Editorially speaking…
Further to today’s post on the famous—and valuable—New Westminster Mint’s 10- and 20-dollar gold coins, the crown colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia also, ever so briefly, printed their own postage stamps.
As an example, this photo is of the British Columbia & Vancouver Island Stamp #2 - Queen Victoria (1860) 2½d, Unwatermarked.
There’s one available online, BTW: $650.00 CN, reduced from $1000.00.—Arpin Philately
In 1999, it was reported that “an exceptional collection of rare pre-Confederation stamps—some from Vancouver Island—has been put up for auction in the U.S. and is expected to fetch about $500,000 U.S...The collection was assembled over the past half-century by Bob Carr, a dentist from Youngstown, Ohio.”
To think that we once minted and printed our own gold coins and postage stamps. Ah, the good old days...
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And speaking of antiquities, one of the rarest of them all—one of a kind—is about to come up for sale.
The failing Hudson’s Bay Co. is going to sell its original charter from 1670.
How the mighty have fallen!
It will be interesting to see who bids for it and how much they offer for what must be the most historically significant document in Canadian and North American history.
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After South Wellington Day on Sunday, April 13, Belinda and I headed up the E&N Railway tracks to the PCC Mine. I’ve done it dozens of times; this was her first.
In warm, brilliant spring sunshine, we stood on the tracks and gazed at what’s now a cow pasture between, to our left and right, light forests of third-growth firs and maples. Still there, too, but hidden from view, the concrete skeletons that are the only tangible legacy of what once was a busy coal mine.
Of what was, in February 1915, the site of one of the saddest colliery disasters in Vancouver Island history, the drowning of 19 men after they blasted through to the flooded workings of the adjacent and abandoned Southfield Mine.
As it’s a chapter in my forthcoming book, Along the Black Track, I’d been re-reading the old newspaper accounts of that tragedy and its immediate aftermath, and I could all but see it in my mind’s eye:
The miners from neighbouring collieries who’d volunteered their services as rescuers but who weren’t needed because the PCC was now flooded; the mothers, wives, sisters, brothers, girlfriends and children of those down below, standing stoically, silently, in the damp February chill and praying for a miracle.
Ten days after the disaster, Manager Foy’s body was recovered. —Courtesy Helen Tilley
A Victoria newspaper reporter captured the grief of that scene:
“No one can tell of the misery that this disaster brings to South Wellington, but with the usual fortitude of the mining element, the survivors are bearing their loss with magnificent courage.
“There was no panic in that little village when the dread message was sent out that the mine was flooded. The excited gathering of the relatives of the entombed men aroused the sympathies of those who were fortunate enough to have escaped, and fathers, mothers, sisters and sweethearts united and watched longingly at the dingy little mouth of No. 1 mine.
“But as the rescuers disappeared into the very bowels of the earth and came back without any sign of the doomed miners, tears came to the eyes of the watchers and they melted away to resume their sorrowful wait in the solitude of cosy homes that had housed happy families but a few hours before...”
Today, the old PCCM is part farm and part regional park—all so very far removed from this drama of 90 years ago. But, every time I visit, and I shall do so again, I can and will “see” and “hear” those sad echoes of our ‘black’ past.
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One of the many bonuses of South Wellington Day was meeting Kerry Parker with whom I’ve corresponded over the years. She’s the granddaughter of Jock Gilmour, a legendary coal miner and Draegerman (mine rescuer).
She graciously emailed these photos of Jock who’s the second from the right in this 1941 team photo. Ironically, Adam Watson, second from the left, would be killed in the South Wellington No. 10 Mine a year after this photo was taken.
—Courtesy of Kerry Parker, loving granddaughter
“This is a delighted me with photo of my grandfather after my 20-year search trying to find out where the BC Mine Rescue Shield was. It had been up Campbell River area and then donated to the Cumberland Museum...” —Courtesy Kerry Parker
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