The Chronicles Blog

When we glance at history, be it that of British Columbia or anywhere else, it’s easy to think that it involved mostly men. And you’d be right.

Going simply by numbers, B.C. was indeed a man’s world well into the 19th century. Perhaps this was never more so than during the fabled Cariboo gold rush of the 1860s.

But there were exceptions, outstanding exceptions, and I’m not talking about hurdy-gurdy girls.

Take Madame Fanny Bendixen, for example, who fled from being a kept woman in San Francisco to owning three successful saloons in the Cariboo.

This was no easy feat in a gold rush composed of men of all types and backgrounds. That she succeeded as a business woman in the sometimes ruthless saloon business affirms her strength of character and has marked her down in provincial history as being one-of-a-kind.

Fanny Bendixen has been written about by numerous historical writers over the years but never in any real depth. You’ll come to know the real Madame B. in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: From the Barbary Coast of San Francisco to Victoria to Barkerville, Fanny Bendixen showed that no man was going to push her around. —By Charles Gentile / Library and Archives Canada / C-088919 - http://www.collectionscanada.ca/index-e.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3442202

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(Part 2)
As we’ve seen, the old steamer Clara Nevada appeared to be doomed from the moment she cleared her Seattle dock in February 1898. Bound for the Klondike gold rush with passengers and freight, she somehow made it to Skagway.

It was on her return trip, this time with a full load of 100 passengers, that she struck uncharted Eldred Rock in Alaska’s infamous Lynn Canal and was lost with all aboard.

Or, so it seemed at the time!

Almost all of those who were aboard, passengers and crew, died in the wreck, that much appears to be certain. But perhaps not everyone, according to tantalizing evidence that has come to light over the past 125 years.

Her captain, to name one, appears not to have gone down with his ship but to have died years later in his hometown of old age!

How could that possibly be?

And what of the Clara Nevada’s reputedly rich cargo of gold, worth millions of dollars today?

It’s one of those stories that, as Alice of Wonderland fame said, gets curiouser and curiouser....

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

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PHOTO: The S.S. Clara Nevada was unfit to sail, but sail she did—into disaster—because of the frantic need for shipping during the Klondike gold rush. This hectic Seattle dock scene gives an idea of the excitement that prevailed at the time. —Seattle Public Library

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Honestly, folks, I don’t make this stuff up. I don’t have the imagination.

Take this story, for example:

“The Clara Nevada is probably America’s coldest cold case file. It is also the largest robbery in American history, twice the size of the Brink’s Job, and was the largest mass murder in American history until the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995...”

We’re talking about a shipwreck!

I first wrote about the last voyage of the ill-fated Clara Nevada in the early 1970’s, for one of my first books. Shipwrecks have fascinated me since childhood but, back then, I had no idea that I’d barely scratched the surface.

It’s one of those rare stories that, rather than fade away, grow with the passage of time...

That’s next week in the Chronicles.

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PHOTO: The former U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey ship Hassler achieved infamy as one of a ragtag fleet of ships, sound and otherwise, that were pressed into service as passenger vessels during the hectic Klondike gold rush. —Wikipedia

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Gold!

It’s one of the most powerful words in the English language, able to, literally, move mountains.

One hundred and 65 years ago, El Dorado was the almost unknown hinterland of British Columbia. No matter that almost no one in the western world had heard of it or even knew where it was; it only mattered that any man or woman who could scrape together a ship’s passage and a grubstake had a chance to strike it rich!

Among the estimated 30,000 fortune seekers who descended upon B.C. shores was a young English chemist (pharmacist) named Henry Guillod. He and his companions didn’t make their fortunes, they even lost their shirts in the process. It’s a great story.

That’s next week in the Chronicles.

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(Conclusion)

During the Second World War, between 1940-45, 10,000 air force trainees “passed through” Pat Bay Station (today’s Victoria International Airport), then the third largest airbase in Canada which could train 3500 students at any one time.

As we’ve seen, 179 of those young men in training—Canadians, British, Australians and New Zealanders—never made it overseas, being killed and going missing without ever coming under enemy fire.

