No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2018
British Columbia (BC) charted its own course in 1949 when it passed legislation permitting Indigenous children to be schooled in provincial public schools. That is, BC's law predated federal legislation allowing integrated schooling by two years. This paper examines how and why BC followed its own policy path with respect to the schooling of Indian children in the years immediately following World War II. It illustrates three key forces propelling BC's integration agenda: policy actors, ideas, and institutional structures. Indigenous and non-Indigenous policy actors were shaped by the discourse of ethical liberalism, an ideology that dominated BC's educational landscape during the first half of the twentieth century. Key policy actors succeeded in implementing integrated schooling in advance of federal legislation due, in part, to Canada's political institutions, which have facilitated regional autonomy in matters such as education. This study highlights the importance of telling regional histories in addition to those of the nation-state.
1 In this paper, I use the terms Indigenous, Aboriginal, Indian, and Native interchangeably, reflecting their usage in different eras of the province's history.
2 Miller, James R., Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 377–405Google Scholar; Milloy, John S., A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879–1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 192Google Scholar; Sonia Brookes, An Analysis of Indian Education Policy, 1960–1989, (master's thesis, University of Calgary, 1990); and Titley, Brian, “Duncan Campbell Scott and Indian Educational Policy,” in An Imperfect Past: Education and Society in Canadian History, ed. Wilson, J. Donald (Vancouver: Centre for the Study of Curriculum and Instruction, University of British Columbia, 1984)Google Scholar.
3 Barman, Jean, “Transfer, Imposition or Consensus? The Emergence of Educational Structures in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia,” in Schools in the West: Essays in Canadian Educational History, ed. Sheehan, Nancy, Wilson, J. Donald, and Jones, David C. (Calgary, AB: Detselig, 1986), 241Google Scholar.
4 Beadie, Nancy et al. , “Gateways to the West, Part I: Education in the Shaping of the West,” History of Education Quarterly 56, no. 3 (Aug. 2016), 418–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the same volume, see Matthew Gardner Kelly “Schoolmaster's Empire: Race, Conquest, and the Centralization of Common Schooling in California, 1848–1879,” 445–72. Kelly illustrates how educational reformers in California managed to centralize educational governance, despite trends elsewhere to localize.
5 See Wong, Kenneth K. and Rothman, Robert, eds., Clio at the Table: Using History to Inform and Improve Education Policy (New York: Peter Lang, 2009)Google Scholar; McCullough, Gary, “Privatizing the Past? History and Educational Policy in the 1990s,” British Journal of Educational Studies 45, no. 1 (March 1997), 69–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hansot, Elisabeth and Tyack, David, “A Usable Past: Using History in Educational Policy,” in Policy Making in Education: Eighty-First Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, ed. Liberman, Ann and McLaughlin, Milbrey W. (Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education, 1982), 1Google Scholar; Ricker, Eric, “Historians and the Study of Educational Policy: An Overview,” in Historical Perspectives on Educational Policy in Canada: Issues, Debates and Case Studies, ed. Ricker, Eric and Wood, B. Anne, (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1994), 3–26Google Scholar; Donato, Rubén and Lazerson, Marvin, “New Directions in American Educational History: Problems and Prospects,” Educational Researcher 29, no. 29 (Nov. 2000), 8–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stearns, Peter N., “History and Public Policy,” in Social Science and Public Policy: The Roles of Academic Disciplines in Policy Analysis, ed. McCall, George J. and Weber, George H. (New York: Associated Faculty Press, 1984), 91–128Google Scholar; and Warren, Donald R., “A Past for the Present,” in History, Education, and Public Policy: Recovering the American Educational Past, ed. Warren, Donald R. (Berkeley, CA: McCutchan, 1978), 1–20Google Scholar.
