Salt Spring Island Archives

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Conrad Pinol

Morton Stratton Farms, 2016

Accession Number
Date 2016
Media digital recording Audio mp3 √
duration 51

356_Conrad-Pinol_Morton-Stratton-Farms_2016.mp3

otter.ai

12.02.2024

no

Outline

    Publishing a book about Saltspring Island's agricultural history.
  • The book "Farmers, Farmers, and Farming the First 80 Years of Agriculture on Saltspring Island" was published to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the farmers Institute.
  • The book is a comprehensive account of the history of agriculture on Saltspring Island, from early beginnings to post-war years, and was published by the farmers Heritage Foundation in 2005.
  • In 2010, George Landry's family put his unpublished book on hold after his death, and the group worked to publish it in 2015 with the help of a volunteer editor.
    A book project with the Stratton family.
  • John Stratton shares stories about his father's farming background and support for establishing Metal Brook on Saltspring Island.
  • Agreement reached on ownership, revenue, and editing of historical manuscript between Speaker 1 and the Stratton family.
  • Family and publisher agree on editorial changes to book about late historian John Stratton.
    Printing and distributing a historical book.
  • Speaker 1 describes the printing saga of their book, including missed deadlines and last-minute changes.
  • Speaker 1 praises the quick work of Island Blue in Victoria, who printed and delivered new copies of the book in time for a launch event.
  • Speaker 1 discusses the book they co-authored with George, highlighting its unique history and serendipitous discoveries.
    Saltspring Island history and culture.
  • Speaker 2 discusses a comedy routine, mentioning the Three Stooges and showing pictures.
  • Speaker 3 joins in, asking questions and sharing insights about the pictures.
  • Speaker 2 shares stories of Japanese workers at Musgraves during WWII, including their living conditions and the impact of the war on the community.
  • Speaker 3 provides context on the history of Musgraves and the different nationalities that settled there, including veterans from the Boer War.
  • Speaker 2 shares memories of early farming on Saltspring Island, including the roughness of hay loads and the hazards of cougars.
  • Speaker 3 discusses the research process for a map of early farms on the island, including the use of circles and outlines to mark the locations of farms.
    Salt Spring Island history and farming.
  • Frank found unpublished photos to illustrate the book, including one of the speaker's childhood.
  • Speaker 2 discusses chicken and cow farming on Saltspring Island, and the challenges faced by farmers there.
  • Speaker 2 discusses changes in a book, including a new picture of Frank and his wife.
    Saltspring Island's agricultural history.
  • Speaker 2 mentions a painting by Mark filfil that will be included in the book and will blow people away.
  • The team worked on mapping 100 years of farming in the area, from 1901 to 2001, and the book will include a detailed report of all the farms.
  • Sue its remote was the leading light in a book project, but it was not published due to the existence of a professional writer and researcher named Mark.
  • The speaker has been researching the history of Saltspring Island since 2005, relying on unpublished manuscripts and notes from the late John Stratton.
  • The speaker suggests that without the footnotes in Stratton's book, the sources of the truth and actual history are missing, and they aim to find the lost sources by going through every single one of them.
    The history of agriculture on Saltspring Island.
  • The speaker found joy in researching the book, particularly in the meticulous way the author conducted research.
  • The speaker admires the author's love for Saltspring Islanders and their farms, as well as their ability to convey this admiration through their writing style.
  • Speaker 3 discusses the footnotes in the book, mentioning that they were added by the author and that some were changed after his death.
  • Speaker 3 thanks listeners for their patience and encourages them to buy the first edition of the book before a second edition is published.
  • Historian interested in seed growing on Saltspring Island, particularly the James Seed Farm and its history.
    Mort Stratton's book about Saltspring Island agriculture.
  • Speaker 5 thanks attendees for coming and shares information about Mort Stratton's legacy on Saltspring Island.

