Editorially speaking...
At least another week of sun, heat, no rain and wild fires ahead of us, alas...
Obviously, if you pore through back issues of the Cowichan Leader as I do regularly, hot and dry summers weren’t a novelty in the Cowichan Valley or on the Island. But I’ve not seen references to a summer such as we’re experiencing now, thanks in part, we’re told, to global warming.
There’s one singular difference, though. Up until the 1960s it was provincial forestry policy that just-logged areas be torched. Not to create fire breaks but as part of what they believed to be the natural order of things. I grew up in Saanich and it was a common thing in the heat of summer when there was little wind for the smoke from these slash fires to turn the sky grey, to affect breathing even for we healthy youngsters.
You could smell the fires even when you were inside.
You don’t see any sign of it now as you drive the Malahat but for years much of the high side along the Tunnel Hill stretch was just exposed rock and blackened trees, the result of not one but two fires within a few years of each other. (Not from slash burning, I don’t believe.)
So far here on the Island, we’ve escaped wildfires such as that which devastated Lytton and which are ravaging thousands of hectares elsewhere on the Mainland. Back in 1938 it was our turn—the so-called ‘Great’ or ‘Bloedel’ fire, the worst in recorded Island history.
A fire so large and so intense that it shrouded much of the Pacific Northwest in smoke so thick that two ships collided off the Oregon coast! A fire so threatening that the province had to hire an army of unemployed men on relief (this was in the Depression) as firefighters, throw in crews from Royal Canadian warships, and gratefully accept the assistance of a visiting British naval cruiser.
So let’s count our blessings—and be careful if we must work in or visit our forests.
On a somewhat related subject—lumber—as most everyone knows, the price of a 2x4, for example, has gone through the roof. Last I read, the cost of an average new house had increased by $30,000 or more for the lumber alone.
Which makes some old building material quotations provided by reader Andrew Waldegrave all the more fascinating. He found them on the internet, attracted by the fancy letterhead of the Consumers Lumber Co. (‘Direct From Forest to Consumer’) whose office was in the Birk’s Building, Vancouver. The quotes are good for four days only, Dec. 11-15, 191-(?).
Are you ready for this? For an entire house (the square footage isn’t given, unfortunately) the order—FOB Neudorf, Sask.—came to $890. Plus another $45.00 if storm windows were included.
The order included almost everything of wood, in effect a manufactured home: shingle siding and roofing, mouldings, window frames, wall panelling, a bevelled glass front door—even a “three piece plate rail”. If the owner opted for exterior wood siding instead of shingles, add “no more than five or six dollars,” in the words of company manager McCrae.
The floor beams for John Schinbein’s house were a chunky 6x8. 1247 feet of 2x10 joists came to $39. There were 2x8s and 2x6s as well, for lesser sums. Almost 2500 feet of the essential 2x4s amounted to all of $59.50. That’s just over two cents a foot!
(We’re talking first-growth timber, remember—delivered.)
Shiplap, lathing, cedar shingles, #1 edge grain fir flooring...it was all there and shipped to Saskatchewan by rail for the grand sum of $890.
Was there a catch? Two, actually: if we factor in inflation over the past 110-odd years, we can multiply Mr. Schinbein’s bill by 25! And it was COD.
No “Will that be Mastercard or Visa, Mr. Schinbein?”
Two recent articles in the Times Colonist throw an interesting light on the struggles of heritage sites, in this case those owned by the province, to fund themselves and to attract visitors during this time of pandemic. The Selkirk Waterway Point Ellice House is literally wasting away for want of adequate money, even for minimal maintenance, from the government. Yet Craigflower Manor, another of Victoria’s most historically significant landmarks which is also managed by sub-contract, appears to be doing well.
But five other sites have complained of insufficient funding: Carr House in Victoria, Yale Historic Site, Kilby Historic Site in Harrison Mills, Hat Creek Ranch near Cache Creek and the biggest, best known of them all, Barkerville.
I remember when the current government was in opposition and its cries of outrage over the government’s niggardly approach to keeping our heritage and history alive. Yet here we are, with nothing or little changed in the way of improvement, it would seem.
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