The Chronicles Blog

One of the joys of publishing what really amounts to an online magazine is that it often draws a response from a reader, either as a brief comment or as something much more ambitious.

In my previous life as a weekly columnist in the Cowichan Valley Citizen, I condensed a chapter from my book, Outlaws of the Canadian West, which is a compilation of new chapters and ones originally published in 1974 as Outlaws of the Canadian Frontier then, again, in 1977, as Outlaws of Western Canada. (Don’t tell me I don’t recycle.)

Fast-forward to 2019 and Outlaws’ third incarnation as explained above. It was my weekly Chronicles column in the Citizen that drew a wonderful email from John McNab.

I’d been inspired, if that isn’t too strong a word, to run the story, “Intensive Manhunt Isn’t B.C.’s First,” by the fact that for two weeks the news media had been reporting a murder spree by two Vancouver Island teenagers who at first were thought to be among the victims, then identified as the killers.

It reminded me of another manhunt that dated back to 1911—the one I’d written about in Outlaws. The story of Moses Paul and Paul Spintlum is right out of a Louis L’Amour novel, when the British Columbia frontier was almost as wild as the American Wild West. The big difference was that we on the north side of the 49th parallel had British justice, the RCMP and the Provincial Police vs. the Hollywood-style anarchy that prevailed in many American states.

But we did have our outlaws, too, and Paul and Spintlum as they were known were as rootin’-tootin’ as anybody below the line. John McNab spotted a connection between these desperadoes and his family and generously shares it next week with Chronicles readers.

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Photo caption: What did Lucie (Bones) Truran do that made Paul and Spintlum, wanted for three murders and on the run for over a year, want to kill her?

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One of the nuisances of driving is having to keep your eyes on the road, a real problem for me sometimes.

A case in point happened last week when, driving south from Chemainus, I cleared the intersection at the Island Highway and Mount Sicker Road that I’ll always know as the “Red Rooster.”

I always watch for and think of two things. At night I look up at the blackness that is Mount Sicker and marvel at the thought that, 100 and more years ago, an estimated 2000 people lived up there in the copper mining communities of Lenora and Tyee. Now, not so much as a candle light. All gone, gone, gone...

By day, immediately south of the intersection, I look to the right, just above eye level. Now it’s field, with what appears to be a gently-curved fence line skirted by broom bushes. But it’s not a fence. It’s one of the few surviving stretches of the Lenora & Mount Sicker Railway, the narrow gauge shortline that the ill-starred Henry Croft built to ship copper from his mine on Mount Sicker to the newly-established deep water port and smelter at Crofton.

Several adjoining properties on the high (west) side of the Highway share what looks like a driveway paralleling the Highway in their front yards. That’s more of the LMSRR before it crossed the Highway, E&N Railway tracks and farm fields to climb Mount Richards on its winding, roller coasting ride to salt water.

What caught my eye last week was dramatic. The property owner is building a new house or outbuilding and has bulldozed a new driveway, using the old railway grade. Unfortunately (I just had a quick glance) it appears that the historic grade has been dug down three or four feet.

Meaning, in effect, that it has been destroyed. God, how I hate ‘progress’ sometimes!

Which is precisely why I try to ‘save’ history is print and in photos if I can’t in fact. Sometimes we actually do save something significant—take the Kinsol Trestle, as good an example as you can get. But, alas, the Kinsols are few and far between and the sporadic battles to save history for posterity more often than not end dismally.

But enough of that: next week I tell you the story of the remarkable Lenora & Mount Sicker Railway. It was an engineering marvel in its day, and I’m pleased I’ve been able to hike much of it. The famous switchbacks on Mount Richards are still there, much as when the little railway was abandoned and its rails torn up for scrap. But, sadly, not much else.

On that happy note I leave you until next week!

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As I’ve said so many times before, history just keeps on coming.

Everywhere I go, every time I open my mail, every time I read the paper, there’s something ‘old’ in the news. So often lately that they’re ganging up on me. So, next week I open my mail bag and my clippings and email files and share with you some of these news stories whose roots are firmly in the past.

Some of them may surprise you. I promise they will entertain you.

That’s next week in the Chronicles.

PS: Speaking of email, some of my best leads over the years have come through suggestions of Chronicles readers, over the 23 years of publication in the Cowichan Valley Citizen, and in the months since they’ve been online. Often they arrive as a comment to a published post, sometimes they’re requests for specific subjects and, often, they’re requests for information.

