The Archaeology of Japanese Camps in the Seymour Valley, British Columbia
Bob Muckle teaches archaeology at Capilano University. He has been doing archaeology for 30 years; directing the Seymour Valley Project for the past ten.
1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver
The Seymour Valley Archaeology Project documents logging camps and residential locations in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve in North Vancouver during the early 1900s. Research has focussed on three sites with evidence of Japanese. One camp appears to have been organized and laid out in a typical Japanese fashion, complete with a bathhouse. After its initial use as a logging camp, a small group of Japanese may have continued living here hidden in the woods until World War II. Another camp is likely evidence of Japanese transitioning to a typical Pacific Northwest logging camp style. A third camp was probably used for a variety of functions over the past 100 years, beginning as a Japanese camp around 1900 and used most recently as an outdoor marijuana growing operation. Several hundred artifacts provide clues to the daily life, alcohol consumption, health, and gender.