Editorially speaking...
From this month’s Cowichan Historical Society newsletter:
May is B.C. Mining Month - The Britannica Mine Museum is commemorating “100 Years of Mill 3” in a feature exhibit that will run until November 5, 2023.
The 20-storey Mill No. 3 was an architectural feat of engineering...built overlooking Britannica Beach and in 1987 was designated as a National Historic Site. In the 1930s the Britannica Mine produced 17% of the world’s copper and was the largest copper mine in the British Commonwealth.
If you’ve never thought that mining is a blast (sorry), you haven’t visited the Britannia Mine Museum. —Britannia Mine Museum
The museum is open Monday-Friday. For details go to https://www.britanniaminemuseum.ca/.
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From a recent post on my Facebook website:
Another of Duncan’s pioneer icons faces an uncertain future.
The ca 1931 Knights of Pythias Hall on Brae Road, long the home of the IWA-81, then the Mercury Theatre, has been closed because it needs serious roof repairs.
Are we about to lose another historical icon?
Maple Lodge, No. 14, the local chapter of the K. of P. goes back to 1892 and first met upstairs in the W.P. Jaynes Store, opposite the E&N station (today’s Cowichan Valley Museum) until they outgrew these premises and moved to the upper floor of the H.W. Dickie real estate and insurance offices.
They finally had their own Knights’ Hall and Opera House, which they built on two adjoining lots (now occupied by the Elk’s Home). When it was destroyed by fire in January 1931, they moved to Brae Road.
Designed by noted architect Douglas James and built by the equally respected contractor, E.W. Lee, for $7000, the Hall was opened by the late Past Grand Chancellor J. Burton Slough on September 12 of that year.
A 1600-square-foot supper room downstairs could accommodate up to 150 people. Many other organizations besides the IWA and the Mercury Theatre utilized the Hall with the blue brick corners over the years of the Knights’ ownership.
Here’s hoping that it will be saved and repurposed rather than razed and redeveloped.
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Also from my FB page:
In all of Canada there are very few women’s names on the many Cenotaphs that commemorate the sacrifices of the First and Second World Wars, the Korean conflict and peace-keeping missions.
Photos follow in order.
Duncan is one of those 2-3 exceptions.
Dorothy Twist. —Courtesy Rev. Jim Short
Dorothy Twist, who’s also on the Cobble Hill Cenotaph, was a nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment as it was known in World War One. The English-born Dorothy, who’d lived with her mother in Cobble Hill until she volunteered, first treated wounded servicemen in Switzerland.
“Returning though ill health,” noted the Cowichan Leader upon reporting her death, “she volunteered again and went out last May with two other nurses from the Victoria Central Nursing Division...”
Despite her having been sent home exhausted, Dorothy’s insistence upon returning to duty was against the wishes, family legend has it, of her mother who begged her not to go. On Sept. 26, 1918 she succumbed to pneumonia at Frensham Military Hospital.
Dorothy Twist, too, as the Leader also noted, “laid down her life” for King and Country.
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