Craigdarroch Castle : Object : trophy [998.034.001a-b]

Object

Accession Number

998.034.001a-b

Description

A two-part silver-plated trophy cup, the round bottom slightly narrowing to the rounded shoulder into a narrow circular spout at top centre, the removable cover about one third of the trophy's overall size and plain with engraved inscription on one side, the handle a wide attached loop with a smoker's pipe attached to it, the body lightly incised in a fine herringbone pattern, on the bottom the manufacturer's name and maker's mark.

Narrative

According to the archivist at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, Robert Dunsmuir Harvey "excelled in athletics" while attending school there as a boy. In August, 1896 he enrolled in the Royal Military College (RMC) in Kingston, Ontario as a "gentleman cadet". His sporting exploits flourished there, and this is just one of many trophies that he won during his military college years.

An amusing aspect of this trophy is that it is also a humidor (for storing tobacco) designed to look like a liquor jug with a smoker's pipe resting on it. The trophy was awarded to Harvey for winning a quarter-mile footrace.

History of Use

This trophy was used by Lt. Robert Dunsmmuir Harvey (1878-1901) while he attended military college, and later while he served in the 4th (Queen’s Own) Hussars regiment in India. Following his death in 1901, his regiment sent the trophy and other personal effects to his sister Elizabeth Georgina Harvey and his grandmother Joan Olive Dunsmuir at Craigdarroch. Sometime later, the trophy and other effects came into possession of R.D. Harvey's brother, Col. James Swan Harvey, who kept them at his residence on Knapp Island, B.C. The trophy and other items were next inherited by J.S. Harvey's son, Robert Oliver Dunsmuir Harvey of Victoria, B.C., and then by his son, the late Robert James Harvey who lived in Victoria, Nanaimo, and before his death in 2013, on Denman Island, B.C.