This post was an eye-opener for me. I'm looking forward to citing some of this new learning the next time I want to make a real nuisance of myself at UBC planning meetings, where Trek is accorded the status of holy writ.

I bet this can really piss off some Star Trek fans too if I crank up the hyperbole enough.
Brian | Homepage | 22 Feb, 2007 - 9:31 am | #

Heh.

Meanwhile, I am wondering when the label "Great Trek" was applied to this event. UBC Archives has a brief history written by the then President in 1958 that doesn't use the term.

It could either be that the phrase was used in the 1920s, but was then dropped (perhaps even for some shame concerning the connotations it held) before being taken back up in the 1990s. Or that it was first used only sometime in the 1960s or 1970s.

I'm not in a desperate hurry to do this research myself, but I'd have hoped someone would have thought about it before deciding on the "Trek 2000" moniker.

It'd be interesting to think further about the histories both of the university's self-mythologizing and of the development of its current brand of management speak.
Jon | Homepage | 02 Mar, 2007 - 4:32 am | #

Ah, but I now see that the phrase is used in Harry Logan's centennial history, Tuum Est. See Chapter Four:

"The Pilgrimage, later known as the Great Trek, has taken its place at the centre of the enriching traditions of the Univesity. To freshly-enrolled students the story is re-told in the Cairn Ceremony, at the beginning of the University Year." (92)

With its "Cairn Ceremony," the atmosphere also reeks of the Scouts--an organization which is another legacy of colonial adventures in Africa, of course. Here, while we're at it, is an account of the very first Scout camp (August, 2007):

"The day began at 6 a.m. when Baden-Powell roused the camp with the weird notes from the long, spiral horn of the African koodoo -- the war horn he had picked up on his expedition into the Somabula Forest during the 1896 Matabele Campaign."

And in 1936 Baden-Powell writes a pamphlet with the title The Great Trek of the Early Scouts of South Africa.

Jolly japes, eh?
Jon | Homepage | 02 Mar, 2007 - 4:51 am | #

I'm a South African and never was I taught at school - primary and Secondary - that the Voortrekkers thought they were "God's chosen people"... I don't know why people like you think it... or historians... if they (The Trekkers) thought that...that was it..full stop..never have we - whites- thought it.. and if there were some whites in SA that thought that..that was a small minority, so small, that I don't even know of their existence. Tomorrow is 16th Dec and you can read my entry about Blood River and the Day of Vow...will always be an important day for many Saffas.
nikita | Homepage | 15 Dec, 2008 - 3:37 pm | #