Thousands of miles from the war zones of Asia and Europe, they died in the line of duty. Killed in crashes while learning to fly at a time of blackouts, in extremes of weather, and over some of the wildest terrain on the continent, some of them have never been found.

Almost as many Royal Canadian Air Force airmen died in the surveillance of the B.C. coastline after Japan entered the war. In total*, casualties numbered about 355–a staggering 70 lives a year!

*Note: My official Air Crash Files likely is incomplete.

In this week’s Chronicles I wrap up my tribute to these young knights of the air who’ve been memorialized as the Lost Airmen of the Empire.

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PHOTO: This graphic photo of one of the many Pat Bay air crashes is courtesy of Tom Wagner whose RCAF father had the unhappy duty of investigating them.

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Part 2

As we saw in last week’s Chronicles, learning to fly out of Pat Bay Airport in wartime could be deadly.

No fewer than 179 young airmen were killed in the line of duty during their training, 1939-1945.

In recognition of Remembrance Day 2023, we continue this little-known story of Pat Bay’s lost airmen in Part 2 of ‘In Friendly Skies,’ next week.

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PHOTO: How many of the young Pat Bay airmen in this photo died without ever getting overseas? —Courtesy Tom Wagner’s

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During the Second World War, Patricia Bay (today’s Victoria International) Airport was part of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan in which 1000’s of Canadian, British, Australian and New Zealand airmen were trained.

179 of those young airmen never made it overseas.

They were killed in crashes while learning to fly at a time of blackouts, in extremes of weather and over some of the wildest terrain on the continent. Some of them have never been found.

Next week, as a prelude to Remembrance Day, the Chronicles honours these airmen who gave their lives for King and Country.

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PHOTO: The Lost Airmen of the Empire memorial is on Hospital Hill, Mills Road, on the north side of the Victoria International Airport.

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Well, it’s that time of the year again: Halloween.

And Halloween wouldn’t be complete without the Chronicles’ annual telling of spooks ‘n’ goblins and things that go bump in the night...

The old store at the corner of Quadra and North Park Streets, for 80 years a Victoria landmark, is long gone, another victim of progress. But it wasn’t forgotten by its former owners who cherished memories of barley sugar sticks, hooped skirts, hand-blended teas–and of locked doors that slammed in the night when no mortal walked its darkened hallways.

The late George and Madelaine Larrigan lived in the store for years and, later, even had kind words for the invisible tenant with whom they shared residence.

In fact, so strongly did they become attached to their “ghostie,” that they invited it to join them when they moved to their new water-view home in Oak Bay, where I met and interviewed them.

Their invitation, as it turned out, might well have been accepted!

That’s next week in the Chronicles.

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PHOTO: The John Ward store as it appeared in its heyday. —Author’s Collection

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The study, revival and use of British Columbia’s various First Nations languages is steadily gaining ground today, along with the inevitable challenges posed by spelling and pronunciation.

So it was for the explorers, fur traders and Native tribes of old: how to converse effectively in a multitude of European and Indigenous languages.

The short-term but efficient solution came to be known as the Chinook Jargon, an amalgam of various Native dialects, English and French. It’s classified as being extinct today but some words remain with us, verbally and on our maps. For example: tyee for chief, skookum for strong, tilikum for friend.

How provincial Indigenous languages are making a belated but remarkable comeback, and the story of the Chinook Jargon next week in the Chronicles.

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PHOTO: This handbook was published in Victoria as late as 1931. —Author’s Collection

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Almost 70 years later, she’s still there—a rusted, broken hulk on the exposed, rockbound shore of Hippa Island, Haida Gwaii.

The 80th of the Victory-class freighters that replaced the famous Second World War Emergency Shipbuilding Program’s Liberty ships, she’d survived the battle of Okinawa. But, on November 24, 1947, while en route from Whittier, Alaska to Seattle, she crashed ashore in heavy seas off the coast of Graham Island.

49 of her 53-man crew perished.

The sad story of the good ship Clarksdale Victory in next week’s British Columbia Chronicles.

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PHOTO: S.S. Clarksdale Victory looked much like this typical Victory ship but would have been all grey with a large US Navy pennant number on her bows. —Wikipedia

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“The strangest funeral procession that ever passed on earth.”

