Editorially speaking...
Traditional First Nation names are cropping up everywhere these days. Latest is the rechristening of a campground beside the Pat Bay Highway between Sidney and the ferry terminal.
What has long been the 20-hectare McDonald Campground is now SMONECTEN (pronounced maw nitch tun) which means “fir pitch place” in recognition of its towering stands of fir trees which once were used to provide pitch (sap) for starting fires, patching canoes, healing wounds and lighting lanterns.
Four hand-carved panels and an interpretive display have also been installed at the campground which is in the heart of pre-colonial WSANEC territory next to an old village site.
Happily, for those of us who know only English, it’s easy to pronounce!
As promised, Prime Minister Trudeau delivered a formal apology in the House of Commons for the internment of Italian Canadian citizens as ‘enemy aliens’ during the Second World War. A letter to the editor of the Times Colonist declared that Canada was in a state of war with Italy which had allied itself with Nazi Germany, therefore national security triumphed all other concerns.
In short, war is hell as General Sherman so graphically put it during the American Civil War. The letter writer reminded me of a man I met at a social function years ago when the topic of Japanese wartime internment came up. He was of the same blunt opinion: we were at war, the Japanese were a threat to national security. As for a formal apology from the federal government, bah, and Japanese Canadians of today should just “get on with it”.
My question for all who feel this way is this: If it had been your parents (he was of that age) who’d been rounded up and hauled away in trucks, confined in cattle stalls in the PNE barns, shipped out to inadequate accommodation in B.C. Interior ghost towns and set to work constructing roads and logging and the like, the men often separated from their families, their lands and properties expropriated and sold at fire sale prices, the money put to their “board”—would he have felt the same way?
Should Italian Canadians whose parents and grandparents were also interned for the duration without any evidence being put forward of their lack of loyalty to Canada just “get on with it”?
I know I wouldn’t.
Then there are those who argue that an apology really is an empty gesture. I disagree there, too. To not acknowledge wrongs of the past is to condone them, something that, it’s becoming increasingly clear, we Canadians have long been good at. But no more!
The latest outrage, the discovery of more than 200 unmarked graves at the Kamloops Residential School, is so appalling, so unforgivable, as to be—at first blush—unbelievable. But, no, it’s all too real, alright, and if ever we needed to have our colonial past rubbed in our faces, this is it.
At this point, I’d bet that the chances of Sir Jon A. Macdonald’s statue ever again seeing the light of day in Victoria are next to nil...
On a totally different note, I was recently asked by a reader to walk the talk after my repeated references to the battle to save the 1916 CNR station house in Hope from demolition. I’d not wanted to become otherwise involved as I knew that I’d be resented as an ‘outsider’—something I’ve been accused of in the past when daring to presume that I had something to offer to a community other than my own.
But April, who was born in Hope and who’s one of those advocating for the station house’s preservation, put me on the spot with her undue praise:
“Hi Tom – I thought I might reach out to you given your advocacy work in preserving and restoring historic sites... If you have the time, we’d love a letter sent to Council...”
What could I do but ante up?
I won’t bore you by reciting all of my appeal to Council but I told them how, here in Duncan, our historic E&N Railway station is home to the Cowichan Valley Museum and a vital part of downtown Duncan.
I told them how public sentiment convinced the provincial and regional governments to reconsider the demolition of the ca 1921 Kinsol Trestle to replace it with a poor imitation that utilized only three timbers for every five of the original. And how, at one of the crowded public meetings that dealt with what had become a highly contentious issue, then CVRD Chairperson Gerry Giles summed it up in the proverbial nutshell:
“We owe it to history to do this right.”
And they did.
The result was a re-thinking of the potential for restoration of the Kinsol Trestle and, today, the ‘rehabilitated’ (their word of choice) Kinsol Trestle draws 100,000 visitors a year of the 500,000 people (local and from afar) who annually use the Cowichan Valley stretch of the TCT.
I then told Council how, earlier this year, B.C. Heritage Trust signed off on its $1.4 million renovation of the century-old headframe/tipple at Morden Colliery Provincial Heritage Park. This came after decades of total neglect by succeeding provincial governments of the last standing structure of its kind in B.C. and one of only two surviving in North America.
Threatened with inevitable destruction by failing structural integrity (it’s a pioneer of concrete construction) and fenced off to the public as a danger, Morden is again open to allow visitors to learn about Vancouver island’s historically significant coal mining heritage.
I could go on, but that’s enough for today. I don’t know yet whether Hope Council is going to follow through with demolition of this handsome and historically significant landmark building which could—should—if absolutely unavoidable, be moved to another permanent location.
But I said my two-bits’ worth. I may not have had any effect upon Council but I at least made a modest attempt to change their minds.
Something I try to do with Chronicles readers from time to time, if you haven’t already noticed!
As one who grew up in the age of ink on paper I’ve always accepted Times (New) Roman as the ultimately friendly-to-the-eye-typeface, particularly for lengthier text. But this is the digital age and I’ve become aware that some of us of advanced years have difficulty reading online.
Beginning with this issue of the Chronicles, upon the advice of digital professionals, you’re reading what’s intended to be a ‘cleaner’ typeface, in this case Open Sans.
Please let me know if you have any difficulty reading it. —TW.
* * * * *
Have a question, comment or suggestion for TW? Use our Contact Page.