The Chronicles Blog

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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(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 

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A 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  

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Sunday 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 

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More 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  

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‘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 

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“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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“Mr. President: It is with much diffidence that after repeated urging on your part I undertook to contribute a paper to this society...”

So began, modestly, George Hope Johnston’s address to the Calgary Historical Society in February 1920.

But he wasn’t there to reminisce about Prairie history. He was there to talk about, in the words of a Calgary Herald reporter, the “wild old days” of 1880s East Kootenay, B.C.

Johnston’s recollections, repeated verbatim in the newspaper, the reporter assured readers, would interest and amuse all who read them.

As I’m sure they will interest and amuse readers of next week’s BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: George Hope Johnston’s headstone. —findagrave.com

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Long before the famous war brides of the post Second World War there were the brides of colonial days; young British women,14-20, who gambled their futures by sailing halfway round the world to “the colonies” in hopes of finding husbands.

Those who landed in Victoria’s Inner Harbour in 1862 were, in the words of one of their own, “an odd assortment of females”.

The story of some of the 60 ladies of the bride ship Tynemouth in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: The Tynemouth was the largest of the bride ships used to transport prospective brides to the British colonies. —www.pixabay.com

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A full century and a quarter has passed since 19-year-old Edna Farnsworth died. Her suicide made headlines from Victoria to San Francisco. She had no money but was given an expensive, fancy plot in Ross Bay Cemetery.

Why such a fuss for a sex trade worker, one might ask? Why, all these years later, a public appeal to restore her grave?

The answer to this fascinating mystery in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Not everyone buried in Ross Bay Cemetery is remembered, so why Edna Farnsworth?

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Eric Duncan is remembered for having written what has been described as “the most important document for the history of the Comox Valley,” From Shetland to Vancouver Island: Recollections of Seventy-Five Years. 

Published in Edinburgh in 1937, it’s a fine read but long out of print. Happily, I’ve had a copy—a first edition, to boot—in my library for years and have read it twice. It was, in fact, one of my earliest antiquarian book finds.

Recently, I scanned it again and found a chapter which I’m sure will please Chronicles readers, “Sketches of Some Pioneers and Old-Timers.”

That’s next week in the BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Pioneer Comox Valley chronicler Eric Duncan. —Author’s Collection

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So the late great B.C. historian B.A. McKelvie titled this manuscript, decades ago.

I just found it in my archives; I really must shuffle my files more often.

For those who don’t recognize his name, ‘Pinkie’ McKelvie was a leading provincial journalist and the foremost historian and writer of ‘popular’ B.C. history in the 1920s-’50s. He was gone when I, a kid, history buff and aspiring author/historian, discovered him during my first visit to the BC Archives while looking for such serious topics as lost treasures, shipwrecks, stagecoach robberies...

McKelvie had been there, done that, decades before me. Not only did he leave a legacy of his historical research and writings, he inspired me. He’d made a career of writing about our colourful past; why couldn’t I?

Sure, he’d had a day job as a senior reporter and editor in Vancouver and Victoria, but that was a mere detail and, millions and millions of words later, here we are!

Among the treasures in a large box of McKelvie’s personal papers—letters, documents, manuscripts and some photos—that the late family member Phyllis Bomford kindly gave me 15-20 years ago, are several typescripts that, so far as I know, have never been published.

I correct that in next week’s Chronicles with ‘Six Weeks of Death,” a rousing tale of shipwreck.

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PHOTO: Bruce and Mrs. McKelvie. —Courtesy Phyllis Bomford  

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April 1925 marked the highlight of a lifetime for 86-year-old prospector Bill Brown of Barkerville.

On his first visit ‘outside’ in 53 years, he saw his first moving picture show in Quesnel. “The actors and actresses were there on the stage,” Bill marvelled, “just as if they were there in real life, only they were not there at all.”

The guest of longtime Cariboo resident and historian Louis Labourdais, Brown said that he hadn’t realized such a thing was possible.

For more than half a century he’d been all but out of touch with the world beyond Barkerville and vicinity. Ever since his arrival in the spring of 1872, the six-foot tall, white-haired miner had picked and panned his living from the Cariboo’s once-rich gold creeks.

There have been 10s of 1000s of men like him in B.C.’s history.

Pioneers who, unknown to us today, helped to lay the foundation for those who followed. We’ll never know their stories, or even their names. But, every so often, one of them—in this case prospector Bill Brown—escapes obscurity if only momentariy from old newspaper clippings. 

Bill Brown’s story in next week’s BC Chronicles. 

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PHOTO: A group of “oldtimers” pose for posterity in Barkerville in 1907. Was Bill Brown one of them? —BC Archives 

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