Bizarre Beach Discovery Recalls Father and Son ‘Gentlemen Scientists’

The recent discovery of a primitive rock carving on a Dallas Road beach prompted two front-page stories in the Times Colonist; the first to describe it as being ancient and of Indigenous origin, the second to report the claim of a Victoria artist that he carved the sandstone icon.

The carving’s beachside proximity to Beacon Hill Park initially added credence to its having been used in rituals by the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, as burial mounds in what’s now Victoria’s premier park confirm that it was once home to an ancient and little-known aboriginal culture.

I’ll leave it to the anthropological experts at the Royal British Columbia Museum and artist Ray Boudreau to sort out the face-in-stone’s provenance. My interest in the story was piqued because of my research of years ago of the fascinating father and son team of anthropologists, Dr. Charles Frederick Newcombe and son William (Billy) Arnold Newcombe. (Coincidentally, they lived on Dallas Road just west of the park.)

Between the two of them they amassed what became known internationally as the “Newcombe Collection” of First Nation arts and crafts, private papers, documents and rare photographs now in possession of the RBC Museum. Billy then went his father one better—a friend of the eccentric Emily Carr, he saved almost 100 of her paintings from destruction.

In fact, it’s been estimated that, between the two of them, they compiled one-fifth of the Museum’s collections which also include botany, marine biology and paleontology!

In recent years there has been a ground-shift in attitude towards some world-famous museum collections of North American First Nation artifacts (which often included human remains) and how they were acquired, and the Newcombes have come under the glass of this new awareness, too.

I tell you all about the remarkable Newcombes in next week’s Chronicles.

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Photo caption: One of Dr. C.F. Newcombe's priceless photos in possession of the Royal British Columbia Museum, this one ca 1901. -- Wikipedia