I have been asked whether Dr. Horace Wrinch (1866-1939) is any relation to Dorothy Maud Wrinch (1894-1976), the renowned mathematician, who also did work in philosophy, physics and bio-chemistry. The answer is yes, but so distant as almost certainly to be unknown to each other. Horace’s great grandfather, (Robert Wrinch (1761-1815), was Dorothy Wrinch’s great great grandfather. They would have had nothing else in common except their name.
Dorothy Wrinch was one of the leading theoretical mathematicians and bio-chemists of her day. Studying mathematics logic at Cambridge’s Girton College, she was a wrangler (that is, she took first class honours in her third year). She studied mathematical logic with G.H. Hardy and Bertrand Russell, whose philosophy she worked on for him while he was in prison for anti-war activities in 1918. Through him, she became acquainted with many members of the Bloomsbury set in 1920’s London. She went to Garsington Manor and knew Clive Bell and Ottoline Morrell. She even introduced Russell to his third wife, Dora Block. Between 1918 and 1932 she published about 20 papers on pure and applied mathematics and 16 on other scientific subjects. She was the first female to be awarded an Oxford University Bsc. From 1932 she turned to studying theoretical biology. She co-founded the influential Biotheoretical Gathering, an inter-disciplinary group that sought to explain life by discovering proteins work. Karl Popper, the philosopher of science, and Nobel prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin were younger members. At the start of the war, Lord Halifax, British Ambassador to the United States, persuaded Wrinch to go to America, where she spent the rest of her working life in academe, notably Smith College, in Massachusetts.
She maintained a long standing academic (and sometimes personal) dispute with Linus Pauling about her theory of protein structure. As it turned out both were correct and incorrect in about equal measure, but the dispute damaged her academic reputation. She has been criticized for spreading her undoubted scientific brilliance too thin and for not staying with theoretical mathematics. Some, nevertheless, think that her influence on scientific progress has been significantly under-estimated. She called her biography “I Died For Beauty.”
Inside the 1904 Hazelton Hospital
This is a rare photograph of the inside of Hazelton Hospital, built in 1904. On the hall table lies what looks to be the hospital register, now in the United Church Archives in Vancouver. (Photo: my own collection)
Was that a UFO over Hazelton?
Was it Andrée’s balloon? A cloud? Or an unidentified flying object? In 1896, Saloman August Andrée, a Swedish scientist, believed he could reach the North Pole by hydrogen balloon. He announced he would set out with two companions from Spitzbergen in early July. In case he drifted over the Pole and into Canada, people across the Canadian North were alerted to watch out for him and to render such help as may be necessary. When a balloon matching the description was actually seen in the skies in the Hazelton district, there was naturally great excitement in the town.
On July 31, 1896, R.E. Loring, the Indian Agent in Hazelton, wrote to his superior in Victoria. “Sir, I have the honour to report that on 3rd inst. at 7.35 p.m., an effect, by description in the shape of a balloon, was seen by a boy about four miles to the west of here, Latitude 55.15, Longitude 127.40.
In an—at the time—strong NNWly wind, it was seen to emerge from out of a heavy bank of white clouds, sailing in an intermediate clear space in semi-circular line, to disappear in another at an altitude of about four hundred feet above the timberline on the mountain. It had a black appearance having been seen between the setting sun. The boy’s description of the balloon and its actions left no doubt as to its reality and is no doubt the André balloon reported to have left Spitzbergen for the North Pole on or about 1st inst.
Again on the 10th, it was reported to us by Ghail, the head chief at Kits-pioux (Kispiox) that, while trapping with a party of Indians on Blackwater Lake, above the headwaters of the Skeena, an object resembling a balloon and then displaying two very bright lights was seen also by them on the evening of the 3rd inst.
Ghail, whom you know, is a trustworthy man and his story must be credited. The Indians on the Skeena were made aware that they were liable to see, during the beginning of this month, a balloon going north and of the purpose of its occupants etc. and to report to me anything noticed by them of that description.”
Alas, the problem with this story was that strong southerly winds at Spitzbergen had caused the postponement of Andrée’s epic journey until the following year. (The balloonists tried again in 1897 and disappeared, their frozen bodies being found in 1930).
Consequently, what had been seen around Hazelton could not have been the Andrée balloon. So, what was it?
Rocher de Boule
The mountain of Rocher de Boule lies to the south of Hazelton and is a prominent feature over the town. The Gitxsan name is rendered into text as Stekyawden.
When Simon McGillivray, the Hudson’s Bay Company trader and explorer and probably the first non-indigenous visitor to the Forks of the Skeena and Bulkley Rivers came in 1833, he described the mountain. Rocks from one of its outlying flanks had collapsed into the Bulkley River at Hagwilget a few years before partially blocking the river and disrupting the salmon runs. The mountain looms large over Hazelton. (Photo: Geoff Mynett, August 2017).
Dr Chismore - was he the first doctor to visit Hazelton?
Dr. George Chismore was perhaps the first European doctor to visit the Forks of the Skeena (Hazelton). Born in New York in 1840, Chismore came out to California in 1854, mined for a while and then entered medical school in San Francisco in 1860.
He joined the Western Union Telegraph company as a doctor and came north with the Overland Telegraph crews laying a telegraph cable to Europe through British Columbia and Russia. He arrived in Victoria with supplies for the telegraph on the bark Onward in mid-July 1866. He was at the Forks of the Skeena, later known as Hazelton, when the project was cancelled not long after, in 1866.
One of his colleagues there was Chas. Morison, with whom he became friends. Morison recounted how later, at Wrangell, that when they were dealing with the results of tribal wars that Chismore taught him how to stitch up wounded First Nations.
After the cable was successfully laid across the Atlantic, the Overland telegraph to Alaska was cancelled. Chismore returned to California in 1867 and joined the US Army as an assistant surgeon, serving in Alaska.
On a short leave of absence from the army in 1870, he returned to the Skeena River, later writing about his journey in The Overland Monthly (November 1885 edition). He described visiting Kil–a-tam-acks (Gitanmaax, Hazelton) and Kis-py-aux (Kispiox). “One of the finest Indian towns I ever saw,” he wrote of Kil-a-tam-acks. “It contained thirty houses and had a population of about six hundred.”
After five years service with the army he returned to California and, apart from his travels, spent the rest of his life there, dying in 1906, much beloved and described in the headline announcing his death as “one of California’s greatest men”.
Operating Room in Hazelton Hospital, British Columbia
Below is the operating room of Dr. Wrinch in the Hazelton Hospital as set out in the Hospital’s 1919 Annual Report.
Hazelton Baseball team champions in 1913
Dr. H. C. Wrinch - Champion for State Medical Insurance -1930
On August 19, 1930, Dr. Horace Wrinch gave his recommendations to the British Columbia Royal Commission on State Health Insurance. After discussing the hardship of people who could not afford medical treatment, he said, “I have long ago come to the conclusion that a State health insurance system would be a solution of the problem of the health of our people.”
Hazelton Public School 1917.
One Hundred Years Ago - Gunanoot Gives Himself Up
One hundred years ago today, Simon Gunanoot, a successful and well-liked Gitxsan hunter and trader from Kispiox, walked into the police station in Hazelton, B.C. and gave himself up . Accused of a double murder in June 1906, he with his family and brother-in-law Peter Himadan fled into the wilderness north and east of Hazelton. For thirteen years he had evaded all the police parties searching for him. No one stepped forward to claim the reward. He was taken to Vancouver and tried for the murders . The jury acquitted him.