The Chronicles Blog

Can you even imagine downtown Duncan without its iconic City Hall?

It’s been there, originally as the federal building and post office, for more than a century. Its image of clock and bell tower has been used as a marketing logo for Duncan for years.

City Hall is downtown Duncan.

So what would make anyone even consider tearing it down? The answer to that is a very big and real concern: earthquakes.

Older brick structures, alas, are at great risk of failure in such catastrophic events. In the case of City Hall, moreover, there’s the significant heritage factor to be considered.

There are two ways that City Hall can be quake-proofed, one purely pragmatic the other offering protection to its heritage vales, but both are expensive. Duncan taxpayers are going to have to choose one of these options or opt for a new City Hall.

Which would mean, in effect, demolition of their 1913 landmark.

I tell the story of City Hall in next week’s Chronicles.

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“Gold! Gold! Gold!”

All these years later, I can see and hear him now. The late Jack Fleetwood, the man with the photographic memory, the man fellow local historians regarded as the Oracle of the Cowichan Valley, was addressing a small gathering of the Shawnigan Lake Historical Society.

An audience so small that it could fit in a lakeside boat house, the SLHS having just been founded by the late Brownie Gibson and several fellow history buffs.

Resting on his good hip, hand on the other, Jack began slowly, pausing between each exclamation for dramatic effect. His subject, gold mining on the Island, held his audience spellbound for there’s nothing more guaranteed to catch a listener’s ear.

Particularly when it’s a tale of gold being lost and found in years gone by...

Gold, to varying degrees, is in virtually every stream on Vancouver Island and many are the tales of its having been found in quantity then ‘lost’ again through the discoverer’s death or by some other misadventure.

A century and three-quarters ago, the first whites to settle in the Cowichan Valley were, for the most part, settlers, here to farm. Sam Harris came to found a township at Cowichan Bay. But he wasn’t all business.

Not when he heard the stories of gold nuggets from a cave near the head of Cowichan Lake, nuggets moulded by the local Natives for use as bullets! Off he went in search, but he didn’t find the cave nor, so far as is known, did others who tried.

But the legend of Cowichan Lake country’s Lost Bullets Mine lives on, as we’ll see in next week’s Chronicle.

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Her only known photo is fascinating in itself. She’s young, fair skinned, somewhat plainish bordering on attractive, without makeup and neatly coiffed. She isn’t looking into the camera but slightly upward to her right, as if at something across the room.

Her high-collared dress has a pattern of conflicting stripes and swirls, with puffed-up shoulders.

But it’s her God-awful hat that pulls the eye. It’s a cornucopia of flowers, lace and ribbons. It most resembles a bowl of wax fruit dumped upside down.

It’s black and white, of course, because her photo was taken in 1898, and it’s high-res as it was shot with a large format camera by the pioneer Victoria photographer, Hanna Maynard.

But Belle’s isn’t your ordinary photographic portrait, she isn’t Hannah’s client and she isn’t posing by choice.

No, Hannah’s client for this photographic assignment was the Victoria Police Department and the photo in question is one of the VPD’s earliest mug shots.

Belle, you see, was in trouble, deep trouble with the law—the result of what was described as “unbridled passion and mad jealousy”.

I’ll tell you the sad tale of Belle Adams in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Pioneer Victoria photographer Hannah Maynard. —Wikipedia

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As I reported two weeks ago, the Cowichan Station Area Association, operators of the Hub, is looking at taking possession of the deconsecrated St. Andrew’s Church. Negotiations are underway with the Anglican Diocese of B.C. Apparently the beautiful century-old church beside the Koksilah River needs serious and expensive repairs and funding remains to be determined.

Should a deal be struck the CSAA wants to use the former church as a non-denominational community centre, “a place for weddings and funerals or a quiet place for contemplation,” said spokesperson Melanie Watson. The fact that it comes with a wraparound cemetery obviously narrows down its potential options.

Ten years ago I published Tales the Tombstones Tell: A Walking Guide to Cemeteries in the Cowichan Valley, the culmination of 100s of hours of boots-on-the-ground research, 100s of photos, miles and miles of driving, and the drawing upon decades of archival research.

I love cemeteries. To me they’re oases of peace and quiet even when situated beside busy thoroughfares. A sense of peace transcends all, at least it does for me. Morbid? Hardly!