Speaker 1 0:00
Thank you very much for inviting us to come and talk to you about Lauren B Stratton's book, farmers, farmers and farming the first 80 years of agriculture on Saltspring Island. My name is Conrad penal, and I'm part of the publishing committee. And my initial task here right now is to introduce the book to you in terms of why we did it, who did it, how we got about doing it, and a few little anecdotes about some of the last minute issues that we had and having it printed. So here we go. The primary reason why we decided to have this book published, was because we were looking away at celebrating and commemorating the 120th anniversary of the farmers Institute. So we basically decided that one of the best ways to do that was to get this manuscript published. More B Stratton's manuscript is a truly comprehensive account of the history of agriculture on Saltspring Island, from the early beginnings meeting 59, up until the post war years, and it's very detailed, and I think that anybody who has a chance to read the book will enjoy it very much. In 2005, we had done in commemorating the 110th anniversary, the farmers Institute, we have done this, this booklet, if you like it's called since 1895, which is the year that the farmers Institute was founded. But this book here, goes before that, and well, it, it carries the whole detailed history of agricultural soils being a little bit about who we are. We the people who decide to publish this book in commemoration of the 120th anniversary of the fires, this was a farmers Heritage Foundation. Now that farmers Heritage Foundation was started in 2003. It's made up of directors and members of the farmers Institute, and it's a it's a society in BC, that is registered as a charitable organization under the Income Tax Act. It's basically its purposes are educational, and it provides all kinds of promotional things about the history of agriculture on Saltspring Island, and as long as it maintains and operates the building code Bittencourt. Museum. The area's continued to be supported by the Saltspring Foundation, the CRD, the farmers Institute, encounters donations to the bitten code Museum. The publishing committee is made up of three directors of the Heritage Foundation. That's George Landry, Frank Newman and myself. And we have a volunteer editor who shall run back some of you may know her. If you haven't, you will, by the end of this meeting, I'm sure. The Russia and Georgia and I and Frank had worked on this on this other book in the in 2005. And the other other person that was working with us on that project was Sue moment. And she was very instrumental in providing some of the background history as well, in working with us. The other thing I want to say about the background on this book is that the more more and strident had met with George and Lucia, back in the late 1990s, early 2000s, and they spoke with him about getting this manuscript published. He was enthusiastic about doing that. And unfortunately, when he died in 2005, the the book was the publishing idea was put on hold, and it was 2010. Sorry, correct. 2005, the year that we did the other book, thank you. 2010. When he passed away in 2010, we had put the project on hold. And finally we got it done this year. So how would you go about publishing the book and when we don't have the author anymore. So I know talk a bit about how we did that. We were trying to get in touch with the family to find out who, who we need to talk to about about getting this done. And we had our first meeting at the library in July of 2015. And lo and behold, if not the day before, we're getting together to talk about doing this and I'm talking about Georgia, Frank and I. John Stratton walks in with a box of notes of resources references for his manuscript for more than be Stratton's manuscript. So it was like fortuitous coincidence that the GA that John Stratton happened to walk in the archives the same or the day before we're going to meet to start on this book. So what we did the next day is we had invited John to our meeting. And we talked about some of the things that we want to do with the book and see if if you get the the families concurrence with what we are planning to do. To be we wanted to make sure that the family basically had a full compliance or full agreement with what we are intending to do. Just take a couple of minutes and talk a bit about Morton V. Stratton. When we met with the John Stratton. He talked about his dad and his dad's farming background. Morton Stratton. Family Farm is called winnaar is just outside of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and it's famous for the Chester barns that whole county Chester County is famous for its its barns that have a very distinct architecture. Frank, you don't have a copy of those. They're like what they look like in your pictures. No, they're they're they're, they're unique barn, I encourage you to, if you if you have access to a computer, you can go to the library and check out what they look like. They're very distinguished, distinctive architecture of barn. And they are from that county. And that family is one of the original builders of this kind of barn architecture. Morton continued to do farming in Ohio when he was the chair of the History Department at the University of Denison and also did some chicken raising and whatnot. But on Carling Avenue here on Saltspring. Also, when we met with John Stratton, he talked about not only his father's academic background, but he also talked about more than his work and in support of the establishment of metal Brook on Saltspring island. So at our subsequent meet at that initial meeting and subsequent meeting, we came to agreement on three points. And these became these points became into like, the basis for a legal agreement between the Heritage Foundation and the Stratton family. And these three points are ownership. The, the ownership of the manuscript remains with the Stratton family. What we mean by that is that in future generations, if a grandchild or a great grandchild of the surviving family wants to do something else with this manuscript, it's still there, as always, only requested was the right to publish it, here in Canada, and distributed across across Canada and across BC in schools, universities, archives, government departments, and so on so forth. The second thing that we agreed on was the whole question about revenue that will be derived from the sales of books. And on that point, we made it very clear to strata family that our intent was that any revenue should we make any revenue from the sale of the box would be devoted to the charitable purposes of the Heritage Foundation, and then specifically, in this case, to the educational purposes of the the Heritage Foundation, to give you an idea of the kinds of things that we've done in the last year, in May of this year or early June, we had the entire friend with school come and spend some time at the for a day at the farmers Institute and the museum. They toured the blacksmith shop, the antique shop, the sawmill, the, the the kitchen, and so on, so forth the museum. And we went through a whole of the history of agriculture on Saltspring Island. And these are the kinds of things that we are attempting to, we're not attempting, we are actually promoting the history of agriculture on Saltspring island in an educational format.

