Cowichan’s ‘Hanging Tree’ (Part 2)

As we’ve seen, two men were pivotal to the events leading up to the Cowichan Valley’s only recorded hanging.

The first one is well known; in fact, Sir James Douglas is remembered as ‘the father of British Columbia’.

Such can’t be said for Tomo Antoine, the phantom-like Iroquois-Chinook woodsman whose skills as an interpreter and spy were essential to every major exploration of Vancouver Island and naval police expedition in the 1850s.

He has, alas, become provincial history’s ‘invisible man.’

Which isn’t to say that he didn’t leave his own indelible mark on Vancouver Island history even if it has, for the most part, been forgotten.

That’s next week, in Part 2 of Cowichan’s ‘Hanging Tree’ in the Chronicles.

 *  *  *  *  *
PHOTO: Fur trader, colonial governor and “statesman” Sir James Douglas. —www.biographi.ca