Quesnel BC

So, apparently you don’t pronounce the “S”. This was pretty much our last stop on the Cariboo Gold Trail. There were other gold rushes in different places, but this one rivaled the discovery at Sutter’s Mill. To honor all the dozens of people important to the history of this town, they have made all their fire hydrants into images of those folk. We enjoyed walking around town checking them out but could have used a guide – had no idea who we were looking at!

We headed to Barkerville. Named for Billy Barker, the miner who placed the first gold claim in this area, Barkerville was the biggest town in BC in the 1860’s population wise, but when the gold entirely played out, the town was totally abandoned.  The town has been recreated to look like the 1860’s, with many of the buildings being the actual structures from that time.

In Barkerville we learned all about Chinatown and why they exist everywhere, explained to us by an actual descendant of a Barkerville Chinese resident. Generally, the Chinese weren’t very welcomed anywhere they came. As a result, they essentially set up all their own support mechanisms, setting up stores, banks, and everything they needed that they could not count on the white Europeans to provide. That helped the Chinese, but further separated them from the locals, who received little or none of their economic commerce.

We also learned that at the time of the gold rushes/transcontinental rail projects, the area around Hong Kong – Guangzhou China – was the only part of China that the then government allowed international trade. – Guangzhou in English is Canton. The Chinese believed that to emigrate from China was unpatriotic, and those caught trying to flee China were executed. The people of Guangzhou are the only ones who were able to get communications from the outside world about the gold discoveries in the US and Canada, so the only Chinese to be aware. In addition, the harshness of the domestic government caused many of the locals to risk death, and hop British ships bound for the west coast of North America. That, for the most part, is why when you old farts were a kid, you could only find Cantonese food in the US.

We also hit Wells British Columbia where a gold strike not terribly long after the strike by Billy Barker resulted in a rush to this community. While Barkerville is gone, now only a historic park, Wells still has a hundred or so residents and a few local businesses. We grabbed lunch, which ended up being a cold premade sandwich as no hot food could be found in Wells in the lunch hour.

We also spent some time at the local education center for First Nation folk. We happened to be in Quesnel for National Indigenous Peoples Day, or National Aboriginal Day. Despite the fact that Canadians treated locals really no better than Americans did at the time, it seems like Canadians do a better job of brining current focus on the folk that were here before them.

On the way to Barkerville we found the gravesite established by folk who were part of the Cariboo Gold Rush. Back then, a large number of the folks who needed burying were Chinese. They were buried in the local cemetery along with the white Europeans. Apparently Chinese belief is that in order to find peace, the remains of their loved ones need to be in China, so most of the graves of Chinese folk were exhumed here, and their remains were sent to China to be buried there. We saw lots of the grave sites where obvious excavation had occurred at some time – kinda creepy!

Apparently when you are in such a rural setting, you need to do whatever you need to do to make a living, and to run a business that will last. Can you think of any more services that could be provided by this Wells British Columbia establishment?

In Barkerville they put on a vaudeville style production that brought to life a little of what it might have been like to be here in the 1860’s. We thoroughly enjoyed it!

Talk to you soon!