6 Hansot and Tyack, “A Usable Past,” 21.
7 Harold Silver, “Policy Problems in Time,” in Historical Perspectives on Educational Policy in Canada, 32.
8 Some Canadian exceptions include the policy perspectives found in Fleming, Thomas, “Canadian School Policy in Liberal and Post-Liberal Eras: Historical Perspectives on the Changing Social Context of Schooling, 1846–1990,” Journal of Education Policy 6, no. 2 (Jan. 1991), 183–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Houston, Susan and Prentice, Alison, Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gidney, Robert and Millar, Wyn, Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise of the High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Gidney, R. D., From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario's Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Raptis, Helen, “Implementing Integrated Education Policy for On-Reserve Aboriginal Children in British Columbia, 1951–1981,” Historical Studies in Education 20, no. 1 (Spring 2008), 118–46Google Scholar.
9 Howlett, Michael, Ramesh, M., and Perl, Anthony, Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2009), 50–51Google Scholar.
10 Urban, Wayne, More Than Science and Sputnik: The National Defense Education Act of 1958 (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama, 2010), 10Google Scholar, 103.
11 Manzer, Ronald A., Public Schools and Political Ideas: Canadian Educational Policy in Historical Perspective (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 165Google Scholar. See also McCullough, H. B., Political Ideologies (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010), 57Google Scholar.
12 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada's Residential Schools: The History, Part I, Origins to 1939. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015), 49.
13 Titley, Brian, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1986), 1Google Scholar; and Titley, E. Brian, The Indian Commissioners: Agents of the State and Indian Policy in Canada's Prairie West, 1873–1932 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2009), 2–3Google Scholar.
14 Dickason, Olive Patricia and Newbigging, William, A Concise History of Canada's First Nations (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2010), 56Google Scholar.
15 Miller, Shingwauk's Vision, 62. See also Roy, Patricia E., “McBride of McKenna-McBride: Premier Richard McBride and the Indian Question in British Columbia,” BC Studies 172 (Winter 2011/12), 35–76Google Scholar.
16 Cole Harris, Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002), xxiii. Patrick Wolfe refers to such measures as “the logic of elimination.” See Wolfe, Patrick, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (Dec. 2006), 387CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Canada's Residential Schools, 109–10. In Canada, a “band” is the body of Indigenous peoples who constitute the population of a specific reserve. The Band Council oversees on-reserve matters much like a municipal government would.
18 Brealey, Kenneth, “Travels from Point Ellice: Peter O'Reilly and the Indian Reserve System in British Columbia,” BC Studies 115/116 (Fall 1997/Winter 1998), 181–236Google Scholar. Provincial authorities argued that Indigenous peoples of BC needed less land because they relied more on fishing and hunting than on agriculture. See also Tennant, Paul, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849–1989 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1990), 33–34Google Scholar, 39–52. In BC, non-Indigenous men were allocated 150 acres if single, 200 if married. See Sandwell, Ruth, Contesting Rural Space: Land Policy and Practices of Resettlement on Saltspring Island, 1859–1891 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005), 29Google Scholar.
19 Smith, Keith D., Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance: Indigenous Communities in Western Canada, 1877–1927 (Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press, 2009), 49Google Scholar; and Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Canada's Residential Schools, 20.
20 Young, Jonathan C. and Levin, Benjamin, Understanding Canadian Schools: An Introduction to Educational Administration, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Harcourt Brace Canada, 1998), 46Google Scholar. See also Wilson, V. Seymour, “Federal Perspectives on Education: Social, Political, and Economic Policies,” in Precepts, Policy, and Process: Perspectives on Contemporary Canadian Education, ed. Stevenson, Hugh A. and Wilson, J. Donald (London, ON: Alexander, Blake 1977), 37–58Google Scholar.
