Interview with Rhoda Beck

Audio recording and transcript of Rhoda Beck's 1979 interview with Myrtle Bergren for the Coal Tyee History Project. Beck shares many stories and anecdotes from her family's history on Vancouver Island, which dates back to her great grandparents, John and Lavinia Malpass, arriving in Nanaimo on the Princess Royal in 1854. She recalls her mother's impressions of the 1887 explosion at the #1 Esplanade Mine; the story of the cave-in at the Southfield Mine, which her father just missed by not being on shift that day; and the introduction of the first telephone in British Columbia at the Wellington Colliery by her great-uncle William Wall. Beck remembers living in a tent at Departure Bay for the summers, and she also reflects on her grandparents' relationship with the Dunsmuir family who also lived nearby. She explains how her grandfather, Samuel Drake, was a musician and how he was an early member of the Nanaimo Silver Cornet Band, and she also gives details about his role as a sheriff and his time in Barkerville.