In Search of "Six Women" in Seattle

     Our first tour in Seattle was "Six Women" by Tours by Carter (Website ).  Carter Churchfield has been a tour operator and guide for over a decade and has created a phenomenal tour of Seattle focusing on women's history in the city.  She started with some 30 or more possible women to research and narrowed the field down to 6 (well, a bonus story makes 7) whose lives and stories unfolded within a few short blocks of Pioneer Square, the historic origin point of the city.  Modern Seattle started as a timber town.  Sawmills were built in order to process the vast timber resources, and a port developed to from which to export the lumber.  The city grew from there, predominantly male.  After the wooden city center burned down in 1889, and a new city was rebuilt of bricks, more and more women arrived, and the city boomed.  The women that Carter selected for her tour represent a great cross-section of those women, each with stories that deserve to be told.

    Who were these women?  I don't want to say much because you have to take the tour if you go to Seattle (and/or one of the other tours that she is currently developing), but the include Angeline Seattle, the daughter of Chief Seattle, leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples and namesake of the city, a former burlesque dancer and gay ally who became an icon in the city's gay community in the 1970s, a missionary who ministered to the down and out along the original "Skid Row" (The trees surrounding Seattle were cut down and slid or "skidded' down a hill to the sawmills.  That path became known as Skid Row.), a quack snake-oil saleswoman who claimed to be a Chinese princess, a brothel owner who built her brothel across the street from city hall (smart lady), and a suffragette who became a government reformer, member of the city council, and eventually mayor.  Each story is interesting and well-told, and the tour gives participants a great overview of Seattle history.  The hour and a half tour is an easy and enjoyable walk, and one sees a lot of interesting post-1889 architecture.  If you're in Seattle, book a Tour by Carter!

Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver

     Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology is located on the campus of the University of British Columbia, and it is a must-see if you visit the city. (Website )

    While the official founding date in 1947, the collection got started with  a donation of First Nations artifacts twenty years earlier, The core of the museum is, of course, devoted to the region's rich and varied First Nations history, including numerous beautifully carved and painted totem poles house poles, boats, boxes, baskets, masks, and other artifacts in the Elspeth McConnell Gallery of Northwest Coast Masterworks and the Great Hall.  The artifacts are mixed with works by contemporary indigenous artists.  The gallery includes high ceilings and lots of glass that really showcase the larger pieces.  Behind the museum, there are also a couple of  Haida houses and totem poles re-creating a 19th century village scene. (The museum grounds around the houses are currently under renovation.)

    But the museum is not all Northwest oriented.  More than 600 European ceramic pieces, ranging from the 16th through the 19th centuries, are displayed in the Koerner Gallery.

    Thousands of objects from around the world are displayed throughout the Multiversity Galleries.  The most interesting collections for me personally were the masks.  If you have an interest in masks, this is the museum for you.  There are hundreds of masks, representing many cultures.

    The Museum houses the world's largest collection of works, in various media, created by Haida artist Bill Reid.   The most striking piece is "The Raven and the First Men," located in the Bill Reid Rotunda.  It depicts the Haida creation story, specifically the moment when Raven discovers the first people in a clam shell on the beach, created from a huge block of laminated yellow cedar.  It is truly deserving of the full 360 degrees rotunda treatment with beautiful details all around.

    One could easily spend a full day in the museum.  The Multiversity Galleries have lots of artifact-filled drawers to pull out; that alone could take a day.   

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"Gastown Historic Walking Food Tour" - Vancouver

     Our second tour in Vancouver was the "Gastown Historic Food Walking Tour," a two and a half tour of Vancouver's municipal starting point, Gastown.  Today, metro Vancouver is the third-largest urban area in Canada, known as one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities and for being surrounded by lots of natural beauty.  In 2010, it hosted the Winter Olympic Games, despite the fact that average annual snowfall in the city is about 2-3 inches, and winter temperatures are moderate compared to other host cities.

    Indigenous settlement of the area began 10,000 years ago and included the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.  While a few white explorers, traders, and trappers visited the area up until the 18th century.  White settlement began in earnest in the mid-1800s when the Fraser Gold Rush of 1858 began, drawing 25,000 miners, including many Americans, to the vicinity.  Vancouver had no gold, but the area around Vancouver became a source of timber used to support the population boom.  A thriving logging and sawmill industry developed, and  a settlement called "Gastown" was born.  The name Gastown apparently comes from the most well known promoter of the area, John Deighton, who was nicknamed "Gassy Jack" because he talked all the time, full of gas in the parlance of the day, or full of hot air.  Deighton built a pub in record time to keep the loggers and sawmill workers happy, and it became the center of municipal development. 

