A few years ago, the comedian James Acaster did a bit about the British Museum. He started by summarizing how it had acquired its collection: “Everyone in Britain got in a big old boat, and we set sail and we robbed (and this’ll sound far-fetched) everyone in the world.” Acaster went on to imagine a visitor from a former colony confidently arriving to reclaim some obviously pilfered…
John Geddes
John Geddes previously worked as the Ottawa bureau chief for Maclean’s.
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John Geddes
In 1829, the fur-trading ship Volunteer sailed down the east coast of Haida Gwaii, then known to the wider world as the Queen Charlotte Islands, passing the village of Skidegate. Travelling with the traders was the missionary Jonathan S. Green, the first outsider to record his impressions of its cedar plank houses and totem…