21 For Canadian day school research, see Ahenakew, Edward, “Little Pine: An Indian Day School,” Saskatchewan History 18, no. 2 (Spring 1965), 55–62Google Scholar; Coates, Ken, “A Very Imperfect Means of Education: Indian Day Schools in the Yukon Territory,” in Indian Education in Canada, Volume 1: The Legacy, ed. Barman, Jean, Hébert, Yvonne, and McCaskill, Don (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Gray, Susan Elaine, “Methodist Indian Day Schools and Indian Communities in Northern Manitoba, 1890–1925,” Manitoba History 30 (Autumn 1995), 2–16Google Scholar; Hamilton, W. D., The Federal Indian Day Schools of the Maritimes (Fredericton: University of New Brunswick, 1986)Google Scholar; Luby, Brittany and Labelle, Kathryn, “‘The New Generation’: Cooperative Education at the Day School on Dalles 38C Indian Reserve, 1890–1910,” Ontario History 107, no. 1 (2015), 88–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Norman, Alison, “‘Teachers Amongst Their Own People’: Kanyen'kehá:ka (Mohawk) Women Teachers in Nineteenth-Century Tyendinaga and Grand River, Ontario,” Historical Studies in Education 29, no. 1 (Spring 2017), 32–56Google Scholar; Raptis, Helen, “Blurring the Boundaries of Policy and Legislation in the Schooling of Indigenous Children in British Columbia, 1901–1941,” Historical Studies in Education 27, no. 2 (Fall 2015), 65–77Google Scholar; Helen Raptis with Members of the Tsimshian Nation, What We Learned: Two Generations Reflect on Tsimshian Education and the Day Schools (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016); and Walls, Martha E., “‘[T]he teacher that cannot understand their language should not be allowed’: Colonialism, Resistance, and Female Mi'kmaw Teachers in New Brunswick Day Schools, 1900–1923,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 22, no. 1 (2011), 35–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
For American works, see also Andrews, Thomas G., “Turning the Tables on Assimilation: Oglala Lakotas and the Pine Ridge Day Schools, 1889–1920s,” Western Historical Quarterly 33, no. 4 (Winter 2002), 407–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jensen, Katherine, “Teachers and Progressives: The Navajo Day-School Experiment, 1935–1945,” Arizona and the West 25, no. 1 (Spring, 1983), 49–62Google Scholar; Woodworth-Ney, Laura, “The Diaries of a Day-School Teacher: Daily Realities on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 1932–1942,” South Dakota History 24 (Fall/Winter 1994), 194–211Google Scholar; and Lomawaima, K. Tsianina and McCarty, Teresa L., “To Remain an Indian”: Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 2006), 48Google Scholar.
22 Coates “A Very Imperfect Means of Education,” 134; and Titley, “Duncan Campbell Scott,” 143. See also Leslie, John, “The Bagot Commission: Developing Corporate Memory for the Indian Department,” in Historical Papers of the Canadian Historical Association 17, no. 1 (1982), 40Google Scholar.
23 Raptis, What We Learned, 28–29.
24 At the time, Flood Davin was a lawyer and former political candidate who ran for MacDonald's Conservative party, but was defeated. Milloy, A National Crime, 7.
25 Rice, Brian and Snyder, Anna, “Reconciliation in the Context of a Settler Society: Healing the Legacy of Colonialism in Canada,” in From Truth to Reconciliation: Transforming the Legacy of Residential Schools, ed. Castellano, Marlene Brant, Archibald, Linda, and DeGagné, Mike (Ottawa, ON: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008), 52Google Scholar. For more information about the boarding school system in the United States, see Woolford, Andrew John, This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015)Google Scholar; and Adams, David Wallace, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995)Google Scholar.
26 Hall, D. J., Clifford Sifton, Volume 1: The Young Napoleon, 1861–1900 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1981), 270Google Scholar; and Titley, A Narrow Vision, 77.
27 Titley, “Duncan Campbell Scott,” 147.
28 Fontaine, Theodore, Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools (Vancouver, BC: Calgary Heritage House, 2010)Google Scholar; and McLeod, Neal, Cree Narrative Memory: From Treaties to Contemporary Times (Saskatoon, SK: Purich, 2007), 55–58Google Scholar.
