BARKERVILLE'S STREET THEATRE
by Margaret Deefholts

It is dusk, the earlier rain clouds have retreated, and the distant mountains are haloed with fire from the setting sun. Most of Barkerville's visitors have gone home, but a few linger to enjoy a meal at the Lung Duck Tong Restaurant in the Chinatown area before retiring to spend the night in one of the heritage buildings which now serve as Bed and Breakfast Inns.

The main street is deserted, but the plaintive notes of a guitar and mouth harmonica drift out from the St. George's Hotel B&B where an impromptu performance by a couple of local musicians is in progress.

At my abode for the night, the comfortable King House B&B, I settle down with a glass of wine, and browse through information leaflets on what the town has to offer its visitors.

Which, as I discover the following day, is street theatre at its best.

At ten o'clock on this crisp, sunny June morning, Barkerville is a bustling late 1800s street scene: a portly driver with mutton-chop whiskers sits perched on a rumbling Barnard's Express coach drawn by two greys; a woman in widow's weeds dabs the corner of her eyes as she tells a sympathetic visitor how her husband was killed in a mine shaft accident; a prim shirt-waisted schoolmarm ushers a group of visiting youngsters into her schoolhouse, and a weary, unshaven miner in a peaked cap, shovel slung over his shoulder disappears into the doorway of a small log cabin.

Across the street, Mr. Joshua Thompson and saucy Miss Rebecca Gibbs are conducting a tour through historic Barkerville. Miss Rebecca flounces along the boardwalk as she takes us over to F.J. Barnard's Express store. “Mr. Francis Jones Barnard,” she says with a theatrical flourish, “isn't a gold miner, but he's one of the richest men in town. He runs a horse and wagon express service from Victoria to Barkerville, carrying passengers, as well as provisions, clothing, tools, and other merchandise which he sells at a handsome profit to the citizens of Barkerville. For example,” she says to Mr. Thompson, “a pair of rubber boots, will cost you $12.00.” Mr Thomson recoils. “That's robbery! Why an ounce of gold is worth $16.00. I'm taking my business elsewhere!” Miss Rebecca smiles. “And where would that be?” she asks sweetly. The audience chuckles at Mr. Thompson's discomfiture. F.J. Barnard is the Bill Gates of Barkerville—and there was no law against monopolies back in the 1860s.

I join a group standing by a Cornish Water Wheel mounted on a wooden frame with a flume stretching to the edge of Williams Creek. Demonstrating its wonders are a couple of Mutt & Jeff type shysters who are trying to persuade the audience to invest in their Sheepskin Claim. Mr. Cruickshank is dapper and smooth-tongued; his side kick Mr. Grimsby is a scruffy individual, who keeps butting in on Cruickshank's sales patter to make disparaging comments about various members of the audience, heckle their kids and perform distracting stunts on the framework of the water-wheel contraption. A flustered Cruickshank tries to ignore these shenanigans, but no one is paying the slightest attention to his spiel. Grimsby opens a water-valve and scrambles down to scoop up a handful of gravel from the sluice box. “Gold!” he yells, straightening up. “Right under our feet!” He holds up a thumb-sized nugget. A grin spreads across Cruickshank's face. “Sorry folks,” he says “The Sheepskin shares are no longer up for sale.”

Adjacent to Wake Up Jake's coffee house is one of the two sites in Barkerville which changed the town's profile forever. In the early hours of September 16 th 1868 an amorous miner while trying to steal a kiss from one of the girls in Barry & Adler's Saloon knocked over a stove pipe and started a conflagration that reduced the town to cinders in a matter of an hour and a half. Only a few buildings at the south end of Barkerville in the Chinatown area survived the blaze. The losses in property and personal possessions were colossal. But it would take more than a mere fire to douse the spirit of Barkerville's citizens. By noon the following day restoration was under way: debris had been cleared, and the sound of saws and hammers resounded along the street as lumber frames were raised into place. A year later, in 1869, a new town had sprung Phoenix-like from the ashes. It was business as usual.

The other site in Barkerville which preceded the fire by several years, and profoundly affected not only the Cariboo, but the entire province of British Columbia is located a five minute walk away from Jake's Coffee House, along the main street. It is the spot where Billy Barker hit pay dirt in 1862. The Fraser River gold rush of the late 1850s was waning but news of the Barker claim in the Cariboo spread like wildfire and within a year the town was inundated with 35,000 or more miners from all parts of North America and Europe. Settlements along the Cariboo Wagon Road sprang up overnight. Mile houses and coaching inns flanked the route, and pioneer farmers and ranchers began to homestead across the rolling Cariboo countryside. In the 1880s the railroad snaked its way across the Province to the capital city of New Westminster. Born of gold rush fever, the development of British Columbia was well under way.

And what of Billy Barker? He died a pauper and is reputedly buried in an unmarked grave in Victoria's Ross Cemetery. What, I wonder, would he have thought of the town that bears his name today?