Tuesday, June 22, 2010

In Memoriam: George Vancouver

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[Statue of Capt. George Vancouver by Charles Marega
located at the north side of Vancouver City Hall.
]

If you think it's a long way from King's Lynn in England to Vancouver today, you should have seen it a couple of hundred years ago. Yet whatever desire drove men like Vancouver - fame, new vistas, wealth, or sweet brown booty - without their towering ambitions I would likely be a carpenter in a dangerously overcrowded slum in Malmö, Sweden, right now.

So thank you for that Captain Vancouver - born on this day in 1757* - and thank you for the little jewel of a city that bears your name. Thank you also to the Squamish people whose land we stole... Oh, and sorry about all the smallpox and genocide. Our bad.

*Captain Vancouver actually spent his 35th birthday here, at Point Grey, having spent the previous nine days charting Howe Sound and Jervis Inlet.
*

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