29 Titley, A Narrow Vision, 17.
30 Titley, A Narrow Vision, 17. See also Hall, Clifford Sifton, 270.
31 Miller, Shingwauk's Vision, 132–33.
32 Guy Williams, Native Voice, March 1947, as cited in Jamieson, Eric, The Native Voice: The Story of How Maisie Hurley and Canada's First Aboriginal Newspaper Changed a Nation (Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, 2016), 77Google Scholar.
33 Grant, Agnes, No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schools in Canada (Winnipeg, MB: Pemmican, 1996), 226Google Scholar; and Milloy, A National Crime, 296.
34 Barman, Jean, “Schooled For Inequality: The Education of British Columbia Aboriginal Children,” in Children, Teachers and Schools in the History of British Columbia, ed. Barman, Jean, Sutherland, Neil, and Wilson, J. Donald (Calgary, AB: Detselig, 1995), 57–80Google Scholar.
35 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume One: Summary (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015), 3–7. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report also implicates Canada in the “cultural genocide” of Indigenous peoples. See pages 1–2.
36 Atkinson, Maureen L., “The ‘Accomplished’ Odille Quintal Morison: Tsimshian Cultural Intermediary of Metlakatla, British Columbia,” in Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands, ed. Carter, Sarah and McCormack, Patricia A. (Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press, 2011), 141Google Scholar. In some cases, Indigenous people found themselves teaching within the very system that sought to assimilate them. For evidence of how such teachers subverted the assimilative colonial agenda, see Walls, “[T]he teacher that cannot understand their language should not be allowed”; and Norman, “Teachers Amongst Their Own People.”
37 Miller, Shingwauk's Vision, 98.
38 Milloy, A National Crime, 17.
39 Dubensky, Kate and Raptis, Helen, “Denying Indigenous Education: Examples from Wei Wai Kum (Campbell River) and We Wei Kai (Cape Mudge),” BC Studies 195 (Autumn 2017), 13–34Google Scholar.
40 Assu, Harry with Inglis, Joy, Assu of Cape Mudge: Recollections of a Coastal Indian Chief (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989), 90Google Scholar.
41 Barman, Hébert, and McCaskill, “The Legacy of the Past” in Indian Education in Canada, Volume 1: The Legacy, 8–9.
42 Miller, Shingwauk's Vision, 361.
43 Furniss, Elizabeth E., Victims of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School (Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1995), 65Google Scholar.
44 Miller, Shingwauk's Vision, 377; and Barman, Hébert, and McCaskill, Indian Education in Canada, Vol. 1: The Legacy. See also Friesen, John W. and Friesen, Virginia Lyons, Aboriginal Education in Canada: A Plea for Integration (Calgary, AB: Detselig, 2002)Google Scholar; and Titley, Brian E. “The Education of the Canadian Indian: The Struggle for Local Control,” Journal of American Indian Education 20, no. 3 (May 1981), 18–24Google Scholar.
45 Miller, Shingwauk's Vision, 382; and Milloy, A National Crime, 192.
46 Miller, Shingwauk's Vision, 296; and Milloy, A National Crime, 192.
47 Raptis, What We Learned, 33.
48 As cited in Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics, 53.
49 “Rev. P[eter] Kelly D.D.,” Mildred Valley Thornton Papers, MS 2909.7, file 7, British Columbia Archives, Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, BC (hereafter cited as BCA).
50 “Captain Kelly of Skidegate,” Vancouver Daily Province, 1947, 7.
51 Van den Brink, J. H., The Haida Indians: Cultural Change Mainly Between 1876–1970 (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1974), 253Google Scholar; and Jamieson, The Native Voice, 44.
52 Morley, Alan, Roar of the Breakers: A Biography of Peter Kelly (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1967), 146Google Scholar.
53 Jamieson, The Native Voice, 40.
54 Jamieson, The Native Voice, 39.
55 Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics, 94; and Jamieson, The Native Voice, 42.
