Editorially speaking...
As I hope you noticed, the Chronicles was off the air last week thanks to a four-day power outage.
Which also meant, of course, that I was offline, so there was no way to go to press with last Thursday’s latest instalment of “Cowichan’s ‘Hanging Tree.’”
Over the next week or so we’ll get caught up again so that readers won’t have missed anything. I apologize for any inconvenience and refer you to BC Hydro who apparently ‘lost’ my file. If I hadn’t gone after them again after being assured that they were working on it, I’d still be without power.
Note: If there’s a next time I won’t take it for granted that I’m just one of 100s of homes down because of snow, that they’re on the job. I’ll call daily for an update until I get some satisfaction. With so many weather ‘events’ now, I’m afraid we can all expect power interruptions from time to time...
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Cowichan (specifically Genoa Bay) lost an iconic landmark last week with the total destruction by fire of Captain Morgan’s Lodge.
For years the home of the late Shirley Berg was one-of-a-kind with a full size yacht suspended from its living room ceiling!
You had to see it to believe it. There’s a great story here which I’ll share with you when I get the Chronicles fully back on-stream.
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The recent smearing of the Royal BC Museum’s woolly mammoth is the work of a climate activist group calling itself On2Otawa.
While I share their concerns for this poor world’s climatic future, I’m offended by their form of protest—even if the paint proved to be water soluble and removable.
But it’s their choice of name that caught my eye: On2Ottawa.
Longtime readers may recall my series, ‘On-to-Ottawa Trek, 1935,’ the story of B.C.’s unemployed who rode the rails to Ottawa to protest directly to Prime Minister R.B. Bennett of having to live on inadequate relief assistance and in work camps during the depth of the Great Depression. They were met in Regina by the RCMP armed with clubs and guns. Two were killed, others grievously injured.
These men, mostly young and single, many of them veterans of the First Wold War, had every right to protest. All but abandoned by various levels of government since the infamous stock market crash of October 1929, they wanted jobs not handouts. and the self-respect that comes with working for a living and having a future.
For this, they were treated as Communists and enemies of the state.
These men coined the On-to-Ottawa slogan and latecomers such as the climate action protesters who pervert it with their malicious pranks hold no candle to the unemployed heroes of the ‘Dirty ‘30’s.’.
They give serious protesters a bad name.
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I see in the news that the Cowichan Trail Stewardship Society wants to include mountain biking on Mount Richards.
I’ve long proposed that the historic Lenora Mt. Sicker Railway grade, stretches of which are intact on the southwestern slopes of Mount Richards, be opened as a public hiking trail.
You can still follow the old Lenora Mt. Sicker Railway grade on Mount Richards if you know where to look. —Author’s Collection courtesy of the late Elwood White
The once-famous switchbacks are still there, just missing their tracks.
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