Editorially speaking...
I had begun to despair that Ladysmith would ever get off the pot but, at last, I’m happy to see that restoration of the old Crown Zellerbach No.11 locomotive is well in hand, perhaps even finished. All done by volunteers, I gather. When will governments of all levels ever learn that our history is a public trust, and accept that they have the responsibility of caring for it? Instead, they’re forever crying poverty and foisting the work and most of the expense off on taxpaying volunteers who, fortunately for future generations, do value their heritage enough to want to do something to save it.
That’s my gripe for today.
On a happier note, I recently finished Negley Farson’s autobiography, The Way of a Transgressor. It’s become a classic internationally and deals with the first half of his working life in Europe, beginning with his experiences as a freelance entrepreneur in First World War Russia, his brief service with the Royal Air Force during which he was badly injured, and up through the late 1920s as a journalist when, already, the first stirrings of the Second World War were apparent to a discerning eye.
But it’s his and is wife’s two-year sojourn in an isolated cabin on the north shore of Cowichan Lake that’s of interest to me. Locals never forgave him when he wrote, sometimes cruelly, of their frailties and foibles, and his use of pseudonyms that were so close to the real thing that anyone who lived at the lake knew exactly who he was referring to.
I’ll tell you more about Mr. Farson another time.
I’m also well into Maria Tippetts’ biography of Emily Carr which is giving me a window into the personality of B.C.’s foremost artist, most of whose work I’ve never been able to appreciate. With few exceptions, her overwhelming sombre browns and depressingly dark greens (I know, I know, we live in a rain forest) leave me cold. I much prefer her writings (and the works of E.J. Hughes, truth be known) but Emily has always fascinated me as a person.
Above all, despite having to make a living as a boarding house owner (which she loathed, by the way), she was true to her art. Her evolution—what became a crusade—as an artist took iron resolve, particularly when public criticisms and outright hostility to her works cut her deeply. How could I not admire someone like that?
So now, when I look at her paintings, I at least give them some thought. What is she really saying, and, if I can’t see it, is that her failing—or mine?
Had my 15 minutes of fame on the Gold Trails and Ghost Towns Facebook site last week thanks to fellow historian and history professor Dan Marshall. He and I travelled together years ago to the Yale History Conferences organized by Blake MacKenzie.
What a joy they were! We even got to raft Hell’s Gate Canyon, an experience of a lifetime. Better yet, we got ashore at Hill’s Bar, just below Yale, where gold was discovered and set off the 1858 Fraser River gold rush. B.C. was never the same—but Hill’s Bar, more or less, hasn’t changed a bit. Other than occasional visits by prospectors and historical tourists such as ourselves, it’s probably pretty much as it was when the ‘49ers paused to have lunch there and one of them chanced to see a sparkle in the sand.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Oh, and we also set ashore at a short stretch of the original Cariboo Road which probably hadn’t experienced the tread of a human foot since the Fraser River highway was built. What can I say but, wow!
I wonder how many people realized that this week—April 5—marked the 63rd anniversary of the blowing up of Ripple Rock? It took the largest man-made, non-nuclear explosion in history to remove this underwater shipping hazard’s twin peaks. I remember my family and I being glued to the TV (black and white, of course) for three hours until the noon-hour detonation which seemed almost anti-climactic after the CBC’s lengthy preamble. But indelible on my memory bank all the same.
The tidal rapids that swirled about ‘The Rock’ had claimed 100s of vessels, including an American warship, over the years, but its destruction capped a by then almost forgotten dream of a truly trans-continental railway. In 1910 the Canadian Northern Pacific Railway (later the CNR and, in the Cowichan Valley, today’s Trans Canada Trail) was meant to go all the way from the Sidney area through Victoria, Sooke and Cowichan to Barkley Sound then on to Prince Rupert via a span over Seymour Narrows using Ripple Rock for a base.
Think of that for a moment. They dreamed BIG, a century and more ago. But the First World War put everything on hold and, by war’s end, circumstances had changed dramatically. So no railway bridge across Seymour Narrows and, as of April 5, 1958, no Ripple Rock.
I’m sure I’ve already encouraged you to check out Glen Mofford’s Facebook site, Historic Hotels & Pubs of B.C. Every other day, it seems, he publishes rare and outstanding photos of hotels around the province, supplemented with richly researched text. Last week’s post was on the Shawnigan Lake Hotel (aka Koenig’s Hotel) beside the E&N tracks on the lake shore in ‘downtown’ Shawnigan Lake. It’s a story of pioneer entrepreneurship and tragedy, one I’ve written about in my Cowichan Chronicles books.
The site of the grand Shawnigan Lake (Koenig’s) Hotel is now just someone’s yard.
But let Glen tell you the story of George and Anna Koenig in his own words, on Facebook.
Lastly: As I predicted here some weeks ago, historic Western Speedway is doomed. It has been given a two-year reprieve under a new name (Westshore Speedy) and efforts are being made to find a new location close to the same Langford site. Meaning that, two years from now, only its heritage plaque will mark the old racetrack.
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