I do my best to respond and I remind readers that I’m always open to queries, suggestions, even (grrrr) corrections. Just keep in mind that I’ve never made a mistake in print—that I’ve admitted to.

Photo: The coastal CPR liner SS. Princess Victoria. Renowned B.C. artist E.J. Hughes' painting of the Victoria entering Nanaimo Harbour recently sold at auction for almost $1 million. Another nugget in the news.

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Back in 2007 the Nanaimo Star ran a look-back piece on the city’s ‘Costco Caper’ robbery of Mar. 7, 1996.

This was a rather ingeniously planned heist of Loomis Armoured guards as they made a delivery of cash to Costco’s ATM machine. The lone robber escaped with seven cassettes of currency; the amount stolen has never been released to the public.

As of 2007 the file remained open, according to RCMP but now, 24 years later, it seems highly unlikely that this ‘cold case’ will be solved.

Not so Nanaimo’s great bank robbery of December 1924, one of the province’s all-time classic heists. In this remarkable case the bandits, all Americans and professional criminals, were soon identified and arrests began to follow.

But, as you’ll see next week, this audacious hold-up with its connections to notorious gangsters of the Roaring ‘20s remains one of the more outstanding cases in our criminal annals.

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By some freak of nature you won’t find jade on Vancouver Island. But you can find plenty of it—some of it really valuable—on the British Columbia mainland, particularly in the Fraser River country between Lillooet and Hope.

In China and Japan jade is valued even more than gold. Which explains why pioneering Chinese prospectors kept their eyes open for this gemstone which has been used for carving objects of art for centuries.

B.C. jade, more technically known as nephrite, has been in the news lately thanks to the theft of a 1300-kilogram (that’s over a ton!) jade boulder from its place of display in front of Cache Creek’s Cariboo Jade and Gifts store.

The massive green stone had been there since 1985, its owners aware that it had more sentimental than cash value because it was low-quality. Apparently the thieves didn’t know that because they went to the trouble of hauling it away with the use of an excavator and flat-deck trailer.

The monster jade stone has since been recovered and, at last report, the RCMP have identified two suspects but no arrests have been made.

Next week I’ll tell you all about the ongoing hunt for B.C.’s green gold...

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For years I’ve been a devoted fan of garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores, always watching for the useful, the exotic and the unique—at least as I define the terms.

One of the more outstanding treasures turned up in a community 'free store' on Gabriola Island years ago. It’s a framed colour photo of a church memorial window. Not in itself a real turn-on for me.

But that changed when I read the penned caption. It identified the window as a memorial for Michael F.A.Ney, RCN. RCN stands for Royal Canadian Navy, of course.

According to the caption, he was killed “while serving against the Mau Mau, October 31st, 1954”.

What they hey? The Mau Mau were an independence movement in Kenya!

I knew there had to be a story here so the photo was worth the $10 asking price.

But it was only last year, thanks to faithful Chronicles reader and avid researcher Jim La Bossiere that I was able to learn more about the enigmatic Michael Ney, RCN.

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It should go without saying that we live in a world of constant change.

One of those changes is profound, even in a world besieged by pandemic.

I’m referring to the recent tsunami wave of consciousness of our colonial past. For Americans, it’s acknowledging a groundswell of resentment for more than two centuries of mistreatment of indigenous and black people. Even the Confederate flag, revered by millions, has come into disrepute.

Closer to home, we’ve just recognized that residential schools were evil—yet it’s only the tip of the iceberg of our colonial history.

History is not about the past—it’s about the present and the future. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply isn’t paying attention!

Next week, the Chronicles looks into the future by looking at our past—the good and the bad.

That said, Happy New Year!

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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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An online reminder that Dec. 6, 1917 marked the 103rd anniversary of the infamous Halifax Harbour explosion reminded me of British Columbia’s own maritime blast of historic proportions.

That was the blowing up of the freighter S.S. Greenhill Park in Vancouver Harbour, on Mar. 6, 1945.

Meaning that 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of this marine tragedy that rocked the Vancouver waterfront and claimed the lives of six longshoremen and two seamen. Until the collapse of the Second Narrows Bridge, June 17, 1958, it was Vancouver’s worst disaster.

You can read all about it in next week’s Cowichan Chronicles.

