Editorially speaking…
Ayer’s Sarsaparilla—the best of its kind
To strengthen the body and brighten the mind!
Then what is more worthy of pencil or song
Than Ayer’s Sarsaparilla? IT MAKES THE WEAK STRONG.
Bad poetry, yes—but it seems to have worked for this purveyor of patent medicine. (Sarsaparilla, by the way, is “a tropical plant used throughout history to treat conditions like arthritis, psoriasis and syphilis”).
Syphilis!
—www.pinterest.com
Was there nothing that the snake-oil salesmen of old didn’t claim to cure? No, as we see in this week’s feature post. As noted, some claims were so outrageous that users, rather than having been naive or even stupid, had to have been absolutely desperate to have hoped for relief or a cure.
Years ago, while digging at the site of a 1920s logging camp, I unearthed several squat and plainish clear bottles that were embossed, Nu-Jol. A few minutes online established that Nu-Jol stood for the New Jersey Oil Co., owned by the J.P. Morgan interests.
Now why, you might ask, would an oil company sell petroleum products for human consumption? Because they could—as a ‘cure’ for, among other things, cancer. I’ve wondered over the years about the poor logger who’d placed his hopes—even staked his very life—in these bottles of distilled petroleum.
How sad. How cruel.
* * * * *
Last year, I wrote about the campaign to save Hope’s historic CNR train station from demolition. How pleased I am to report that they succeeded this month!
* * * * *
Proving that preservers of heritage sometimes—not often, but sometimes—win. Proving, too, that there’s nothing ventured, everything gained by taking a proactive stand when development or other circumstances dictate or default to demolition by neglect. Here in the Cowichan Valley, we have the 1894 Elkington house steadily deteriorating even though owned by the Municipality of North Cowichan for the past 20-pus years.
Paul Considine has been circulating an online petition to urge North Cowichan to undertake conservation before it’s too late. Chronicles readers who share Paul’s concerns and wish to sign his petition can do so by Googling Elkington House, Duncan, B.C.
* * * * *
A week ago, it was reported that a Tofino woman had made a miraculous find at the high water mark on the beach in front of her home: her wallet. She’d lost it eight months before when it fell out of her backpack while transferring from a canoe to a boat. She’d tried desperately to find it, even called in a diver, but no luck.
But she never gave up hope that the sea would one day return her wallet and, every time she beachcombed, she watched for it until, lo and behold, there it was, washed up by the tide.
You never know what the tide will bring in, as proved by a Chronicles post, Beachcombing: Mysteries Cast Up By the Sea.
* * * * *
A new subscriber asked if I wrote a book on the Headless Valley on the Nahanni River, Northwest Territories.
No, but R.M. Patterson (two t’s vs. my 1) did many years ago; in fact, it’s a Canadian true adventure classic. When I first hit print many years ago, R.M. was retired in Oak Bay and we’d sometimes get each other’s mail by mistake. Another tenuous link was the fact that my mother had worked as his housekeeper when she was a teen.
As for the legendary story of the Headless Valley and the ill-fated McLeod Brothers whose decapitated bodies gave it its name, I’ve amassed a half-inch-thick file but never have written about it. But I shall, having been given a, so far as I know, previously unpublished McLeod family memoir.
In my spare time, eh?