Interpretations

Most of this website consists of a collection of all the documents that the creators could find pertaining to the murder of William Robinson and to colonial Salt Spring Island society. With a few exceptions, these documents were created by people living in the nineteenth century. This section is different. It contains essays written recently, essays that seek to interpret the historical documents that are on this site, or which pertain to it. These essays, written by the site originators, involve the same processes of research and interpretation used by anyone writing history -- by anyone using the website to answer the question "Who Killed William Robinson?"

What makes these essays unique is your access to the primary documents upon which the essays are based, giving you, the reader, the ability to critically evaluate their conclusions much more rigorously than is usually the case.

Teachers can request access to the experts' interpretations of the mysteries that have been created for each site. We have made this section password-protected to encourage students to come up with their own interpretations of primary documents, rather than relying on other people's analyses. To access the Interpretations just fill in our online registration form and await your password.

Access the interpretations