Editorially speaking...
For years, I shunned Facebook.
People just chit chatting and often telling the world of the most trivial—and sometimes most personal—aspects of their lives, simply doesn’t appeal to me.
I mean, is nothing private any more? Don’t people have better things to do with their time?
Now those are personal prejudices, I admit. To each his/her own.
But, recently, social media savvy friends convinced me that I was missing the boat, that there’s real potential in posting historical nuggets and promoting my websites and books.
So I let my digital-world expert Blake set up two Facebook websites for me, T.W. Paterson History Author and, of course, Cowichan Chronicles.
The results have astounded me.
But I’m not here to brag, I’m praising Facebook for its unbelievable reach and its potential for drawing priceless information from people I otherwise would never know of nor have contact with.
In just over two months my almost daily quickie posts, which I think of as snapshots (brief text and a photo or two), have brought me in touch with 10s of 1000s of people who have turned the tables on me by informing and enlightening me!
I’ve received some incredible information in return for a quarter of an hour’s effort. History, after all, is a never ending learning curve. To give an example, check these three photos of the No. 2 Climax locomotive that’s on display inside the BC Forest Discovery Centre.
This is the old logging locie that the legendary mechanical wizard Granger Taylor hauled from the bush and restored, I believe, single-handed.
The first photo, taken last year at the BCFDC, shows the No. 2 as she is now, with Granger’s neighbour and young friend Dan Flanagan alongside. The second and third photos show the No. 2 in the terrible state of neglect and disrepair that Granger found her in in the Sahtlam area.
What a story there is behind his hauling her out of the bush, never mind the work of restoring her!
Which brings me back to Facebook: It was a post on T.W. Paterson History Author that prompted Simon Grant to send along these before-and-after shots of the No. 2.
Granger actually operated the No. 2 on a length of track on his family’s acreage beside Somenos Lake before it ended up at the BCFDC, by the way. There are other Granger Taylor “rescues” there as well, not all of them restored or identified for visitors.
All of which proves to me that Granger Taylor, who has achieved international notoriety for his obsession with aliens from outer space, was, in fact, a mechanical genius who should be celebrated for his passionate love affair with, not just things mechanical, but history.
