Editorially speaking…
How long does it take most of us to begin writing 2025 instead of 2024 without having to think about it—or correct ourselves?
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Most Chronicles readers, I’m sure, have seen the news about the loss to fire of the well-known and highly-regarded Whale Interpretation Centre at Telegraph Cove. The 20-year-old natural museum housed a wonderful collection of marine mammal specimens including the skeleton of a 20-metre fin whale.
The cove’s buildings and docks were much older, with a rich history of their own.
Telegraph Cove as it was, left, and as the fire died down. —Courtesy of Andrew Waldegrave
Whaling by First Nations peoples then by commercial harvesters has a long and colourful history in this, Canada’s Pacific province. It’s within living memory that some species were hunted almost to the point of extinction. But that was then. Whales now enjoy high public interest and esteem, rescue when they’re caught in discarded fishing gear, and sympathy when they’re struck and killed by ships.
The Telegraph Cove Whale Interpretation Centre took public interest another step.
Can you picture a large, dead whale on a beach being de-fleshed then the bones de-greased for reassembly? (Have you ever smelled a dead whale? It can travel for miles; that’s how Rose Harbour, once a whaling station, got its name.) Not a task for the weak of heart!
It takes strong noses, strong willpower and determination to convert that rotting mass of flesh into a museum exhibit capable of drawing 10,000 visitors per year. But that’s what a dedicated band of volunteers did, and now, as of Dec. 31St, everything has been destroyed by fire.
What a sad way to end 2024 and to enter 2025. But plans are already underway to restart the museum. “We’re going to do our best [to rebuild] and we’ve got tremendous support,” co-founder Jim Borrowman posted online.
Three years ago, fire swept away Lytton’s Museum and Archives, and the privately operated Chinese History Museum. A century and more of our collective history gone up in smoke, and now, too, those treasures at Telegraph Cove.
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Also on Vancouver Island, the Chemainus Health Care Auxiliary celebrated its 125th anniversary in October. There aren’t many organizations of any kind in B.C. with that track record.
Looking more like a private residence, the new, turn-of-the-last century Chemainus Hospital. —BC Archives
It all started in 1899 during a typhoid epidemic when “23 ladies of Chemainus first got together to form a Women’s Auxiliary,” reported the Cowichan Valley Citizen.
They raised $767.68 and the first 10-bed hospital opened May 5, 1900. Since then the Auxiliary has raised $5.3 million in donations alone as well as comforting and caring for Chemainus Valley residents in the hospital and other medical care facilities.
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Heaven forbid that I should encourage competition for Chronicles readers’ attention, but I feel compelled to draw your attention to Historica Canada, which promotes itself as “a charitable organization that offers programs in both official languages that you can use to explore, learn, reflect on our history, and consider what it means to be Canadian”.
Sort of what we do here at BC Chronicles but on a national scale.
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On a sadder note, I regret to inform you that, as reported in the Kamloops Telegram, “T.W. Paterson passed away last Sunday in Victoria.”
So I was recently informed by friend Belinda Wright who, in surfing for something else, came across this clipping from Aug. 30, 1921. That T.W. Paterson was a former B.C. lieutenant-governor and very successful businessman. (For all my efforts, alas, I don’t qualify on either count.)
Darn. Not content with being more famous and richer, he was better looking, too. —Wikipedia
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You only have to follow the news to know that history is under siege these days. By this, I mean that many aspects of accepted historical record and exalted personages are being questioned, even denounced and demoted.
Look at Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, for one. From Founding Father to villain, all in a matter of a few short years. Who could have foreseen his monuments or statues being defaced, damaged or warehoused?
But history as viewed through a 21st century lens has also produced some dramatic reversals of the accepted record, of the negative roles played by individuals and governments. Look at the number of official apologies issued in recent years. There have been so many that they have, regrettably, generated apology fatigue in some people.
Personally, I prefer some form of correction when it’s warranted to be better late than never.
Last month, a Virginia judge declared innocent three Black men who were lynched in rural Culpeper County, 120 kilometres from Washington, D.C. “The best history helps us recognize the mistakes that we’ve made and the evil corners in which humanity can dwell,” Circuit Court Judge Dale Durrer said.
The real credit for this case of posthumous justice for Charles Allie Thompson, William Thompson and William Grayson goes to Zann Nelson, 76, who spent almost 20 years researching the three cases then pestering officialdom to correct the record.
To those who thought the lynchings unimportant because they happened so long ago, Nelson answered that the court ruling brought closure, not just to family descendants, but to the community as a whole.
And some people actually believe that history is boring?
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