R.A. Brooks was a Vancouver resident who had a curio shop for a number of years. He died c. 1949 and his collection of stone heads – ‘Brooks heads’ – were offered for sale in his shop by his widow, Mrs. Mabel Orr Brooks. Brooks had apparently collected the stones over a number of years from a mound near the Fraser River
Reginald Robinson was born in Stevenage, England. In 1920, he immigrated to Canada. For the next twenty-five years, Robinson was employed in various capacities until Canada became involved in the Second World War and he enlisted in the military. Originally he was stationed in Victoria, BC, but in early 1945 he was shipped to Darwin, Australia, as a member of the secret 1st Canadian Special Wireless Group. While stationed in Darwin, Sergeant Robinson obtained special permission from his commanding officer to photograph the native population, members of the neighboring Aboriginal tribes. During his stay, he also received many artifacts as gifts, which he carefully shipped home to Canada.
After the war, Robinson led an accomplished civilian life. He was the first paid manager of the South Burnaby Credit Union, an active community volunteer, an amateur photographer, and a devoted husband and father.
Rev. George Stallworthy was an LMS (London Missionary Society) missionary born August 16, 1809, at Preston Bissett, near Buckingham, England. He studied at Homerton College and was ordained, October 3, 1833 at Ramsgate, England. Stallworthy was appointed to the Marquesas, and sailed October 27, 1833, arriving in Tahiti on March 23, 1834. On September 11, 1834, Stallworthy left Tahiti with Mr. David Darling (another missionary) to the mission on the Marquesas, arriving at St. Christina on October 6, and settling at Vaitahu. The Marquesas Mission was relinquished in 1841, and Stallworthy left those islands in December 1841, arriving in Tahiti on December 13 and going to Papaoa.
Stallworthy joined the Samoan Mission at Falealisi, Upolu in February 1844. There he married his first wife, Charlotte Burnett Wilson (b. 1817 in Tahiti), the daughter of another LMS missionary Charles Wilson. Charlotte Wilson was already suffering with tuberculosis when she and Stallworthy married, and 18 months later died of it at Upolu on August 2, 1845. She was buried in Samoa. Despite their short marriage, a son, George Burnett Stallworthy, was born in 1844. Charlotte's parents were living near the family in Falealii and raised George Burnett there until 1855, when the ten-year-old was sent back to England to go to school. He later also became a minister.
Stallworthy left Samoa in March of 1846 by the appointment of the directors in order to visit Tahiti and confer with the missionaries there on the distressing circumstances of that mission. On that trip aboard the "John Williams," he met Mary Ann Darling (b. 1819), also the daughter of an LMS missionary. He returned to Samoa at the end of August 1846, and married Mary Ann in Apia, Samoa on October 13, 1847.
As part of a deputation in 1858, Mr. Stallworthy visited the New Hebrides, Loyalty Islands, and Niue, and later Fakaofo, one of the Tokelau group. In January, 1859, Stallworthy moved to Malua to take the place of Dr. George Turner in the seminary there during Turner's absence in England. Stallworthy died at Malua in November 1859, leaving his wife with eight children (along with his first son in England). The family caught the "John Williams" back to Tahiti, later leaving for Sydney in 1860. During this journey, three of the children died of diphtheria (William, Louisa, and Sarah Ann) and were buried on Raiatea. Mary Ann and the remaining children carried on to Sydney, where eventually their health improved, and they carried on to England. Mary Ann (Darling) Stallworthy died in England in 1872.
A descendant, John J. Lewis, wrote a now out-of-print book about Stallworthy's mission called “Wind in the Palms- Mission in the SW Pacific 1817-72- David Darling- George Stallworthy." This book is available in the Museum of Anthropology's library.
