Photograph of Margaret Middleton (seated in front of log) and Miss Hopwood (lying in front of her on the beach) with a house and outbuildings in the background.
Photograph of Margaret Middleton (seated in front of log) and Miss Hopwood (lying in front of her on the beach) with a house and outbuildings in the background.
A photograph of "Marg" (Margaret Huck), Flo (last name?) and Marg F. (Margaret Forrest) standing at the corner of the Squirrel Cove school next to a big stump which is right beside the school. The building's siding and a row of windows can be seen clearly.
A photograph of "Marg" (Margaret Huck), Flo (last name?) and Marg F. (Margaret Forrest) standing at the corner of the Squirrel Cove school next to a big stump which is right beside the school. The building's siding and a row of windows can be seen clearly.
Photograph of Margaret and Billie Huck standing beside a team of horses hitched to a wagon. They are on a dirt road; the corner of a shake-roofed house is to the left. This is probably in Whaletown, near Burnside.
Photograph of Margaret and Billie Huck standing beside a team of horses hitched to a wagon. They are on a dirt road; the corner of a shake-roofed house is to the left. This is probably in Whaletown, near Burnside.
Meg Robertson (Shaw), Margaret Middleton, Margaret Copland and Elsie Allen seated on a beached rowboat at a sandy beach at the lake at Manson's Landing. Other people, including children, can be seen in the background.
Meg Robertson (Shaw), Margaret Middleton, Margaret Copland and Elsie Allen seated on a beached rowboat at a sandy beach at the lake at Manson's Landing. Other people, including children, can be seen in the background.
Fonds consists of records created by Muriel and William Whiting and includes correspondence, official documents, business records, recipes, notes and ephemera. It is arranged in three series: Correspondence; Documents; and Subject files.
Muriel Horner Whiting (1882-1977) and William Henry Evans Whiting (1853-1927) settled on Cortes in about 1918, having purchased 58 acres of land in Whaletown (present-day 1474 and 1416 Robertson Rd.) from Charles Allen. Their son Basil Evans Whiting was born in 1923.
William Whiting was considerably older than Muriel; he died in 1927 and is buried in the old Whaletown cemetery. After his death, Muriel supported herself by raising poultry and eggs for sale and by taking in boarders. Her only son, Basil, joined the Royal Canadian Navy just before the outbreak of World War II. He lost his life at the age of 19, when the destroyer HMCS "Ottawa" was torpedoed and sunk on Sept. 13,1942. His war medals are in the Cortes Island Museum Artifacts Collection.
Muriel remained on Cortes until the late 1960s; she died in Whiterock in 1977. Although the Whiting house burned down in 1982, remnants of the homestead remain: a tumble-down barn built of hand-split cedar boards, a few old apple trees and some hardy garden survivors such as japonica, mock orange, and St. Johnswort. The yellow primroses in the Museum garden are descendents of her flowers.
Custodial History
This material was found stored in the barn on the former Whiting property in 1971. It was passed down through several owners of the property before being donated to the museum by Sabina Leader-Mense in 2018.
Scope and Content
Fonds consists of records created by Muriel and William Whiting and includes correspondence, official documents, business records, recipes, notes and ephemera. It is arranged in three series: Correspondence; Documents; and Subject files.
Photograph of four young women, Margaret Copland, Violet Stoney, Muriel Cunliffe (teacher at the Whaletown school) and Joyce Allen, seated on a bench against the front of the freight shed on the Whaletown wharf. Posters advertising the Vancouver exhibition and a dentist can be clearly read on the side of the freight shed.
Photograph of four young women, Margaret Copland, Violet Stoney, Muriel Cunliffe (teacher at the Whaletown school) and Joyce Allen, seated on a bench against the front of the freight shed on the Whaletown wharf. Posters advertising the Vancouver exhibition and a dentist can be clearly read on the side of the freight shed.