JULIA BULLOCK WEBSTER The Tale of a Pioneer Gentlewoman
Julia Bullock Webster, an English-born gentlewoman, visited two of her sons at their settlement in a remote British Columbian valley in the early 1890s.
Julia was in her late sixties when she travelled by train from Oxford (her home) to Liverpool, England; thence by steamship to the St. Lawrence River. She crossed the Canadian Prairies by rail, following the route taken by Catherine Schubert thirty years earlier. Once in British Columbia, she boarded a paddle steamer and travelled down Lake Okanagan. Finally, she caught a stage coach to meet her sons in Keremeos.
She wrote a meticulous journal of her two-year stay, detailing day-to-day domestic chores and comparing the relative sophistication of English Middle Class life with her experiences in the sparse wilderness of the B.C. Interior.
Julia painted watercolour sketches of the abundant local flora as well as many scenes of the Lower Similkameen Valley.
Christine uses copies of these, entries from Julia's journal, and props and artifacts to give a delightfully insightful picture of Canadian pioneer life. She often invites the audience to help her!
Click below to see Christine Pilgrim as Julia Bullock Webster in an excerpt from Global TV's Pioneers and Places.
Contact Global Okanagan for the full Pioneers and Places program featuring Christine Pilgrim with Mike Roberts (Catalog #213).
