Lest we forget...

On Sunday last I attended the Burma Star memorial service in downtown Charles Hoey Park, site of the Duncan Cenotaph. I and 13 others, all of us members of the local Royal Canadian Legion and/or veterans, with a representative from the City of Duncan on hand to place a wreath.

And a 40s-something passerby who paused out of curiosity, stood at attention for The Last Post, then settled on the curb with a cold drink for the balance of the 20-minute service.

I can remember when the August gathering of Burma War veterans was a major event in town; they came from afar and did a march-pass after meeting at the memorial on the Cowichan River, a site chosen because it was Victoria Cross winner Charles Hoey’s favourite childhood fishing hole.

100S gathered to watch them in those days and there was media coverage, too. But the years have passed and so have the Second World War veterans, leaving only Sunday’s honour guard to remember and to honour them. How ironic that, even 80 years ago, the Burma Campaign was known as “the forgotten war” because, for most Canadians, the real war was all about defeating Nazi Germany, and the Americans were dealing with Japan.

Adding poignancy to this year’s event, 102-year-old former Spitfire pilot George Brewster recited P/Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr.’s exhilarating poetic celebration of flying, High Flight, that begins,

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings...

Wearing his well-earned medals, an aged veteran places a wreath at the base of the Duncan Cenotaph.

Remembrance Day in the Cowichan Valley draws larger crowds every year, but observance of the Burma Star campaign and Canada’s epochal role in the Battle of the North Atlantic on May 1st are steadily slipping from public consciousness.

Lest we forget...

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This email from Leah Pipe, Tourism & Community Development Coordinator of the Hazelton Visitor Centre certainly caught my attention:

“Hi Tom:

I was recently on your website, reading the comments regarding Cataline’s grave site. Many people stated that they couldn’t find it probably because it was destroyed a few years ago. A local group of community members rebuilt it and added a name plaque and this is what it looks like now:

Just thought you’d like to know the update…”

Who was Cataline, you ask? Well, you, too, can read his story on my other website, www.twpaterson.com.

A great Frederick Dally photo of a Cataline pack train on the main street of Barkerville in 1868. —*BC Archives*

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Further to last week’s Chronicle on the collision between the BC ferry Queen of Victoria and a Russian freighter in Active Pass in 1970...

Many, many moons ago when I committed to being a writer/historian, I realized that I had to be my own photographer, and quickly graduated from my father’s 1948 Kodak Tourist folding camera to 35mm which had become the standard in journalism.

Then, of course, I needed accessories: a camera bag, light meter, lenses, filters, etc., etc.

Which meant having to lug them around, and very carefully. After all, they represented what was to me, a struggling freelance writer, a sizable investment. (I still cry at the memory of an expensive UV filter as it gently weaved its way to the ocean bottom after falling from my camera while I was filming the wrecks of the Royston Breakwater.)

Also, a camera is fragile, so you have to coddle it, which becomes really tedious. Add to that, the bag and accessories and...you get the idea.

On top of which, they’re also expensive, so you have to keep close rein on them at all times.

The bottom line of which is that there came a day when I just got fed up having to lug the damn things around with me everywhere I went and seldom taking any photos to justify the bother.

The *Queen of Alberni* aground—a photographer’s dream come true. —*Vancouver City Archives*

So, there I am, coming home by ferry from the Mainland in August 1979 and—there she was—high and dry, with perfect lighting for taking once-in-a-lifetime photos: the BC ferry Queen of Alberni. She’d run aground and, as we passed within several 100 yards of her, listing heavily and partially awash.

And for the first time, I, the guy who’d already written 100s of newspaper and magazine articles on BC shipwrecks, had—intentionally—left his camera at home!

There just ain’t no justice...

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Musing Out Loud...