Editorially speaking...
It’s no coincidence that for two weeks in a row the latest Chronicles have had their roots in the present.
One of the first and most valuable things I learned as an historical storyteller was to forge, when possible, a vicarious link between then and now. If I can get you to say, “Hey, I drive past that old building every day on my way to work; I didn’t know it was a w—house in the 1920s,” I have you hooked!
But, of course, if I restricted my research and writings to using this dramatic ploy, I’d eliminate 99% of the stories I want to share with you.
By the way, referring to myself as an historical storyteller rather than as an historian in the classical sense provokes this thought: Years ago I was invited to join the B.C. Folklore Society. Excuse me, Folklore Society? My immediate reaction was to be mildly offended. I mean, seriously, folklore is all about fairy tales and fiction, isn’t it? I’m serious about history, I deal only in real events, real people and ‘facts,’ not blarney!
What I do is called non-fiction. You know, the truth, at least as it can be determined after the fact through records and research. Folklore, indeed!
Well, dictionaries and Wikipedia are more generous than that but it still took me a while to come round to accepting myself as a factual folklorist, if you will, because the secret sauce is in the presentation. How many of us hated history in school? How many of us thought that history, as force-fed to us in a classroom, was bor-ing?
Believe it or not, I did, too, until I finally encountered Canadian—not ancient not medieval not European but Canadian history—in Grade 8. Grade 8! By then, for many if not most students, it was way too late. Not for me because I’d already discovered British Columbia’s rich and colourful history on my own, even though, at first, I was tainted by a childhood of exposure to American films and popular literature, beginning with comic books. But that’s another story and one I’ve told before.
That said, this week’s Chronicle also owes its provenance somewhat to the news. It was on my list of future posts when yet another news story in the Times Colonist advanced my schedule.
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