Photo: A close-up of the carnage on board and alongside the freighter S.S. Greenhill Park, in Vancouver Harbour.--Photo Courtesy of Vancouver Sun
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At the time—Oct. 1, 1951—it was the worst aviation accident in British Columbia history. It’s now the 18th which shows you how far we’ve come in 70 years.

Although I’ve always been fascinated by old aircraft and plane wrecks are a natural extension of that interest, I’ve only managed to get to several over the years.

The one on Nanaimo’s Mount Benson is the one that has intrigued me most of all. I first head of it as a kid and was reminded of it in the mid-1970s as I came out of a north Nanaimo department store and saw the sun glinting on something on the southwest face of Mount Benson.

It looked silver, like some kind of monument, which I took it to be. When I asked someone about it, he replied that it was a memorial to a plane wreck, the one that had intrigued me for years.

Turns out he was wrong: All these years later, there is no memorial to the 26 people who died in the crash of a Queen Charlotte Airlines Canso.

Fast-forward to last June when I was offered a guided tour to the wreck site. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity.

I tell you allow about it in next week’s Cowichan Chronicles...

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For those of you who don’t recognize the name B.A. McKelvie, aka Bruce McKelvie, aka ‘Pinky’ McKelvie, he was in his day one of the best known journalists and historians in the province.

But that was long ago and he was retired before I first encountered some of his works in the Provincial Archives. McKelvie was right up my alley, with his newspaper articles on crimes and shipwrecks and other exciting events in B.C. history. (I was in my early teens so it was these kinds of stories that initially appealed to me.) McKelvie and retired B.C. Provincial Policeman Cecil Clark, who wrote true crime stories for the magazine section of The Daily Colonist, inspired me to devote myself to historical non-fiction.

But back to McKelvie: Years later I came to know more about him as a man, thanks in part to the late Lois Bomford, a family member, who allowed me access to many of his manuscripts, published and otherwise, and to other documents relating to his journalistic career.

That’s when I learned that, as a very young newspaper reporter in Vancouver, he’d packed a gun when he went to work! That he was there the day Police Chief M.B. MacLennan was gunned down in a wild shoot-out. All this in downtown Vancouver!

Ah, the good old days... I tell the story of Bruce McKelvie’s role in Chief MacLennan’s death in the line of duty in next week’s Chronicles.

Photo: A very young journalist/historian Bruce McKelvie was there, notebook in hand, the day Vancouver Police Chief Malcolm MacLennan was killed by a crazed gunman. --Family photo courtesy of Lois Bomford

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Having finished Charles Herbert Dickie’s sprightly memoir over the past six weeks, concluding with his firsthand observations of the R.B. Bennett and Mackenzie King governments at the start of the Great Depression, it’s tempting for me, as editor, to close the file.

But there’s more to Dickie’s story, thanks to numerous articles that appeared over the years in the Cowichan Leader. From the time of his involvement in the copper mining strike on Mount Sicker, he was considered to be newsworthy; as indeed he was.

So I ask readers to indulge both Mr. Dickie, and me, in allowing him one more week to summarize his out-of-parliament activities, many of which took place in the Cowichan Valley.

I do so in the belief that most readers will have come to share my admiration for this genial, hearty frontiersman who went on to serve 14 years in Parliament. His long out of print and extremely rare memoir, Out of the Past, is, in my opinion at least, a thoroughly enjoyable tale of a fascinating pioneer.

If only more of our trailblazers had set down their lives on paper!

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We’ve been following Charles Herbert Dickie’s memoir Out of the Past.

Last week we accompanied him on his almost round-the-world voyage as he recharged his mental battery after the stress of seeing the money he’d made from the sale of his shares in the Tyee copper mine on Mount Sicker all but disappear in unsuccessful mining ventures in the Stewart River area of northwestern British Columbia.

Ever the optimist, although he lost his money and changed careers, he never did lose the mining bug.

In between, seeking relief from pouring more money (and effort) down holes that, he recalled ruefully, offered less and less in return the deeper they went, he took another voyage, this one to the Orient. This is where we pick him up in this week’s Conclusion.

But that isn’t the end of Dickie’s story any more than it was the end of his life and career. Despite his disappointing experiences in the B.C. Legislature, he returned to politics—this time, federally—and served several terms in Ottawa as a Member of Parliament.

