Many thanks to guest blogger, Barbara Towell, for contributing the below post! Barbara is E-Records Manager with Digital Programs & Services at UBC Library and an avid cyclist.
Clara and Kitty Wilson. Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs. UL_1591_0087
On Monday, July 17, 1939, twenty-something sisters, Clara and Kitty Wilson, left their comfy family home on the west side of Vancouver and embarked on a two-week self-guided cycling holiday to Vancouver Island. This journey was one of a decade of summer cycling tours they undertook in British Columbia. They documented their trips through a series of photos and letters home that have been brought together in a wonderful photo album, now fully digitized and available on UBC Library’s Open Collections and forming part of the Uno Langmann Family Collection of Photographs. For Kitty and Clara Wilson, the summer of 1939 was one of leisure, adventure, letter-writing, and fun.
86 years after Clara and Kitty’s trip, my partner and I plan to recreate that ride, tracing the sisters’ tire marks, staying in the places they stayed, seeing the sights they saw. Our tour, like many of Kitty and Clara’s, begins at the Plaza Hotel in Nanaimo (now called Fairmont Hotels and Resorts), and carries on north to Campbell River. Some of the hotels and camps where Clara and Kitty stayed still exist, but most are gone. All the natural monuments remain however, and we plan to visit the waterfalls, rivers, and maybe the potholes mentioned in the letters. As for the buildings, I hope to find at least the addresses of where these places once were. In short, we plan to do just what Kitty and Clara did all those summers ago: enjoy a journey powered by legs and bicycles.
The Route
Kitty and Clara began their ride on July 17 and arrived in Campbell River on July 23, 1939. Their trip took place along what is now known at Highway 19A Ocean Side Route, which was at the time, primarily a gravel road. The highway was only fully paved in 1953, as part of WAC Bennet’s highway improvement plan. The sisters averaged just over 40K per day; theirs was a leisurely pace. Kitty herself said it best in a letter home: “We walked up every hill that was more than a foot high and still made good time.” I like the attitude conveyed in the letters; some days they just didn’t feel like riding, especially once they got to Campbell River where they were spoiled by the proprietor of their lodgings, Mr. Danby. They were on holiday after all.
The Gear
We don’t plan on sourcing and riding the same kind of bikes Kitty and Clara used (this isn’t that kind of recreation), but judging by the photographs, the sisters appear to be riding 1930s Dutch-style bikes that weigh-in at more than 20 kilograms each. They named these bikes Rastus (Clara), and Ginger (Kitty).
We Leave Nanaimo. Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs. UL_1591_0047
Kitty and Clara did not itemize their gear, but I can see from the photos that they traveled light: one small suitcase each strapped on to their bike’s luggage rack. Given the heft of Rastus and Ginger, packing light was necessary. I believe they brought their bikes on the ferry that docked at what is now Canada Place in Vancouver then took the CPR Princess Elaine to Nanaimo. It would be another twenty years before BC Ferries established the same routes to Nanaimo.
The Lodging: Auto Camps
There are still evidence of tiny cabins dotting the seaside on Vancouver Island. They were an invention that developed together with the expansion of the road network. I never knew what an auto camp was before I started reading the letters, but in 1939 they were everywhere. The sisters wrote to the proprietors of the auto camps along their route in advance ensuring they had a place to stay.
The Letters
Kitty and Clara wrote and received letters from their family daily, care of various post offices along their route. To the 21st century reader, the sisters’ address and the manner in which they write paints a veneer of white British middle-class privilege and youthful ease. Their letters are full of comic misspellings, nicknames, and devil-may-care kinder-pomp. In contrast to the casual and nonchalant attitude taken up in the letters, the sisters planned this trip carefully. Two young women cycle-touring the dirt roads of Vancouver Island was not a common sight in 1939, and the people they told had opinions about their adventure. The sisters maintained an attitude about their trip that strikes me as particularly modern; they didn’t seem to be especially influenced by people’s opinions of how to spend their leisure time.
These two were not ordinary.
I hope you will join me in part two of this blog as we recreate the ride Kitty and Clara embarked upon 86 years ago, compare the sights, and perhaps get to know these intrepid sisters just a little.
