Message on a bottle

By Greg Scott

The very name “Old Calabar” conjures up Arabian Nights, slave traders and caravans from Timbuktu but it’s the starting point in a story of an old leather-covered bottle being auctioned on e-Bay by the St. Saviour’s Church Men’s Group in Nelson. The bottle had been re-discovered during the clean-up of the old Memorial Hall which has recently been sold. The bottle was just one of those things; a curiosity that seemed to be always around.

The bottle is approximately 9 inches (23.5 cm) tall and the glass, visible at its mid-riff, is green. The leather covering and decoration are typical of West African bottles of the 19th Century, examples of which can be found in various museums throughout the world. It is easy to picture it as a discarded European relic, covered, decorated and taken into use by the local inhabitants. Attached to it’s neck is a yellowed paper tag reading:-
“Brought from Old Calabar by the Rev. Geo. Faulds ca 1890. Given me by Geo.F. Stirling, Victoria B.C. Centre of bottle was originally covered with antelope skin. JRT.”
To trace the journey of the bottle, we must start in Old Calabar, a legendary port on the coast of Nigeria. The Faulds family were very active in the Scottish Missionary Society which had a major presence in Calabar and also during the 1860’s, in Victoria BC. While we have found no specific record of the Rev. George Faulds, George F. Stirling appears to be George Faulds Stirling. According to the 1911 Canadian Census, both he and his wife, Edith, were public school teachers and had immigrated to Canada from England in 1906. By 1934 he had remarried to Daisy Burcher and he later owned a ranch on Shuswap Lake. Stirling was a politically active socialist who ran in a number of B.C. Provincial elections including among others, Okanagan in 1912, Slocan in 1924 and was eventually successful in Salmon Arm in 1942. In the latter, a by-election, he was elected as a member of the C.C.F. Party, only to be defeated in the next full Provincial election in 1945. Stirling passed away in Victoria in 1966 at the age of 88 and Daisy, six years later at age 90. It is not clear who “JTR” was but subsequent to the e-Bay listing, we were contacted by a local gentleman who states he was given the bottle in 1965 in Grand Forks by a woman who knew he was a bottle collector. He understood that she was given it by her family. He subsequently moved to Nelson and as he had no interest in decorated bottles, donated it to the Church in the mid 1970’s. As the provenance was not such that the local museum, Touchstones, was interested in, it was decided that the Men’s Group would see if they could sell the bottle with the proceeds going to Church restoration. With the assistance of Greg Nesteroff of the Nelson Star newspaper, the bottle has been listed on e-Bay and a story published throughout the West Kootenay in the Advertiser. The story was picked up by CBC, Kelowna and an interview was done on the morning show, Daybreak South. While the sale may not prove to be a windfall for the Church, the exercise has been interesting and helps keep the Church’s history alive.