In the final instalment of his life story which he wrote during his retirement, he gives insight into the dark-and-sometimes-dirty politics of big government. (Some things never change...)

We’ll finish with Mr. Dickie (one of my favourite pioneers, by the way) with a recap of his mining endeavours, both locally and up North.

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Our hero C.H. Dickie has come a long way since he left home in Ontario: to Michigan, to California and on to the Cowichan Valley then the Stewart region.

Having become disenchanted with his first term of office as a Member of the Legislature, and with money in hand from his successful investment in a copper mine on Mount Sicker, he was now smitten with mining and the hope, however remote, of striking it rich. With others, as the Mount Sicker boom began to dim, he was drawn to the wilds of British Columbia’s isolated northwestern corner.

For the rest of his life, even when serving as a Member of Parliament, he’d be irresistibly drawn to the search for precious minerals. Although he did so with little to no success, he never gave up hoping: “I continued,” he tells us in his memoir, “at divers times and in various places to put down ‘damn-fool’ holes in the landscape, shaking dice, as it were, with the mountains, but with ill success.

“Every mineral deposit I worked on was wrong side up. The deeper I went, the leaner the metallic contents...”

Did he quit? No. But he did “decide it was advisable to take a rest and give my Jinx time to leave me.” This is where we resume Out of the Past, Part V.

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Last week Charles Dickie recounted his hilarious days as the co-host of the rough and ready Alderlea Hotel, in what was then known as Duncan’s Station.

(Ah, the good old days, when men were men, the booze, sometimes watered, flowed free, the steaks were tough as leather and fist fights and crude practical jokes were the order of the day.)

Until the rich copper strike on Mount Sicker, Duncan’s (Crossing) had been just a quiet cluster of stores and businesses at the strategic intersection of Trunk Road and the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway that served as the Cowichan Valley’s commercial centre.

That changed dramatically with the Mount Sicker copper boom. Short-lived though it was, it produced millions of dollars in profits, mostly for English investors, but local merchants also prospered while it lasted.

As did our hero, Charles Dickie, who, as we’ve seen, made a tidy sum from his investment in the nascent Tyee Claim which, after he’d sold out, went on to become Mount Sicker’s richest producer.

With money in his pocket for the first time and, having divested himself of his hotel interests, with time on his hands, he looked about for something to do. A chance conversation set him on a fateful course to enter politics. This is where we resume his story as originally told in Dickie’s self-published (and now extremely rare) memoir, Out of the Past.

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Welcome to the third instalment of Charles Herbert Dickie’s memoir, Out of the Past, “by an M.P..” As I’ve noted, you’re not likely to find it in a used book store—or even online.

Dedicated to the memory of carefree friends, it’s small, just 20,000 words in length, but it’s a fascinating look at not just Dickie’s colourful career, but also the remarkable circumstances in which he found himself in Michigan, California then British Columbia, and the oftimes bigger-than-life characters he encountered along the way.

Dickie, who never lost his sense of humour, had a keen eye for human frailty—that of others and his own. The resulting tale is of particular interest to students of Cowichan Valley and British Columbia history as, once he arrived in B.C., he never left other than to serve for 14 years in Ottawa as the Member of Parliament for Nanaimo.

After an exciting stint as a sheriff in Michigan, he hoboed his way through California and arrived, penniless, in Victoria where he quit work in a sawmill because of the poor food and accommodation, quit his job as a fireman on the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway after an altercation with an engineer, served as a special constable during race riots n Vancouver, then returned to the E&N as a conductor—a story in itself.

This is where we resume Out of the Past in this third instalment of Charles Dickie’s rollicking life story....

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As I noted last week, you’re not likely to find Charles Herbert Dickie’s memoir, Out of the Past, “by an M.P.,” in a used book store—or even online.

Dedicated to the memory of carefree friends, it’s small (128 pages) and just 20,000 words in length.

But make no mistake: It’s a great read and of particular interest to students of Cowichan Valley and British Columbia mining history.

A member of the B.C. Provincial Legislature for a single term, then a Member of Parliament for Nanaimo for 14 years, his background as a sheriff in Michigan, as a fireman with the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway, as a saloonkeeper in Duncan, as the principal owner of the Richard III copper mine on Mount Sicker, and as a fortune hunter in the Stewart River wilds of northern B.C., is a fascinating story.