Speaker 1 9:04
And finally, the third agreement that we had, or the third part of the agreement was editing. And on that part, we wanted to make sure that John and the family understood that what we were doing is we were not editing the text in terms of changing anything, but we were editing was we're editing out any kind of typos or that and Anushka explained to John that she was taking basically all the notes that we had the 291 footnotes and attaching them to this specific parts of the text. So they they linked up directly with the text and that was a phenomenal amount of work and Anisha was painstakingly long but it she got it done. And John agreed to those to those editorial changes, but at again, the text is John is is more than words. We simply corrected the typos and basically redirected the The basis of the information in terms of the references and the resources, which he had hand scribed on some, on some current on some notes and notepads in handwriting. So what we did is we took this agreement, we wrote it all out between the family and us. And we took it to implement here in his office, it was ratified and signed by both parties. i Before I finish, I need to talk about just two little things here. On July 20 of this year, we met with the Stratton family in the Betancourt Museum, to give them a copy of the book, and to basically celebrate the the the, the announcement of the publication of the book, they drove all the way up from Utah, John came with his wife, Linda, and sisters, Peggy and Nancy. And I can tell you that it was very moving in most of them. We heard all kinds of stories about their father, you know that he was he was a husband, a father, he was a historian, a professional teacher, he was a farmer. And I can tell you that we got a whole list a whole range of stories and anecdotes about this man. And it was that only a family can tell. And he was very, very, very moving. And very interesting. We truly enjoyed our day with them. Imagine they drove all the way from Utah to to spend the day with us. So we were quite, quite happy about that. quite proud of it. And finally, I'm going to end up with the the printing saga. We we've tried to get in order to meet our deadline, our deadline that we had set for ourselves was July the 17th. So you have to back that up about two weeks to have the book completed in order for you to have it ready for that day. So that means given the kinds of changes and proofs that we would go on, we attempted to have the book and we did get the book ready by the beginning of June. And by the second proof we had basically done there was a few changes that we made. But basically in terms of the layout of the pictures, and the map that was donated to us by Margaret Threlfall, the beautiful color history map. So we basically had it all done and to them and and then George and I drove to Victoria on the eighth of July on the Friday to pick up the book, all 500 copies all set to go. We put them in the truck drive back to Saltspring. That's on the Friday afternoon, late Friday afternoon. On the Sunday afternoon. I've been looking through the book, but I hadn't paid attention to a certain part of it. I get a call from OSHA at about five o'clock on the Sunday afternoon. They told me that the first 15 pages of the book are out of order. So you can imagine it's now July the 11th on Monday morning, and I'm getting in touch with the printer and saying you've got this all reverse at the beginning that the first page the second page of the content was the first page of the book. They were blank pages between the maps it was it was not a pretty sight. So I didn't know we had missed that. I guess not looking through the boxes. But anyways, I phoned up this young man Lindsey cocking young man who graduated here on Saltspring Island at the high school who works at Island Blue in Victoria. And I said, this is a big mistake. And we need this book by Friday. And this is a Monday and of course we I knew that this was gonna be a difficult thing for them to do. I had a new 500 copies printed and delivered to my front gate at Wednesday evening. They did they worked overtime and they got it done. It was quite fun to me. And it was amazing. I mean, this is Island knew that. We were quite. I mean, we were amazed that they turned it around so quickly. So we had the book ready for Heritage Day, which was our first launch event we sold some 50 Odd copies that they and then and then of course we had it ready on the 20th of July when we met with the Stratton family and we obviously donated a number of copies to them and their family to take back to to Utah. And we'll be distributing as well to the University of Denison and a number of other places that basically board and spend a lot of time working and providing some very interesting views about history. So that's basically all I wanted to talk about if anybody has any questions about how we put the book together about the agreement we have with the family about who we are moving far away otherwise I'll get George to take away

