The Chronicles Blog

To Englishman John (Jack) Green goes the honour of being Savary Island's first permanent resident. After years as a placer miner in the American Southwest, followed by some successful real estate ventures on Vancouver Island, he first set eyes on the island in the Strait of Georgia, northwest of Powell River, as a seagoing trader. 

He was 69 when he preempted 160 acres, built a one-room cabin with an equally humble store attached, and erected outbuildings and a cottage on the beach for his Native clientele. 

He sold the usual goods and foodstuffs, and fresh pork and mutton from the 300-odd animals he let roam loose on the island. Not to mention, (so police suspected) illicit liquid refreshment on the side.

By the age of 76 he’d prospered; many had seen the cash-box in his store, and a wallet choked with 10-dollar bills. 

One of those who saw old Man Green’s treasure resolved to make it his own.

The fascinating tale of murder and lost treasure on Savary Island in next week’s BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Today, Savary Island is a summer vacationer’s dream destination. — www.bcseakayak.com/savary-island/

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An Awful Accident to a Railway Train on the Union Colliery Line
Six Men Reported to Have Met Instant Death– the Wires Down

Such were the headlines of the Victoria Daily Times, Aug. 17 1898:

“The startling news was received in this city about noon to-day that a terrible catastrophe had occurred on the Union Colliery railway line early this morning, whereby at least six people had lost their lives.

The news spread like wildfire, and the greatest interest prevailed throughout the day. The Times at once set the telegraph wires in operation to ascertain the full particulars of the accident, but owing to the fact that the wires are grounded only the most meagre particulars could be obtained...”

Well, the telegraph wires aren’t grounded now, and you can read the full story of one of Vancouver Island’s next the coming issue of the BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: The impact from plunging eight stories shows graphically in this photo of the Trent River train wreck. —BC Archives

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One of the benefits of being a regularly published writer is that one automatically becomes a ‘destination’. By this I mean, I rarely know who my readers are but they know me, and how to contact me. 

And when they reach out it sometimes becomes a gift—more grist for my mill. 

Years ago, I came upon a story identified as an unpublished manuscript by the late Peter Cheeke of Cobble Hill, in his day a rural community between Victoria and Duncan. 

Mr. Cheeke was way ahead of his time; he liked to write about the paranormal, the kind of scripts later favoured by One Step Beyond and TV’s Rod Serling, host of The Twilight Zone.

Readers, TV viewers and movie-goers love that stuff today but, in the 1920s and possibly the 1930s when Mr. Cheeke was putting pen to paper (okay, the three manuscripts in my possession, courtesy of his son Peter Robert and grandson Ryan) are typewritten.  

The senior Mr. Cheeke was very avant garde. But one manuscript, untitled, is purely down-to-earth, the story of a hunter’s encounter with every backwoodsman’s nemesis, the Game Warden. It’s a treat—and next week’s BC Chronicle.

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PHOTO: A blacktail doe innocently poses for the camera. Does can only be hunted during posted hunting seasons. —www.blacktaildeer.org/about

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For months now we’ve been watching the drawn-out demise of Canada’s oldest corporation, the Hudson’s Bay Co.

Other major department stores have failed in recent years; companies we grew up with, trusted and patronized while eagerly awaiting their latest catalogue in the mail: Eaton’s, Woodwards and Sears, to name the three biggest.

Next week, the Chronicles take a stroll down memory lane for those readers old enough to have lived in the golden age of catalogues.

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PHOTO: An early T. Eaton Co. Catalogue. —https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca

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For 27 years now, I’ve written the special Remembrance Day edition of the Cowichan Valley Citizen. And all those years, all those 1000s of words later, I have more material to work with than when I started!

I’ve said it before, but as the first of three generations of my family who didn’t have to go to war, even to wear a uniform, I’m not only grateful, I’m beholden. By which I mean, I owe for the privilege of being born in, allowed to live in, a country such as Canada.

Researching, writing about and honouring all those men and women who have served Canada over the years is a joy and a privilege.

Ergo, next week’s BC Chronicles will be yet another Remembrance tribute from my extensive files. 

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PHOTO:  The Last Post is played at the Duncan Cenotaph. 

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(Conclusion)

He was barely middle-aged, this man of iron will and stamina, but he’d challenged his health too many times in the past and, now he was weighed down by sorrow. His closest friends noticed that he seemed to have aged perceptibly, and at least one of them even feared for his life.  

None could have foreseen that, after all he’d done for others, Henry Irwin would die tragically. His premature passing remains one of the sadder ironies of our history.

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PHOTO:  Father Pat Irwin was as remarkable as they come. —www.anglicanhistory.org/canada

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(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

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(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

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I’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  

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(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

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Such 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

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For 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

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Today’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 

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It’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 . 

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It 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

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It’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 

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Everyone 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 

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So 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

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“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.

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The 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 

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