need for a new people that was an indigenous response to the changing needs. The ethnogenesis of this people often manifested with race people. HBC prevented its employees from becoming settlers by requiring them to return to Montreal after their contracts to get paid. They developed new cultural norms like holding land individually and excelling in communications and technology. They developed hybrid languages like Michif and Chinook Jargon. Métis people were a significant presence on the West Coast before the creation of British Columbia before 1858 and before the province joined confederation in 1871. Kumtuks is a video blog that shares knowledge and explores new narratives especially related to British Columbia. Some quotes and descriptors have been adjusted for clarity and brevity. Please subscribe if you would like to be notified of new videos. If you would like to receive commentary and invitations and support more videos https://www.patreon.com/kumtuks Sam Sullivan narrates this video. He is a Member of the Order of Canada, a former Mayor of Vancouver and Cabinet Minister responsible for Cities, Culture and Transit, a Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia and an Adjunct… Read More »Insights Into Métis History

Insights Into Métis History

Harland Bartholomew

Vancouver Urban History 1928 to 1958 For 40 years, Vancouver developed without government planning. The Canadian Pacific Railway laid out Vancouver’s streets before the city government existed. The London-based BC Electric Company chose the arterial streets to maximize riders on its streetcars. London was the model, where order came from human interaction not human design. Robert Horne-Payne, founder of BC Electric Company sold it in 1928 then died shortly after. That same year, Harland Bartholomew presented his radical Plan for Vancouver, claiming cities are better designed and organized by planners than by natural processes. He had been the first full-time planner in the US, advising on freeways and slums. Mayor LD Taylor, originally of Chicago, endorsed him though many had wanted someone from the Commonwealth who understood British cities and institutions. The British Discretionary System is principle based; it starts with what cannot be built, everything else is possible. The United States Regulatory System is rule based; it starts with what can be built, everything else is not possible. The US system was top down originating in Bismarck’s Germany. The British system was bottom up, incremental, organic. British philosophers like Alan Turing, an inventor of the computer, were Emergentists. He described how complex structures assemble themselves without a designer. Jane Jacobs was influenced by the British Emergentists and wrote “no logic can be superimposed on cities. People make it”. Ants, termites and computer algorithms all produce unexpected emergent order in large numbers. When tiny polyps achieve critical mass they create coral reefs. When humans achieve critical mass they adopt a distinctive density gradient, to benefit the greatest number of people. Designed cities do not have this gradient, for example a Soviet city like Moscow or the completely planned Brasilia. Bartholomew installed planning regimes in hundreds… Read More »Harland Bartholomew

Harland Bartholomew

Jay Powell is the last remaining speaker of Chinook Wawa in British Columbia who learned it from native elders. He is inspiring other British Columbians to revive this important language as a reminder of our past and in inspiration for our future. In this video, one of Jay’s students, Sam Sullivan, interviews him about the language.

Jay Powell interviewed by Sam Sullivan in Chinook Wawa