Ho! for the Koksilah

By mid-1905, the incredibly rich copper strike on Mount Sicker which had sparked three mines, two townsites, two smelters, a railway, a tramline and a deepsea shipping port, had peaked. Although the mines continued to give diminished returns, the principal operators began casting about for another source of income.

The exciting rumours of a rich silver strike on the Koksilah River, specifically in the Kinsol Valley, set their hopes soaring.

Koksilah River silver never came close to achieving the size and scope of the activity on Mount Sicker but, for five years, it kept prospectors hoping and hopping.

The story of the Cowichan Valley’s second mining boom in this week’s BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: For a few short years the Lenora Mine, as was the neighbouring Tyee Mine, fabulously rich. But, by 1905, the bloom was off the rose for Mount Sicker. —BC Archives

promoPatricia MacGregor Graphic DesignerMarch 12, 2026

Black Wednesday Spelled Death For the Coal Dust Twins

Way back in the Dark Ages, 1977 to be exact, I completed a three-week-long blitz of dozens of southern mainland B.C. ghost towns while researching a never completed series of books on the subject.

non-membersPatricia MacGregor Graphic DesignerJanuary 13, 2022Disasters, non-members

COVID-19: Great Depression Rerun?

There was an old house in Victoria West, immediately beside Tillicum Road and just a block or so shy of the Burnside Road intersection, that my mother would point out to me from time to time. The fact that she repeated herself told me that she had reason to remember it well. Once operated as a Relief store, it was where, as a child, her parents, armed with a relief voucher from some government agency or church, had bought her a “new” Christmas coat.

Are they out there? John Magor’s UFOs

I’ve never been able to quite believe in UFOs (flying saucers). Or Sasquatch. Or ghosts.

Mind you, I’ve wavered a few times, if only briefly; sometimes from reading or hearing particularly credible news reports or solid firsthand accounts of alleged sightings. Mostly, my skepticism has come closest to losing its resolve after

Victoria’s House of Horrors

This grisly tale of Victoria’s ‘Pest House’ was originally set down in print more than a century ago by Victoria journalist and politician D.W. Higgins. By then Higgins, who’d come to B.C. for the Fraser River gold rush, was retired and enjoying the role of raconteur in a weekly article in the Colonist.

non-membersPatricia MacGregor Graphic DesignerApril 8, 2020Victoria Crime, non-members

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