Rita Steeds (nee Pollock) was born in 1918 in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. She attended business college in Regina and worked in the field of accounting between 1938 and 1955. In 1943, she married James Steeds and moved to Ottawa. She completed training in 1962 to become a medical records librarian. Between 1962 and 1964, she worked as a medical records librarian at the Ottawa Civic Hospital and the Royal National Orthopedic Hospital (London, England). She functioned as the Director of the Medical Records Department of Kingston General Hospital in Kingston, Ontario between 1964 and 1969. From 1969 to 1973, she was Director of the Medical Records Department and the Head of Medical Records Librarian Training at Severance Hospital in Seoul, South Korea. After completing this appointment, she served as a consultant at Silliman University Medical Centre at Dumguetl, Island of Negros, in the Philippines between 1973 and 1976. Prior to her retirement in 1980, Steeds worked as the Head of Medical Records at Wrinch Memorial Hospital, Hazelton, B.C. Rita Steeds is the author of several publications related to medical records in addition to her autobiography, Woman Not Alone.
Robert Keziere was born in Vancouver in 1937. He has been chief photographer at the Vancouver Art Gallery as well as a freelance art photographer, and his work has appeared in a number of books.
Robert W. Reford was the heir to the Reford shipping and navigation business. In 1889 he journeyed from Montreal to British Columbia in order to assist with his family’s business there. He stayed in the province until 1891. Though centered in Victoria, Reford made several trips along the coast of British Columbia, into the interior and in to the Arctic. Reford was an amateur photographer and while in British Columbia he took a large number of photos, both of his acquaintances and of the local scenery and inhabitants.
Roland W. Reed was an American artist and photographer. Born in Wisconsin, he held a variety of jobs that took him throughout the western United States - including work on railways, sawmills, and as an Associated Press photographer. It was not until the age of 43 that he devoted his time to photographing Native Americans in the western United States. This is the work that he is best known. It is typically described as being pictorialist in nature.
Ronnie Evelyn Tessler was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1944 and has resided in Vancouver, B.C. since 1968. She attended the University of Manitoba, the Manitoba Institute of Technology, the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, the University of Victoria, and Simon Fraser University, where she received a Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies in 2006. Tessler became a documentary photographer in 1973, working on various photographic projects and exhibiting her work in Canada and the United States until 1990. Her artwork resides in a number of public collections, including the National Archives of Canada, the Canada Council Art Bank, and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. In 1990, Tessler became the first executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, and was instrumental in its development into a fully-staffed facility with a museum, archives, and education and resource centre. Since 1996, she has worked as an independent project consultant and editor for cultural arts groups in B.C.
Rosa Ho was born on August 22, 1949 in Hong Kong. After moving to Canada, Ho earned a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and a Masters of Arts with a specialization in Chinese Art from the University of British Columbia. She began her museum career with a volunteer position at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. In 1975 after completing some years of service at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, she was appointed as the museum’s Assistant Curator, a position she held until 1977. After moving back to British Columbia in 1978, she was appointed as Curator at the Surrey Art Gallery. She was promoted to Director of the gallery in 1980 and continued in this position until 1987. In 1988, she left the Surrey Art Gallery to begin working for the Museum of Anthropology as the Curator of Art and Public Programmes.
As the Curator of Art and Public Programming, she was responsible for activities surrounding the planning and production of exhibitions and public programmes for contemporary art, Inuit and First Nations art, community-based public programmes, and museum education.
Throughout her career, Ho had numerous professional affiliations and served on a number of local, provincial, and national arts committees. Ho also published extensively during her career on the subject of cultural identity. Rosa Ho passed away in 2001.
Roy James Hanuse was a Kwakwaka'wakw artist known for working in the traditional Kwakwaka'wakw style. Roy was born in 1943 in Bella Bella and lived at Rivers Inlet (Owikeno), British Columbia. Largely self taught, Roy became interested in his cultural heritage while attending school in Alert Bay in the 1950s. He was later inspired by illustrations of the paintings of Mungo Martin and, in 1971, received some instruction from Doug Cranmer. His work has been exhibited and collected in a number of organizations in North America, including Expo 67. Four of his paintings, sold to the University of British Columbia, were published in Audrey Hawthorn's book Kwakiutl Art in 1979. Other highlights from Roy's career included carving a 12-foot totem for the Denver Art Museum in 1972, and carving two totem poles for the Montreal Olympics in 1976. Roy passed away on November 8, 2007.
Ruth Phillips served as Director of the Museum of Anthropology from 1997 - 2002.