Unknown Speaker 14:53
nothing. I was that clear? Yes I just couldn't. Is that Betty? Yes, I can see your baby. Yeah. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 15:14
What she was able to do with all those notes so forth

Speaker 1 15:27
no, yes. Well, I mean, actually, if you read through the 100, the 291 footnotes, there are quite interesting. I mean, the book is great. But some of those loads are quite fascinating. I mean, how we got information about this farm or that farm by standing in the grocery line at Ganges Village Market. It's really quite remarkable. It really is. And you should know that just two days ago, this always happens. And whenever we plan something about for more than striking about his book, out of nowhere at John cups I would you call that stuff? George? Serendipity. Yeah. He sent me an email with more than stratas ledger on Saltspring island of everything he did on saucer and Arlington's when he spent on funny when he spent on running his farm up on Carlin. And he asked us if you want of course we want it. I mean, it's another part of the history of this man. He's an interesting man, you know, he was a pilot to the age of 90 used to fly with his daughter, Nancy guy was an amazing guy. Anyways, any other questions or points? Okay, so George, do you want to come up here and talk a bit about the book?

Speaker 2 16:43
What are you doing? I'm standing behind you, George. correct you? Why don't you just let her talk?

Speaker 3 16:53
This is a comedy routine. We got about an hour. Three Stooges? Yeah, so Frank's gonna show some pictures. And I'll try and shut you shut. The first I don't know what that is. But that's that's in the book. That's just showing our board of directors of pharmacist showing

Speaker 2 17:17
the history of the pharmacy Institute from 120.

Speaker 3 17:26
The first cover this is called a cover. And he didn't tell you the story about the week color. But that's another matter. But if ever Frank did a great deal of this work. And if ever there was a picture in my mind, I'm talking about my bias, which is the only bias I really understand. And if ever there was a picture of agriculture on Salzburg, that's got to be two houses there that you recognize are still available. This one, of course, has wings built on it. This is the stylish, what's called a started when they began to move away from the log houses. They had a new word was called stylish. And there's one can you imagine the size of that house you can estimate from his height is probably only about 14 feet across or something like that. And and that's, that's a family house. Here's a stone board, which we all used. It's just a slight, of course, gone primarily by oxen. And we've all heard the story about how oxen were much more stable in a country where there were Cougars on a regular basis,

Speaker 2 18:48
more stable in horses who would get frightened of cougars?

Speaker 3 18:54
That's one we've seen a bit one of the things we tried to do was find pictures that word in other books and I'd give Frank a word and he a key sentence or something and he would find out we tried to fit it in Word Match the actual wording and Jen while we were fairly lucky with it, you could imagine how long that takes go springboards that as an art form as like ballet dance. That's not in the book, but that's another famous picture of him. Wilson clean throwing the land. One of the things we tried to get wasn't the wildness of everything and you can see there that's that's a weekend's work. And of course, it's the golf club. And Frank did a nice job putting them side by side he got the angle wrong but aside from that to see those two pictures side by side, and that's exactly the same land. Japanese workers are A lot of them were used Musgraves, for example, during this period, there were other there was a logging camp down below the Buddhist monastery, but on the water, and there were 75 Japanese workers there. A lot from the logging company worked most of the time that my dad was up there. Here's your, here's your lawn

Speaker 3 20:31
much of the help and softening, of course, in those times was from outside Chinese, Japanese, etc. This is a quite a famous picture in the sense of I don't haven't seen it in other books, but the trench family was the third in a line of remittances people that came. And a number of years ago, not many years ago now, a family shows up at the information booth at Denton wants to know about Musgraves. And we're able to take the grandchildren, which are now in their 60s, I get over to Musgraves. And Phoebe was very good with people, Kevin Kennedy. Sorry. Kellogg, was very good to us and let us inside their original grandparents house. And they had a little booklet of their grandmother's record of living there when she was five. And we showed them the little stream, she talked about the fairy ferns. And we showed them the stream where the fairy friends would be, hopefully a very moving experience for them.

Speaker 2 21:37
So that grandmother lived there at Musgrave from the age of five until 15.

