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Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History:
News for Educators
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Doukhobors on board ship to Canada, 1899 (Doukhobor Discovery Centre, Castlegar, B.C.). From the website Explosion on the Kettle Valley Line: The Death of Peter Verigin. Welcome to the latest edition of the GUMICH Gazette, a thrice-yearly newsletter to help keep educators up to date on news and tips for teaching with historical mysteries. We now offer thirteen mystery websites, along with many learning materials for teaching Canadian history! Be sure to check out the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History (GUMICH) project, based at the University of Victoria, and follow us on social media. 
Contest – Win Franklin Expedition T-ShirtYou could win one of five Franklin Expedition T-shirts! Just follow Franklin Expedition on Twitter @FranklinMystery, and tweet @FranklinMystery with this message: I entered the #FranklinTShirtContest. 
Download Free Posters
You can download free copies of all of our posters from our website. This poster for Who Discovered Klondike Gold? is just one in a set of unique classroom posters that illustrate each of the mysteries featured on the GUMICH website. If you look closely at the Klondike poster, you might be surprised to see what the artist thinks Kate Carmack might be reading in her hammock! See all of the posters here, where you can print them for your classroom. Teaching Tool – MysteryQuest re Donnelly Massacre: Life in the Township of Biddulph George Foreman Residence, Biddulph Township, 1878. (University of Western Ontario Archives) The notorious Donnellys emigrated from Ireland in the 1840s with the hope of finding success in what would later become Canada, but many family members were murdered in 1880. If your class is studying immigration history, our website about the “Black” Donnellys of Ontario is an invaluable learning tool. Your students can investigate a variety of topics with the MysteryQuests for Heaven & Hell on Earth: The Massacre of the “Black” Donnellys. Life in Biddulph Township (MysteryQuest10), is a critical thinking challenge designed for students ages 14-16. This lesson invites users to take on the role of a historian studying the Donnelly massacre in 1880. The task is to write a one-page background piece about life in Biddulph Township based entirely on the sensational eyewitness account of the massacre by Johnny O’Connor, a boy of 12 who was hiding under the bed while the events of that night unfolded. Students must find in his testimony enough evidence about life in Biddulph Township to write a one-page background piece. To begin this task, students will investigate the massacre and search for clues. They will need to learn about the event and analyse Johnny’s testimony in order to develop a picture of the economic, cultural, and social life of Biddulph Township. All of the required primary and secondary documents and images are provided on the Donnelly Mystery website. The quest includes an evaluation rubric and activity sheets. MysteryQuest Teaching Tool – Was Jerome Mistreated?
How do we treat people deemed “not normal”? On September 8, 1863, a man whose legs had been cut off at the knees was found on the beach of Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia. He had no identity papers, money, or belongings, and didn’t speak. Unable to look after himself, Jerome was taken in and cared for by local Acadians. The website Jerome: The Mystery Man of Baie Sainte-Marie tells his story and provides students with a complete archive of primary documents and other material.  Surgeon’s box, circa 1860. (QEII Health Sciences Centre) MysteryQuest27, a critical challenge for students 16-18, asks students to investigate the care of the mentally ill using a historical perspective. Featured Source from Explosion on the Kettle Valley Line: The Death of Peter Verigin
Peter Vasilievich Verigin inspired his Doukhobor followers to build a communal empire that spread over three western provinces in the years after 1899, when they arrived in Canada. But in the early morning of October 29, 1924, an explosion on the remote Kettle Valley Line in southeastern British Columbia ripped apart Canadian Pacific Railroad Car 1586, killing the 65-year-old Lordly, his 17-year-old female companion and seven others. 
Freedomites at God's Valley settlement, near Grand Forks (UBC Special Collections, Jim Hamm) Not everyone in the community had welcomed the Doukhbors in British Columbia, or mourned the death of Verigin. The following letter expressed concerns about the Doukhobor community, drawing attention to nudity and other issues. Letter from Mayor of Grand Forks to the Attorney General, 1923.
Hon. A.M. Manson, At a Special Meeting held by the Police Commissioners at Grand Forks on Friday April 13th, 1923, called to consider ways and means of dealing with the existing menace being created by a section of the Doukhobor Community residing on lands known as part of the Graham Ranch, situate on the North Fork of the Kettle River, comprising some thirteen acres and situate some five miles from the City of Grand Forks, such lands, the Commissioners understand to have been set aside for these people by the Community, for the purpose of isolating these fanatics from the main Colony... (1)Recently one of these people wandered- as far as the Catholic Church and was detected in the act of removing all his clothes during devotional services: (2)On another occasion a member of this same Colony got as far as the Public School in a NUDE state, on a Sunday afternoon, at a when numbers of young children were on their way to Sunday School... You can read the rest of the document online, along with many other sources pertaining to the mysterious death of Doukhobor leader Peter Verigin. Featured Image by Inuk Artist
LAC C-119412 The Franklin Mystery website includes an image entitled "First Communication with the Natives of Prince Regents Bay." It’s an engraving made from a drawing by John Sackheouse, who was an interpreter on voyages of Arctic explorer Captain John Ross in 1818. An Inuk from Greenland, Sackheouse received some basic education in art after being taken to England on a whaling ship. He later travelled with Ross on the ships Isabella and Alexander, during a voyage to explore Baffin Bay and search for the Northwest Passage. This image was included in a publication about the trip, and the British Library has noted that “This is certainly the earliest representational work by a native American artist to be so reproduced.” You can learn more about The Franklin Mystery: Life and Death in the Arctic and find many historical photographs on the GUMICH site. Partner News – University of Victoria
The Kawkiutl community presentation at the conference First Nations, Land, and James Douglas: Indigenous and Treaty Rights in the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, 1849-1864. (February 25th, 2017). In addition to the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History, the History Department at the University of Victoria has another set of resources for teachers. The Governor’s Letters focuses on the prairie and BC treaties. The numbered prairie treaties get a lot of attention in the socials curriculum but the Vancouver Island Treaties of 1850-1854 are often overlooked, even on Vancouver Island! So on February 24-26th , the History Department paired up with the Faculty of Law and the Songhees First Nation to host a conference on those treaties. Over 300 people, half from First Nations, heard speakers from the academic and Indigenous communities give presentations about the historic and current implications of First Nations, Land, and James Douglas: Indigenous and Treaty Rights in the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, 1849-1864. The conference website will soon host video and other resources generated by the conference. 
Cover of brochure for Grafton Tyler Brown exhibit. Mysteries co-director John Lutz has an ongoing interest in the history of race and racism in British Columbia, which led him to The Mystery of Grafton Tyler Brown: Race, Art, Landscape in 19th Century British Columbia. This is now an exhibit at the Legacy Gallery in Victoria, BC. Brown, regarded as one of the most famous African American artists of the American west in the 19th Century, started his artistic career in 1883 in British Columbia where he was considered to be Caucasian. The gallery show is linked to a website which explores another mystery – where are all the paintings Brown created of British Columbia?  Grafton Tyler Brown and John Lutz at Legacy Gallery, Victoria. |
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