St. Andrew’s, Cowichan Station, is one of my favorites. Situated beside the Koksilah River and our last surviving wooden truss road bridge, within yards of the original sandstone E&N overpass, it and its surrounding cemetery is worth a visit at any time, particularly on a spring morning. Be sure to check out the headstone that shows in the left foreground of the above photo—this has to be one of, if not the, most distinctive grave markers in all of B.C.

Anyway, the news of its possible new lease on life set me to thinking that many Chronicles readers (for shame!) won’t have read Tales the Tombstones Tell. Which explains why the chapter on St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, Cowichan Station, is next week’s Chronicle.

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PHOTO: St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, Cowichan Station. —www.templelodge33.ca

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“Great excitement has been recently produced in Victoria by the exhibition of a nugget of pure gold weighing 14 ounces, procured by the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company from the Indians of Queen Charlotte’s Island. There is a generally prevalent impression founded on the discovery of gold in that island in the year 1851, that it will yet become a productive gold field.”

Note the reference to 1851.

That’s a full six years before the first reports of the discovery of placer gold by First Nations prospectors began to seep out of the B.C. Interior and, in turn, start one of history’s greatest gold rushes to ‘Fraser’s River’ the following year.

The resulting rush, and an even greater treasure hunt in the Cariboo, placed virtually unknown mainland British Columbia on the world map, and set it on course to becoming Canada’s westernmost province.

But who remembers the Queen Charlotte (Haida Gwaii) gold rush of 1850, with its reports of fabulously rich gold deposits that were jealously guarded by its fierce residents?

White prospectors were persona non grata—the Haidas guarded their seaside ‘mines’ to the point of committing piracy. It’s a great story as you’ll see in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: It was a gold nugget such as this that sparked an unwelcome rush to the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1850. —www.coinnews.net

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To his superiors he was a rebel, a troublemaker and a bore; to his students he was a stern taskmaster whose word was law and whose temper, uncertain at best of times, was to be avoided at all costs.

Still, he left his name on our maps. You’ll meet him in next week’s Chronicles.

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(Conclusion )

In this week’s conclusion to the saga of the On-To-Ottawa Trek, the B.C. Camp Relief Workers have arrived in Regina where they are met with an offer to meet with Prime Minister R. B. Bennett.

All believe that it’s a trap, that he’s just stalling while police and militia reinforcements are rushed to Regina.

But they’ve gone all that way with the proclaimed intention of dealing directly with the prime minister—for all their mistrust, they have no choice but to agree.

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PHOTO: Prime Minister R.B. Bennett. —Wikipedia

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(Part 3 )

It appears that the anti-vaxxing truckers’ protest that besieged Ottawa and blocked cross-border points, inconvenienced 1000s of fellow Canadians and cost the nation 100s of millions of dollars, has been shut down by police.

The crisis reached the point that, for only the second time in history, the Emergency Act was invoked.

In trying to compare the ‘On-To-Ottawa Trek’ by thousands of unemployed men in 1935 to the three-week-long occupation of Ottawa, next week’s Chronicle is based upon the recollections of onetime Lake Cowichan resident and Spanish Civil War veteran Ronald Liversedge.

His account of the Woodward’s fracas and the eight-hour occupation of the Vancouver Public Museum, as seen from the inside of the unemployed workers’ protests, is, as to be expected, partisan.

That said, however, his description of the events leading up to the Ottawa Trek, as he recalled them while living in Lake Cowichan in the 1960s, is accepted as being one of the best accounts of these epoch events in Canadian history.

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PHOTO: Street barbecues, yes, but no need of soup kitchens for the protesting truckers in Ottawa. —Public Domain

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(Part 2 )

In trying to compare the ‘On-To-Ottawa Trek’ by thousands of unemployed men in 1935 to the continuing occupation of Ottawa and the blockading of crucial border crossings by anti-vaxxing truckers and their supporters, this week’s Chronicle is based upon the “recollections” of onetime Lake Cowichan resident and Spanish Civil War veteran Ronald Liversedge.

As we saw last week, in 1934, preparations were underway in Vancouver for a general strike across B.C. Thousands of single men had rebelled against government-run relief work camps where they’d laboured for their board and 25 cents a day.

What they wanted was real work—real jobs with pay cheques that enabled them to live their lives as productive and contented citizens, to look to the future with hope and optimism.
But this was the Great Depression, the Dirty ‘30s.

