‘My First Christmas In Victoria’ by D.W. Higgins

Well, here we are—Christmas 2020.

This year of pandemic has been one heckuva ride even for those of us fortunate enough to have—so far—escaped more or less unscathed.

While 2020 may be almost over its legacy will linger long in fact and in memory.

But it’s Christmas: the time of year we make merry with family and friends, decorate a tree, exchange gifts, enjoy turkey dinner and plum pudding. Most of us can still do these things, even in this year of social distancing and caution, of course, but it’s going to a Christmas unlike any Yuletide any of us have known before.

Not since the Spanish ‘Flu of 1918-19 have we been so universally besieged by the reality and the threat of contagion.

I mentioned that, for most of us, Christmas is all about family and friends. It has ever been thus (at least since Charles Dickens). So it was for the hero of this week’s Chronicle. Much closer to home, Victoria is the setting for this week’s tale of Christmas as penned by pioneer journalist D.W. Higgins whom we’ve met before in these pages.

In 1860 he was a young reporter working for the fledgling British Colonist and the legendary Amor de Cosmos. Higgins was far from his Nova Scotia home and living alone with few friends near when he met the alluring and scheming Madame Fabre.

More than 40 years later, while writing his classic book The Mystic Spring and Other Tales of Western Life, he recalled that fateful day in the dingy, damp office of the Colonist this mysterious woman inadvertently set the stage for his most memorable Christmas...

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