Speaker 3 21:46
And here's another famous picture, you'll know the next picture. And we always tell visitors to Saltspring about that other. The other part of it that you'll see in the next slide is there's a bomb shelter and things like that. And I hadn't seen the picture of the barn before. And so when Frank got the picture of the barn, that's an exciting picture from the opposite direction. But that's, that's what it was. And I hadn't seen that before. So that's a that's a neat, new picture in the book. And as I said, the book has many pictures that are not in other booklets as far as we know. Again, this was to show the amount of the kinds of workers that were most of the most of the people working on farms or from other nations. If you read Wilson's book, he talks about how many different nationalities

Unknown Speaker 22:41
whether I've forgotten that

Unknown Speaker 22:45
there was one Patagonia

Unknown Speaker 22:48
and the last one was one Patagonia.

Speaker 3 22:52
And this is the most famous picture in the book, of course. So this is my dad's barn. And this fits right into the script. And of course, for people who went to mass graves. That's the one barn that you saw, and it was the last of the Pioneer barns. My dad was a death from the Boer War and came in 1910 and opened up what's called upper Musgraves. There were too much grace. The coast was settled by very wealthy people. Musgraves and people like that. And the upper one was more settled by later people, including the veterans, so not first of all war 70 new families moved in to what's called upper Musgraves. Now you've all seen this one. And that one, and of course r&b Bakery now, and here's a map that is in the museum. And I would hope that someday you'll come by and have a look at it because it's from all this from ceiling to floor. And a teacher in 1912. DREW This and had the kids go and put circles where the farms were an outline where their farms I knew remarkable, yeah,

Speaker 2 24:04
had the kids go out and do the research to find all the families and then come back and put the location on the map.

Unknown Speaker 24:14
So come and see that at the museum

Unknown Speaker 24:16
because we couldn't fit it into the book, big

Speaker 3 24:24
Princess John that stayed around a long time. When the boats pulled into Fulford after the fourth and Ganges, of course, were much later getting started. They were not here in the early settlement, I guess, for for 19, eight, maybe something like that. Yeah, in that range. And my mother died born in 18. Two and she talks about going down I think once a week. That was a big social event. You ride the horse down to the farm. We were about two miles to kilometers north or west of it. And that was a social event at Fulton We'd like this picture I asked for a picture showing the roughness of the loads of hay. And up in the second reach of

Unknown Speaker 25:11
the sector. They're a little long. And Charlie. Charlie Sampson says that that's his head. So if you see Charlie, tell him you have seen his head. He claims out that

Speaker 3 25:24
the nice thing is that this is paying as I remember awfully rough. You notice that some of the hairs come off at Scott on the fence post, and come off the load. Yeah. Normally books show the bullet farm where everything is groomed and combed and stuff like that. And this is the way I remember the farming

Unknown Speaker 25:50
I couldn't really go to go. Oh, jeez.

Speaker 3 25:58
Can you see Frank? Okay, there's Charlie's head up there. That's when he tells us one of the oldest families on Saltspring question. This one's not in this one's not in the book. This one's in the book. And of course, that's illustrating Martin as illustrating the the hazards of farming in the early day and cougars were a serious issue. Although I don't know anyone who was actually killed by one but there. They certainly killed cows they made farming, cattle farming very, very difficult. That was not not in the book either.

Speaker 2 26:44
When George is saying it's not in the book, Frank was amazing. He found photographs that have not been published before he found photographs to fit exactly with the text. And there are masses of them. So you had to wade wade through them to choose which one was perfect. Some of them illustrate what's in the book, but you didn't have room for it because there was another picture on that thing.

Speaker 3 27:06
This is the furnace fireman you can see the house in the cover of the book up there. The furnace family the two I grew up knowing two boys. And I've mentioned before that one of them had an old Parkmobile or something with a rumble seat. And I got it when I was about 10 years old I got to go into Victoria and back all the way in the rumble seat on full ferry the site back which took about a one hour or something like that across. And the two o'clock ferry left when Captain mod was buddy well finished his tea. Again, this isn't in this book, but that's typical of the farming. And here's one of my favorite pictures and it's the caption. The caption is by the cow says this, this may take a while.