The capital systems of the entire western world had foundered after the stock market crash of 1929. Canada was no exception. As noted last week, 30 per cent of the Canadian labour force was out of work, one in five Canadians were dependent upon government relief for survival, and the unemployment rate remained above 12 per cent until Canada began to prepare for another world war—and workers were again wanted.

For most of 10 years, federal and provincial governments met the challenges hesitantly, uncertainly, even reluctantly, often with downright cavalier and niggardly responses. The result was social unrest such as Canada had never seen before.

Until now if one wishes to equate what’s happening in Ottawa and at border crossings to the events of 1934-35.

Please note: In recounting these historic events, l would make known that, although I’m generally empathetic, my own beliefs don’t totally agree with those of Mr. Liversedge and company of 87 years ago. I’d also point out that the participation of acknowledged Communists in the Trek to Ottawa didn’t corrupt the protest.

It was a march to demand that the federal government do more to meet the suffering of millions of Canadians—including, as we’ll see, many of those who were employed.

I also remind readers that Liversedge’s account of the Trek-To-Ottawa is accepted as being, overall, historically accurate.

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(First of two parts)
I seem to recall having recently presented you with a case of history, sort of, repeating itself.

One could argue that the ongoing (as of time of writing) truckers’ protest in Ottawa is another case of deja vu. The precedent, for those of us who know even a smattering of Canadian history, is the 1935 On-to-Ottawa Trek of the unemployed in 1935. This was mid-Depression, the worst ever experienced by Canadians.

There, all similarity ends. Not only in protesters’ modes of transport and their stated aims, but particularly in the way the two protest movements have conducted themselves, and the responses by various levels of government.

We’re talking the difference between day and night.

In the 1960s, Ronald Liversledge who’d been one of the leading participants of this epochal event in Canadian history, was living in Lake Cowichan when he wrote Recollections of the On-To-Ottawa Trek, 1935.

Originally self published in a cheap and crude format “produced by volunteer labour,” it was reissued in standard paperback format in 1973. Despite the author’s pro-labour viewpoint and his personal participation, it’s considered to be one of the best accounts of the events leading up to and during the protest that ended in tragedy for some of the protesters and a policeman.

It’s easy to think that, because Ronald Liversledge was one of the ‘ringleaders” of this cross-country protest, his account is suspect. The fact is, it has a distinct aura of truthfulness and most historians, it seems, accept his version as being honest and incisive.

It should be required reading in Canadian schools.

When you read next week’s Chronicle, compare the circumstances described by Mr. Liversledge to news accounts of those which led up to the current debacle in Ottawa. If ever there was a time to really learn from history, this is it!
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PHOTO: Eighty-seven years ago, thousands of unemployed couldn’t protest with trucks—they had no gas. So they ‘rode the rails’ eastward from Vancouver, determined to present themselves directly to the R.B. Bennett government in Ottawa. They made it as far as Regina where they were met with mounted police and bullets. www.labourheritagecentre.ca

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Years ago, when I was still writing the Chronicles in the Cowichan Valley Citizen, I received a complaint from a young woman I knew to be an activist for her gender. (I’m trying not to say, feminist.)

She accused me of not writing about women pioneers, only men.

She hadn’t been paying attention. I was able to reel off a list of women whose stories I’d told from my days of writing for the Colonist to that point in time in the Citizen. To name just a few, locally, provincially and nationally:

—Annie Duncan
—Clara Gravenor
—Johanna Maguire
—Elizabeth Sea
—Minnie Paterson
—Nellie Cashman
—Laura Secord
—And numerous others

There were more but I’m not going to dig for them now. Yes, by far, my articles were male-oriented because, folks, that’s the way it was. The British Columbia frontier was, for decades, predominately a man’s world for the simple fact that there were very few women. They came later.

Which isn’t to say I couldn’t have tried harder to be more inclusive. But when working to deadline, as I almost always was doing in those days (in truth, nothing’s changed), I followed the line of least resistance. So men’s adventures, achievements, conflicts and failures it was...

But enough. The lady’s complaint did give me pause for thought which, in my usual roundabout way, brings us to next week’s Chronicle. For years now, and I do mean years, I’ve had a book on my desk that contains an article about a truly amazing woman who so impressed me that I’ve wanted to write about her.

But there’s always something to do and I’d need the publisher’s permission to make use of the firsthand content so I kept putting it off and off and off. The book I’m referring to is Volume 13 of Boundary History, published by the Boundary Historical Society boundaryhistorical@gmail.com.