So said Father Henry ‘Pat’ Irwin, Kootenay’s unofficial saint, of the 1885 avalanche that buried a 16-man train crew alive, and of the super-human efforts he and others made to recover their bodies for proper burial.

It was all in a day’s work for one of the most amazing pioneer men of God that British Columbia has ever seen. As you’ll see in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: A search for bodies from another avalanche, this one in Rogers Pass in 1910 which claimed 58 lives. —Revelstoke Museum

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As we saw in last week’s Chronicles, Robert Homfray’s friends had been right when they warned him that trying to find a route through the Cascade Mountains at the head of far-off and unexplored Bute Inlet in winter was little short of madness—even suicidal.

But he and seven others were determined to find a shortcut to the Cariboo gold fields and, in a single canoe with few supplies and only two muskets, they set out from Fort Victoria in November 1861.

When we left them last week, they’d been forced to turn back. By this time all but exhausted, too weak even to carry their tent, and down to little food, they began to fight their way over glaciers and mountain peaks.

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PHOTO: Today, despite its ominous name, Desolation Sound has become a Mecca for boaters and kayakers. In the summertime, in particular. But, in November 1861, Desolation Sound was almost off the map with unknown threats to life and limb. As surveyor-explorer Robert Homfray and his men soon found out, they faced a fight for their very lives. —BritishColumbia.com

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For more than 30 years, respected civil engineer Robert Homfray kept his promise not to publish his account of a dangerous surveying expedition to the Cariboo in 1861.

Finally, 1894, at the insistence of friends, he agreed to tell of his epic ‘winter journey of 1861’. That was when he and six others had suffered innumerable hardships during an attempt to survey a new, shorter route to the gold fields of the B.C Interior by way of Bute Inlet.

He’d agreed to take charge of the expedition despite the warnings of many who were convinced that he’d never return alive. His friends, in fact, had been quit explicit, arguing that it was “madness to attempt it in the middle of a severe winter”.

They were, as he found, much to his regret, right. Amazingly, he lived to tell the tale.

The Homfray saga is one of incredible courage yet, 162 years later, has been all but forgotten. We re-examine this fascinating tale in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Robert Homfray and party’s assignment: find a shortcut through these mountains from the coast to the Cariboo in the middle of winter!. — https://vancouverisland.com/plan-your-trip/regions-and-towns/coastal-inlets/bute-inlet/

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For those of you who follow T.W. Paterson History Author on Facebook you’ll recognize the next few paragraphs as a recent post that gained numerous thoughtful comments. Today, I’m going to expand upon this theme with the stories behind several some of the photos I’ve ‘rescued’ over the years at garage sales and flea markets. Once, from a dumpster!

You see them from time to time at garage sales, flea markets, even antique sales: old family photos, some of them still mounted in their original albums.

Some have been removed to sell individually and are now separated from their captions so there’s no way of telling who, when or where.

Once they were someone’s prized family treasure; now they’re just a sales item without meaning or value other than as objects of mild curiosity.

I’ve rescued many (even war medals) over the years, sometimes buying them from a family member who just doesn’t give a damn about aunts and uncles, grandparents or—Give them a couple of bucks and it’s a deal.

If I sound cynical, so be it. It always bothers me to see photos that once had great meaning to someone treated so cavalierly, hence my sometimes buying them just to give them a home, even if it’s that of a stranger. At least, I can sometimes use them to illustrate my writings—like today’s Chronicle.

And, it can be fun to study the faces and wonder who they were, what happened to them.

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It's not a very big book: half an inch thick, yes, but only 4 1/2 inches wide by less than six inches deep, and the type covers only 3 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches. It really is a pocket book.

But, proving that good things can sometimes come in small packages, there's a lot of great content in Chinook Days' 200 pages, 1000 copies of which were published in 1926 by the Vancouver Sun as a souvenir for the opening of the Grouse Mountain Highway.

An online dealer describes it thus: “This book includes a variety of [MacInnes'] writings, such as historical recollections, legends, and poems, that relate to the cultures of British Columbia and Canada at the time of the Klondike Gold Rush.”

The last time I checked online, original copies were priced at $43.00 U.S. and $45.00 U.S. (shipping included) respectively. Let's say, $60.00 Canadian, delivered to your door.