Unknown Speaker 28:01
And this one of the Bearcat children. We just put this in because I was getting bored. And

Speaker 3 28:10
again, this is a common picture but he was one of the great farmers up the north end here. Fall fair time early on. And again, one of my favorite pictures this was in the book and during the war that would have been me. Mom carried me on the more. Conrad said she tried to throw me under it sometimes, but I don't know what are the only parents in town around away from home. And here's a picture Frank's got even with me. Most Florida we've never had this picture again in any book. And it's a wonderful picture, but it's in every book, you see. And when you're talking to children, it's very important. I mean, that's exactly what people in the south end not many of the rich people at the north end but the south end people we all have four to six cows which we melt and you'd get on Ernie Breton's bus with you know that bounced off all over your boots and smelling like cows and while the guys told me that that's one of the reasons that the guys from forefoot never had girlfriends when he went to school because all the girls in North End were looking for military people you know chickens were more strapping does quite a section on chickens and we held the championship. Chicken we'll show you a little later on in Canada some years. But chicken farming became very, very, very big on Saltspring. Again, I liked that picture that's Maximals farm. It's an unusual picture looking straight up to the peak

Unknown Speaker 29:53
that's not in the book, but that's a bit of a picture fry. Thank you Not in the bookie that Frank had to put up with a lot of problems.

Speaker 3 30:06
Conrad me and me and he Noid OSHA a lot or is that Zarei Conrad or was it the other way around? There were there were constant changes. We'll talk about the book on 290 some odd footnotes and there's a huge change and because every twice a day to be changed says in the pictures will change a picture you change the whole page Nelson so I have Frank still a little bit older but he's again here's a neat picture you don't often see this one was a famous old Eric wall picture of Viva Bergeron Bay the Bergen Bay work there's a book a kid again this one's not it's not in the book

Unknown Speaker 31:09
because the books not wide, Frank

Speaker 3 31:11
Frank sometimes figures he's got to have his entertainment to is

Unknown Speaker 31:24
not in the book

Speaker 3 31:31
not in the book. Not in the book. There's a picture showing one of the famous families on Saltzman. Another picture, it's in the book and often seen about probably the most famous teacher on solspec. 10. Here's an interesting one, I demanded that there be a picture of the Shaw barn. That's the most visual barn I think on Saltspring. Everybody's seen this all barn. And so Frank sent his wife to get this picture. So this is a special joy. I don't think this is this, this angles never been seen before. But she got it and it's in the book here. fits right in. Again, some of the ads that are that we had, and this is in the book also. Landscape Gardener I don't know the year on, do you know the year

Unknown Speaker 32:40
96. Again,

Speaker 3 32:42
okay. 1886 96 I can't hear either. Not in the book. And it was one that is in the book. And it may seem like a professional one. But he has the wordings right at the end when he talks about the use of the land 1995 And he talked about all the way through the long history of the seed companies on Saltspring all the way from big through and now in with Dan Jason. So we felt it was fair game to put that in.

Speaker 3 33:28
Okay, and then a couple other pictures that we didn't talk about. On the back is this one thing we did in this little Frank's put a whole series in a collage. And that's a wonderful, wonderful set of pictures. And the other thing that we didn't talk about was this what I call a famous picture painting by Mark songful. And one of the things you get to record but you know, one of the things that we thought about which was that we will have an American audience and quite a few pictures are in the book that didn't get in here we didn't show the chicken and a number of other pictures as well. But this picture we think will blow people away when they see it if they haven't seen it before. There we are

Unknown Speaker 34:20
19 one farms there and in 2001. Where's all spring is we have another map in there where Salzburg is of course, for

Speaker 3 34:35
this will be given to the copies of the book will be given to the university down there and all of the members of their family will have a so we thought that this would be one of the interesting things that might blow blow them away when they just open and see this beautiful, beautiful painting by Mark filfil.

Speaker 2 34:51
So what it's showing is 100 years, the 100 years of farming because we have a full detailed report of all Well, the farms in 1901, and those are all the yellow ones plus all the brown ones. And then in 2001, it's all just the brown ones are the ones that are still being farmed in the same place. And Mark trout both did that. As part of the NATs fest, Millennium project that was held about mapping.

Speaker 3 35:26
So we'll take any questions if you have them. I just want to say the the team, I think, had a wonderful time that this little booklet, this is a special work come in publication of it. And the team Frank. I don't know how he does his magic. But he puts up with me and puts up a new show and whooshes work is beyond belief. I don't know how she doesn't work. How many? Frank did

Speaker 2 35:57
all the layout of this book, which is usually put out? Print it? And it's absolutely wonderful. That took an awful lot of work because of me. What is that 280 991 footnotes?

