I happened upon this PDF file and thought I would pass it along to any other interested parties. It is a Masters Thesis in Adult Education written by John Cuthill in 1997. In it the author interviewed a number of early BC divers (1951-1957) to try to determine what strategies they used to learn how to SCUBA dive in the absense of formal classes or instructors (the first SCUBA classes began in 1957 in our province). It is a long read (about 170 pages) much of which has to do with the "methodology" aspect of thesis writing, but the interview portion is very interesting from a historical perspective and covers skin diving, rebreather use and the introduction of the "aqualung". It provides a unique slice through an isolated community of divers and tracks their adaption of gear and techniques from primitive goggling to the creation of the first dive club in BC.
This is a link to the abstract page. In it is a section called "files in this item" where you can click a link to open an Abobe PDF file (12.67Mb).
https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/6384
If someone can let me know if the link works I would appreciate it.