Well, this week I bit the bullet and emailed them, asking for permission. Talk about service!

Within half an hour I had a response from Doreen Sorensen, Secretary, saying she’d pass my request on to her board of directors. Next day, I had their approval. All they asked in return is that I acknowledge the BHS which, as you see, I’m doing here.

So who is the heroine who so impressed me that I’ve kept her at my elbow all this time?

Hands up, those of you who recognize Bea Zucco. To quote the BHS, “From miner’s wife and mother in the bush to champion on the steps of the provincial legislature, and more, Bea...travelled a unique path. Her story is an inspiration.”

Quite simply, her husband, a miner, became terminally ill with the dreaded occupational hazard and ‘widow-maker,’ silicosis. But there was no workman’s compensation, no government interest, just the old story of “so sad, too bad...”

Mrs. Zucco, like 100s of other miners’ widows with young children to care for, was on her own. She resolved to fight to have the disease officially categorized as a hazard of the workplace and a threat to workers’ health. Her years-long struggle took her all the way, as noted by the BHS, to the Provincial Legislature.

That’s the Bea Zucco I’m going to tell you about next week. A workers’ champion who has received too little recognition. As I’ve long argued, we Canadians just don’t seem to honour our heroes, male or female. Ironically, in the few cases where we have done so, we’re now hellbent on tearing down their statues and their reputations.

But no editorializing; just the story of Bea Zucco who, unable to save her own husband, set out to save the lives of 1000s of others—and succeeded.

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PHOTO: —Grand Forks Gazette

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Genealogists have a field day with Vital Statistics; they’re a treasure chest for family researchers and historians alike.

But, of course, they really don’t tell you much beyond the barest of bones. Take, for example, this one:

BIRTH 1826

DEATH 22 May 1874 (aged 47-48)
Victoria, Capital Regional District, British Columbia, Canada

BURIAL Unknown

Now what’s an author/historian/storyteller supposed to do with that?

Not a heck of a lot, obviously, unless you have access to other sources. So, to answer the old puzzle, which comes first, the chicken or the egg, the answer is to seek out details like vital statistics after we’ve discovered a story.

Often that source is a newspaper. Which is how I chanced upon the fascinating man whose statistics are given above. When I worked for The Daily Colonist, as it was when I was still a lad, I’d spend my evening supper break in the morgue, or library, digging through what were known as the vertical files—clipping files of old news stories, some of them going back decades.

Or straining my eyes on the microfilm machine with its green light and purple print.

How I cursed the genius who came up with that colour combo; an hour or so was almost sure to bring on the start of a headache even for young eyes.

But the point of the exercise, after all, was to access the wealth of old Colonists and Victoria Daily Times with their millions of stories on those rolls of 35mm film. To a newbie such as I, who was just beginning to grope my way into the incredible repository that is our provincial history, that microfilm machine, for all its crudity, was the key.

So I carried on, straining my eyes, making notes then advancing to using a typewriter alongside. To get to the point, one of those great discoveries came when, working my way through the British Colonist a year at a time, I came to 1904—and to D.W. Higgins.

I’ve introduced you to D.W. several times in these pages, even letting him tell you about the Christmas dinner that almost cost him his life, in his own words. What I found in those 1904 Colonist’s were a series of articles, reminiscences, he later compiled in two books. Highly collectible today are The Mystic Spring and The Passing of a Race.

Modern researchers such as the late, local David Ricardo Williams have criticized Higgins’ claim to have been on the inside of almost every major news story over his 50-year-long journalistic and political career, most of it in Victoria.

In particular, they fault him for his use of reconstructed dialogue.

So be it. I accept that Higgins was, in fact, privy to details of the great political events, many of the leading the pioneer personalities and details of the major crimes of his day. I do acknowledge that he isn’t always 100 per cent accurate (who is?) and that he likely embellished his own role in them.

But I refuse to look a gift horse in the mouth. To read Higgins’ stories, for all their purplish prose, as judged by our contemporary standards, has been a joyful voyage of discovery for me. The subject of this week’s Chronicle was one of the very first of D.W.’s stories that I found and I’ve been following in his shadow ever since.

The story of ‘Happy’ Tom Schooley, as told here, is as much mine as it is D.W.’s but he experienced and recorded it first, a fact I respectfully acknowledge.

