Talk:Won Alexander Cumyow

message: The reason is that this article is less concern with Cumyow as a person, than as a political object used to illustrate the "we were victimized" version of Canadian history; there's a lot more to his life and the times in question than what's here; and I dispute the context of the disenfranchisement account; this isn't as bad as many other Chinese-Canadian history sites, but the ethnocentric is bias is still implicit in its content; and in the single-mindedness of its content.Skookum1 23:32, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: POV tag

message: :According to some accounts, he was also the first Chinese Canadian to vote in the 1949 federal election, but this is unlikely given the time-zone differences
Yeah, true; because even adding a qualifier like "he was also the first Chinese Canadian to vote in British Columbia in the 1949 federal election" won't even work because of the Mountain Time Zone, which is a normal thing in the East Kootenay and Peace River districts; unless there were, perhaps, no Chinese voting or who voted east of the Pacific Time Zone; the phrase seems more symbolic than factual, though.Skookum1 07:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Note on JimWae's comment-out

message: Took it out, after our discussions; meant to do this a few days ago.  I think you understand where I'm coming from on this now; the idea is that individuals do not exist in cultural/polticial ghettos in the history of 19th Century BC; and shouldn't in the 20th either; but in the 19th everybody knew and interacted with everybody else, and in Cumyow's case there must be other stuff around, other than in the family fonds (which for anyone can be notoriously selected; it's what gets kept, not what gets thrown out, as I've found in the case of some Lillooet-area fonds and I know would be the case if my own father's papers ever found their way into the archives; a lot got thrown out after the wake, I know that for sure, and I wasn't enough of a history person back then to care).  As said before, I've seen other bits on Cumyow (MacDonald's Vancouver: A Visual History didn't have much, as I'd thought before; must have been in Early Vancouver but I'll check some more in what I've got here; might have been in Morton, maybe the Akriggs, or in Decker anyway).  I'm trying to find my OCR program disc so I can re-OCR some scans I have on the Chinese in Lillooet from Lillooet: Halfway to the Goldfields by Lorraine Harris, which I'm sure you'll find interesting; they're currently PCX files so I can send or link them for you if you can OCR them yourselves; or just want to read them as image files; a fair bit of detail, plus individual names, earnings and which ranches and stores they owned, and obviously from a source with a lot more detail (probably dox in the Lillooet Museum archives, or from The Prospector, which is the 1890s newspaper there, which is in UBC and BC Archives in 'fiche but I've never read them; VPL will have BC Directories (not in SFU, which I'm near) which will list Chinese merchants in any of the towns involved (Boston Bar, Lytton, Spences Bridge etc).  NB the Chinese-Canadian history pages use the term "settlers", as do other Canadian history pages; the term "colonist" in all cases is far more accurate, since many (of any race/culture) were not settlers so much as merchants, prospectors, and so on; it's like that term "immigrants" when applied to non-Britons; but even the Britons were immigrants (esp. if you ask First Nations people....); and "colonist" reveals the nature of the beast IMO.  BTW did you know Cum Yow's mother was the first Chinese woman in BC; somewhere I came across a mention of her arrival in Victoria, which turned heads; first woman by name anyway, as I'm pretty sure there were prostitutes in Victoria who'd come up from San Francisco, but on the other hand maybe they weren't Chinese but some other kind of East Asian, e.g. Malay or Filipino....Skookum1 19:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Removal of POV tag

message: Please see 
RE BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum re: Talk:List of United States military history events#Border Commission troops in the Pacific Northwest.  If you think maybe I should also move some or copy some of my other stuff from NW history and BC history pages  and various Indigenous peoples project article/talk pages let me know; I never mean to blog, but I'm voluble and to me everything's interconnected; never meaning to dominate a page so have made this area to post my historical rambles on.  Thoughts?Skookum1 03:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Comment on my posting of this: if anyone has any questions or wants to debate any issues relating to Oregon Country/Columbia District/Pacific Northwest history/historical geography, colonialist, aboriginal/indigenous, Pacific Rim/trade/migrations re Pacific NW, please feel free to drop by the forum and start a thread/topic, or just butt in at yer leisure.Skookum1 05:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[User talk:Skookum1/BC&PacificNorthwestHistory|BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum]]

message: I just noticed the change in Cat from British Columbia to the Fraser Valley Regional District.  I'm not sure this is the way to go and I'll take this up at the BC Wikiproject page (see box above) as Regional Districts change in boundaries over time and are not the parametere people identify themselves as coming from; a city, a town, a settlement, a "country" (Boundary Country, Cariboo Country, Thompson Country etc.), but nobody thinks in terms of Regional Districts except for municipal politicians and those who have to deal with them.  In Cumyow's case, he was born in Port Douglas and while yes that is currently part of the Fraser Valley Regional District historically it was part of the Lillooet Country; it happens to be in the New Westminster Land District I think; or just north of the border between that and the Lillooet Land District, I'd have to check.  But Port Douglas had virtually ceased to exist by the time Cumyow was 10 or 12, although it didn't fully peter out until the era when by then it was only a small handful, and AFAIK no Chinese were left as it happens.  Where Cumyow is "from" is matter of debate; certainly he was born at Port Douglas, but he lived where his work was; his main domicile was Victoria was it not (I'll have to read the article again), or New Westminster (where he must have had digs, because of the role of the court and prisons there).  Anyway, the basic point is that the FVRD is a modern invention and didn't exist in Cumyow's lifetime.  How can he be "from there"?Skookum1 19:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Sorting people by Regional District