It’s 8 a.m. and a cool breeze flows through a tiny park in Cordova Bay where Roger Charlie is digging into his ancestors’ past.
The five-week dig was limited to Saanich parks in Cordova Bay and had only so much funding, said team leader Brian Thom, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Victoria. The U-shaped fish trap, aligned with currents and tides, is similar to those found in recent Indigenous archeological work in Squamish and the Sunshine Coast.
Thom said some of the earliest recorded history indicates that in May 1791, a longboat from a Spanish ship anchored at Esquimalt went exploring into Cordova Bay, but was chased away by canoes. The Spanish headed to the San Juan Islands across the Salish Sea instead. “We haven’t hit a metre yet [in Agate Lane Park] and we know the village gets older and older the further you go,” said Thom. He noted that carbon dating on the artifacts pulled from just under a metre at the neighbouring site were just under 1,000 years old.He said the primary objective of the dig is to find the footprint of the village site in relation to Agate Lane Park and where it represents in time, based on the depth of the dig and the carbon dating of artifacts.
“In 1852, when Douglas was here, it was an active village,” said Thom. “By 1870, when settlers are establishing their farms, they’re not reporting people living here full time.
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