    The name "Gastown" wouldn't last, however.  Tour guides will tell you that Queen Victoria didn't care for the name, but it was far more likely that the heads of the Canadian Pacific Railway demanded a name change, and the city was renamed Vancouver after British naval officer George Vancouver who led expeditions that charted and mapped the region in the late 18th century. "Gassy Jack's" legacy continued to tumble over a century later when a statue of the man  standing in front of his former pub on Maple Leaf Square was torn down during a February 2022 Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Girls.  Marchers were upset by claims that his second wife was a twelve year old Squamish girl that he either kidnapped or bought. Stories differ, however.  Some claim that she was the niece of his first wife who had come to nurse her ailing aunt, and she was assigned multiple birth years at different times.

    Following the Great Vancouver Fire of 1886, the city rebuilt, using bricks that arrived as ballast stones in returning cargo ships to replace the first wooden structures.  Today, Gastown is a thriving area of the city filled with restaurants, galleries, and high end retailers, making it an ideal tour location.

    We met our tour guide Kelsey at the Waterfront Station transit center, originally built in the early 1900s as the western terminal of the Canadian Pacific Railway, restored and now a hub for city transit.

From there, it was a walk from one taste to another, with lots of history along the way. Craft beer at the Steamworks Brewery, named for the original six miles of steam pipes under the area installed for heating, crispy Karaage chicken at a Japanese restaurant, sausage and cheesy potatoes at Petrichor French Bistro, chili cauliflower "wings" at a vegan place called Meat, real Canadian poutine at 6 Acres (on the original site of Gassy Jack's pub), great tortellini and meat sauce at a Sicilian place, and Nutella waffles for dessert.  Along the way, we saw the famous steam clock in operation ("Westminster Chimes" at every quarter hour), Maple Leaf Square, and other points of interest.

   

        

    Even in the rain, it was an excellent tour, in great company. For more information, go to their website Taste Vancouver .

    

"A Wok Around Chinatown" - Vancouver

     On our first full day in Vancouver, British Columbia, we took a four-hour long history and food walking tour of Chinatown.  It was led by Robert (Bob) Sung, a third-generation Chinese-Canadian with a long family history of work in the food and hospitality industry.  Bob himself has been a cook and a culinary instructor, but he has been conducting tours of Chinatown for nearly 20 years.  "A Wok Around Chinatown" proved to be one of the best tours that we've ever taken.

    We met Bob at the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden, a re-creation of a Ming dynasty era garden home, first opened to the public in 1986.  One of Vancouver's top tourist attractions, it was built by Chinese craftsmen using ancient methods (The elaborate woodwork uses no nails or fasteners, just traditional pegs and grooves.) and building materials imported from China.  There, Bob gave us a crash course in Chinese philosophies, explaining how the architecture and landscaping reflected various elements of the culture.  (Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Garden )

    Then, our walk began.  First stop was the Chinese Canadian Museum which just opened in 2023 inside the oldest brick building in Chinatown, the Wing Sang building that formerly housed the business of merchant Yip Sang.  The museum's spaces include a period classroom and art and history exhibits that tell the story of Canada's Chinese immigrants from their arrival in the 19th century to work on the railroads and to mine for gold.  Chinese Canadian history mirrors much of Chinese American history.  Thousands of single Chinese men immigrated during the second half of the 19th century, drawn by the dream of making their fortunes, sending money back to their families, and maybe returning with their wealth.  Some did make money, a few even became wealthy (mostly by managing - or exploiting - their countrymen), but the majority found segregation, racism, and hardship.  The aforementioned Yip Sang became a very wealthy man and a political and social activist.  He made his fortune in real estate, the import/export business, and by procuring labor for the Canadian Pacific Railway Company.  Chinese Canadians weren't given the right to vote until 1947. ( Chinese Canadian Museum)

    Of course, this is a food tour too, and the food was terrific.  We made several stops seeing and sampling all sorts of delicious pastries and dishes, ending up at the Jade Dynasty restaurant for a sit-down dim sum lunch.    The tour ends at The Chinese Tea Shop where Daniel, the proprietor, gave us a full course on traditional Chinese tea culture, serving us the most delicious hot tea that we've ever had. ( Tea Shop )

    One of the most interesting stops was at a traditional Chinese apothecary.  At first glance, it looks like a grocery, filled with bins and jars of various dried animal and plant parts, including various fungi, worms, sea cucumbers and other sea creatures, and even dried whole geckos on sticks.  How does it work?  An ill person would go to a traditional medicine practitioner and describe his or her symptoms.  The practitioner would then write a prescription to be filled by the store's clerks who then assemble the ingredients.  The patient then boils a broth of the ingredients to drink.  

    Our "Wok Around Chinatown" was definitely a highlight of our trip, and we highly recommend that you contact Bob Sung whenever you visit Vancouver.  Information here Robert Sung Tours