Editorially speaking…
It’s all my fault.
So Stan Strazza told me at Sunday’s bi-annual South Wellington Day in the Cranberry Fire Hall.
Because we had to arrive early to set up our table I was able to shoot some of the neat exhibits before people got in the way.
By my fault, he meant that, 21 years ago, he read something I’d written on Nanaimo’s Mount Benson plane wreck of October 17, 1951 that killed 23 passengers and crew. At that time it was B.C.’s worst aviation disaster. (See: Disaster on Mount Benson Almost Forgotten.)
A resident of Nanaimo, Sid hadn’t heard of it before and set out to learn more. And did he!
He also set out to connect with me and, on Sunday, knowing that I was going to soft-launch my latest opus, Unknown Nanaimo, at South Wellington, he brought along his research: a briefcase a foot thick, stuffed solid with photos, records, documents, newspapers, interviews on CDs, and on and on. I could hardly believe it.
He must know more about this sad tragedy on the slopes of Mount Benson than any other person alive.
Not content with that, however, he has since researched several other major crashes, including that of the fabled Martin Mars water bomber in the Nanoose area in the 1970s.
As for that fat and heavy briefcase, it’s now home with me, with Stan’s permission to copy and publish anything in it to my heart’s content. Unreal! So, readers, you can expect to learn more about that doomed Queen Charlotte Airline Canso in future Chronicles.
At present, the victims’ only memorial is a primitive concrete headstone in the Nanaimo Cemetery where the remains of nine of them are interred. It reads: AIR CRASH VICTIMS with the date. (I bet it cost the City all of $50.) The Nanaimo Historical Society has been working with the latter-day City Parks to erect a signboard in an Expressway parking lot that looks directly towards the crash site.
It has been at least two years now and still... But stay tuned, there’s still hope.
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I’ve introduced Chronicles readers, obliquely, to Helen Tilley in the tale of the Pacific Coast Collliery Mine disaster of February 1915. (See: Pacific Coast Colliery - Doomed Miners' Day in Court.)
Helen is the indefatigable historian of South Wellington. And I do mean, indefatigable. What’s that expression: when you want something done, ask a busy person?
Ever willing to share the treasure house of documents, newspaper clippings, personal reminiscences and photos she has amassed over the years, she’s the historian/writer’s best friend and it was Helen who led the charge to publish a history of South Wellington. Bless her!
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Popular musician and local son David Gogo popped in, too.
Blues guitarist and singer/songwriter David Gogo won a Juno nomination for She’s Breakin’ Through! She’s Breakin’ Through!, his tribute to his grandfather Sam Wardle and 18 other miners who died in the flooding of the PCC Mine in February 1915. You can play it and other great Gogo songs on YouTube. —Wikipedia
I met David while working with the Friends of the Morden Mine to try to get the provincial government, owners, to fix the failing tipple/pithead that’s the last survivor of the Island’s coal mining history, before it was too late. They’ve since done so, thanks to a lot of public prodding, including that of David Gogo who gave a benefit concert and recorded a live performance of She’s Breakin’ Through! at Morden.
I’ll be telling a great anecdote about David and the PCCM in my forthcoming book, the work of 25 years of field and archival research, Along the Black Track.
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Besides Stan Strazza and his Mount Benson archive, it has been a week of readers coming forward with more information and photos that I shall share with Chronicles readers as I can get to them.
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