Lt. Col. Bowen Van Straubenzee: A Reflection of Canadian History
One of the guiding principles of our curatorial research at Murney Tower is to further our knowledge about the people behind the objects in our collection. Objects hold memories, and when they are examined carefully, they can tell us stories about the individuals who created, owned, and used them. This dispatch case (or briefcase) is no exception. Outwardly, the case, which is made of vegetable tanned leather with steel clasps, is quite plain, but a glance inside reveals that it is lined with green velvet, hinting at the important status of its past owner. The briefcase came to the Murney Tower collection in 1973 when it was purchased at the estate sale of Edith Van Straubenzee. It is believed to have belonged to Edith’s father, Lieutenant Colonel Bowen Van Straubenzee. The story told by this object, which centres on the life and military career of the Lieutenant Colonel, is complex and mirrors the broader conflicting history of Kingston and Canada as a whole.
The Van Straubenzee family motto is “The Brave Beget the Brave.” It is no surprise, then, that Lieutenant Colonel Bowen Van Straubenzee, born in Spennithorne, Yorkshire in 1829, joined the British army. His service led him to Kingston in 1856, where, a year later, he married Annie Macaulay Cartwright, the daughter of John Solomon Cartwright, one of the most prominent citizens of Kingston and Upper Canada in the nineteenth century. Together, Annie and Bowen Van Straubenzee had seven children: Cordelia, Madeline, Edith, Arthur Hope, Bowen William Sutton, Casimir Cartwright, and Charles Turner. All four of their sons would go on to serve in the military, with three, Arthur, Casimir, and Bowen, educated at RMC. Both Arthur and Casimir would also teach at the college later in their careers.
Despite his marriage to an Upper Canadian, Lt. Col. Van Straubenzee did not stay in Kingston for long. Over the next decade, his service in the army took him around the world, including to China and Mauritius. Curiously, however, by 1875, after Kingston was no longer a British military post, Van Straubenzee found himself back in Kingston without a job. It is unclear why he chose to return here. Perhaps he wanted to establish himself as independent from his family – his brother, Sir Charles Thomas Van Straubenzee, was, by that time, an established commander in the British army serving as governor of Malta. Perhaps his wife wanted to return to Canada to be closer to her family, or perhaps, like so many Kingstonians, he simply enjoyed living on the shores of Lake Ontario.
After turning down several job postings, including offers to be Captain of Cadets at RMC and Private Secretary to his brother in Malta, Van Straubenzee was appointed as Deputy Adjutant-General of Military District 3, which included Kingston and the surrounding area. His briefcase perfectly exemplifies the essence of this position, which was centred on administrative work and required him to travel to nearby towns, including Picton, Port Hope, Trenton, Belleville, and Bowmanville. In fact, a closer inspection of his bag reveals just how much it was used. The seams appear to have been re-stitched while the bag was still in use, indicating that the Lieutenant Colonel was highly dependent upon it for his day-to-day work.
Van Straubenzee appears to have been the perfect fit for the position of Deputy Adjutant-General. One of his primary tasks was to perform troop inspections and report any minute issues that might indicate larger problems in the performance of the district’s troops should they be required for active duty. In an 1879 report, for example, he noted that officers were, knowingly or not, recruiting men from other corps to fill out their ranks before inspections. Van Straubenzee himself observed how difficult such an issue was to spot as many of the men used “assumed names” when drilling with another company. Van Straubenzee’s notice of this issue and his insistence that it be fixed by having officers provide direct assurance that the men participating in the drills were legitimate members of their company, demonstrate Van Straubenzee’s attention to detail and his dedication to ensuring that the militia was in top shape.
Van Straubenzee’s dedication applied not only to the wellbeing of the army but to the wellbeing of the district in his command. In 1888, Van Straubenzee first recommended that the annual camp for Military Districts 3 and 4 be given a permanent place in Kingston. He made this request again in 1890 and 1891, demonstrating that he was persistent in his recommendations when he knew they would benefit the troops in his district. He also included in his reports recommendations for future protocol based on complaints that he had received from officers. For example, when told that brigade camps were too short for any substantial work to be completed, he recommended that the duration of the camps be extended.