56 Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics, 104.
57 As cited in Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics, 106.
58 As cited in Jamieson, The Native Voice, 47.
59 As cited in Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics, 108.
60 Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics, 112; and Foster, Hamar, “We Are Not O'Meara's Children: Law, Lawyers, and the First Campaign for Aboriginal Title in British Columbia, 1908–28,” in Let Right Be Done: Aboriginal Title, the Calder Case and the Future of Indigenous Rights, ed. Foster, Hamar, Raven, Heather, and Webber, Jeremy (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 70Google Scholar.
61 As cited in Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 147–48.
62 As cited in Jamieson, The Native Voice, 81.
63 “Indians Ask BC to Administer Education, Health and Welfare,” Victoria Daily Times, Feb. 25, 1947, B.C. Indian Arts and Welfare Society fonds, PR-0247, BCA.
64 Brotherhood to MacKinnon, March 25, 1949, Indian Inquiry Committee, file 11-Labor, box 82, Premiers’ Papers GR-1222, BCA (hereafter cited as Premiers’ Files, BCA). Members who signed the letter included Frank Assu, president; Henry Jackson, secretary; Telford Adams, Joe Delisle, John Thompson, and Albert Thompson (Manitoba); Ben Christmas (the Maritimes); Ivan Burnham (Six Nations); Nelson Green (Ontario); Paul Taylor (New Brusnwick); Ethel Assu (BC); Mrs. D. Diabo (Quebec); L. Laform (New Credit, Ontario); and Andrew Paull (North Vancouver, BC).
65 As cited in Jamieson, The Native Voice, 96.
66 John H. Cates to Byron I. Johnson, April 20, 1949, Premiers’ Files, BCA.T. Reginald Kelly, Secretary of the Indian Advisory Committee undertook a similar tour in 1951. T. Reginald Kelly to John H. Cates, Sept. 7, 1951, Premiers’ Files, BCA.
67 Harold Sinclair to Byron Johnson, Sept. 17, 1949. Sinclair had earlier extended his thanks to John Cates. Harold Sinclair to John Cates, May 7, 1949, City of Vancouver Archives, John Henry Cates fonds, Political Correspondence, file 3, box 513-E-8, series S2, City of Vancouver Archives, Vancouver, BC (hereafter cited as CVA).
68 “An Act Authorizing an Inquiry into the Status and Rights of Indians in the Province [Indian Inquiry Act],” RSC 1950, c 32, s5. It is important to note that the Committee membership included Indians: Reverend Kelly's son T. Reginald Kelly from the Department of Labour, who served as committee chair; Ernest Brewer (from Vernon); Edward Bolton (Port Essington); and Chief William Scow (Alert Bay). Non-Indigenous members were Lawrence Guichon (Quilchena) and Captain Charles Cates. See T. Reginald Kelly to T. R. L. McInnes, Secretary of Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Dec.1, 1950, Correspondence, Provincial Advisory Committee on Indian Affairs, file 9, box 1, GR-1071, BCA. The Committee later became known as the Indian Advisory Committee.
69 Canada, Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence (Ottawa, ON: King's Printer, 1947), 888.
70 Jamieson, The Native Voice, 117.
71 Jamieson, The Native Voice, 121. Calder completed a theology degree at the University of British Columbia in 1946 and was the first Indigenous person to be elected to a Canadian parliament when he secured the seat for the Atlin riding in 1949. He served as a member of the legislative assembly for twenty-six years, first as a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), which later morphed into the New Democratic Party. He later joined the Social Credit Party and became the first Indigenous person to “achieve cabinet status.” “Chief of Chiefs ‘A Wonderful Guy,’” Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), Nov. 6, 2006, A3. See also Foster, Raven, and Webber, “Frank Calder and Thomas Berger: A Conversation” in Let Right Be Done, 37–38. In his first speech to the legislature in 1949, Calder noted that Indigenous enfranchisement had “paved the way for new rights and new responsibilities.” His vision was for “equality of opportunity in education, in health, in employment and in citizenship” for Indigenous peoples. Harper, Joan, He Moved a Mountain: The Life of Frank Calder and the Nisga'a Land Claims Accord (Vancouver, BC: Ronsdale Press, 2013), 29Google Scholar.
