Editorially speaking...
Don’t think history repeats itself? Try this...
Until the arrival of the E&N Railway in 1884 there was no Duncan. All shopping was done in Victoria, the goods arriving by weekly steamship at Maple and Cowichan Bays.
Then came the railway and Alderlea—Duncan’s Crossing, Duncans and, finally, Duncan, which, right from the start, became the Valley’s commercial hub as various merchants and tradesmen offered their goods and services.
The arrival of the E&N Railway in 1884 was a mixed blessing for some Duncan residents. --Author’s Collection
But the E&N brought with it something else—large-scale competition.
Victoria and, to a lesser degree, Nanaimo, offered a much wider range of goods and services. Because Duncan didn’t have its own newspaper, many Valley residents subscribed to either of the two Victoria dailies or the Nanaimo weekly.
Needless to say, these newspapers were filled with ads, including those of large mail-order department stores such as Eaton’s and the Hudson’s Bay Co. which also published their own catalogues.
Who needed to shop locally?
Here we are, more than a century later, and Duncan—Cowichan—merchants, the so-called bricks-and-mortar merchants, are facing an even greater opponent—online shopping. Not just out of town, but out of country.
See what I mean about history repeating itself?
Obviously, the merchants of old survived the Big City competition.
Not long back, there was an editorial in the Cowichan Valley Citizen entitled “Shop Locally.” Another example of history repeating itself!
When, finally, Duncan did have its own newspaper, first the short-lived Enterprise, then the Cowichan Leader, editorialized on, of all things, shopping locally.
It’s the old story of, the more things change, the more they stay the same...
That said, local merchants of old didn’t have to contend with the perfect storm of today’s marketplace: government-imposed COVID closures and restrictions, supply line challenges, labour shortages...have I missed anything?
(Yes, they endured the infamous Spanish ‘Flu epidemic of 1918-19 but the collective responses of governments of the day in no way match those imposed during the present emergency.)
Here’s hoping...
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More talk of tearing down another of Victoria’s iconic heritage buildings, this one the 1890s Armouries Building right beside the Parliament Buildings.
Back when I applied for a driver’s license the handsome brick landmark served as the Motor Vehicles Branch. But I have a more vivid memory of this building than that.
Years ago, the superintendent of Fort Rodd Hill Historic Park, the late Capt. Jack Rippengale, a personal friend and one of Nature’s noblemen, asked me to use my metal detector to help locate a cannon barrel buried beneath the driveway. It was thought to be interred immediately beside the old Armoury as you turned in off Menzies Street.
As indeed proved to be the case!
In fact, if memory serves, there were two of them—but to confirm, yea or nay, I’d have to dig deep into my archives and there’s no time for that today.
Suffice to say, I hope the final decision is to earthquake-proof the existing building. We’ve lost far too much of our heritage to ‘progress’ now...
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No sooner had the Chronicles gone to press last Thursday than the Citizen reported that the Joseph Mairs Memorial at Ladysmith had been scaled back because of the latest COVID restrictions. There would be no guest speaker, no live folk music, just the march from the church and the laying of wreaths at the Mairs memorial.
This in itself is worth the doing, just not what I’d promised here.
Good thing nobody takes me seriously, eh?