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This picture-based timeline gives a brief history of the Esquimalt Harbour and its use over time. Swipe your way through time and follow the links to learn more about local history!

By OB24
It will take a lot of effort from the groups helping with the Bowker Creek restoration, such as the Greater Victoria Green Team, the CRD and Oak Bay High, to clean up the pollution to make Bowker suitable for salmon again. Hopefully, when Bowker Creek has been sufficiently restored, we will be able to reintroduce salmon to this urban ecosystem.

By OB24
In Bowker Creek, there are many species that act as bioindicators, such as leeches, sticklebacks and aquatic worms. Bioindicators are organisms used to gauge the health of an ecosystem. The organisms found in the creek all have a high pollution tolerance, meaning the creek is polluted. If we want salmon to return, the pollution must be reduced.

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60% of glass artifacts were alcoholic. The issue of daily spirits was one of the customs the RCN took from the British Royal Navy and it had changed over time. Junior sailors had to mix their rum with cola. Some will switch it for coke and pour the rum into a bottle for later. Later on, the serving of spirits at sea was replaced by beer and wine.

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Hayato Takata and Yoshitaro Kishida opened the garden on July 11, 1907. Two Takata brothers started to run the garden as a family business in 1922. The Takata family was interned in 1942. Their houses and the garden were vandalized and destroyed. The rest of their belongings were sold off by the government. [BC Archives-E-01902] Learn more about this image at BC Archives here.

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A scrapbook donated by Alderman Halford Wilson contains newspaper clippings, advertisements, and annotations made by the author that show his racism towards Japanese Canadians. This documents illuminates the racist climate of the 1940s in which the dispossession of Japanese Canadians occurred. [BC Archives-ms0012, box 3]

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Hideo Kokubo was interviewed in Vancouver in 1973 in a project by Reynoldston Research and Studies. He discusses life as a fisherman in BC in the 1940s and mentions how the government seized Japanese Canadian fishing boats during the Second World War. [BC Archives-AAAB8584] Learn more about this interview at BC Archives here.

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The owner of the Ikeda Mine, Arichika Ikeda, died in 1939 but the ownership of his mine came under the jurisdiction of the Custodian in 1942. His wife, Kaoru Ikeda, interned in Slocan, was made to release her rights to the property as well as their family house. She died after four years of internment in the spring of 1946. [BC Archives H-04580] Learn more about this image at BC Archives here.