opposite: New Westminster circa 1865. Irv- ing House sits on top of the hill overlooking the Fraser River. [New Westminster Museum and Archives IHP2914] above: Irving House circa 1890. [New Westminster Museum and Archives IFP0369]
right: Irving House today, in 2008.
of how life was lived. If the Renaissance cabinet of curiosities conveyed, symbolically, its patron’s control of the world through the telling of that world – a kind of propaganda, then too the house-museum offers a specific world located in a precise time and space. Irving House acts as an historical text; the context from which it came offers insight into a community’s desire to tell this story. New Westminster’s story is that it was founded as the capital of the mainland Colony of British Columbia by the Royal Engineers in 1859. In an effort to ‘civilise the frontier’, it became the first incorporated city in western Canada a year later. Its strategic location on the Fraser River was the ideal outfitting point and mainland berth for the Cariboo gold rush and the city prospered as the centre of trade and commerce for the entire Fraser Valley. When the mainland and Vancouver Island colonies merged in 1866 to form British Columbia, New Westminster became the new provincial capital, destined for greatness which was, however, short lived. The rights to the capital were transferred to Victoria only two years later, and New Westminster’s course changed drastically. Over the next century its significance as the main economic centre for the Fraser Valley was bypassed by the development of new communication and transportation networks in the region. While its neighbours fed off the increased economy and rapid change, New Westminster had the time to take stock of its resources before they disappeared.
In the early 1950s, a time when progress was associated with things ‘new’ and buildings were at the forefront of development, the Native Sons and Daughters of British Columbia were largely responsible for preserving and maintaining historical relics and records of the province, including buildings of historic significance. Originally formed in Victoria in 1899 to assure that native-born sons of pioneers received fair competition for civic and provincial jobs among new immigrants, their mandate evolved over the next century to perpetuate and cherish the memory of those pioneers. Now, their goal is to carry the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century values and customs of of those responsible for the development of the province into the new millennium. As the oldest city in Western Canada, heritage is a significant part of New Westminster’s civic identity. Named by Queen Victoria after her favourite part of London, New Westminster still proudly markets itself as ‘the Royal City’, and is laden with references to its colonial days. There is a nostalgia not necessarily for what was but what could have been that fuels this image, also present in the house museum. Irving House is the story of what it meant to be successful in British Columbia in 1865, and the house and its contents are tools to monumentalise the potential for what the city could become. ~
Miller, Archie. Irving House, a Family History . New Westminster: The Board of Trustees Irving House Historic Centre, 1988.
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