It is this dedication to his troops’ wellbeing that made Van Straubenzee so popular amongst the military community, both in Kingston and in Montreal, where he served from c. 1881 to 1888. When Van Straubenzee left Montreal in 1888 to return to Kingston and take command of Military Districts 3 and 4, which were to be amalgamated, he was thrown a farewell dinner and his wife was given a silver service as a demonstration of the Montreal people’s affection for them. Van Straubenzee was equally dedicated to the community at large. His brigade camps had close ties to the YMCA. He was also a member of the Kingston Agricultural Society, a proprietor of the Bank of British North America, and a dedicated member of the Anglican church, attending St. John’s in Portsmouth.
Nineteenth century documentation portrays Van Straubenzee as a flawless military hero, and while the above information makes it tempting to echo this interpretation, it is important to remember the context in which he lived. While serving in the British Army, almost all of the campaigns in which Van Straubenzee participated were designed to enforce Britain’s colonial and imperialist agendas. Between 1848 and 1849, he fought at Multan, seeking to quell the local uprising against the East India Company-run regency that Britain had imposed on the once-independent Lahore state in 1846. While Van Straubenzee, who was mentioned in despatches during this campaign, continued to be praised for his efforts forty years later, the campaign itself contributed to the development of colonial structures in the Punjab region. In a similar vein, Van Straubenzee fought in the North China Campaign that followed the Second Opium War. Although China was never fully colonized, this campaign was a successful effort to force European ideas and industries into the Chinese worldview, which, until that point, had remained relatively isolated. The North China Campaign is perhaps most notable for the “taking”, i.e. the looting and destruction of, the Yuanmingyuan, or Summer, Palace, a massive imperial complex “filled with hundreds of different buildings, including pavilions, galleries, temples, pagodas, libraries, audience halls, and so on” and magnificent “gardens filled with trees, flowers, lakes, streams, man-made mountains, and much else besides.” After British and French soldiers seized this complex on October 6, 1860, they proceeded to steal and destroy many of its contents before the British burned it to the ground eight days later. According to the account of British officer, Garnet Wolseley, “When we first entered the gardens, they reminded one of those magic grounds described in fairy tales; we marched from them upon the 19th October, leaving them a dreary waste of ruined nothings.” Not only was Van Straubenzee present for the destruction of this cultural symbol, he was once again mentioned in despatches, indicating that he played a pivotal role in the events.
Although Van Straubenzee later left the British army for the Canadian militia, Canada, too, sought to enforce colonial systems. Notably, Van Straubenzee was commander of the Canadian infantry during the North-West Rebellion at the Battle of Batoche. Like the Red River Rebellion before it, the North-West Rebellion was an expression of the outrage of Indigenous people, particularly the Métis, regarding the Canadian government’s general disregard for Indigenous rights and land claims. Although the Canadian government had indicated that Indigenous claims were justified, they had refused to address them. In a decision that mirrored that undertaken in Red River fifteen years before, the Métis declared a provisional government on March 8, 1885. As happens far too often in Canadian history, Indigenous claims were not recognized and were countered with violence, ultimately resulting in the Battle of Batoche and the surrender of Louis Riel.
Like Canada itself, then, there were two sides to Lieutenant Colonel Bowen Van Straubenzee. There was the side that those around him clearly saw and admired: the hard-working, detail-oriented man who excelled at his job. The other side was a man closely associated with national and global systems of oppression. Van Straubenzee may not be a Canadian military figure to be celebrated, but if we are ever to succeed in fully understanding the pain of our colonial past, he is one to be remembered. His worn, leather briefcase, unexpectedly lined in rich, green velvet, holds conflicting memories, and, in doing so, tells the conflicting history of our nation.
An Alphabetical List of the Proprietors of the Bank of British North America, on the 1st January, 1868. London: Waterlow and Sons, 1868.
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