So the late great B.C. historian B.A. McKelvie titled this manuscript, decades ago.
I just found it in my archives; I really must shuffle my files more often.
For those who don’t recognize his name, ‘Pinkie’ McKelvie was a leading provincial journalist and the foremost historian and writer of ‘popular’ B.C. history in the 1920s-’50s. He was gone when I, a kid, history buff and aspiring author/historian, discovered him during my first visit to the BC Archives while looking for such serious topics as lost treasures, shipwrecks, stagecoach robberies...
McKelvie had been there, done that, decades before me. Not only did he leave a legacy of his historical research and writings, he inspired me. He’d made a career of writing about our colourful past; why couldn’t I?
Sure, he’d had a day job as a senior reporter and editor in Vancouver and Victoria, but that was a mere detail and, millions and millions of words later, here we are!
Among the treasures in a large box of McKelvie’s personal papers—letters, documents, manuscripts and some photos—that the late family member Phyllis Bomford kindly gave me 15-20 years ago, are several typescripts that, so far as I know, have never been published.
I correct that in next week’s Chronicles with ‘Six Weeks of Death,” a rousing tale of shipwreck.
******
PHOTO: Bruce and Mrs. McKelvie. —Courtesy Phyllis Bomford
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