(Part 3)
Was there ever a bigger heart than that of pioneer missionary Henry “Father Pat” Irwin?
A man who did nothing by halves—he only gave his all.
What bitter irony that, at the moment of his greatest joy, he should be struck by double tragedy.
That’s next week in the BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: Father Pat Irwin was as remarkable as they come. —www.anglicanhistory.org/canada
Read More(Part 2)
‘Hero:’ so the Rev. Henry Irwin’s biographer chose to title her biography of the remarkable pioneer known affectionately as Father Pat.
And why not? Didn’t he lead a party of equally brave volunteers to recover bodies from a snow slide?
That was a single, extreme example of the eventful life of this truly remarkable man of god who dedicated and ultimately sacrificed his life as a missionary, a calling he’d set for himself as a child in Ireland.
Part 2 of the legendary Father Pat’s story in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: Digging for bodies in one of the many deadly snow slides that bedevilled early B.C. railways in the mountains. —BC Archives
Read MoreI’ve already introduced Father Henry ‘Pat’ Irwin to BC Chronicles readers; The Strangest Funeral Procession Ever just hinted at his strength of character.
I mean, how many men would risk their lives to comfort a grieving widow?
That tale, told mostly in Irwin’s own words, only hinted at the man who became a legend in his own lifetime, only to die tragically.
A more detailed look at Father Pat Irwin in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: B.C. has known many dedicated men of the cloth but Father Pat Irwin was one of a kind. —www.anglicanhistory.org/canada
Read More(Conclusion)
“My conscience is clear. It was no fault of mine for I did all that I should have done. The lights were on and the gates were locked.”
So said bridge tender Thomas Dodson, four days after the terrible accident in November 1916 that saw an overloaded “motor stage” plunge into the Fraser River. Nine of the 13 on board drowned.
Dodson obviously was anxious lest blame be pointed his way.
The conclusion to this sad story of early day B.C. automotive history in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: The grim headline of Vancouver’s Daily News Advertiser. —Newspapers.com
Read MoreSuch was one of the horrific headlines of Vancouver’s The World newspaper, Nov. 10, 1916.
Beneath the page-width banner, FOURTEEN KILLED IN B.C.E.R. WRECK, startled readers were informed that a “motor stage,” as multi-passenger vehicles that weren’t quite buses were defined a century and more ago, had plunged into the Fraser River.
It’s one of B.C.’s worst public transit disasters in history, second only to the collapse of Victoria’s Point Ellice Bridge on May 26, 1896, when an overloaded trolley crashed through rotting bridge timbers and killed 55 people.
In Victoria’s case it was the deteriorating stage of the bridge that killed; in the case of Vancouver’s tragedy, it was driver error.
The story of that ill-fated crash in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: Today’s Point Ellice Bridge. —Author’s Collection
Read MoreFor years in a previous lifetime I spelunked on weekends.
In other words, I and friends explored caves, small, large, often wet and dirty, but sometimes spectacular.
Which probably accounts for my particular interest is this legend of a lost cave as told by Rev. W.H. Collison, one of B.C.’s legendary missionaries among coastal First Nations. He tells the story in his fascinating memoir, In the Wake of the War Canoe (edited and annotated by Charles Lillard).
I’ll pass it on to BC Chronicles readers next week.
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PHOTO: Horne Lake’s Riverbend Cave is so spectacular it’s now a provincial park. —Author’s Collection
Read MoreToday’s so-called ‘war on drugs’ has an interesting parallel in history. In 1917, after a contested and controversial referendum, Prohibition was declared and, overnight, Canada Dry became more than a popular soft drink.
Officially, at any rate. In practice it was more a case of business as usual, despite the efforts of police.
There wasn’t a community in B.C., large or small, that wasn’t affected, that didn’t have its bootleggers, its stills, its ‘blind pigs,’ as 1000s of otherwise honest and law abiding citizens closed their eyes to the illegal booze around them or chose to actively engage in producing and selling it as a sideline or as a full time business.
A look at this fascinating chapter in provincial history in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: A Nelson wholesale liquor warehouse, 1899. —BC Archives
Read MoreIt’s interesting to speculate as to how many ways there are to turn a dishonest dollar. There must be as many variations to the old shell game as there are operators, and B.C. has known its share of these shady types.
Almost a century ago, Jacob Jacobsen (if that was his real name) earned his niche in provincial criminal lore when, under the alias John Hellsing, he worked a novel dodge on a Victoria realtor. His was, as a newspaper reported put it, a “smooth scheme,” and one not without its charm if something less than original.
