Fonds consists of material that was gathered by Thompson as she researched island history for museum exhibits and local history albums. It includes land title information about Cortes Island properties going back to the original Crown Grants, correspondence and notes about Cortes Island history, photographs, maps and ephemera.
Fonds is arranged in five series: Land Titles Research; Historical Information; Maps; Photographs; and Ephemera.
30 cm of textual records
40 photographs
12 maps
2 CDs
History / Biographical
Doreen (Huck) Thompson, 1944-2006:
Doreen’s grandparents, William Edward Huck and Mabel Wells Huck, arrived on Cortes Island in 1915. Widowed in WWI, Mabel and her four children left Cortes for Vancouver in 1923. Her son Harry, Doreen’s father, returned to Cortes in the 1930s. He married Edith Launchbury in 1937 and had two children, Doreen (b.1944) and Ed (b.1945, d.1993). Doreen and Ed were raised in Whaletown and attended school there and at Manson’s Landing.
Doreen graduated from Vic High in Victoria before marrying Bob Thompson in 1962. From 1961 to 1963, Doreen lived in Teakerne Arm in a floathouse Bob had built on the shore of the Whaletown Lagoon and then moved to the shores of Heriot Bay on Quadra Island. Her children were born in 1964 (Janny) and 1965 (Debby). In 1970 the family and the house moved to Cortes Island where both daughters attended school to Grade 10.
Doreen spent a few years living in Alberta and Victoria in the early 1980s and then returned to Cortes Island. Doreen developed a deep knowledge of the history of the island and she devoted considerable time to preserving, gathering and sharing her own and others knowledge of the island through her volunteer work at the Cortes Island Museum and Archives.
Doreen was one of the founders of the Cortes Island Museum. She curated four exhibits at the Museum, including “Windows on Whaletown” in 1999, “Von Donop Inlet”, the commercial fishing portion of “Celebrating Wild Salmon”, and “Memories of Manson’s Landing”. She researched and created albums which combine photographs, reminiscences and clippings to document the history of various island areas, such as Green Valley and Whaletown. The Doreen Thompson Exhibit Gallery at the Museum commemorates her contributions.
Doreen was making a fourth cross-Canada road trip from Cortes to Newfoundland when she was killed in a car accident near Fort McLeod, Alberta on August 1, 2006.
Custodial History
Material was stored at the museum or collected from Doreen Thomas' house.
Scope and Content
Fonds consists of material that was gathered by Thompson as she researched island history for museum exhibits and local history albums. It includes land title information about Cortes Island properties going back to the original Crown Grants, correspondence and notes about Cortes Island history, photographs, maps and ephemera.
Fonds is arranged in five series: Land Titles Research; Historical Information; Maps; Photographs; and Ephemera.
Series consists of family trees of Cortes Island settler families, with notes on related people and events. These trees are intended to help identify links between families on Cortes. Sources include online databases (e.g. Family Search.org, Ancestry.com and Canada Archives), CIMAS Archives and Information files, interviews and correspondence with family members.
Families researched include: Aldrich; Barrett; Borden; Byers; Cafferata; Froud; Hawkins; Hayes, Ashford and Griffin; Heay; Manson; Marquette; Middleton; Nichols; Percival and Saunders; Petznick; Pickles; Smith; (Carr) Smith& Marflett; Tiber; Tooker; Valley.The family trees and notes are kept in a binder labelled "Cortes Family Trees Project", located above the public access computer in the May Ellingsen Archives Room. Files are not available online due to privacy concerns.
We acknowledge that these trees are of white settler families and reflect colonization of ancestral homelands and displacement of the Indigenous Peoples who have thrived here for generations. We would welcome the opportunity to add those families to our records.
Family trees were researched by Bernice McGowan (1387 Bodington Rd, Whaletown, BC) in 2022. The Manson family tree was provided to CIMAS by Greg Johnson (2837 West 6th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V6K 1X2; phone # 604 897 5925) in 2022.
Scope and Content
Series consists of family trees of Cortes Island settler families, with notes on related people and events. These trees are intended to help identify links between families on Cortes. Sources include online databases (e.g. Family Search.org, Ancestry.com and Canada Archives), CIMAS Archives and Information files, interviews and correspondence with family members.
Families researched include: Aldrich; Barrett; Borden; Byers; Cafferata; Froud; Hawkins; Hayes, Ashford and Griffin; Heay; Manson; Marquette; Middleton; Nichols; Percival and Saunders; Petznick; Pickles; Smith; (Carr) Smith& Marflett; Tiber; Tooker; Valley.The family trees and notes are kept in a binder labelled "Cortes Family Trees Project", located above the public access computer in the May Ellingsen Archives Room. Files are not available online due to privacy concerns.
We acknowledge that these trees are of white settler families and reflect colonization of ancestral homelands and displacement of the Indigenous Peoples who have thrived here for generations. We would welcome the opportunity to add those families to our records.
