Talk:Barkerville

Extra sources

I added some extra sources to the page - I don't know if they were used or not, but they're most helpful. The Last Melon 00:04, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed that paragraphs 3-6 ("The largest town" to "Chinese immigrants") are almost word for word the same as pg.222-223 of the textbook Horizons: Canada Moves West by Michael Cranny. Is this plagiarism? Pentap101 00:37, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Is it? Funny, I have that textbook. I'll take a look. As for plagiarism, I think it may be. Is the textbook cited? The Last Melon 06:15, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

And like all textbooks, it's cheesy and out-of-context. I've just "come out" of Barkerville, where I was working for a month, and had time to read various local histories: Mark S. Wade's The Cariboo Road, Robin Skelton's This Is Cariboo (which quotes Wade a lot) and Gordon R. Elliott's Quesnel, Barkerville and the Cariboo Gold Rush (or Barkerville, Quesnel and the Cariboo Gold Rush or something to that effect; it also quotes Wade a lot, but Wade himself quotes a lot of people. See next section.

Recommended changes

Especially because of the shift of temporal context concerning the apparently plagiarized section on the Chinese (which is incomplete and, as noted, kinda cheesy and schoolbookish), the Chinatown section should either be broken off on its own, or there should be a Chinatown, Barkerville, British Columbia article separately. All towns in the Cariboo had significant Chinese populations, and as at Barkerville there wasn't much distinction between Chinese neighbourhoods and non-Chinese ones; Barkerville's had a "Chinatown" because that's what the upper end of town was called, even though Chinese lived also in the lower part of town and non-Chinese lived and had businesses in the ostensible Chinatown. There is enough material for a separate article on it, however; in the context here the discussion of returning bodies to China is spurious in terms of Barkerville and applies to the whole of British Columbia; and omits mention of the fact that many of the coffins in question were known/suspected to include shipments of unreported gold. The leading role of Chinese in looting Barkerville in the aftermath of the fire is also notably missing. Most other towns had no designated Chinatown, and some were so overwhelmingly Chinese for much of their history that saying they had Chinatowns would be redundant; as elsewhere in BC, there was very little distinction between Chinese and non=Chinese areas of any of these other towns: e.g. Richfield, Antler, Quesnel Forks, Keithley Creek, Stanley, Van Winkle and so on; in some cases towns such as Antler and Stanley were overwhelmingly Chinese for much of their lifespan (the Cariboo's population was similarly about half Chinese for most of the province's early history, right up until WWI). The focus on only one ethnic group is tiresome in any BC history article, especially when you consider that the discoverer of Williams Creek - "William's Creek" - was the Prussian Wilhelm Dietz ("Dutch Bill") and that Scandinavians and others in addition to Germans were notable in the goldfield towns; and among Britons Cornishmen and Welshmen especially notable. In modern-speak these are all "levelled" to be "Europeans", which is a horrible ideological-conceit misnomer that is mercifully not present in this article.

I noted this passage also:

Because supplies were scarce, even the prices of most everyday items were inflated. Inflation in Barkerville did not ease up until the Cariboo Road had been finished, when goods could be transported by huge freight wagons.

"Inflation" is the wrong term here; especially with the linking of the word inflation; the prices were jacked definitely; but economic inflation was not the reason; the prices were a direct reflection of the cost and difficulty of transportation. Not sure what other word to use but maybe someone could rephrase that better.

Barkerville's place in the "lineage" of the leading town in the Cariboo should also be noted; all the towns named just above preceded it, with Richfield being the original diggings on Williams Creek and also the seat of government in the region even after Barkerville's ascendancy; "greater Barkerville" included Richfield, which is above the canyon of Williams Creek, and Camerontown, which was just below it and almost as large. Van Winkle in particular was thought to be on its way to becoming the main town of the region until Dietz's find.

That's all for now; there's tons more; anyone interested in expanding the Cariboo Goldfields content (dozens of towns and "fairs" - temporary towns - need articles, and there are innumerable bios to be written yet.Skookum1 04:23, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

film roles

"film roles" as per Buntzen Lake's section heading. For sure Kootenay Brown and Kootenay Brown and various others; perhaps in the old TV show Cariboo Cowboy also. Leaving this here for someone else to add the section, after sourcing more films using the site as part of a film set.Skookum1 21:08, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Richfield, Stanley et al.

Attention Cindy and others working on BC history articles; I'm not sure how many of the goldfield towns are in Wikipedia, maybe only Barkerville and Quesnel, unless Likely and Horsefly and such are in there by community effort. Not all rank as worth an article, maybe, but Richfield as a seat of government would seem to, and Stanley by its sheer size and longevity, among others; Camerontown, British Columbia could maybe redirect to Barkerville, maybe Richfield also; but I think in the latter case there's enough material on the place that qualifies it as different in character than Barkerville or Camerontown, even though it's of course part of Barkerville Historic Park today (no doubt that redirects, or should, though there's also New Barkerville to consider....). Anyway, any time someone's looking for an article to do, maybe grab TW Paterson's books or others like them and start "making towns". Merry Xmas and Happy Ho-ho, still out in Halifax and enjoying it...Skookum1 (talk) 20:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The history section

Appears to be copied verbatim from the 'Horizon: Canada Moves West' school textbook. Zazaban (talk) 02:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Really? Then please delete it; I did find some Mark Sweeten Wade online at www.archive.org but not The Cariboo Road, which I would have liked to find (to use as a source, that is). but if the text in question is plagiarized, it's got to go, period, even if nothing replaces it; Barkerville Museum people monitor this page, one would hope they'd work more at contributions to it, and also if it was them who put that in there, to be aware of Wiki content guidelines. School textbooks about BC history are also notoriously unreliable as well as deliberately POV.....Skookum1 (talk) 03:41, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

roadhouse articles made

This morning I just made Cottonwood, British Columbia/Cottonwood House and Coldspring House and will likely do up a stub for Beaver Pass House, based on its BCGNIS entry. Dropping this note here in the hopes that someone from the Barkerville-Wells community might want to embellish these articles with more history/details. I'm thinking that a List of roadhouses on the Cariboo Road might not be a bad idea, plus an accompanying category.Skookum1 (talk) 12:43, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

images of Chinatown in BC Archives

This one says 1920s, but seems to be earlier.....maybe not (though BC Archives does often get its information wrong). There's other; this one is from 1946 and probably isn't PD-50 (Swannell has been dead long enough, though).

• This one is Sept 1 1925, photog undetermined
• 1920s
• July 1, 1900

Skookum1 (talk) 02:28, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

• Funeral in Chinatown, 1890s and another of the same event.Skookum1 (talk) 02:41, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

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