Joan Goodall served as a nurse in Burma during and after the Second World War. Goodall was a volunteer at the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA) before the Volunteer Associates was organized. During her volunteer work at MOA, Goodall worked in the Library and then in Ethnology, serving as chairman of the Ethnology Committee and the Nominating Committee. Joan Goodall passed away on 18 January 1982.
John Webber was an English artist most famous for the drawings he created while accompanying the explorer Captain James Cook on his third and final voyage. Webber studied fine arts in Switzerland and Paris. Returning to England in 1775, he came to the attention of the English naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, who appears to have introduced him to Captain James Cook. Cook subsequently hired Webber to accompany him aboard the HMS Resolution as a topographical artist, supplying drawings to supplement the official written account of the journey.
In July 1776, the expedition departed England and sailed for the Pacific. After visiting Australia, the Hawaiian Island (which Cook named the Sandwich Islands), and a number of other South Sea islands, Cook’s ships reached the coast of North America, which they charted while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage. In the spring of 1778, the expedition spent a month retrofitting their vessels at Nootka Sound, where Webber was active sketching landscapes and the indigenous peoples they encountered. Having charted the remainder of the North American coastline to the Bering Strait, the expedition returned in February 1779 to Hawaii, where Cook was killed following a dispute with the Hawaiians.
As an artist aboard the HMS Resolution, Webber created some 200 sketches during the four-year voyage. Upon the expedition’s return to England in 1780, Webber was commissioned to supervise the engraving of 61 of these drawings for publication in official journals, a task that took him until 1785. Between 1784 and 1792, Webber exhibited 50 works at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1785, and a Royal Academician in 1791.
John Williams was a Reverend in the Anglican Church of England, and was commissioned as a missionary in 1816 by the London Missionary Society. In 1917, Williams and his wife Mary Chawner voyaged first to Australia and from there to the Society Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Their first missionary post was established on the island of Raiatea. Williams and his wife later engaged in mission trips to the Polynesian islands with other London Missionary Society representatives. The couple was also involved in mission work in the Cook Islands, specifically the islands of Aitutaki and Rarotonga. In 1834 the Williamses returned to Britain. During this time, John William oversaw the printing of the New Testament which he had translated into the Rarotongan language. While in London Williams published a work titled “Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands” that helped expand awareness in England of the South Seas Islands region. Throughout their careers, the Williamses were well known for the success of their mission work
In 1837, John Williams returned to the Polynesian islands on the mission ship Camden, commanded by Captain Robert Clark Morgan. In 1839, John Williams and fellow missionary James Harris were engaging in missionary work on the New Hebrides [Republic of Vanuatu] islands. On November 20, 1839, Williams and fellow missionary James Harris landed on the island of Erromango. As they approached the shore they were attacked and killed by the people living on the island, and ritualistically cannibalized. Unbeknownst to the missionaries, a few days prior, traders had landed on the island of Erromango and the people erroneously thought Harris and Williams were returning traders. In 1839, a memorial stone in Williams’ honor was erected on the island of Rarotonga.
Jonathan Griffin was a UBC student. In 1974 Griffin took a trip to Anthony Island in Haida Gwaii, where he took extensive pictures of the conditions of the poles at a deserted Haida village.
Ken Kuramoto was contracted by the Museum of Anthropology in 1980 to produce the film Celebration of the Raven. At this time, Kuramoto was director of K.K Enterprises.
Lyle Wilson, a Haisla artist, was born in 1955 at Butedale, British Columbia. He grew up in the northern coastal communities of Kitimat and Kitimat Village. Wilson grew up watching his uncle, Sam Robinson, create carvings out of wood, and he later became a skilled carver and artist himself. In his explorations of art, Wilson brings together his fine-arts training and knowledge of Western European art history with his understanding of Haisla art and tradition and experiments with a range of media. In addition to the carvings he creates out of wood, horn and ivory, Wilson also creates metalwork, jewelry, drawings, and paintings.
Wilson attended the Emily Carr School of Art and Design and the University of British Columbia in the 1980s, where he was educated in European art traditions. At UBC Wilson was exposed to a wealth of Northwest Coast First Nations’ art. He studied artifacts, photographs of artifacts, and learned from practicing artists. He worked as a Project Consultant in the development of the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s Grand Hall exhibition and was an artist-in-residence at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. Wilson has worked on commissions and exhibited his work both locally in Vancouver as well as internationally in Osaka, Japan and New York.