But running afoul of the law in those pioneer days could be harsh, especially if one were sentenced to hard labour.
You’ll meet Mr. Jacobsen and other illuminaries in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: B.C jails had their own versions of the ball and chain brigade, shown here in an American state. —Wikipedia .
Read MoreIt was a colourful career that Thomas Herbert Murphy reflected upon in the summer of 1930. A lifetime that had been seen him in the mixed roles of sailor, blackbirder, prospector and Justice of the Peace.
Nova Scotia-born, he’d followed the will-o-wisp of adventure to the West Indies, Europe, China, the South Seas, New England, New Zealand, Australia, the United States and—finally—British Columbia.
As a seaman before the mast he’d known the great tea clippers. However, upon reaching Australia, he’d been bitten by the gold bug and, “once into mining you could not turn me to anything else".
Like legions before and since, Murphy was addicted to seeking his fortune and he spent the rest of his life in search of El Dorado.
His colourful story in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: Looking every inch the old prospector, Thomas Murphy, —findagrave.com
Read MoreIt’s so easy to just go with the obvious, to accept old newspaper accounts at face value. After all, the story is exciting enough that others have done it before you, so why look a gift horse in the mouth?
Heck, I’ve done it many times!
But recently, while researching another subject, I came upon an article—ah, the wonders of the digital age—in an 1890 edition of the Winnipeg Chronicle.
Winnipeg, need I say it, is a long way from British Columbia, but the Tribune story, prompted by a hanging in Kamloops, added a new dimension to the accepted story of American outlaw Frank Spencer. He’d escaped a previous date with the executioner below the line, it was said, then killed one man too many, this one above the 49th parallel where British justice prevailed.
Such is the accepted story, which reads like something out of the American Wild West. But is there more?
Of course there is; “life” is layered. And so was Frank Spencer.
I’ve told his story—as I knew it at the time—in my book, Outlaws of the Canadian West. Next week, courtesy of the Winnipeg Tribune and the Rev. T.W. Hall who attended to Spencer during his last hours while awaiting the gallows, the BC Chronicles will look at him again—but through a slightly different lens.
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PHOTO: While on the run from the law below the border, Frank Spencer lay low on a Kamloops area cattle ranch. —BC Archives
Read MoreEveryone has seen the story in the news: B.C. Ferries has contracted to spend billions—billions—of dollars, building new ferries in China.
The only real surprise is China; we’ve been ordering ferries from European countries for years.
There was a time, and not really all that long ago, when shipbuilding in B.C. was a mega industry, one absolutely vital to the nation’s defence and to its economy. We still have shipbuilding, of course, but the fabled shipyards of old, in Vancouver and Victoria, are history.
And since history is what the Chronicles are all about, I’ll take you back in time when this vital marine industry, like charity, began at home.
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PHOTO: Shift change at Burrard Shipyards, 1944. —BC Archives
Read MoreSo soon we forget; it’s almost part of the Canadian character, it seems.
How many times I’ve encountered cases of true heroism, often to the point of supreme sacrifice, during my extensive historical research. But even war heroes come and go in memory; civilian heroes who rise to the call at home and in peacetime rarely create more than a momentary ripple.
Monuments? Hardly. Immortalized in school textbooks? Not a chance.
Maybe a street or a building named after them before they fade into oblivion, but seldom more than that.
In next week’s BC Chronicles I tell you about four men who had at least two things in common: they gave their lives for their workmates and they’ve been forgotten.
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PHOTO: What kind of a man risks his life to help his fellow miners, trapped 1000s of feet underground? —BC Archives
Read More“With her holds full of water and possibly abandoned by the underwriters, the 10,000-ton American freighter Golden Harvest is lying at the mercy of North Pacific waves, a hoped-for harvest of the natives living along the rim of the inner Aleutian Islands and the bleak Alaska coast when the seas break her up and distribute the cargo remaining in her holds along the beaches of the northern coast...”
It wasn’t often that the mighty steam tug Salvage King had to admit defeat. For 15 years her name achieved almost legendary status in B.C. maritime circles—as fine a working lady as ever secured a bowline.
The exciting story of this famous salvage tug in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: There was a time when Victoria was considered to be the home of one of the finest salvage tugs in the world—the S.S. Salvage King.
Read MoreThe date: Mar. 4, 1910.
The site: Rogers Pass.
