Editorially speaking…
I sometimes wonder how historical writers were able to research before the internet.
I remember the 100s of weekly trips I made to Victoria to risk eyestrain while “surfing” on the newspaper microfilm machine in the Victoria Press Library, and visits to the Provincial Archives, the Public Library, the Douglas Building, repository of the Department of Mines annual reports and photos, and the Post Office building which housed various federal government offices of value to me...
Parking for a full-size pickup was almost always a challenge, sometimes necessitating a mile-long walk to the Archives from places like Dallas Road.
Then there were the trips to the National Archives in Ottawa, museums across the country, road tours, camping trips, interviews, etc., etc., etc.
Ah, but that was then.
This is now—the wonderful world of digital research. Meaning, for me, surfing the internet from the comfort of my library with a cup of coffee at my elbow, listening to music of choice without commercial breaks... It’s nothing less than decadent, I tell you.
It has its hazards, however. Keywords—those magical door openers to the information we seek—can sometimes challenge even Google, which wanders off into the ether and gives up totally unrelated data,
Then there are those land mines we know as rabbit holes. You start out with the best of intentions, a quick confirmation here, a missing link there, just a correct name or date—and next you know, you’re wandering on a totally new and unrelated page, victim of your own curiosity and the internet’s bottomless trove of information.
Ah, but all this from the comforts of home!
I must also commend email, my favourite means of communication. Like me, it works 24/7. (Okay, not every day, all day, although I often come close; I mean I can open, answer and send, morning, evening or night, and it’s delivered within minutes. So much for snail mail, and to heck with the phone.)
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Speaking of rabbit holes, I couldn’t resist this one while researching the story of the Fraser River motor stage tragedy online. It’s a small item in a November 1916 issue of the Vancouver News-Advertiser, simply headlined, BODY OF PROSPECTOR IS BROUGHT TO CITY.
How often B.C. Provincial Police officers were called upon to attend to unpleasant but necessary duties when not chasing robbers, Just as, I’m sure, police officers are today. In this case:
“In order to bring out and give decent burial to the remains of George Blackman, an old prospector who perished of exhaustion and cold as he endeavoured to make his way out of the Clow-hom country by way of an unknown creek, two provincial constables last Saturday went up to Sechelt with block and tackle, hired the assistance of two other men, cut a trail for three miles through the timber, and were successful in bringing out the body, which reached Vancouver last night.
Recovering bodies, sometimes with great difficulty, was just another unpleasant but necessary duty for police officers. —BC Archives
“The chief difficulty was expected in getting the body out of a deep pool in the creek bottom in which it had fallen when a previous endeavour was made to move it from the place where Blackman had stumbled for the last time.
“The body was recovered without much trouble, however, and was then gradually packed, attached to a pole, a thousand feet up to the trail and then down to the mouth of the Clow-hom River.
“Provincial Constables Markham and Lavery was [sic] in charge of the grim business. They were not hampered at all by the weather.”
Grim business indeed.
Cutting a trail for three miles; using a block and tackle to recover the body from the water; taking turns carrying it, slung from a pole between two men, 1000 feet through the bush, in wintry weather.
Today, they’d fly in and out by helicopter and hardly work up a sweat.
But not a century and more ago when this was just another day on the job as a provincial policeman.
One more reason we should honour our pioneers.
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