Editorially speaking...
It’s a hard world out there, even for some of the giants.
Latest to fall, or almost, is K-Mart, from a high of 2000 outlets now down to three stores in the continental U.S. What a far cry from decades ago.
Looking back into my distant past I recall, in Victoria, Kresge’s, Woodwards’s. Woolworth’s, Woolco, Eaton’s and Sears; and today’s Bay, or Hudson’s Bay Co., is struggling. All thanks to changing times, changing technology and changing buyers’ patterns.
The Mom and Pop corner store, (Christie’s and Parkdale Grocery, in my part of the world, Saanich), have also gone the way of five-and-dime stores and the horse and buggy.
Imagine it, a store that sold goods—real goods—for five and 10 cents! You could buy a chocolate bar for a nickel, a bottle of pop for eight cents (10 for the 10 oz. bottle), three jawbreakers for a penny. It’s a wonder that kids still had their teeth by adulthood...
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A recent article in the Times Colonist reported that the onetime kitchen garden of the Dunsmuir family at Hatley Castle, Colwood, is being reactivated by the current tenants, Royal Roads University.
Coal baron James Dunsmuir; his castle is now a university.
The castle and grounds, probably the primest piece of real estate on the entire Island, are renowned for their Japanese gardens but growing table greens has been dormant since the coal mining Dunsmuirs’ tenure.
The new vegetable patch is part of a program to raise a quarter of a million dollars for the Vision in Bloom Campaign “to support ongoing work to restore, re-imagine and sustain the university’s century-old gardens and ancient landscapes”.
I’ve never been a fan of the Dunsmuirs, least of all James, who, born with the proverbial spoon in his mouth, was a skinflint when dealing with those who had the misfortune to work for him. It was on their labour and lives that he was able to commission Hatley Castle by the sea and to live out his retirement years in luxury while they laboured, unappreciated, in the dark, damp and dangerous underground.
If there’s any justice in the after-life their roles have been reversed.
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Nanaimo’s Cold War-era ‘Diefenbunker,’ an underground bomb shelter for political leaders in time of nuclear war, is about to undergo a multi-million dollar soil contamination clean-up.
Located on the city’s Second World War army base, now reduced by development (with more development to come, which explains the need for an environmental housecleaning), the landmark’s purging is still in the tender-letting stage.
The historic underground structure isn’t going to be demolished but the encompassing soil—7400 tonnes—has been contaminated by leaking fuel tanks over the years and has to be removed and replaced or remediated.
Although the site is no longer used militarily it’s still owned by the Department of National Defence.
Named for Prime Minister John Diefenbaker whose government commissioned it and six other similar bunkers across Canada, the two-storey structure covers 61,000 square feet. Decommissioned in the mid-1990s, it was intended to “ensure the continuity of government if nuclear war broke out”.
As for the rest of us, if we didn’t build our own bomb shelter in the basement or in the backyard, we were on our own. At school, we practised hiding under our desks! I shudder to think what protection they provided against nuclear fallout.
Ah, yes, the good old days. Aren’t we glad they’re not making them any more?
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