Years ago, when I was invited to launch a weekly historical column in the Nanaimo newspaper (I think it was the Daily News which became the Harbour City Star then something else, I've lost track) a friend predicted that I'd be starved for research material "in four months". Not a chance, I said; in four months I'll have more to work with than I do now.
Read MoreAs mentioned in last week’s promo, this week’s post is a mixed bag of historical “nuggets in the news” drawn from my newspaper clippings file, and from comments, suggestions and queries from readers of the Chronicles.
It’s so easy to think of history as being, well, in the past and far removed from our present-day lives. But here we are, in effect replaying the great ‘Flu epidemic of 1919-20. So much for the distant past and far away!
We’re already mid-month January and the ‘new’ year is beginning to look more and more like a replay of 2020—more pandemic, more tragedy, more hardship, more inconvenience. Even with vaccines on the way it’s obviously going to be a long haul.
What did the British use to say in hard times, “Keep a stiff upper lip”?
As we, ever so unwillingly, go on struggling through these historic trials we can at least take advantage of our ‘down time’ (thanks to what amounts to self-imposed house arrest) by reading about and enjoying—maybe even learning from—history.
What interesting times we live in!
Well, another year gone by. And what a year it was!
2020, which began with just whispers in the news of a new contagion in China became, by March, full-blown global pandemic. For the first time in a century since the infamous ‘Flu of 1918-19, we—all of us—are in the front lines of defence.
Not since the Second World War has Canada had to mobilize to face a common and deadly enemy; not for 75 years have we all had to make personal sacrifices and endure personal inconvenience for the common cause.