Editorially speaking...
Did you know that Canadian professional foresters played a key role in the D-Day landings and the land assault on Germany that followed? See below.—Wikipedia
It’s that time of year again when Elder College, subject to COVID restrictions, resumes at the Cowichan Community Centre and, in some cases, on-site.
Several of this fall’s offerings should appeal to Chronicles readers; beginning in the order in which they’re listed in the college catalogue, there’s Shirley Blackstaff’s Ladysmith’s Industrial Heritage Preservation Project.
Shirley, a longtime community history volunteer, will lead a tour of the No. 11 locomotive undergoing restoration, the Humdirgen rail car log loader and an early box car of the Comox Logging & Railway Co. Her presentation includes a slide show and tour to “see the preservation progress and discover exciting heritage plans”.
Another 49th parallel course, Lady With a Past: A History of Ladysmith, is being offered by local historian Rob Johnson. He tells, among other things, the story of Town of Ladysmith’s founding and its relationship to the coal mining Dunsmuir family. He’ll make his presentation at the Cowichan Community Centre.
Also presented by Rob Johnson is the one that grabs my attention: Me 262: The World’s First operational Jet Plane, an aircraft that has intrigued me since childhood. To quote: “Learn myths and facts of the Me 262 and the Jumo 004 engine, a remarkable technological achievement in WW2 Germany.”
Had Hitler not insisted upon using the 262 as an attack bomber instead of as a defensive fighter when Germany was being levelled by day and night Allied bombing raids, its ability as the fastest military aircraft of its time might well have changed, or extended, the final two years of the war.
This course, too, is at the CCC.
Then there’s America’s Civil War 1861-1865 presented by Chris Connors, again at the CCC. He’ll tell how “four years of war preserved the Union and ended slavery, but political and social scars linger today.
“This expanded course examines the cause, course of the fighting, and the consequences of the Civil War.”
The sad irony, of course, is that the Civil War really isn’t ancient history at all—in some respects, such as racism and the resulting social ills, its legacy is current throughout the U.S. today.
For full details, dates and costs of these courses, etc., you can check via cvrd.ca and register at the Cowichan Community Centre online, by phone or in person.
Having taken and presented several Elder College courses over the years, I can vouch for their fascinating content at garage sale prices (plus the nominal Elder College membership fee).
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My reference to racial strife south of the border reminds me of something I recently read in a history of the Rogers Sugar Co., The Refiners: A Century of B.C. Sugar by John Schreiner.
In 1914 B.C. had its own racial problems with prevailing discrimination against Asian immigrants, in particular the Chinese who were viewed as a threat to workers’ wages (read white workers’ wages) because they accepted lower wages. (As if they had a real choice.) For years this had provoked labour unrest; in the spring of 1914, finding itself competing with cheaper imported Chinese sugar, the Vancouver refiner responded with this ad:
“Would you relish a meal cooked by a half-naked, unwashed, perspiring Chinese Coolie whose bath consisted of nothing more than a shower of rain—when rain is rare?”
As opposed to “British Columbia White Labour Refined Sugar...every inch [of which is] spotlessly clean?”
My point being that we don’t have to look to the south to find blatant racial discrimination. Ironically, within months of that ad, Canada and the British Empire were at war with Germany and, before long, Chinese ‘coolies’ were welcomed in the 1000s as they passed through the Bentinck Island quarantine station.
They were en route to the European battlefields as vitally needed labourers. Many of them, alas, would never make it home, falling victims of the infamous Spanish ‘Flu epidemic at war’s end.
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Finally: the ongoing disputes over the logging of old-growth forest has blackened the entire forestry industry and its place in provincial history in the eyes of many. A tree-hugger myself, I have problems with the way commercial logging is practised in this province, but to write off logging, like coal mining, as being more of a detriment than an asset is both unrealistic and unfair.
The history of B.C. logging is nothing less than fascinating, as rich and colourful as anything you’ll find in fiction. That’s why I promoted in a previous Chronicle, and do so again today, the British Columbia Forest History Newsletter, which is published quarterly by the Forest History Association of B.C. (fhabc.org).
To prove my point of the significant and positive role that the industry has played over the past 160-odd years, this snippet from this month’s newsletter. Hands up all Chronicles readers who already know that it was professionals of the B.C. Forest Service who pioneered aerial surveys and who were instrumental in plotting the Normandy landings in advance of D-Day.
They then, and I quote, “...landed on Normandy Beach and moved in close support of the advance eastward to the Rhine. In battlefield conditions, using mobile generators to power instruments, photo processing, drafting and printing equipment...[they] supplied almost instant photographs and maps to forward field commanders.
“Nothing like this had been done before and [their] success was tremendous.”
Something to think about the next time we feel the urge to denigrate our forest industry as being no longer relevant...
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