Speaking of cold statistics, as I did earlier, I’ll give you a hint from another clerical entry relating to Thomas Schooley: Miner, age 38 (sic), executed for the murder of Henry Foreman.

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere!

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PHOTO: A foggy fall shot of the historic Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria B.C. So wrote Sheryl Walker of this moody scene used as a cover photo for the Old Cemeteries Society’s Stories Beyond the Graves in Victoria, B.C. It’s that imposing dark headstone on the left that prompted me to dig into my archives for this week’s Chronicle.

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I’ve often wondered why some people seem hyper-sensitive to their family histories; sometimes to the point of burning old papers, photos and other memorabilia that should have been passed on to future generations.

Personally, I’ve often joked that if my great grandfather was hanged for cattle rustling I’d revel in the fact. (Think of it as colour!)

Well, a lady researching her family history approached me in October about one of her forefathers whom I’d written about, years ago. As it happened, a fellow scribe had just picked up on that very issue of the Citizen back when the Chronicles appeared there, so I forwarded her a copy of his post.

(It saved me having to dig into my files.)

From his post, which he based on my column, she clearly saw that her antecedent on her mother-in-law’s side of the family was both a cattle rustler and an attempted murderer whose chosen career as a frontier hellion was cut short by the dreaded ‘Hanging’ Judge Begbie.

Rather than cringe with embarrassment, she wants to know more.

So, Louise, I’m giving you both barrels in next week’s Chronicles. Readers are welcome to come along for the ride if they so desire.

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PHOTO: As if farming on the Cowichan frontier wasn’t challenging enough, having a gunslinging cattle rustler for a neighbour was salt in the wound! —Author’s collection

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You may recognize the names of renowned Victoria architects Samuel Maclure and Francis Rattenbury who’s as well remembered for his having been murdered by his wife’s lover as he is for having designed the B.C. Parliament Buildings.

But how about Thomas Hooper?

Not only are his wonderful creations all over the Greater Victoria landscape but he has left another, far, far more tantalizing legacy. Many of his homes and buildings are believed to be haunted!

So much so that some honestly believe that he practised black magic while achieving his architect’s credentials—that he baptized his first buildings with human sacrifices.

Sound far-fetched?

Of course it is. But those stories about his creations, some of them credibly vouched for, of ghostly images, mysterious doings and things that go bump in the night are too many to be ignored. Hence his title among paranormalists as “the haunted architect.”

You’ll hear the whole ghostly tale in next week’s Chronicles.

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Way back in the Dark Ages, 1977 to be exact, I completed a three-week-long blitz of dozens of southern mainland B.C. ghost towns while researching a never completed series of books on the subject.

Among the many sites I visited in the Similkameen District was Coalmont, 11 miles (18km) northwest of Princeton, and mountainside Blakeburn, located southwest of the confluence of Granite Creek and the Tulameen River.

Coalmont, which was the railhead connection to the Kettle Valley Railway for the Blakeburn Mine, still has 80 permanent and 20 seasonal residents.

Not so Blakeburn. But for the collapsing remains of some log cabins and wood-framed houses, a tramway tower, concrete ruins and scarred landscape, there’s virtually nothing to show that this was once a thriving community of 500 souls.

Nothing in the way of a memorial to the 45 men of the Blakeburn Mine who, on Black Wednesday, Aug. 1, 1930, were victims of an horrific explosion and who are buried in a collective grave in the Princeton Cemetery.

This seemed so very, very wrong to me, and so I wrote when I first told the story of that black day in Blakeburn in 1930. Several years later, I was researching in the Provincial Archives and was recognized by a man who said he was writing a book on Blakeburn.

He informed me that that he’d read one if my books on ghost towns and was motivated by my comment about the lack of any kind of on-site memorial at Blakeburn. He said that the local historical society had erected a signboard at Blakeburn and he thanked me for giving them the idea.

Well, fast-forward to 2021 and the signboard has again been stolen.

Wrote Bill Kellett in November: “I was saddened today to discover the sign which had been erected at the former Blakeburn site has been stolen for the second time! It is indeed unfortunate that there are idiots among us who feel the need to engage in this sort of thing!”

I must say that Bill is much politer that I am...

The story of the heroic attempts to rescue the trapped Blakeburn coal miners 90 years ago is heartrending and should never be allowed to be forgotten. I’ll do my best to keep that memory alive in next week’s Chronicles.

