Alice Ravenhill
March 31 1859 - May 27 1954
Royal Sanitary Institute, London (Fellow)
Cowichan Women's Institute (Chairman)
Island Arts & Crafts Society - List of Exhibitors
B.C. Indians Arts and Welfare Society ("founder and president emeritus")
Alice Ravenhill was born in Snaresbrook, Essex, England. She came to British Columbia in
November 1912, and "at the request of the Minister of Agriculture she organized Women's
Institutes." In support of this she wrote a number of pamphlets, including:
The Place and Purpose of Family Life
The Preservation of Food
Labour saving devices for the Household
Food and Diet and the Art of Right Living
Around 1917 Ravenhill was succeeded as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Women's Institute
by Mrs. Blackwood-Wileman.
She exhibited with the IACS from 1929 to 1940.
In 1951 she wrote MEMOIRS OF AN EDUCATIONAL PIONEER, published by
J.M. Dent & Sons (Canada) Ltd. It was a 244-page hardcover book,
which included photographs, notes, and a list of Ravenhill's published works.
She died in Victoria in 1954 at the age of 95. She was single, living at 857 McClure
Street.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
| DATE |
EXHIBITION |
ARTWORK |
| 1929 Oct. 22 - 31 |
IACS Belmont Bldg.
20th Annual |
Two Hooked Rugs (Indian Design) |
| 1930 Oct. 28 - Nov. 8 |
IACS Board of Trade Bldg.
21st Annual |
(rugs)(Listed as Mrs. Ravenhill) |
| 1936 Oct. 26 - 31 |
IACS Coast Hall
27th Annual |
Collection of Embroideries, Indian Designs |
| 1938 Oct. 22 - 29 |
IACS Belmont House
29th Annual |
Crafts - Indian Designs |
| 1940 April 8 - 13 |
IACS Crystal Garden
30th Exhibition |
The Spirit of the Winds (oil) |
|
|
Needlework, Indian Design |
References - MONOGRAPHS
Refer to BIBLIO.
References
ARTISTS IN CANADA 1982 - UNION LIST OF ARTISTS' FILES (refer to AIC82)
MEMORIES NEVER LOST compiled by the Pioneer Researchers
"Stories of the pioneer women of the Cowichan Valley and a Brief History of the Valley 1850-1920"
Includes mention of Ravenhill on page 258, "The Cowichan Women's Institute"
ISBN 0-88925-724-8, hardcover, published 1986.
B.C. VITAL STATISTICS ON-LINE death (refer to BCVS)
Clippings
"Alice Ravenhill's Folklore of the Far West (1953), with its good Canadian
title (as opposed to the "northwest," which is, of course, the U.S. perspective), contains
fifty-two representative legends from the B.C. area. She has used Boas's Tsimshian
Mythology (1916) to survery the corpus, and has chosen one version of each of the more
popular tales. Her rewriting is fresh and inoffensive - insofar as any rewriting can be.
The book was previously published privately (nominally by the B.C. Indians Arts and Welfare
Society, of which the author is listed as "founder and president emeritus"), and is no
longer in print.
Alice Ravenhill's contribution is remarkable, since it was a labour of her retirement years.
She was seventy-eight at the time of her first publication, The Native Tribes of British
Columbia (1938). She gained recognition from funding agencies, and her other publication,
A Cornerstone of Canadian Culture (1944) was published as No. 5 of the Occasional
Papers of the British Columbia Provincial Museum. This volume includes illustrations of
mythical beings and crests, and summaries of the associated myths."
A GUIDE TO B.C. MYTH and LEGEND, Ralph Maud 1982 (1986 reprint)
Published by Talon Books, Vancouver; ISBN 0-88922-189-8
"A Short History of Myth-Collecting and a Survey of Published Texts"
A review of Ravenhill's books, page 174.
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