The recent death of Maple Ridge historian and author Fred Braches, just before B.C.’s Heritage Week (Feb. 19 to 25), is a reminder that our past is fragile. (See related story, page 6).
That’s doubly true here in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. Outside of Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster, very little of B.C.’s history is recorded in buildings made of durable stone and brick.
The history of the region’s Indigenous peoples, including the Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations, was mostly oral. Even after the first fur traders and early loggers and farmers arrived in the 19th century, they left few written records. The early built environment was mostly wood and other materials that succumbed to time and rot.
But it’s important to remember that history.
Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows didn’t just spring up as suburbs, fully formed, sometime in the 1950s. There have been thousands of years of local occupation, and even the sliver of time since the Hudson’s Bay Company first arrived on the Fraser River has seen a complex local history, involving many people who were considered not important enough for official records.
Our communities have had triumphs and tragedies, shameful incidents and proud ones.
The stories of our past, and the physical reminders – from photos and artifacts to heritage buildings – are a key to telling those stories so that some wisdom can be passed along to future generations, who will continue to call these communities home.
READ ALSO: VIDEO: Crowds turn out for historic train station move in Hope