Rabbit Holes

They’re a curse, I tell you!

I defy anyone to pore through old newspapers and documents on a daily basis as I do and not be pulled down, down, down by these unforeseen, unavoidable and irresistible sirens. 

You can hardly turn a page, it seems, that there isn’t another story crying out to you: “Read me”.

If you’re lucky, they’re what I’ve come to call Nuggets—shorties too small to make a regular story as appears here weekly in the BC Chronicles but too good to dismiss. So I save them and set them aside. The years go by—and the file grows...

It’s time for me to take a stand.

Here we are, barely into another new year and I’m still sorting through 100s of clippings, manuscripts and notes. So, this week in the Chronicles, a look at some of these unusual and often quirky events and characters that once, if only momentarily, made it onto the historical record.

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PHOTO:  There’s a story to be sure behind this graphic photo of an accident during construction of the Alaska Highway in 1943. My point being that historical researchers are forever being lured off the track by kinky news stories and photos. —BC Archives