Well, another year is about to bite the dust.
For most of us blessed to live in Canada, it likely has been another year of getting by in comparative comfort while complaining bitterly about inflation every time we go to a checkout. A minor plaint when you look around this embattled world of ours...
Read MoreIt should come as no surprise to Chronicles readers that I spend a lot of time delving into old newspapers. They’re a ‘popular’ historian’s lifeblood.
Read MoreHere’s irony for you...
In researching today’s feature story on the sinking of the U.S. Army transport S.S. Brig.-Gen. M.G. Zalinsky, and the subsequent—and expensive—efforts to stem the bunker oil leaking from her hull, I found an article bearing this headline,
Oil Spills Are Bad For Shipwrecks
I mean, it’s ironic that sunken ships that leak oil and pollute the environment are subject to accelerated corrosion from their own oil! Sort of like being hoist with (her) own petard, as Shakespeare would say.
Read MoreThere will be no great fanfare this week for the departing Phillipine Mars water bomber, as was the case for her sister Hawaii Mars back in August. Her final flight to a military museum in Arizona, after decades in the Alberni Valley, will be determined by weather conditions.
Read MoreAs I write this, the 1000-foot-long S.S. United States, the “longest and largest ocean liner ever built in America,” and the record holder for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a passenger liner, is about to sail one last time.
Not under her own power but with the aid of five tugs.
Read MoreI don’t think I’ll ever become comfortable with Facebook.
Sure, I post something historical every two days and have built up a small following. It’s a modest way of self-promotion which, after all, is part of the publishing game. What’s the point of writing about our pioneers and historical events if there’s no one there to read them?
For the most part, it can be fun, requiring as it does little of the discipline necessary to researching and writing serious texts, and some of the comments are illuminating.
Read MoreIn place of an Editorial, and in keeping with Remembrance, this week’s Chronicles theme, this tribute to Americans who volunteered to serve King and Country. Our King and Country.
Their sacrifice has been all but overlooked by most historians and is worthy of being recognized and remembered.
Read MoreSurely, you don’t expect the Chronicles to be about anything but Halloween on this propitious date, do you?
And why not? Old newspapers, the fodder for historians and writers, are filled with stories about encounters with the supernatural. After all, everyone loves a ghost story, right?
Read MoreOne of the joys of historical research is that it's like a treasure hunt. You never know what the next document or deed, the turn of a page of an old newspaper, or a tip from a reader might lead to.
This nugget from the Nanaimo Free Press was sent along by a friend who’d been researching coal mine history at Vancouver Island University. It concerns lost treasure—the real thing.
Read MoreI wonder how many people ever pause to think that they’re literally walking on air as they go about their business in downtown Nanaimo.
The ‘air’ beneath their feet being that formed by abandoned coal mines—miles of them—now mostly flooded, but, in many cases, otherwise intact. This false floor is something that City building inspectors and contractors must take into account when they plan new works.
Read MoreI’ve mentioned before that history is ever with us, even in the breaking news which media prides itself on. It isn’t always apparent, as in a flashback or an overt reference to an historical event or personage, but often hidden between the lines.
In other words, you have to know something about history to recognize it when you see it.
Read MoreAn unsung jewel is the Esquimalt Naval & Military Museum at Naden, Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt. It’s open seven days a week (10-3:30), including statutory holidays. Admission is by donation.
As the son of a career Royal Canadian Navy man, I feel almost at home during my too infrequent visits. Almost every which way I turn, there’s an artifact on display—a bell, a crest, a model, a photo—of one of my father’s ships. About the only one that I didn’t notice this past Sunday was his last ship, the light cruiser HMCS Ontario.
Read MoreTalk about a labour of love. Fourteen years and 100 interviews later, Duncan author Lynn Starter’s opus, a coffee table took of 1200 pages of photos and facts is off the press and available.
Read MoreIn last week’s editorial I shrugged off the impending demolition of the historic Holt Creek trestle at Mile 59.7 on the Glenora stretch of the Trans Canada Trail as inevitable and, well, c’est la vie.
It’s to be replaced with a purely utilitarian span of steel and concrete with a wooden deck.
Read MoreWhen I was a kid, way back in the Jurassic Age, all that I knew about the Doukhobor people of B.C. could be summed up in a cynical four-line ditty which we kids bandied about in school. I still remember it, but won’t repeat here.
As the years went by and there were glaring newspaper headlines about arson, and scenes of naked demonstrations by the Sons of Freedom sect filled evening TV screens, what little thought I gave to their protests and beliefs wasn’t charitable.
Read MoreThere just ain’t nothing sacred any more...
It’s looking more likely that a Vancouver mining company will get the go-ahead to “process the large quantities of waste rock on land owned by Mosaic on Mount Sicker...” reads the lead of a front-page story in this week’s Cowichan Valley Citizen.
The waste rock referred is that of the ore dumps and tailings piles of the historic Lenora and Tyee mines on Mount Sicker.
Read MoreWhenever we see or hear anything in the news about whales these days, it’s about their being threatened (in the case of the Orcas) with eventual extinction, or of a whale being run down by a ship, or becoming entangled in discarded fishing gear...
Our concern for their general welfare is a dramatic turnaround from that of our pioneers, Indigenous and White, who harvested them for their meat and blubber, then for their oil and ambergris which were valued for industrial purposes.
Read MoreHaving a Facebook page can be like stroking a cat; rub it the wrong way and you can get scratched.
So I've learned over the past months of hosting T.W. Paterson History Author, which was set up for me by and at the urging of friend Blake Mackenzie, creator of the phenomenally successful FB site, Gold Trails and Ghost Towns.
Read MoreIt was over almost as soon as it began but still worth the time and trouble to drive to Crofton.
I’m referring to Sunday evening’s flypast by the famous Martin Mars water bomber, Hawaii Mars, on her final flight to retirement at Sidney’s BC Aviation Museum. (Bonus: She was escorted by the Snowbirds in perfect formation.)
Read MoreIt’s the dog days of summer so please forgive me if I begin this week with a ramble; specifically, a quote from immortal Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery who obviously was a lady after my own heart:
“I am simply a book drunkard. Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotees. I cannot withstand them.”
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