Editorially speaking...
As you read this it’s—or it isn’t, depending upon your response to calls for its ‘cancellation’—Canada Day.
I never thought I’d live to see July 1st be anything but a celebration of Canada’s birthday.
But then I didn’t foresee events unfolding as they have over the past few years, and the last few months in particular.
I’m not going to dwell upon what you’ve been following in the news. I’m simply going to urge readers to think not just of the current heat wave, of COVID, and their negative impact upon our comfort levels, but to think—really think—about how we’ve come to this point in our national history.
And, more importantly, to think of where we go from here. If ever there was a time for national soul-searching, Canada Day 2021 is it...
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July 20th will mark another significant event, the 150th anniversary of British Columbia’s becoming the sixth province of Canadian Confederation. At 7 PM PDT the Ladysmith & District Historical Society is sponsoring an hour-long online event on Facebook entitled, “Historically Speaking: BC 150, Confederation & How Ladysmith tied in to the tricky tale of the E&N.”
The talk by Dr. Quentin Goodbody, free to anyone on or off Facebook, will explore “the promises, broken and fulfilled, leading to BC joining the Canadian Confederation in 1871 and the construction of the Esquimalt to Nanaimo [R]ailway between 1884-1886 with extensions to Wellington in 1887 and to downtown Victoria. In 1888 [the] original Ladysmith Station, not built until 1900, rapidly became ‘the’ hub of activity in the northern part of the line and remained so ‘till the demise of coal mining at Extension...”
For years the E&N Railway station was the hub of Ladysmith activity. The second station house, ca 1943, has just been restored. —Ladysmith & District Historical Society.
Again, Dr. Goodbody’s talk is free and available via Zoom at 7 PM. July 20th.
Register for your link at museum@ladysmithhistoricalsociety.ca
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To conclude for today on a lighter note, this amusing tidbit buried in the CVRD Official Community Heritage Register:
“The Shawnigan lion is a concrete, life-size replica of the lions that are posed to guard the steps of the B.C. legislature. The Shawnigan lion was built to face north along the eastern shoreline of Shawnigan Lake at what was then Rockvale Estates, home to Chief Justice Gordon Hunter, famous for ruling against a discriminatory immigration law that barred entry to East Indian migrants, despite their British citizenship. His ruling was controversial at the time and was in turn overruled by the B.C. Supreme Court.
“To illustrate his chagrin, he stated that politics in Victoria ‘make an ass of justice,’ and he commissioned George S. Gibson, an architectural carver from Shawnigan Lake, to create and position the lion to face north, in order that its other end point directly toward the [P]arliament [B]uildings in Victoria[!]”
It’s the fact that the lion was created by renowned artisan George Gibson, not Hunter’s political statement, that warrants the lion’s possible heritage status, the CVRD noting that Gibson’s work is “incorporated into many significant historic structures in Canada. Rockvale Estates briefly operated as a hotel, then as Cliffside Preparatory School from 1959-1977 (Cliffside accommodated about 110 international students and adopted the lion as their crest) and more recently as the Lions Easter Seal site. The lion has been maintained over the years, in 1986 receiving restoration by the famous rock sculptor, Gus Galbraith.”
Happy Canada Day.
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