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- 292 REMINISCENCES OF OLD VICTORIA
Kanakas here who came on vessels from Honolulu at odd times. They formed a small colony and located on Humboldt Street, then called Kanaka Row. I can remember them in 1859, one family attending Christ Church regularly. There are many buried in Old Quadra Street Cemetery. The first sheets of the Colonist were printed on the Hudson's Bay Company's wharf in a large shed or warehouse, and later on the paper moved to Wharf Street to about where the Macdonald Block now stands. This was fifty-two years ago, and our visiting friends can draw a comparison with what it then was, a small double sheet, to its Sunday issue of to-day, with its many illustrations. For the information of our visiting friends I might say that the Hudson's Bay Fort shown in the view of "Government Street in 1858," enclosed the two blocks running south from .the corner of Bastion (the brass plate on the corner will show this) to the corner of Courtenay and westwards to Wharf Street. In this fort all hands took shelter at night at the date of its erection. In 1858 and for years later, the fort bell rang at six o'clock in the morning, when the gates at the east and west ends were opened, and at six o'clock in the evening they were closed. There were two large general stores, and many storehouses and barns inside, and at the stores you could buy anything from a needle to an anchor, from a gallon of molasses to the silk for a dress. I might say a deal more, but it might not interest those for whom this sketch is written. As it is, there are many repetitions of what I have already written in the Colonist and Times during the last six years.
VICTORIA THE NEW AND THE OLD 293
THE METROPOLITAN METHODIST CHURCH.
To-day, February 13th, the Metropolitan Methodist Church celebrates the fifty-third anniversary of its foundation as a congregation. It was exactly fifty-three years ago yesterday that the first Methodist missionaries, sent out by the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Canada, then part of the English Wesleyan conference, landed in Victoria. They were Rev. Dr. Ephraim Evans, his wife and family; Rev. Arthur Browning, Rev. Ebenezer Robson and Rev. Edward White, who also brought his family, one of his little sons being Rev. Dr. White, to-day Superintendent of Methodist Missions in this province. Rev. Dr. Robson was married shortly after his arrival. Of the gallant little party who faced the hardships of the then comparatively little known West with such tranquility and courage, all have now passed to their rest, Dr. Robson, the last survivor, dying less than a year ago in Vancouver.
The missionaries were received by Mr. John T. Pidwell, father-in-law of Mr. D. W. Higgins, and entertained in his home until they could secure permanent quarters. The following Sunday, February 13, service was held for the first time in the courthouse, and Rev. Dr. Robson subsequently went on to Nanaimo, where he found Cornelius Bryant, a young schoolmaster, who enjoyed the distinction of being the first member of the Methodist Church to set foot in British Columbia. He afterwards entered the Methodist ministry and died a few years ago. Rev. Edward White was quartered in New Westminster, where he established Methodism, and Rev. Mr. Browning, after acting as evangelist at different coast points, became the pioneer Methodist missionary in the Cariboo country.
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