Editorially speaking…
Have you ever really, really given thought as to how the British Columbia that exists today came to be? Of the legions of men and women, mostly unknown and unsung, who built this province, often with their hands, from what was wilderness?
You might reply, that’s my job, I’m the historian. Okay, but, funnily enough, it took me years of writing about historical events to realize that I was really writing about the people who made them happen.
In other words, remove people from the equation and you have—?
It’s the human factor—the human drama—that has always fascinated me and fuelled my decades of narrative. Not just to entertain, I’d consider that futile, but to inform.
Better yet, to inspire.
What follows is a short article I wrote for the Victoria Colonist 35 years ago. A story about a man you’ve never heard of. Writing this week’s Chronicle about a remarkable pioneer such as ‘Father Pat’ Irwin reminded me of A.L. Marsh, of my fascination with the human spirit, of why I shall go on “storytelling,” if that’s what you want to call it, to the last drop.
(And, most of a lifetime and millions of words later, I’ll have hardly scratched the surface.)
So, read about A.G. Marsh and give a thought to all those who came before us and who did the heavy lifting, allowing those of us who’ve followed ro enjoy the benefits. We are so blessed.
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Jack Lee, said to be the last miner on Wild Horse Creek, 1918. A lonely life, indeed. —BC Archives
A miner's lot, like that of the policeman, wasn't an easy one back in the so-called good old days. In an industry which has known a thousand busts to every boom, countless dreams have been shattered in the quest for nature's bounty.
The keys to success in pioneer British Columbia, it seems, were vision, brawn and determination.
A prime example is that provided by A.L. Marsh, who invested 25 years of back-breaking labour to prove his claim in the Cherry Creek district of the Okanagan. Gold Commissioner L. Norris, in his annual report for 1913, described Marsh's lonely battle against the odds.
In so doing, he wrote an encapsulated history of the early B.C. mining industry.
“Over the hill and east from the Monashee mill-house lies the placer ground where A.L. Marsh drove, single-handed, 2,500 feet of tunnel in a vain attempt to reach bedrock in the bottom of the gulch.
“A practical miner, and a man much above the average, mentally and physically,” as Norris described him, Marsh came to B.C. in 1883 from San Francisco where he’d lost a large fortune previously acquired in mining in Nevada. Convinced that a second fortune awaited him in the Okanagan if he could reach bedrock, but having no funds and being unable to interest capital in the project, he began to work his claim by himself.
Commencing an 1889, he worked at it single-handed for 12 years. Then he found that the timbers he first put in were beginning to rot and fall in and he had to abandon his tunnel, by this time more than 300 feet long.
“His actual achievement," Norris continued, “if encountered in the pages of a novel, would be deemed incredible, and had he been successful many would have heard of it, but as it is the story of his amazing pluck will probably never be told. Mr. Marsh is now 70 years of age and still has unbounded faith in the ground."
At last report he was hard at work on his new mine shaft.
Need I remind readers that 2,500 feet, the total length of tunnelling done by Marsh, is one-half of a mile? Half a mile dug and timbered, then picked, wheel barrowed and washed by one man! All done in the ironclad conviction that it would ultimately pay off and make all his years of sacrifice worthwhile.
Or was there more to it than that? Something few of us might even understand, that drove this man? And those like him? We’ll never know, of course, but isn’t that what makes people so fascinating?
History dull and boring? Get real!
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