High muckety-mucks in Revelstoke

I bought the photo seen below on eBay. It shows a group of men in Revelstoke gathered outside the Selkirk Hall, a building that was downtown at 103 Second Street East, which is now the site of an office building constructed in 1995.

The Selkirk Hall was the headquarters of the local chapter of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a non-political fraternal order. But a closer inspection of the photo reveals this was in fact a political gathering, not an IOOF meeting.

While no names are provided (and sadly, no one wore name tags), I immediately recognized one of the few men without a mustache, standing in the middle of the second row from the top, as Richard McBride, who served as premier of BC from 1903-15.

A little searching in the UBC digitized newspaper collection reveals that this photo was taken on Sept. 12, 1902. At that time, McBride was the MLA for Westminster-Dewdney, but had not yet become premier. The event was a Conservative convention.

The photo is specifically mentioned in the Nelson Daily News of Sept. 13, 1902, although the photographer isn’t identified: “The visiting members and delegates were then photographed outside the hall.” (All of them men, naturally. Women would not be able to vote in BC for another 15 years.)

Several other high muckety-mucks are in the picture. Sitting directly in front of McBride is Robert Borden, who was then the leader of the federal Conservative party and would go on to serve as Canada’s prime minister from 1911 to 1920. (I originally identified Borden as a different guy, but Frank Bucholtz in the comments below pointed out I was likely mistaken.)

At top row, far right, is Edward Prior, then the MLA for Victoria, and soon to become premier of BC, although after less than seven months he was fired by the lieutenant governor in a conflict-of-interest scandal. McBride replaced him. Prior was himself named lieutenant governor in 1919 but died a year after his appointment.

In the front row, second from the left, with glasses and a white Van Dyke beard, is Robert F. Green, the founding mayor of Kaslo, who was at the time of the photo the MLA for the Slocan riding. He was later MLA for Kaslo, MP for Kootenay and Kootenay West, and was appointed a senator in 1921.

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Clockwise from top left: Richard McBride, Robert Borden, Robert Green, Edward Prior

Somewhere in this photo is John Houston, founding mayor of Nelson, and at the time of the photo, the MLA for Nelson. At first I thought he was in the front row, third from the right (as seen below right). But Art Joyce, who has written about Houston, suggests a better candidate is the guy standing at furthest left, almost removed from the rest of the group (as seen below left). I agree.

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Strangely, for a guy who was so influential — and so controversial — we have very few pictures of Houston. There is a well-known portrait of him that has been reproduced in several books and hangs in Nelson city hall, seen below.

The first known use of this photo was in the Victoria Daily Times on March 4, 1910, but it was printed backwards, which seems somehow appropriate given that it accompanied an erroneous report of his death. This in turn led to a couple of cartoons, seen below.

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Vancouver Province and Victoria Daily Times, both March 5, 1910

A gravely ill but nevertheless amused Houston dashed off a letter from Quesnel to the Vancouver Province, one of three papers that had prematurely published his obituary. The contents of that letter were not revealed until 1927, when C.H. Gibbons, who had been working at the Province in 1910, quoted from it:

I didn’t know I was dead till your paper came, and even then I might have questioned the accuracy of the information if I hadn’t known its reliability. Don’t be putting in any correction — I’ll make good on the story.

Sure enough, a few days later — and probably before the letter reached its recipient — Houston really was dead.

There is also a photo in the BC Archives of the Fort George Tribune office, seen below, that shows two men. While the listing on the BC Archives’ website doesn’t identify the men, Houston’s Wikipedia page claims Houston is on the left. I initially discounted this because that man looked too young. But then I came across the same photo in a book called A History of Weekly Newspapers of British Columbia 1871-1971, which stated that Houston is on the right, which seems much more likely.

(Image D-07317 courtesy Royal BC Museum and Archives)

Other than that, the Nelson Museum has a photo in its permanent exhibit of Houston standing next to a boy who is holding what appears to be a billy club. I’m also aware of a photo in private hands taken at Donald in 1889 that is said to show Houston among a group of 15 men.

And in 2018, The Vancouver Sun published a photo of members of the BC legislature in 1900 and speculated on which one was Houston, but I’m not convinced that they had the right guy.

Back to the Revelstoke Conservative convention photo: presumably other noteworthies are depicted, but I can’t identify them. Newspaper reports said attendees included former Rossland mayor A.S. Goodeve; former premier Charles Semlin; Vancouver MLA Francis Lovett Carter-Cotton; and provincial Conservative party leader Charles Wilson, who tried to resign at the Revelstoke meeting, but his resignation wasn’t accepted.