Unknown Speaker 36:17
And then the

Speaker 2 36:18
story has not quite been told as as it was, which is set. Now you get? Oh, well, I

Speaker 3 36:29
see also did a listing of the all of the family names 200 separate so that if you have dealt with farming, you can find a page number where they'll talk about the history of them. And other things. Sorry, would you like to take a we've got another hour?

Unknown Speaker 36:53
Okay, so yes. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 37:03
Probably, for the first? Yes. Yes. Searching for those still,

Speaker 2 37:16
I don't know what happened is that by 1993, when the author of the book ended up in the archives, it started out as a as a project that Sue its remote was very much the leading light in and it was a to be a chat book full of chapters and the Historical Society members were volunteering to write one chapter, and what offered the chapter of the history of agriculture. And when I first met Sue and found this amazing manuscript in the archives, myself as a researcher, she told me Well, you know, it was really different. What chapter was a professional book, and he was a, he was a writer, himself and an experienced researcher and interested in history and interested in agriculture. So the other chapters didn't look quite as good as they could have if Mark didn't exist. So that's part of why the book that book project was not published, but also, Charles cannon took that box of all those chapters and turned into the story of an island. Now, when I have been doing all the research for the archives, ever since about the whole of Saltspring island in its history, I relied enormously on moats, unpublished manuscript, and I would ask him if if he would not mind getting it published, because it's superb piece of research work if nothing else, and he said, no shit can't be published. Because all the parts the first part of the book, more than 200 footnotes that he has put in, you can see the little number in in his text, all the way up to more than 200. Those footnotes themselves the pages with his footnotes had gone missing. And they have not been found. So the questioner is asking us is, are we searching for them? I believe that I certainly searched for them and have not been able to find them. The fact that John Stratton came and brought into the archives of offered to the archives, one of Mort Stratton's many, many, many, many, many more final cut at a drawer full of cards that he had written. That helped me enormously because I could see the way that he wrote notes when he wrote notes on the telephone after coming back from the lineup in the bank, and he would write this meticulous details of where and what date what time of day, what place on Saltspring Island. This interview had happened a lot on the telephone a lot in in the bank line up and in the grocery store. Sign up the checkout counter, things like that, and also on the site of the original farm. So I, I totally enjoyed his cards. But because there were no footnotes he he used to say to me, no, it cannot be published because he was a professor, a historian and a writer. And without those footnotes, it for him wasn't worth anything, because there's all the sources of the truth of the actual history of what he was writing. So in 2005, I had the mad idea to suggest to him that maybe, since I've done all this research ever since and have been finding some of his sources, I could go all the way through every single one of them, and try to find the source that had been lost. That is to say, where had he got that information from, that he is writing about, and at the end of the sentence puts a little number in number 92, or number 198. And that takes you to the end of notes at the back of the book, and you find out where he found that out, if you're a historian, or if you are a researcher, that is key information that he did not want to be absent from his book. So I said, four, and he said, That's ridiculous. You couldn't possibly do that, which is fairly true. Especially back when I first asked him, and then in 2005, I came up with the phrase that you will see in the footnotes, which is the source of this particular the source of this particular statement in the book has not yet been found, and more laughed and said, Okay, or so yes, you can. So I tried my best to make as few of those as possible. And by 2015, it was amazing. The internet is there. And there are crazy people out there who have been scanning all the newspapers since 1859. The local newspapers around here, all the government reports about agriculture from the Ministry of Agriculture, including the fact that the Saltspring Island farmers were very keen to send in when they were requested when all the farmers were asked to send in the details of what they were growing and how productive and what their problems were and what challenges they've had and what help they wanted from the government. Those have all been scanned in. So all I had to do was type in more sentence that he had put a footnote to and see what came up on the internet content down till they actually found the document itself. And yes, it was an awful lot of hours of work. And a little bit of ingenuity, but it was enormous fun. And it was so exciting to have this book put out there to show people just how this is not for you and everyone who wants to buy the book for as interested in Saltspring island. But for me to teach people how research is done. And what and the fact that the way that that he used it, I had written articles while I was doing it just because I was so enthralled at the meticulous way that not worked. He was superb as a researcher, and he was he is utterly delightful to read. Usually when you get somebody who is erudite is that as as intellectually capable of doing meticulous research is boring to read more is a total delight to read all the way through, he was making me laugh everywhere. And he his style is delightful. And he just loved Saltspring Islanders, and their farms, the people that he was living amongst he loved talking with him listening to them. And he so admiring of of what the pioneers did in the early days to set this all up. I find the book personally an absolute thrill and to have all of the background proof of the fact that he knows what he's talking about. Okay, let's flip that enormous section of the back of the book that's got more than 291 the second part of the book is much shorter. It's after the First World War, which was the turning point for agriculture. And he brings it right up to date to 1995 and looking back and so those the footnotes to that last part, the 93 footnotes do exist they are all his that he asked me to change various things before he does. So I've got a lot of more input into what he wanted me to do, and permission granted to use his book to fix research that had been erased erroneously done before but which as time goes by, researchers find out more of the truth and Alterra perspective, said oh shall Yes, go ahead and put that in the footnotes as Editor's Note. So that's the story of the footnotes. The story of the crew is that put it together is delightful. I love the contributions of Conrad, he's talked about what it was. And I don't know Frank's got a turn. But Frank really deserves a turn he amazing Frank, really, really stunning to see what he would just throw it away in the background, not asked to do these things. He just did them. And it was lovely. And so I make a very public apology to how much excess work I put you through friends in my meticulousness. So thank you. Are there any questions? Yes. Me. Nice to see and make our fire.

