Editorially speaking...
It almost always surprises me how out-of-synch I sometimes am with my readers when it comes to judging a post’s popularity.
Some that are of particular importance to me, such as the Ladysmith train wreck pass almost unmentioned. Others, such as last week’s editorial on my memories of my first job in the old Victoria Press Building, drew several warm responses and likes.
It was meant to be no more than a passing mention of the old building’s reincarnation with offices and residential suites but, once I got started, it sort of grew and grew...
So, this week, back to business!
There are so many news stories these days that have historical roots that I can’t keep up with them unless I want to condense them to the point of near pointlessness. Too, hardly a week goes by but that someone researching their family tree asks me about an ancestor I’ve written about over the years.
Such as the lady wanting to know more about Patrick Brennan, one of the Cowichan Valley’s less illustrious pioneers. And the lady who wonders if the ill-fated sailing ship Janet Cowan was named for a family member.
And the television production company looking into the fascinating tales of lost Spanish mines in B.C., the man wanting me to replay an article I’d written decades ago about skeletons in a cave on the Island;’s west coast, the childhood friend of Granger Taylor who’d like to see the ‘real’ story told about this legendary icon who’s been featured on prime time television in recent years.
And so on...
A new Facebook site, Cowichan Valley History, is tapping into the treasure trove of photos in the Cowichan Valley Museum Archives. A recent post was on Maple Bay’s historic Elkington House, one of the Valley’s few heritage designated structures, and in danger of falling down from neglect.
Farther afield, a memorial to 12 Japanese-Canadian veterans of the First World War has been installed in Greenwood Nikei Legacy Park. The irony is that these men weren’t residents of Greenwood (the smallest incorporated city in Canada) by choice but were interned there during the Second World War despite having served their country.
A particularly interesting (to me) article in the TC dealt with how Parks Canada and the Sites and Monuments Board of Canada attend to the management and maintenance of prime ministers’ graves.
Over the past 20 years of its existence the program has spent about $1 million on “inspections, repairs, commemorative plaques and flagpoles” at grave sites. It’s expected that these expenses will increase in coming years.
Besides ongoing maintenance the editing of the wording on the grave panels in this post-colonial, Truth and Reconciliation age has created challenges.
With all of the recent controversy surrounding Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, for one, Parks Canada faces revamping plaques so that they “recognize the enormous shifts in historical understanding” and “reflect on the past in the context of the present”.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s final resting place poses quite a different challenge. His mausoleum, of grey stone, concrete and brick, has taken a beating from the freeze-thaw cycles of winter/summer weather and heavier rainfalls attributed to global warming. Even the sheet metal roof and flashing have been leaking.
Curiously, the grave site of former prime minister John Turner (1920-2020) is still a work in progress. An “awareness panel” has yet to be installed.
The ca 1929 lighthouse memorial to Cowichan’s war dead on Mount Prevost. —Cowichan Valley Museum/Archives
It’s that time of year again and the Cowichan Valley Citizen has commissioned me to write the Remembrance Day edition, a privilege that has been mine for 25 years now. This year, as I noted in last week’s Chronicles, is the Duncan Cenotaph’s centennial.
Accordingly, in accessing my archives for the Duncan, Chemainus and Cobble Hill cenotaphs, I also pulled the file on Mount Prevost. It’s another chance for me to spit in the wind by calling for the restoration of the light in the tower on the mountain.
It’s been 40 years since vandals trashed the beacon and nothing has been done to fix it, one of the excuses being that it would only be vandalized again. With today’s technology it can be fixed and damage-proofed if the local/regional political will is there. But first someone has to get off their axis and get the ball rolling; the silence that has prevailed from North Cowichan Council has been deafening.
That’s my whine for this week. Cheers, TW.
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