Before making his way to B.C. via Victoria, Dickie found himself penniless in California and forced to take on odd jobs just to get by. This is where we resume Out of the Past in this second instalment of his rollicking life story....

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You’re not likely to find Charles Herbert Dickie’s memoir, Out of the Past, “by an M.P.,” in a used book store—or even online.

Dedicated to the memory of carefree friends, it measures 3.5 inches by five, and 128 pages, it’s just 20,000 words in length, more comparable to an e-book than to a pocket book, and it’s stapled rather than bound. All in all, it’s pretty small and likely was printed on the cheap.

But make no mistake: It’s a great read and of particular interest to students of Cowichan Valley and British Columbia mining history.

A member of the B.C. Provincial Legislature for a single term, then a Member of Parliament for Nanaimo for 14 years, his background as a sheriff in Michigan, as a fireman with the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway, as a saloonkeeper in Duncan, as the principal owner of the Richard III copper mine on Mount Sicker, and as a fortune hunter in the Stewart River wilds of northern B.C., his is a fascinating story.

Best of all, he tells it well. Dickie was smart, shrewd, enterprising and never seems to have lost his sense of humour, not even when he all but lost most of the small fortune he’d, ever so briefly, acquired during Cowichan’s copper boom.

Towards the end of his full life, he joked that every mine he’d ever invested in had proved to be a bottomless pit, money-wise.

What follows is the first instalment of Dickie’s rare memoir. I’ve left editing to a minimum so as to let him tell you his story in his own words. I’ve added footnotes where I felt it necessary, either to make more understandable to the modern reader, or to fill in what I considered to be blanks in certain chapters.

In one chapter only, I’ve deleted references to people of other races which, today, would be considered racist. Dickie wasn’t perfect. He was a man of his times, when the British Empire was largely built at the expense of its coloured dominions and the attitudes of white supremacy prevailed.

That said, I really like C.H. Dickie. And I think you will, too, when you read his look back at an amazing and adventurous career. He wasn’t perfect—who is? But, overall, he’s one of our pioneers who’s worthy of remembrance and respect.

Caption: Charles Herbert Dickie, MLA, MP and adventurer fit right into British Columbia's Wild West.

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Cowichan’s legendary Tzouhalem is in the news again. Not the Quamichan war chief himself—he’s been dead for well over a century—but the fact that he's going to be the subject of a movie.

Reporter Robert Barron recently reported in the Cowichan Valley Citizen that documentary filmmaker Harold C. Joe, a member of Cowichan Tribes, and a film crew are making a television documentary that will “examine the near-mythic figure of Chief Tzouhalem through interviews and creative re-enactments".

The operative word here is “creative” as the only existing written records that refer to Tzouhalem are the hand-me-downs of non-Indigenous (i.e. white) contemporaries (some of them in positions of authority and therefore adversarial).

Meaning that Tzouhalem is seen today through a racially and colonially tinted lens—the very lens that’s now under critical scrutiny across Canada.

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I have a single, very vague memory of Victoria’s street cars.

It would have been when my father was away in the navy as Mom and I boarded a street car in the Cloverdale Road area of Saanich to go to town. (A long walk from our home on Brett Avenue for someone my age, I can tell you.)

I remember the driver at the front and the glass-sided box filled with coins and paper tickets, and a well-worn floor and hard seats, but not a whole lot more. Then, for years after motorized buses had taken over public transit, several downtown Victoria streets with their flush-mounted iron rails yet intact, and the giant, corrugated iron barn on Cloverdale where the trolleys were kept and repaired. It stood, unused, until into the 1960s or so when the Hudson’s Bay Co. finally razed it to build a warehouse.

And, even after that, two of the old trolleys retired to private acreages, one in Saanich, one in Colwood, for use, I suspected, as chicken houses.

But that’s it.

I have two books been written about Victoria’s and Vancouver’s street cars in my library and now, thanks to friend and reader Lorelei Rondeau, an illustrated booklet published by the B.C. Electric Railway Co.

This special April 1955 issue of The Buzzer, entitled Rails-to-Rubber, “cordially invited” the public to “take a last ride FREE” aboard Vancouver’s street cars which were about to be retired.

Next week I share this Buzzer with Chronicles readers who will, I’m sure, find the photos of this now long-gone mode of public transportation as fascinating as I have. Anyone who has ridden a bus lately will realize how far we’ve come in 65 years!

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