Editorially speaking…
Well, it’s officially Spring. The birds are swarming my feeders, the snowdrops have all but come and gone, it’s the turn of crocuses and daffodils, Japanese cherry trees, choke cherry, Indian Plum...
—Wikipedia
But they’re predicting another hot and dry summer with its threats of wildfires and drought. Our poor forests! Our poor rivers! My poor trees!
But there I go, predicting doom and gloom when the sun’s shining and it’s already shirt-sleeve weather here in the Cowichan Valley... So, readers, take it at face value and enjoy it while you can, summer will be what it will be.
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On a happier note (you’re welcome), Chronicles reader and fellow writer/historian Tom W. Parkin, who specializes in railway history, has created an hour-long PowerPoint presentation (what he describes as a new-school slide show) about the Lenora Mount Sicker Railway.
Henry Croft’s famous but short-lived Lenora Mount Sicker Railway. —Author’s Collection
He not only offers it for viewing by anyone interested, he’s willing to give free talks to “interested local hiking, history and community groups”. Note that he lives in Nanaimo. He can be reached at tomparkin1951@gmail.com.
In response to my mention of Chief Constable Bullock-Webster in last week’s and this week’s story of murder on the Klondike trail, he writes that Bullock-Webster’s daughter “lived an adventurous outdoor life in northern B.C. as well. I knew her and her husband after they retired to Smithers, B.C.
“Husband T.W. (Tommy) Walker wrote about their experiences in Spatsizi @1975 by Nunago Publishing Co. I have an inscribed copy.
“Mrs. Walker gave me a complete silver cutlery set which formerly belonged to her parents, engraved BW on the handle[s]. It was an honour which I treasure and I used it daily for decades.”
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Also on offer, by the Nanaimo Museum for five-plus months, is a feature exhibit, Broken Promises & Japanese Canadians in Nanaimo. It opened last week and will continue until September 2nd.
The internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War remains one of the most contentious chapters in British Columbia history.
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Speaking of museums, tonight it’s AGM time again for the Cowichan Historical Society. (Which reminds me that it’s also dues time for me—but money—a pittance—well spent.)
NOTICE OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Date: Thursday, March 21, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm
Meeting room doors will open at 6:00pm.
A parking lot is available off First Street.
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One of the many joys of surfing online is that you never know what you’re going to find. Ditto answering email.
I just tripped over the site Working People: A History of Labour in B.C. by the Labour Heritage Centre and the B.C. Teachers Federation. I’m not quite sure how I found them but I was immediately hooked on the lengthy post about Lake Cowichan industrial photographer Wilmer Gold, whom Chronicles readers have met in these pages.
Gold left an incredible legacy of fine photographic images of logging in Cowichan Lake area in the 1930s and 1940s, many of which are displayed, large-size, in the Kaatza Station Museum’s schoolhouse. Well worth a visit, I assure you!
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Ten dollars says this ca 1937 BC Archives photo of a Leyland logging truck is a Wilmer Gold photo.
But don’t quote me.