Editorially speaking...
One of the downsides of being a one-man-band is the inability to do everything right every time; errors and omissions are inevitable, sometimes costly.
Not all of them are noteworthy, of course, but, from time to time, I’ve blown what could have been golden opportunities to learn more about important subjects because I made the conscious decision that I was too busy.
Or that they could be done another day, only to have the ship sail...
I’m reminded of these lost opportunities by an email from Teresa, asking me about Elizabeth McLay, mother of Bob McLay who built what’s now the McLay Historic Guest House that she and her husband operate, just down the road from me on Koksilah Road.
Bob McLay Jr. Is one of my Cowichan Valley heroes: a self-taught man who has left us with an incredible inventory of landmark heritage buildings: Koksilah School, the Cowichan Merchants Building, the old Hydro Building on Canada Ave., and McLay House.
All that as a grade school dropout!
It wasn’t that Bob couldn’t learn, he was a genius with figures, he simply hated the rigid conformity of attending class and, for all his parents’ attempts to bribe him with a pony, he soon quit to make his stake in a copper mine, found and operate a sawmill then begin his construction career.
Any time I think of Bob McLay I’m reminded that the house I live in was built by his mother, Elizabeth, after she and Robert Sr. separated, he to homestead in the Glenora area. For fire insurance purposes my insurer and I agreed, years ago, to simply and arbitrarily set my home’s provenance as “pre-1963”.
As indeed it is—but by how much, I’m not sure.
That’s because, despite knowing Jack Fleetwood, the Oracle of the Cowichan Valley with the photographic memory, and Mrs. Cavin, descendant of another pioneer family, both of whom knew the McLay story well, I just never got around to nailing them down as to details.
Too busy! How I kick myself now!
But, way too late to do anything about it and I’ve had to rely over the years on the written record for much of what I know about the pioneering McLay family whose first home was near the Simon Charlie property, on the highway near today’s Old Farm Market.
Sigh...
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Had several positive responses to last week’s photo story on St. Andrew’s Church, Cowichan Station by people with firsthand memories of this lovely country landmark. Proof if needed that The Hub is on the right track in seeking to acquire possession of the church for use, among others things, as a community centre.
Here’s hoping that negotiations with the Anglican Diocese are successful and the necessary repairs are made to the century-old structure.
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Last week I noted the international race to save Ukrainian heritage and how it’s now possible, in many cases, to do so digitally rather than physically as is the case with paper records.
Another instance of the high priority given to history, in this case, written documents, is the need to consult church records to learn, if possible, the identities of the human remains believed to be buried in unmarked graves at various residential schools. Surely a record of each death was made at the time and that record is on file somewhere in the files of the church which operated the school in question.
This is when record keeping—the preservation of history—is of the highest value and it’s the perfect argument against treating history as a, yawn, bore, or as Sandbox 101 to pad credits at university.
History is, in fact, one of the most important academic subjects of all—as necessary, in some ways, as the old Three Rs. The more we learn about the past the more we learn about ourselves and the more able we are to chart our futures.
I’m speaking ideally, of course. As some sage once said, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history...”
So true, so sad.
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