Fort Vancouver Historic Structures Report

1. Occasionally, as at Fort Langley in 1829 and Fort Nisqually in 1849, a post would be without a bell; in such cases a horn was sometimes substituted. Leechman, Notes and Comments, MS, section on bells.

2. Wilkes, Narrative, IV, 329.

3. Beaver, Reports, 55. The use of the bell to regulate the daily routine was long a feature at many Company posts. As late as the period 1867-1882 the schedule of bell soundings at Lower Fort Garry was as follows: 6:00 a.m. Work starts. 7:30 a.m. Breakfast. 8:30 a.m. Return to work. 1:00 p.m. Dinner. 2:00 p.m. Return to work. 6:00 p.m. Work closes (5:00 p.m. on Saturdays). "Lower Fort Garry, in The Beaver, Outfit 266, no. 3 (December, 1935), 35-36.

In 1840 Mrs. Letitia Hargrave, wife of the post manager at York Factory on Hudson Bay, mentioned in a letter that the bell there was rung "always 6 times a day, but on particular days still more frequently," and she complained that all the dogs about the establishment "began howling while the noise continues." Margaret Arnett MacLend, ed., The Letters of Letitia Hargrave (The Publications of the Champlain Society, XXVIII, Toronto, 1947), 79.

4. John Sebastian Helmcken, A Reminiscence of 1850, MS, 4, in Provincial Archives of British Columbia. Helmcken, speaking of conditions at Fort Victoria in 1850, also mentions (p. 2) the dogs which assembled under the bell at every meal and howled, "the howling being taken up by some dogs in the Indian village opposite."

5. Beaver, op. cit., 55.

6. Emmons, Journal, MS, III, entry for July 25, 1841.

7. Lowe, Private Journal, MS, 11.

8. For a discussion of this point see Hussey, History of Fort Vancouver, p. 187, note 250.

9. Lowe, op. cit, 21.

10. See plates XI and XII. The unsigned painting of c.1847-1848 in the Yale University Library also seems to show this single-mast belfry rising behind the New Office (see plate XVI).

11. See plate XXII. This same feature seems also to be shown in a drawing which may date from 1854 (see plate XX).

12. See plates XXVII and XXVIII.