Editorially speaking…
Let’s start the day with another great digital colourization by Duncan computer whiz Nigel Robertson, this one of a BC Archives photo of an E&N passenger train crossing the famous Niagara Canyon trestle at Goldstream in 1902.
Note that the photographer’s lens was too slow to ‘freeze’ the movement of the train as almost any camera or cell phone can do today.
—Nigel Robertson / www.recaptureyourmemories.ca
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Daily, we’re assaulted with more depressing news from south of the border. President Trump, who obviously revels in controversy and in creating animosity, no doubt has never had any qualms about his, shall we say, colourful background on both sides of the 49th Parallel.
He even has a family connection here in B.C. as the Canadian Press was pleased to point out recently in an article that the Victoria Times Colonist gleefully headlined, How the Trump family fortune began in a B.C. brothel-hotel.
In fact, it’s still there—or at least a replica of same—in Bennett, B.C.
It was during the Klondike gold rush that Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump realized that as much gold could be made from the miners as from the frozen gravels of the Yukon—with a lot less effort.
Mind you, he was somewhat discreet, calling his business the Arctic Restaurant & Hotel, and it’s said that he really was a good cook.
But, wink, wink, one could buy more than a meal and a room at the Arctic.
Somewhat ironically, it’s Parks Canada that’s behind Freidrich Trump’s celebration as a brothel owner, having created a wooden facade that resembles the original 1890s restaurant/hotel/brothel as part of the Chilkoot Trail National Historic Site in 2017.
Freidrich, who founded the family fortune and who started out as a barber’s apprentice was working in a restaurant in Seattle when news of the Yukon gold rush electrified the world. While on their way to Dawson, Y.T., he and a partner found themselves temporarily stranded in Bennett where 1000s of gold seekers had to tarry while awaiting spring thaw before continuing their journeys by boat to the Yukon diggings.
Seeing a profitable way to cater to the miners before starting over in Whitehorse, the partners opened the Arctic, serving food and booze, and offering “private suites” for those blessed with female companionship.
Again, Trump prospered. Until, in 1901, the RCMP clamped down on prostitution, gambling and liquor sales. Trump’s gold rush was over.
But Friedrich had made his pile. Returning to Germany, he married then emigrated to New York where he invested in real estate, the start of the Trump financial dynasty.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
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Speaking of gold rushes, gold futures recently surpassed US$3,000 per troy ounce for the first time. That’s a long, long way from the $35 an ounce, the artificial price imposed for decades by the United States.
I can remember when it was front-page news that gold, finally freed of government restraints, had achieved $800 an ounce. Now, thanks to current financial turmoil, $3,000!
My point being that many an old mining claim in B.C. may well be worth looking at again. Even old tailings piles may contain a small fortune at today’s prices.
Do you suppose these Cariboo miners found all the gold hiding beneath these boulders in 1896? At today’s price of gold, maybe these old diggings are worth a second look. —BC Archives
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I’ve often thought that much of our history, for any number of reasons, is in a stage of siege. Never ending change—so-called progress—is the usual culprit.
In Courtenay, it’s the town’s war museum that’s presently threatened, not by progress but by our shifting society.
Attendance has dropped dramatically since a shelter for the un-housed was established next door. Rightly or wrongly, people who otherwise would visit the museum feel that, according to news reports, “it’s too dangerous downtown”.
Walk-in traffic has all but ceased, affecting the museum’s cash flow, and their grants aren’t enough to cover all expenses even though staff is voluntary.
How utterly, bloody sad!
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