72 Jamieson, The Native Voice, 116–28. In the fall of 1950, Walter Harris, the federal minister responsible for Indian Affairs traveled to BC to meet with Indian and provincial government officials due to their strong opposition to Bill 267. “Harris Here to Discuss Indian Act,” The Province (Vancouver, BC) Oct. 7, 1950, 2.
73 “An Act to Amend the Public Schools Act,” RSBC 1949, c. 57, s 13.
74 “Pleasant Innocuous Beginner, Straith ‘Grows’ as Minister,” Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), Feb. 14, 1951, William T. Straith: Scrapbook, MS-0074, BCA.
75 G. Pierre Normandin, The Canadian Parliamentary Guide (Ottawa, ON: P. G. Normandin, 1952), 473–74; and “Straith Funeral Monday,” Victoria Daily Times (Victoria, BC), March 29, 1980, 2.
76 “Straith Funeral Monday,” Victoria Daily Times (Victoria BC), March 29, 1980, 2.
77 “Pleasant Innocuous Beginner, Straith ‘Grows’ as Minister,” Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), Feb. 14, 1951, William T. Straith: Scrapbook, MS-0074, BCA.
78 “An Act to Amend the Public Schools Act,” RSBC 1949, c. 57, s 13.
79 Indian Advisory Committee, file 7, box 1, BCA. Between 1949 and 1952, Cates and Straith met twelve times to discuss Indian affairs. Meetings also included Indian Commissioner W. S. Arneil and a cabinet committee on Indian Affairs consisting of nine elected members. Figures compiled using day planners of John Henry Cates. Office Diary, John Henry Cates fonds, MS-0281. See also Byron I. Johnson to John Henry Cates, March 21, 1949, AM210-S2, John Henry Cates fonds, Political Correspondence, file 3, box 513-E-7, series 2, CVA.
80 British Columbia Legislative Assembly, Journals, 21st Parliament, 5th Sess, Vol 78 (March 22, 1949), 100.
81 “Action Progresses for Equal Education,” Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), Sept. 13, 1950, 1.
82 “British Columbia Takes a Wise Step,” Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), Sept. 14, 1950, Indian Advisory Committee, file 8, box 1, BCA.
83 W.E. Harris to Byron I. Johnson Sept. 21, 1951, file 4, box 117, Premiers’ Files, BCA.
84 Historians of education have characterized BC's educational civil service in the early twentieth century as “forward-looking” and “progressive.” See Thomas Fleming, “From Educational Government to the Government of Education: The Decline and Fall of the British Columbia Ministry of Education, 1972–1996,” Historical Studies in Education 15, no. 2 (Fall 2003), 211; and Raptis, Helen, “A Tale of Two Women: Edith Lucas, Mary Ashworth, and the Changing Nature of Educational Policy in British Columbia, 1937–1977,” Historical Studies in Education 17, no. 2 (Fall 2005), 316Google Scholar.
85 Shewell, Hugh, ‘Enough to Keep Them Alive’: Indian Welfare in Canada, 1873–1963 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 146Google Scholar. Near the end of World War II, British Columbia—like jurisdictions elsewhere—began to experience profound social changes, a phenomenon that some historians have termed the “equality revolution.” According to Barman, Jean, “equality of treatment, of opportunity, of access, of experience, of acceptance—all acquired credibility as the way things ought to be.” See The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 298Google Scholar.
86 Provincial/municipal enfranchisement for Indians predated federal enfranchisement by eleven years. See Jamieson, The Native Voice, 131.
87 “Education Major Factor In Reaching World Peace, Says Hon. W. T. Straith,” Victoria Daily Times (Victoria BC), Oct. 23, 1948, William T. Straith: Scrapbook, BCA.
