I see in the news that the Garth Homer Centre in Victoria has moved into the old S.J. Willis School building while their new facility is being built.
That brings back memories of when I attended ‘S.J.’ for Grades 7-9. That was back in the Jurassic Age, you understand. Not happy memories, by any means, but Jr. High was unique to me for other reasons.
Read MoreLet’s call this unfinished business.
I recently told the story of Rev. Henry “Father Pat” Irwin who, in my mind, is one of B.C.’s most remarkable pioneers ever. A man who, as you have read, never gave less than his all; a minister of God who thought nothing of riding all day and all night in all kinds of weather in the middle of nowhere on an empty stomach.
Read MoreWar is Hell – But to Die After You Come Home is Worse
I still recall the shock, followed by rage, all these years later.
The shock that a former soldier had just died in a veteran's hospital where he'd been laid up since the First World War, some 40-odd years before. And rage at the thought that he’d spent two-thirds of his lifetime disabled and suffering in a hospital word, far, far from the trenches of Europe and long, long after Armistice Day.
It wasn't right! It was so unfair!
Read MoreNot even a drizzling rain could keep the ghoulies away from Victoria’s Ross Bay Cemetery last Sunday.
It was October’s Ghost Tour by the Old Cemeteries Society, an annual event that draws so many visitors the tour has had to be broken up into 10 teams of 20-odd people each instead of the usual single group of, say, 20-40. Each stop is given five minutes with an enthusiastic volunteer storyteller, then a klaxon horn sounds and onto the next grave of interest.
What would Halloween be without good a ghost story? And if they really do exist, there surely must be some resident in Ross Bay.
Read MoreLast week, inspired by the remarkable Rev. Henry “Father Pat” Irwin, the subject of last and this week’s Chronicle, I told you about A.G. Marsh, a pioneer I originally wrote about for the Victoria Colonist 35 years ago. He, too, seems to have thrived on physical and spiritual challenge.
He, too, was doomed to disappointment. For Irwin, the loss of wife and baby then illness and premature death; for Marsh the labour of half a lifetime unfulfilled.
Read MoreHave you ever really, really given thought as to how the British Columbia that exists today came to be? Of the legions of men and women, mostly unknown and unsung, who built this province, often with their hands, from what was wilderness?
You might reply, that’s my job, I’m the historian. Okay, but, funnily enough, it took me years of writing about historical events to realize that I was really writing about the people who made them happen.
Read MoreI knew it was too good to last. In fact, I’m amazed that it lasted this long.
I’m referring to a singular piece of real estate, the site of a 1920s sawmill beside the Island Highway at the entrance to Lantzville.
Jennifer and I visited it several times, and a minor gold mine it was for Chinese and Japanese bottles, crockery and various other artifacts.
Read MoreI sometimes wonder how historical writers were able to research before the internet.
I remember the 100s of weekly trips I made to Victoria to risk eyestrain while “surfing” on the newspaper microfilm machine in the Victoria Press Library, and visits to the Provincial Archives, the Public Library, the Douglas Building, repository of the Department of Mines annual reports and photos, and the Post Office building which housed various federal government offices of value to me...
Read MoreCoincidental to this week’s Chronicle on the Fraser River bridge tragedy of 1916, time is ticking for the iconic Pattullo Bridge linking New Westminster and Surrey. Named for B.C.’s 22nd premier, Thomas Dufferin Pattullo, it officially opened in November 15, 1937.
Its replacement is slated to open for traffic in December.
The new bridge will have its work cut out for it, the existing crossing handling an average of 75,700 cars and 3840 trucks daily (these are 2013 figures)—about 20 per cent of the cross-river traffic.
Read MoreI know I’ve asked this before, but, well, progress, or what purports to be same, is ever-astir.
My question: When is heritage, even purportedly dedicated heritage, no longer safe from change? Why, when it gets in the way of progress and, in particular, ever-morphing social change, of course.
The latest victim is Victoria’s Cedar Hill School, 1912-13, proof yet again that nothing is really written in stone in our society.
Read MoreI don’t think I’ll ever really understand Facebook. Or even, as in this case, email.
I mean, what kind of digital genie delivers a message four months after the fact? Where has it been all this time, up in the ether? Talk about snail mail!
To begin at the beginning: Years ago, I told the story of Cobble Hill pioneer and part time author George Cheeke who wrote one of the most enjoyable ‘ghost’ stories I’ve ever read, better even than TV’s Rod Serling and Twilight Zone.
Read MoreThat old adage, “Better late then never” certainly proved to be the case in Nanaimo, two and a-half weeks ago.
That’s when a special memorial service was held in the Nanaimo Cemetery to honour the victims of a 1951 air crash, at that time the worst in Canadian history.
Read MoreEven as a kid I knew what the Broad Arrow stood for.
As the son of a career navy man, I’d seen it from time to time on various things such as trunks and tools, etc.: a three-pronged arrow head pointing straight up, sometimes beneath a crossed bar.
I noticed it among Dad’s things and, later, in the treasure trove of maritime memorabilia on display or for sale at Capital Iron & Metals.
Read MoreNever let the facts get in the way of a good story. Was it Farley Mowat who said that?
I was reminded of his alleged quote when a lady suggested that, perhaps, I should change my initials to B.S. Paterson. She was joking, of course. Wasn't she?
Read MoreIf you don’t think history is alive and well, you’re not following the news.
By alive, I mean, current stories whose roots go back—often way back—in time. Sometimes, alas, they’re in the news because they’re still festering like an unhealed wound.
Read MoreMany B.C. communities will mark this week’s 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. From my archives, this historical column I originally wrote for a Nanaimo newspaper on the 60th anniversary.
Read MoreSasquatch aka Bigfoot hasn’t been in the news lately but some Williams Lake residents were reminded of the elusive giant recently when they found a B.C. Forest Service bulletin attached to their windshields.
Headlined SASQUATCH ALERT, the notice advised of recent Sasquatch sightings in the area and urged that anyone encountering one of the hairy creatures not to be alarmed, that Sasquatch come down from the mountains to feed on fish, freshwater clams, vegetation and to mate.
Read MoreThis week’s story is about the great avalanche of March 1910 that killed 62 railway crewmen and navvies in Rogers Pass, the worst such disaster in B.C. history.
Last month, I told the story of the province’s second worst snow slide, that which entombed 26 miners at the Granduc copper mine in February 1965. (Snow Slide, June 12, 2025.)
Read MoreThis week, the Chronicles concludes the sad tale of Canadian Pacific Airlines Flight 21, British Columbia’s worst unsolved mass murder.
How is it, one might ask, that hardly anyone, besides journalists and family descendants, seems to know about it? Is 60 years that long ago? It’s almost as if many us have placed a statute of limitations upon memory.
While researching and writing this story several thoughts have come to mind.
Read MoreIt’s so easy to think of history as being, well, long ago and far away. In the past. Come and gone. Done with. Move on.
The reality, of course, is that history walks among us as a living, vibrant being. Rather than being static, it’s happening every minute of every day, even in our own backyards. Okay, sometimes it takes a while to be officially recognized and recorded as such; that’s what historians and archivists are for.
Conversely, and it’s happening more frequently these days, we turn the telescope around and, like the revisionists of Communist infamy, we try to undo history—making even more history.
Read More
