Editorially speaking…
This week’s story is about the great avalanche of March 1910 that killed 62 railway crewmen and navvies in Rogers Pass, the worst such disaster in B.C. history.
Last month, I told the story of the province’s second worst snow slide, that which entombed 26 miners at the Granduc copper mine in February 1965. (Snow Slide, June 12, 2025.)
A wind howling off the Granduc glacier gave Mr. Vance and his companions the creeps. —BC Archives
I also mentioned the Granduc story on Facebook which drew this response from Eric Vance:
“I was up in Hedley for a couple of days this week, where part of my family is from. I was having coffee in the museum with some of the old timers and the conversation veered over into places we had been in B.C. I mentioned I had been up to the old Granduc Mine and stayed there one night with a couple of other people in pickup trucks with campers and how eerie it felt, knowing what had happened there.
“The wind howled all night long as we were little specks in this massive valley with a large glacier off to one side.
“Anyway, this one old timer told me that he had a good friend that worked at Granduc at the time. His friend had booked of the day before to go to Vancouver to visit his family. If he had not done so, he would have perished.
“Such a tragedy.”
Steve Hogarth wrote: “When I was working at Premier Mine outside Stewart in the 90’s an avalanche came down right over the portal, luckily I was underground when it happened. Had I been outside [the] portal dumping the cars I would’ve got wiped away. I still work underground today.”
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So much for snow slides, probably the last such story I’ll write.
In more contemporary news, it has been reported that a childhood icon of mine is about to expire. Mondelez Canada Ltd. has discontinued production of the famous and (I thought) popular (Cadbury) Neilson Jersey Milk candy bar.
I can’t remember when this creamy confection with the white and gold wrapper wasn’t around. But, alas, no more. —Wikipedia
It was originally developed by the Canadian dairy brand William Neilson Ltd. in 1924.
It has been described as one of the OG’s of anyone with a sweet tooth—“its rich, velvety taste and recognizable retro packaging made it a standout — not flashy, not filled with caramel or crunch, just pure creamy milk chocolate at its finest”.
Jersey, by the way, refers to the Jersey cow, once the hallmark of B.C. dairy farmers because its lactic cargo was rich in buttermilk. But farmers are business people, too, and the greater production capacity of the Holstein has all but replaced the gentle Jersey of my childhood when I grew up beside, and hung around, three dairy farms surrounding Swan Lake.
And Holstein milk—how providential that it also fits our modern views of nutrition—is low in buttermilk.
I’m sure none of this has any bearing on the mega-corp decision to discontinue the bar.
Interestingly, when the tariffs fuss began a few months ago, it was predicted that Canadian candy manufacturers would be hit because the bulk of their sales are in the U.S. and they’ll be subject to Trump’s tantrums. I don’t know if that is in fact playing out to prediction.
But check out this headline from two weeks ago: Purdy’s expands into Save-On Foods amid high ‘buy Canadian’ demand.
This famous Vancouver confectioner has been around since 1907 when Richard Carmon Purdy, a barber of all things, opened his first shop on Robson Street. Having moved to Vancouver from Ontario to begin life over again after the death of his son, he began experimenting with creating chocolate recipes in his home kitchen and selling them in the street while building what was described as an “enthusiastic” market.
Ironically, when he got into financial difficulty, it was his major creditors who saved his company—but not Purdy. A crack bookkeeper named Hugh Forrester soon had the company back on track and all debts paid. Debtors were impressed enough that they sold the reinvigorated chocolatier to Forrester for all of $1.
As for Purdy, he went back to making chocolates in his kitchen and selling them from a street cart. He managed to open a second shop in Burnaby which he called Window Made Candy, until his retirement; he died in 1943.
In the meantime, Forrester and his father, selling under the brand Purdy’s Chocolates, modernized production methods and expanded to a larger plant until irreconcilable differences prompted them to sell the business and a new partnership built the business to what it is today.
And that today is “buy Canadian,” so Purdy’s has decided to sell them outside its own stores for the first time in its 118-year history.
“Since about January, we really noticed...people either remembered we are a Canadian brand and always have been or were interested in learning more about Canadian brand and how they could support Canadian companies,” said company vice-president Kriston Dean.
If all goes well, she said, Purdy’s will be looking to expand its partnership with more retailers.
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