I've wanted to write something about this author and give a sampling of his singular approach to B.C. history for quite some time. So, in next week’s Chronicles, I’m going to introduce you to Thomas Robert Edward McInnes. Note the 'Mc' not 'Mac,' the latter being an affectation he chose later in life.

While I’m at it, I’ll let MacInnes tell you, in his own words, the colourful story of once-legendary Vancouver Island woodsman Mike King.

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PHOTO: Among the many subjects that MacInnes chose to write about was bigger-then-life woodsman Mike King. —Chinook Days

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I can resist many things but never a good story.

Last week’s Part 1 of A Tale of Two Soldiers was to be a doubleheader, the stories of both Gunner Ratcliffe, the villain, and Private Michael James O’Rourke, VC, MM—war hero, labour activist and, by all measures, an outstanding man.

But, well, I just couldn’t resist going all the way in telling of how Ratcliffe, a career soldier, let his resentment of Corporal Bowlan’s reprimands—things so minor as cleaning up after himself in the kitchen—drive him to the ultimate act of murder.

A crime that appeared to all who knew and liked both men to have been totally out of character for Ratcliffe who’d been popular with his comrades, who loved animals and gardening, who had, in fact, not long before been a friend of the man he shot down in cold blood.

So be it, it’s done, story told. Next week, for sure, the amazing career of Private James O’Rourke.

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PHOTO: Pte. James O’Rourke, VC, MM. —vcgca.org› profile › 571

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They couldn’t have been more unalike.

About the only thing they had in common was that they both served in uniform.

One was a hero, winner of the Empire’s highest medal for gallantry, the Victoria Cross, and the Military Medal.

The other died in infamy, so despised, it’s said, that he was buried face-down—the ultimate indignity for a soldier who has disgraced his comrades.

The story of these pole opposites, Private James O’Rourke and Gunner Charles Ratcliffe, in next week’s Chronicle.

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PHOTO: Pte. James O’Rourke, VC, MM. —vcgca.org› profile › 571

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Build it and they will come.

It may have worked in a novel and in a movie but, sad to say, it seldom works in real life. If ever you wanted proof, take the sad story of George Turner and his church.

He poured heart and soul, every penny he had and years of his life into building the Church of Jesus Christ of Christian Brotherhood that, today, minus its tower and bell, is a sales and service shop.

George Turner’s sad story is next week’s Cowichan Chronicle.

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How times have changed. It wasn’t all that long ago that almost everybody smoked cigarettes, cigars and/or pipes.

But the latest statistics for Canada (2020) show that just one Canadian in 10 smokes cigarettes, down from 12% the previous year. More men (12%) smoke than women (9%). These statistics include those who smoke only occasionally.

What a far, far cry from when I was a lad. My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles smoked, their friends smoked, and when we could sneak them and were playing out of sight in the bushes that lined the nearby CNR tracks, we kids smoked.

We called them coffin nails and someone said that each cigarette took a week off our lives. From the mouths of babes...

Next week on the Chronicles, a look back at the heyday of tobacco in British Columbia.

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PHOTO: One of the most popular brands in Canada was Players Navy Cut. Despite its obvious play on the Royal Navy, my father, who served 20 years in the RCN, smoked Export A.

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The demolition, several years ago, of the 1890 Officers’ Mess and Quarters at Work Point, Victoria, inspired a letter to the editor of the Times Colonist warning against disturbing its two resident ghosts.

The writer was referring to the spirits of a Major Steinberg and a four-year-old boy.

Indeed, the former Esquimalt army base should have been haunted–by the spirit of Captain Peter Elliston. The commanding officer of No. 5 Company, Royal Canadian Garrison Artillery met eternity at 9:25 on the morning of Monday, Aug 1, 1910, moments after he’d begun his daily rounds.

That’s when Gunner Thomas ‘Paddy’ Allan, who for weeks had nursed his hatred for this officer who’d given him 21 days’ detention for drunkenness, made good his vow, “I’ve a bullet for him and it will find its billet.”

As indeed it did.

This fascinating story in next week’s Cowichan Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Gunner Paddy Allan. —Author’s Collection

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