Speaker 2 46:15
And I don't see any history. The farmers. So if they're in Missouri book, there's going to be a second edition, all we have to do is sell the first 500 copies before that happens. So my promotion for selling the book is please, please buy the first edition, sometimes they're worth something, because they're the first edition. But if we can get rid of 500 copies, and I will persuade the Heritage Foundation to republish and have the second edition with all the errors fixed, there are not very many. But there are some and additional information that we can find out I'm quite sure, absolutely certain that Mort would not mind if we added more. Of course, for the population of however many it was isn't wasn't 10,000 people on Saltspring, back when he finished the book, which is 9095 390 93 to five or so. But, of course, he couldn't meet everybody. So his history is includes what he came across. The research that he focused on was not just Saltspring Islanders, that was actually the history of agriculture in BC. And that's where all of these governmental reports and things come in as well. And, in fact, even wider than that, it goes to the history of the farm since two movements I know that's what Mort struck knew about. And not everything that he knew by any means is in the book. As a last quick example of that, that long box of cards that John Stratton brought in, I used only 12 of them. That's only 12 Out of the 200 that I had to research. So he had many, many, many more interviews and information coming in and newspaper articles and governmental reports, then appear in the book, because a book needs to be that synopsis of what you learn. But yes, I am very interested in that particular piece of land north of Fernwood dock because of the great history of that piece of land in the history of the seed growing on Saltspring Island. Was the James Seed Farm. Yes. It was Beggs. Yes. and Mrs. Griffiths too. So that, in fact, I could say that that is a book just in that piece. It's that strip of property up there. Yeah. The nurserymen strip. And I don't I don't know about your family. So I should reconnect with you.

Speaker 2 49:15
You're Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. And this is starting in 1859. Okay, they were the very first settlements. And yours was in the 1920s. Right? Yes.

Speaker 2 49:39
Now, Oh, okay. Yeah. So we could connect later, unfortunately, after the fall fair, but I will reconnect with you. Yes. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 49:53
Any other questions? Thanks very much. That's right. Four of you. I guess. Conrad, George Raikou. Chef, I know you came at a very busy time with the fall fair on Saturday and Sunday. And I appreciate the fact that you took the time to come and share mortes books with us. Mort was an honorary member or life member of this historical society. It was a very active member. His books and manuscripts actually, as was mentioned earlier, became part of the psaltery, a story of an island from Charles fan, he used a lot of the agricultural references from morts papers. So he has done left quite a legacy for for Saltspring. And in this book, I read it the other night, as matter of fact, it's good book, got to remember the editors and the people who put the book together were restricted by what Mort Stratton had written. And so there's all sorts of other agricultural stories and Saltspring. And I think that some of those will be coming forward. But this particular book was based on mortes manuscripts, his family history, his ability to take the agriculture as he saw it, and put it into great words. It is a very interesting book, and I know some are bought that one there are on sale at the back and there'll be a sale at the Fall fair. And you'll be able to pick one up I think, the $20 And they're very excellently put together. And so thank you very much. Don't forget the free historical today's books at the back if you want to take some with you. And I don't know about our October program, but we're working on it. Keep your eye out on the driftwood. We still use the driftwood and also our exchange articles. So we hope to see you back here in October otherwise it will be a November meeting. Thank you very much.