The toll: 62 railway workers swept away or buried alive.
The story: in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: Digging out the bodies and wreckage in the aftermath of one of B.C.’s worst railway and weather disaster. —Wikipedia
Read More(Conclusion)
The tragedy of Air India Flight 182 on June 23, 1985, the deadliest ever terrorist attack on a commercial airliner, was in the news last month for its 40th anniversary.
But who remembers Canadian Pacific Airlines’ CP 21, a DC-6B that blew up in mid-air near 100 Mile House, B.C., killing all 52 passengers and crew, in July 1965?
Investigation narrowed it down to an explosive detonated in the left rear lavatory. But by whom?
Suspicion focused on several passengers, meaning that if so, the murderer also died in the crash.
Next week in the BC Chronicles, the conclusion to what Global News has termed “one of Canada’s greatest aviation mysteries” that the CBC calls “the largest unsolved murder on Canadian soil”.
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PHOTO: —Author’s Collection
Read MoreA month short of 20 years before Air India Flight 182 was blown out of the sky by British Columbia-based terrorists, B,C, had its own aerial mass murder.
Mid-afternoon, July 8, 1965, CPA Flight 21, bound from Vancouver for Whitehorse, YT, exploded in the sky near 100 Mile House, crashing and killing all 52 persons aboard.
It’s B.C.’s worst mass murder and—unlike Air India—has been all but forgotten.
The sad and unsolved story of CPA Flight 21 in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: —A Canadian Pacific Airlines DC-6B such as the ill-fated CP 21 that crashed with all aboard in July 1965. —www.propspistonsandoldairliners.blogspot.com
Read MoreSunday before last, Belinda and I spent half a warm afternoon poking about the coal mine sites of South Wellington; something I’ve done a hundred times but a first for her.
It was a bus man’s holiday for me as I’m finally—finally—writing the book I’ve been researching, in archives and in the field, for 25 years. To do that, I need to know what changes if any have occurred since my last visits of a year ago.
Because things do change, more and faster all the time, it seems.
We’d already visited Extension, a ‘ghost town’ just southwest of Nanaimo that I’ve been to more times than I recall. Which made my rifling through my B.A. McKelvie file (Chronicles readers have met him before) a happy coincidence: I’d forgotten that he wrote about Extension before I hit the editorial scene.
That was in 1957, in the magazine section of the Vancouver Province.
So, in next week’s BC Chronicles I’m going to let Mr. McKelvie, who was considered to be B.C.’s premier historical writer in his day, tell you the sad and dramatic tale of The Day the Mine Blew Up: Ladysmith’s Day of Horror, October 5, 1909, when 32 men perished.
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PHOTO: These Extension miners were photographed at work in 1908; a year later, a devastating explosion would kill 32 of them. —BC Archives
Read MoreMore than one seagoing lady of the night has called Victoria, B.C., home port over the years. Ladies of ill repute who’d ghost into harbour unannounced, rest and restore then, as the city slept, quietly weigh anchor for destinations unknown.
To the curious, their masters and crew had little to say beyond a terse, “Bering Sea,” or equally vague “North Pacific.” Asked as to cargo, they’d grunt a muffled reference to “ballast,” and push on by.
So it was with the men of the schooner Halcyon. Unlike her namesake of Greek mythology, the noble kingfisher which calmed winter seas, this beautiful two-master created a storm wherever she sailed.
Her exciting story in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: This seagoing lady was, well, no lady. —BC Archives
Read More‘He lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.’
We haven’t heard from our old friend D.W. Higgins for a while. Not for want of material, I assure you, as my file for this pioneer journalist and one of B.C.’s all time great storytellers continues to grow.
While skimming my hit list for another Chronicle I keep passing one that has always intrigued me, sad tale that it is. So, cutting to the chase, for next week the story of a man whose dramatic fall from glory, but for Higgins, would be totally unknown to us today.
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PHOTO: Pioneer journalist D.W. Higgins is back this week with another fascinating tale of pioneer days. —Author’s collection
Read More“May Day, May Day, May Day—!”
The distress call pierced the grey stillness of Feb. 18, 1965. Then the voice was cut off, and static reigned the airwaves...
But the frantic plea had been heard and, as cold and weary miners, existing on chocolate bars, clawed at a mountain with shovels and bare hands in search of buried comrades, one of the largest rescue operations in B.C. history was begun.
The incredible story of the Granduc Mine disaster in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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PHOTO: The Granduc Mine, 1980. —BC Archives
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