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| Robert C. "Bob" Harris |
"If Bob Harris had been working for [Swan Wooster
Engineering], the bridge would never have collapsed,” recalls Louise Irwin, a
longstanding member of the Vancouver Natural History Society.
Robert C. “Bob” Harris (1922-1998) was an engineer by trade and a historian at heart: after twenty-five years of
service with the Dominion Bridge Company in Vancouver, Harris joined the
Structural Engineering Company of Buckland & Taylor and oversaw the
construction of Granville, Oak Street and Port Mann Bridges, as well as work on
the Second Narrows and Lions Gate. Bob worked for Structural Engineering from
1975 until his untimely death in 1998; his bridge surveys for Lions Gate in the
early 1990s are still kept for reference at the University of British Columbia’s
archive for government publications. He served with the Royal Engineers in WWII
and received his degree in Civil Engineering from the University of London in
1948; that same year, he immigrated to Canada with his wife Rita.
His English upbringing and move to Canada naturally prompted
his interest in the Royal Engineers: a corps of the British Army responsible
for the first European surveys in the Pacific Northwest. Bob served with the
Royal Engineers during the Second World War, and his interest in RE history
consumed his spare time. After his move to Vancouver, Bob made monthly trips to
the provincial archives in Victoria to review maps, survey reports, and
correspondence. He worked closely with VNHS members Bruce Ward, Bill Hughes and
Harley Hatfield. Bruce took over the natural history division of VNHS after Bob
passed away, and is listed as the primary donor for the R.C. Harris fonds
stored at IKB Rare Books. The pair were often seen pouring over maps on the
kitchen table at the Harris family home: a habit that his wife Rita attempted
to remedy by confining their workspace to the basement. See The Royal Engineers and Hudson’s Bay Company for more
historical context.
Bob was an active member of North Shore Hikers, the BCMountaineering Club, the Vancouver Natural History Society and BC Historical MapSociety. He also volunteered on Bowen Island as Warden for Ecological Reserve
No. 48, just west of what is now known as Apodaca Park. Bob was not merely a
historian, he was also something of a pioneer: Apodaca Park was largely overgrown by the time the VNHS trudged its way
through the undergrowth. It is because of Bob Harris that many of these trails
were re-cut and open to the public; see The 1848 HSBC Trail for an example. Largely neglected since the HBC traders cut
along First Nations hunting routes at the turn of the nineteenth century, Bob’s
expert bush-whacking and his troop of loyal followers paved the way for future
exploration. As Louise Irwin recalls:
“Bob didn’t see rain, snow, or bush-whacking. It was all the
same to him, he always had the same stride...Bob said
‘No, I’ve got my eye on that mountain and I’m going straight ahead.”
Travelling
with Bob was something of an adventure: you had to keep up, but the keeners
always did. He was not one to pause and describe a particular region to the
group, but hiked in view of an endpoint. He organized about three trips a year
for the Vancouver Natural History Society from 1977-1996, which ranged in
length from three to five days. To his campers, “his quiet good-natured humour
was a delight on the trail or around the campfire.” He was a tough, quirky and
rigorous trip leader known for sleeping in the rain with nought but his coat
and conveniently forgetting to bring his own meals –only to scavenge from the healthy
amount of leftovers that campers inevitably offered to him. His hikes began at
8:00 in the morning and went long after supper; when his group had pitched
their tents or hiked out, Bob would often hike ahead with Bill Hughes to do
field research. His reconnaissance provided the data for seventy-five articles
on trails for BC Outdoors, twenty of which were published in a 1986 volume Best Hikes of BC. See Publications for more information.
The Vancouver Natural History Society began leading natural
history trips around the same time that Bob joined; he also assisted in their
summer camp programs and the Federation of BC Naturalists’ “Exploratory Camps.”
These trips were an opportunity for both the leaders and campers to enter
unexplored territory; some of these included the Height of the Rockies (1993),
Ilguatchuz Mountain, West Chilcotins (1994), Altin Lake in Northwest BC (1995),
Lorna Lake, Central Chilcotins (1996), Nonda Creek in Northern Rockies (1997).
Louise Irwin was present on the first of these trips listed; at the Height of
the Rockies, Bob spotted an inconsistency on the map. His intuition and
expertise led him to believe that the lake drained on the opposite side, and
when the group ascended the ridge, he discovered he was correct.
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| Letter from the BC Geographical Names Office, naming "Harris Ridge" |
“Bob loved to be right,” Louise recalls, “You couldn’t send
anything to him without being corrected.” His attention to detail translated
well into his research for BC Outdoors and VNHS trips: often correcting
topographical inconsistences or tracing his way along HSBC and First Nations
hunting trails, Bob’s research, publications, and reconnaissance trips are indispensable
to our current knowledge of BC natural history. He passed away quite suddenly
of a heart attack in 1998, during an opening performance by the Vancouver Opera; sadly, the performance that night was
arranged in his honour. The BC Geographical Names Office assigned a section of
the South Chilcotin Mountains, the north Cinnabar Basin, to be named “Harris
Ridge,” in recognition of this BC historian.
