Raley, George H. (1864 - 1958)

George Henry Raley was born in either 1863 (B.C. Archives) or 1864 (his daughter) near Sheffield, in Yorkshire England, and emigrated to Canada in 1882. In 1888 he was ordained a Methodist minister. In 1893 he was appointed Methodist missionary to Kitamaat. In 1898 he began publishing a periodical called NA-NA-KWA (Dawn of the West Coast) in Kitamaat. In 1906 he was appointed to the Port Simpson mission. In 1914 he was appointed principal of the Coqualeetza Residential School in Sardis, a post he held until he retired in 1934. In 1937 he published a booklet "A Monograph of the Totem-Poles in Stanley Park." In 1948 his collection was purchased by the University of British Columbia for their Museum of Anthropology. He was a Doctor of Divinity, a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society of London, England, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts London, England. He had a son G. G. E. Raley (aka Captain Emsley Raley) and a daughter Mrs. E. M. Charlton (of Vancouver). There is material on the Raley Collection in the Vancouver Archives and the BC Archives.