Editorially speaking…
February is Black History Month with various events scheduled in Victoria. You can learn more at bcblackhistory.ca.
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I’m happy to report that my newest book, Unknown Nanaimo: History You Never Learned in School, is being well received in, where else, Nanaimo. One bookstore now orders by the case and she tells me that “people love local history”.
Who knew?
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Last week, I mentioned the sad and incomprehensible subject of children’s graves being disturbed. In this case, I say “disturbed” because mementos placed around the graves were removed by Maple Ridge civic employees as part of a tidying up program, not desecrated, as meaning senseless defacement by (fill in your own term).
If cemeteries are morbid, as some people seem to think, how come Victoria’s John Adams has built a career of giving tours, as he’s doing here in Ross Bay Cemetery? —Author’s Photo
Friend and faithful Chronicles reader Bill Irvine responded to my having referred to headstone markers as expressions of love with this description of his pro-active approach to cemetery maintenance:
January 30 2026
Hello Tom, Thank you for another issue of your BC Chronicles this January 29, 2026.
Tom wrote: “Cemeteries are places of love. Those headstones, many of them works of art, and their inscriptions, are all expressions of that love. And they’re never more poignant for visitors than when they mark a child’s final resting place.”
Let me state I agree one-hundred percent in your sentiments. I too am of the same ilk. Many of my days each month and over the years are spent volunteering for graveyard cleanup and in particular those of my own Irvine family ancestors.
Between St. Luke’s Cemetery (SLC) in Saanich, BC and Ross Bay Cemetery (RBC) in Victoria there are no less than 10 Irvine sites at RBC and there’s six at SLC. It’s estimated I spent no less than 80 hrs this past year and over six-hundred dollars to keep these sites looking their best. The financial expenditures were for three pressure washers and several hundred feet of garden hose to feed the pressure washers.
By the way, I have practised this regimen over the past several decades.
The reason for having to buy multiple pressure-washers was not knowing it takes maximum water pressure to clean the stone and cement on most sites. Finally, I knew I had to go to a gas-powered, 2600psi unit to get the job done. It’s noising [sic] but powerful!
Anyway, this is what I do and it is what I was called to do from the day I was born. It’s all part of God’s Plan for my life.
I was named William John Irvine by my parents. My father’s ancestors — back to a recorded date of 1776 — named the first male child after the father’s name and so on. Thus William begets John then John begets a William. I did not make this up; it’s Scottish history and folklore. The Scottish father names his son after his father.
It took me over 50 years of my life to come to these conclusions because no one in my family knew anything about these facts. It came to me as a Revelation from the Creator of Everything — Yahweh.
Something you don’t often see in a cemetery, a pressure washer. This is the third one for Bill Irvine who found that to clean grave markers properly you need over 2,000psi. Some people prefer to do it by hand but I leave that to personal preference and bless those who, like Bill, care enough to help make headstones legible, as they’re meant to be. —Courtesy Bill Irvine
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And since I’m patting myself on the back this week (see above), this brief note from Chronicles reader Lorelei: “Thank you for continuing to write and share such amazing stories of our shared history of BC. What makes them so special to me are the people who you bring to life.”
Thank you, Lorelei. As has been said so often before, truth is stranger than fiction—I don’t have the imagination to make up what I write about here in the Chronicles!
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