Well, readers, we’re a day early because tomorrow is Christmas. This week’s edition is the last BC Chronicle for 2025—another year done, and another 52 true stories about British Columbia’s rich and exciting past in the can.

Somewhat coincidentally, I was asked this week in an interview—by, of all people, a Saskatchewan newspaper reporter—which was my favourite story of the 100-odd chapters in my latest book, Unknown Nanaimo.

I was stumped. I mean, these are my children; how do I favour one over all the others?

But I do, of course; it’s unavoidable even if not on the conscious level. I began my writing career captivated by BC’s wild west: the gold rushes and the bigger-than-life characters who risked all for fortune. This was after I’d made the momentous discovery in my teens that BC has its own wild and woolly past. What a joy after having grown up on the American Wild West.

Then there are the shipwrecks!

Imagine it, growing up in a seaport like Victoria, on an island whose west coast was long known, world-wide, as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Is there anything more dramatic that a shipwreck?

Well, perhaps yes, as I soon discovered. Mid-Vancouver Island’s ‘black past,’ coal mining, soon took the fore and I’ve been hooked ever since. Which explains why, after 25 years of archival and field research, I’m now writing the first of what’s intended to be my grand opus, four volumes about the coal mines of the Greater Nanaimo area.

The entrance to a Nanaimo coal mine, 187-. —*BC Archives*

Trust me, this is among the highest of drama, better than anything I can watch on TV or see in the movies. Simply put, there ain’t nothing more exciting and fascinating—and entertaining—than the human story as exemplified by coal mining.

That’s just one aspect of history, of course, and resurrecting and interpreting the wondrous stories of human drama, the good, the bad and the ugly which make up BC history—our history—is what the BC Chronicles are all about.

Will the Chronicles ever run out of stories? Not a chance! When we meet again in the New Year I’ll continue endeavouring to put the lie to that old saw, history is dull.

See you in 2026!

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