88 “‘Traveler’ Straith Covers B.C.” Victoria Daily Times (Victoria BC), Nov. 26, 1951, William T. Straith: Scrapbook, BCA.
89 “No Child Should Have to Leave School,” Vancouver News-Herald (Vancouver BC), Feb. 24, 1949, William T. Straith: Scrapbook, BCA.
90 “Education Major Factor in Reaching World Peace, Says Hon. W.T. Straith,” Victoria Daily Times (Victoria, BC), Oct. 23, 1948, William T. Straith: Scrapbook, BCA.
91 “‘I Wouldn't Head Any Other System But Ours’” News-Herald (Vancouver, BC), April 15, 1952, William T. Straith: Scrapbook, BCA. In this regard, Straith perpetuated the dominant provincial view. It should be noted that support for denominational schooling was not legislated in BC until 1979—unlike the situation in other provinces. See Barman, Jean, “Deprivatizing Private Education: The British Columbia Experience,” Canadian Journal of Education 16, no. 1 (Jan. 1991), 12–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Downey, Lorne, “The Aid-to-Independent Schools Movement in British Columbia,” in Schools in the West: A History of British Columbia, ed. Sheehan, Nancy M., Wilson, J. Donald, and Jones, David C. (Calgary, AB: Detselig, 1986), 241–64Google Scholar.
92 “Pleasant, Innocuous Beginner, Straith ‘Grows’ as Minister” Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), Feb. 14, 1951, William T. Straith: Scrapbook, BCA.
93 “Minister Says Indians Must Be Given Incentive to Sell Wares,” Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), July 8, 1949, William T. Straith: Scrapbook, BCA; Straith and his wife were also longtime patrons of the University of British Columbia Players’ Club in Vancouver. For example, see the UBC Players’ Club playbill for William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (March 1952), 3, University of British Columbia Archives, https://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/pdfs/theatre/pc5203.pdf. The Society for the Furtherance of British Columbia Indian Arts and Crafts was founded in 1939 seeking to help preserve and market Indian arts and crafts. The Society incorporated in 1951 and changed its name to the British Columbia Indian Arts and Welfare Society. B.C. Indian Arts and Welfare Society Files, MS-2907, BCA.
94 Seymour Wilson has noted that provincial officials have generally been “only too glad to accept the funds offered” by federal authorities but have been “just as quick in disclaiming any other federal incursion in the field of educational matters.” See Wilson, “Federal Perspectives on Education,” 39.
95 Raptis, “Implementing Integrated Education Policy,” 121–22.
96 Mann, Jean, “G.M. Weir and H.B. King: Progressive Education or Education for the Progressive State?,” in Schooling and Society in Twentieth Century British Columbia, ed. Wilson, J. Donald and Jones, David C. (Calgary, AB: Detselig, 1980), 91–115Google Scholar.
97 “A Message from the Honorable the Minister of Education,” Anecho—Provincial Normal School Annual (Victoria, BC: Normal School, 1948), 4.
98 “A Message from the Honorable W. T. Straith, Minister of Education,” Anecho—Provincial Normal School Annual (Victoria, BC: Normal School, 1949–1950), 2.
99 “‘Traveler’ Straith Covers BC.”
100 “‘Traveler’ Straith Covers BC.” At the time, new capital costs for schooling required the support of local ratepayers.
101 See, for example, Stanley, Timothy J., Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011)Google Scholar; and Raptis, “Implementing Integrated Education Policy,” 120.
102 Jamieson, The Native Voice.
103 John F. Anderson, President, Campbell River and District Liberal Association, to Byron Johnson, April 22, 1949, file 11, box 82, Labor: Indian Inquiry Committee, Premiers’ Files, BCA.
104 Marie Battiste, “Micmac Literacy and Cognitive Assimilation,” in Indian Education in Canada, 23; Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Canada's Residential Schools, 77; and Miller, Shingwauk's Vision, 186–87, 217–40.
