{"id":31661,"date":"2019-01-18T03:57:12","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T11:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=31661"},"modified":"2019-01-16T10:04:19","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T18:04:19","slug":"transcribing-vancouver-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/01\/18\/transcribing-vancouver-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Transcribing Vancouver history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Left to right are Sam Sullivan, Glen\nHodges, Cynthia Ramsay, Margaret Sutherland and Shirley Barnett with one of the\nMountain View Cemetery ledgers. (photo by Lynn Zanatta)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we were restoring the Jewish cemetery at\nMountain View, we spent two years going through City of Vancouver material\ntrying to determine if the city actually had something in writing to prove the legitimacy\nof this Jewish section since 1892,\u201d Shirley Barnett, who led the Jewish\ncemetery restoration project, told the Jewish Independent<\/em> in an email.\nThe committee couldn\u2019t find anything in the city records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this lack of documented history lengthened\nthe restoration agreement process significantly, it did not halt it. Barnett,\nas chair, opened the first meeting of the restoration advisory committee on\nFeb. 13, 2013, and the Jewish cemetery at Mountain View was officially\nrededicated on May 3, 2015. However, if the committee were to have started its\nwork today, the information it sought would have been found, and the process\nwould have moved much more quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sam Sullivan, member of the Legislative\nAssembly (Vancouver-False Creek) and former mayor of Vancouver, founded the\nGlobal Civic Society in 2010. As part of its mission to encourage \u201ca\nknowledgeable and cosmopolitan citizenry to make strong connections to their\ncommunity,\u201d the society leads several initiatives, including Transcribimus, \u201ca\nnetwork of volunteers that is transcribing early city council minutes and other\nhandwritten documents from early Vancouver, and making them freely available to\nstudents, researchers and the general public.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transcribimus project coordinator Margaret\nSutherland has transcribed at least 155 sets of Vancouver City Council minutes.\nIt was she who found what Barnett and her committee were looking for \u2013 in the\ncouncil minutes of June 6, 1892. On page 32 of the minute book, it is recorded\nthat correspondence had been received, \u201cFrom D. Goldberg asking the council to\nset aside a portion of the public cemetery for the Jewish congregation,\u201d and\nwas \u201cReferred to the Board of Health.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two weeks later, the minutes of June 20, 1892,\nnote that the health committee had resolved, among other items, \u201c[t]hat the\npiece of land selected by the Jewish people in the public cemetery be set aside\nfor their purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"photo
In addition to the transcribed council minutes, transcribimus.ca includes photos of the minute book pages. This image is of the June 20, 1892, minutes, which note that the health committee had resolved, among other items, \u201c[t]hat the piece of land selected by the Jewish people in the public cemetery be set aside for their purposes.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The cemetery first appears to have come up a\nfew years earlier. In the July 29, 1889, council minutes, there is reference to\na letter: \u201cFrom L. Davies on behalf of the Jewish congregation of the city of\nVancouver requesting council to set apart about one acre and a half in the\npublic cemetery for members of the Hebrew confession. Referred to the Board of\nWorks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an email to Barnett, Sutherland wrote,\n\u201cThere doesn\u2019t seem to be any indication from city council minutes that the\nBoard of Works ever followed up on the above request. Although [Jewish\ncommunity member and then-mayor] David Oppenheimer was on the Board of Works\nfor that year, so was his opponent, Samuel Brighouse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Dec. 7, 2018, the Jewish Independent<\/em>\nmet with Barnett, Sullivan, Sutherland, Lynn Zanatta (Global Civic Policy\nSociety program manager) and Glen Hodges (Mountain View Cemetery manager) at\nMountain View. In documents she brought to that meeting, Sutherland explains\nthat Oppenheimer \u201cdeclined to serve as mayor again at the end of 1891, citing\npoor health as his reason for retiring. Fred Cope was elected mayor in 1892 and\nserved till the end of 1893.\u201d So it was Cope who was mayor when the Jewish\ncemetery was established; Oppenheimer was Vancouver\u2019s second mayor (1888-1891)\nand Malcolm Maclean its first (1886-1887).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first interment at Mountain View Cemetery\nwas Caradoc Evans, who died at nine months, 24 days, on Feb. 26, 1887. The\nfirst Jew interred in the cemetery is thought to be Simon Hirschberg, who \u201cdied\nof his own hand\u201d on Jan. 29, 1887, and was, according the plaque erected by the\ncemetery in 2011 (the cemetery\u2019s 125th year), \u201cintended to be the first\ninterment,\u201d however, \u201crain, a broken carriage wheel on a bad road and his large\nsize all contributed to him being buried just outside the cemetery property,\u201d\nwhere he was \u201clong thought to have been left near the intersection of 33rd and\nFraser\u201d until his body was moved into a grave on cemetery property. Oddly\nenough, the first Jew to be buried in the Jewish section was Otto Bond (Dec.\n19, 1892), who also took his own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"scan