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This capsule preview of next week’s Chronicles comes to you courtesy of Wikipedia:

Sewell Prescott "Sue" Moody (1834 – November 4, 1875) was a carpenter and Yankee trader from Maine, United States. He bought the Moodyville Sawmill Co. in 1865 in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, which was facing bankruptcy and established Moodyville, the first European settlement on Burrard Inlet….”

Two more lines give the names of his parents and children and the fact that he died in an 1875 shipwreck.

Talk about the tip of the iceberg!

Look just a little deeper and you’ll find the truly fascinating story about a truly remarkable pioneer who left his mark on British Columbia maps. I’ll prove it to you in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Among his other accomplishments, pioneer sawmill owner Sewell Moody sent a message from beyond the grave. —Wikipedia

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In my recent caption for the coming Christmas Chronicle, I sort of joked that, thanks to email, hardly anyone mails Christmas cards any more, with or without an envelope.

It wasn’t always so, of course. For more than three-quarters of a century Christmas cards were mailed in western world countries by the millions each November-December. But that’s all changed now.

One can argue that our digital technology is to blame. Why use “snail mail” when you can send and receive an email anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes? It’s much less personal than a card but... But.

I believe there’s more to it than that, however. Mail delivery as I knew it from childhood through middle age or so, was—or seemed—to be much more of a bedrock Canadian institution; something that people trusted, used and relied upon without a second thought. Long before the internet and couriers we had ‘posties’ in uniform going their rounds with their black bag hanging over their shoulders, the red boxes at strategic intersections, daily (well, Monday-Friday) home deliveries. Not only rock-solid dependable but inexpensive.

Have you mailed anything lately? Did you suffer sticker shock?

In short, times have really, really changed. That old expression, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” is pure nostalgia now.

But it was that way once. In next week’s Chronicles I tell you of the day when the B.C. mail went through, come hell or high water, sometimes at the risk of the carrier’s safety, even his life.

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Christmas Day, 1858. For pioneer journalist D.W. Higgins, this was his most memorable Yuletide of all—the time Christmas dinner almost cost him his life.

That’s next week in the Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Shades of Shirley Temple! I found this wonderful photo at a charity sale in Duncan years ago; I’d love to know the identity of the little girl and if she’s still around. (Proving once again that there oughta be a law that people must write the who, the when and the where on the backs of their family photos!)

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Well, COVID or no, it’s that time of year—Christmas 2021.

And Christmas isn’t complete, of course, without decking the halls with boughs of holly, i.e., home decorating. Then there’s gift giving and meal preparation and, and, and, all pandemic permitting...

All of these require not just the time and trouble of planning and setting them in motion but....money.

So, to make things easier for you, I’m going to take you back in time to a century ago, to December 1921 when (if we don’t factor in inflation) prices were cheap.

And to promote you to shop locally I’m going to visit exclusively Duncan stores where you’re sure to find everything you and your family’s hearts desire. But be warned: you can’t use your credit cards—they haven’t been invented yet!


As for credit, period, well, that could be dicey if you hadn’t already established a good working relationship with your grocer, butcher and general store.

Whatever, that’s next week in the Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Originally, Christmas cards were printed in postcard format and mailed without an envelope. Now, thanks to email, hardly anyone mails them, with or without an envelope, at all! --Author’s collection

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Lost treasure is where you find it—quite possibly under your very nose!

I offer this as encouragement to armchair enthusiasts who confine their treasure hunting to books, television, movies and daydreams. Ironically, few realize that, while there definitely is gold in some of 'them thar hills,' it can also exist, in various forms, much closer to home.

It might well, in fact, be under your very nose, unsuspected, at this precise moment.

Don’t believe me?

How about these recent newspaper headlines:

• Unopened Nintendo game from 1987 sells for $870,000
• GP finds painting in Courtenay thrift store that could be worth a small fortune
• Rare Coin in a Candy Tin Sells At Auction For $350,000

Or, better yet, the so-called Saddle Ridge Hoard. I quote:

“One day in April 2014, a California couple was on a walk with their dog when they found a metal can sticking out of the ground, according to Dan Whitcomb of Reuters. Rusted from age, they were able to open the can after digging it out finding a large cache of gold coins inside...”

Okay, that one’s a real exception. But don’t kid yourself; treasure, like beauty, can be in the eye of the beholder. Some valuables can look to be anything but.

I’ll tell you about some interesting treasures closer to home that have, in some cases, enriched their finders, in next week’s Chronicles.

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