105 Roy, Patricia E., A White Man's Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858–1914 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989)Google Scholar.
106 Barman, “Transfer, Imposition or Consensus?” 241.
107 For more about postwar reforms to improve British Columbia by extending individual welfare rights, see Clarkson, Chris, Domestic Reforms: Political Visions and Family Regulation in British Columbia, 1862–1940 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1982)Google Scholar.
108 Barman, West Beyond the West, 297–321. See also Finkel, Alvin, Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006), 125–47Google Scholar.
109 Finkel, Alvin and Conrad, Margaret, History of the Canadian Peoples, 1867 to the Present, vol. II (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1998), 338Google Scholar.
110 McKay, Ian, “The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History,” Canadian Historical Review 81, no. 4 (Dec. 2000), 643CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
111 Jamieson, The Native Voice, 73. Paull had fallen out with the Brotherhood in the early 1940s over a financial scandal. See also Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 146–47.
112 Helen Raptis and Samantha Bowker, “Maintaining the Illusion of Democracy: Policy-Making and Aboriginal Education in Canada, 1946–1948,” Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy 102 (March 2010), 9.
113 Raptis and Bowker, “Maintaining the Illusion of Democracy,” 11.
114 This political diversity among Indigenous groups of BC continues, as illustrated by differing views on the proposal to expand the Kinder Morgan pipeline from northern Alberta to the port of Vancouver. The Tsleil-Waututh (of North Vancouver) are opposed, whereas the Simpcw (in central BC) are in favor. “‘We've Made Our Decision’: BC First Nation Speaks Up for Trans Mountain Pipeline,” Global News, https://globalnews.ca/news/4165979/first-nation-support-trans-mountain-pipeline.
115 National Indian Brotherhood (NIB)/Assembly of First Nations (AFN), Indian Control of Indian Education: Policy Paper, Presented to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Ottawa: National Indian Brotherhood/Assembly of First Nations, 1972), 25–26. Johnson's coalition government dissolved in 1952 with the election of the more conservative Social Credit Party led by W. A. C. Bennett. By the late 1960s, BC's educational governance had changed significantly. See Thomas Fleming, Worlds Apart: British Columbia Schools, Politics and Labour Relations Before and After 1972 (Mill Bay, BC: Bendall Books, 2011), 60.
116 NIB/AFN, Indian Control, 10.
117 It is important to note, though, that the slow pace of change has prompted critics to characterize the shift in control as more illusory than real. See Assembly of First Nations, First Nations Control of First Nations Education: It's Our Vision, It's Our Time (Ottawa: Assembly of First Nations, 2010), 6; Harold Cardinal, The Rebirth of Canada's Indians (Edmonton, AB: Hurtig, 1977), 56–83; and Longboat, Dianne, “First Nations Control of Education: The Path to Our Survival as Nations,” in Indian Education in Canada, Vol. 2: The Challenge, ed. Barman, Jean, Hébert, Yvonne, and McCaskill, Don N. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1987), 24Google Scholar.
118 Tyack, David and Cuban., Larry Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 57Google Scholar.
119 Tyack and Cuban, Tinkering toward Utopia, 7.
120 Howlett, Ramesh, and Perl, Studying Public Policy, 60.
121 Rancor was particularly evident during the prolonged constitutional negotiations that dominated Canadian politics during much of the 1980s and 1990s, decades that witnessed the rapid decline of the “liberal consensus.” Miljan, Lydia, Public Policy in Canada: An Introduction. 5th ed. (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2008), 5Google Scholar, 15, 63.
122 Beadie et al., “Gateways to the West,” 418–19. See also High, Steven, “Sharing Authority in the Writing of Canadian History: The Case of Oral History,” in Contesting Clio's Craft: New Directions and Debates in Canadian History, ed. Dummitt, Christopher and Dawson, Michael (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, 2009), 21–47Google Scholar.