Madeline Bronsdon Rowan is a Canadian citizen, born on February 21, 1940. Her educational background includes a Bachelors degree in Anthropology and English Literature in 1963 and a Masters degree in Anthropology in 1966 from the University of British Columbia. Madeline Bronsdon Rowan was formerly in a joint position as the curator of education/public programming at the Museum of Anthropology and senior instructor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia from 1975 to 1987. Her curatorial responsibilities included establishing and supervising school programmes for students and teachers, and to train members of the Volunteer Associates to conduct these programmes. In addition, she was responsible for providing professional development workshops for teachers and students in the Faculty of Education department at the University of British Columbia, and to develop units of curriculum and "touchable" artifact kits (in co-operation with various natives groups and experts). Rowan was also the supervisor for the Native Youth Project and the Coast Salish Project, these two projects are designed to encourage First Nation's youths to conduct lectures and give tours to museum patrons on traditional and contemporary Northwest Coast Native culture. Rowan's teaching areas of specialization for the anthropology department are: Introductory Anthropology, Material Culture and Education, Netsilik Inuit Culture and Northwest Coast Indian Studies. She was also an active board member of Native Indian Youth Advisory Society from 1982 to 1987. The society, under the direction of Mrs. Brenda Taylor, sponsored the Native Youth Project. Rowan was the curator in charge of the following exhibits: Dress and Identity, a cross-cultural display on the nature of attire expressing identity and status within a community (1977); East African Medicine, an exhibit based on the artifact collection of Dr. T. Margetts that demonstrates various methods of healing (1978); and Cedar, the use of trees in the Northwest Culture, co-authored by guest curator Hilary Stewart (1984). She also designed the "Netsilik Culture" artifact and raw materials teaching kit and a supporting curriculum unit, An Introduction to Netsilik Culture: A Seasonal Station Study, in 1983. Madeline Bronsdon Rowan authored and co-authored several published and unpublished articles relating to the Native Youth Project, Netsilik culture, native education, museums in relation to anthropology, museums and the school environment, and artifacts as art. This includes her articles "Making Museums Meaningful for Blind Children", co-authored with Sally Rogow, Faculty of Education, Gazette, July 1978; Guide to the U.B.C. Museum of Anthropology co-authored with Dr. Margaret Stott; and "U.B.C. Museum of Anthropology Native Youth Project", Urban Indian Multicultural Conference. Vancouver, October 1981.
Marie-Claire Delahaye worked as a nurse in Barotseland in western Zambia from 1956 – 1960 and again from 1962 – 1965. In that time she spent one year at Mwandi, one year at Nalolo and two and a half at Senanga. Upon her return in 1962 she lived for one year at Lealui before returning to Senanga until 1965. Delahaye spoke Silozi, the language of the Lozi people, exclusively while living in Zambia. She worked in missionary hospitals and dispensaries.
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.
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.
Selig Kaplan is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Nuclear Engineering. He and his wife Gloria have been longtime collectors of Northwest Coast First Nations artwork.
Dr. Stephen Inglis was born in 1949. He has a BA and a PhD (1984) in Anthropology from UBC. He received an MA in Museology and Indian Art from Calcutta University. Dr. Inglis was a guest curator for the MOA exhibit “Calendar Prints: Popular Art of South India” which was displayed at the Museum from September 1983 to January 1985. He is currently the Director General of Research and Collections at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC). Dr. Inglis specializes in artists and their communities, particularly in South Asia.
Stuart Schofield was born in Kent, England. After moving to Kingston, Ontario as a child, he completed his B.A. (1904), M.A. (1906), and B.Sc. (1908) at Queenʹs University. He later completed a Ph.D. at M.I.T. (1912). He began his geological career with the Geological Survey of Canada as a student assistant to R.W. Brock in 1906. In 1915, Schofield accepted Brockʹs invitation to start courses in Geology and Mineralogy at the newly‐established University of British Columbia. He was appointed professor of Structural Geography at the university in 1920. After accepting responsibility for making a geological survey of Hong Kong in 1906, Brock sent Schofield to undertake a general reconnaissance for six months. Ill health forced Schofield to retire from UBC in 1940; he died in Vancouver in 1947.