This page from a Mountain View Cemetery ledger shows the entry for Otto Bond, the first Jew to be buried in the cemetery\u2019s Jewish section.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So far, since its inception in 2012,\nTranscribimus has seen more than 300 transcripts produced by almost 40\nvolunteers, although a handful of them are responsible for the lion\u2019s share to\ndate. Many people have donated their time, technical advice and, of course,\nfunds to the project. Barnett sponsored the transcribing of the city council\nminutes for 1891, and fellow Jewish community member Arnold Silber sponsored\nthe transcription of the 1890 minutes. A few other years have also been\nsponsored, including 1888, by the Oppenheimer Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About nine years\u2019 worth of minutes have been transcribed\n(1886-1893 and 1900), leaving much more work to be done, as the city kept\nhandwritten minutes until mid-1911. After that, minutes were typewritten and\nthese documents can be scanned and read with OCR (optical character\nrecognition), said Sutherland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Transcribimus website (transcribimus.ca<\/a>) is one of the best-designed sites the Independent<\/em> has come across. It is both visually appealing and incredibly easy to use. In addition to the transcribed council minutes, it includes photos of the minute book pages. As well, it features letters from Vancouver\u2019s early years, historical photographs and a few videos, including a film by William Harbeck of a trolley ride through Victoria and Vancouver in 1907, which has had speed corrections and sound added by YouTuber Guy Jones. (Astute viewers will see that the trolley is driving on the lefthand side of the road. British Columbia didn\u2019t switch to the right until 1921-22.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the material Sutherland brought to the\nDecember meeting at the cemetery office, she included the transcription of the\nshort letter that city clerk Thomas McGuigan wrote on June 23, 1892, in\nresponse to Goldberg\u2019s letter that was mentioned in the council minutes. In it,\nMcGuigan confirms \u201cthe grant made by council to the people of the Jewish faith\nof a piece of land in the public cemetery,\u201d but adds that \u201cthey will be unable\nto give you title for the same, as the land was set apart by an Order in\nCouncil of the provincial government for burial purposes and they refuse to\ngive any other title.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sutherland hadn\u2019t come across Goldberg\u2019s\nletter, that of Davies or any response to Davies. It\u2019s likely that these\nletters have been lost or destroyed, but they might turn up in another file,\nshe said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Sutherland did find a brief letter to\nthe editor of the Vancouver Daily World<\/em> newspaper, dated Nov. 1, 1898,\nfrom L. Rubinowitz, which she emailed to the Independent<\/em>. Rubinowitz\nwanted the application for the Jewish cemetery by \u201ca certain number of Jews of\nthis city\u201d to be refused. In his view, \u201call the Hebrews of this city are not\ncombined as one body\u201d and \u201cTo avoid trouble between them and for the sake of\npeace, as one party will claim that they have the sole right to it, the other\nparty will claim that they have the sole right to it, therefore, as it is now\nunder the control of the city, we are well satisfied to let it remain so, as in\nmy opinion the city will have no objections for us to make any improvements if\nnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old joke comes to mind of the Jewish man\nwho, when stranded on a deserted island by himself, builds two synagogues \u2013 the\none he\u2019ll attend and the one he won\u2019t set foot in. Community cohesiveness is a\nheady task; always has been, and definitely not just for the Jewish community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As more council minutes, letters, photographs and other documents are found, transcribed and shared, the holes in our understanding of the past and how it has formed the present will be filled. To support or participate in Transcribimus or other Global Civic Society projects, visit globalcivic.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Left to right are Sam Sullivan, Glen Hodges, Cynthia Ramsay, Margaret Sutherland and Shirley Barnett with one of the Mountain View Cemetery ledgers. (photo by Lynn Zanatta) \u201cWhen we were restoring the Jewish cemetery at Mountain View, we spent two years going through City of Vancouver material trying to determine if the city actually had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2741,8641,4242,8643,3515,8642,1755,8640,1742],"class_list":["post-31661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-cemetery","tag-global-civic-society","tag-history","tag-margaret-sutherland","tag-mountain-view","tag-sam-sullivan","tag-shirley-barnett","tag-transcribimus","tag-vancouver"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}