Editorially speaking...
I just spent four days for perhaps the 20th year in a row at Christmas Chaos, the Cowichan Valley’s premier Yule Season craft show in the Cowichan Community Centre.
Once the work of preparation then setting up my table is done, it’s one of the few opportunities I have each year to just.........sit back....sip on a coffee and.....relax....
Best of all, it’s a chance to chat with people, many of whom have been readers of the Chronicles in the Citizen and my books over the past quarter of a century.
Those who are familiar with my work must realize by now that I’m trying to keep history alive by making it interesting to readers who might not otherwise overcome their school-hood phobia of “history is bor-ing...”
Most of all, I’m trying to pass the torch of our exciting Canadian experience to young Canadians—our nation’s future—to inform them and to inspire them by honouring the pioneers who built the Canada that we and they have inherited.
Yes, yes, with all its faults, shortcomings and challenges of the future.
But there are billions—billions—of people on this planet who’d change places with us in a nanosecond and in so doing improve their lives.
But I’m digressing... I want to tell you about one visitor in particular whose father introduced him to me. He’s all of 10 and an avid reader of history books, some of them from the library and inches thick, according to his dad who during two visits bought four of my titles.
Based upon our first meeting, I gave him a used copy of what must be my flagship, Ghost Town Trails of Vancouver Island which has been in continuous print since 1975.
Here’s my point:
When I was 10 and I, too, was fascinated by history, I had only American content to feed my hunger: American comics then American magazines, American movies and American television.
It was as if we Canadians had no history at all other than the bit I learned about Quebec, Champlain, “Gooseberry and Radishes” in a single Grade 8 semester. British Columbia? My school curriculum had never heard of it.
As for the Wild West which most intrigued me at that age, we were Canadian, eh?
Well, guess what. We had our Wild West, our stagecoach robberies, our gunfighters, shipwrecks, heroes and villains and lost treasures, too!
Only we didn’t talk about them or teach them in school. It probably was Pierre Berton who first achieved a national audience for Canadian history with his epic Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush 1896-1899 in 1958. The edge of the wedge, so to speak.
What matters to me is that I offered that young man British Columbia history on a platter. There were 14 titles on the table, several of them ranging beyond the Cowichan Valley. Everything that I’ve learned about our pioneer life, the good and the bad, our gold rushes, disasters and achievements, I’ve had to learn myself over a working lifetime.
But there it was, all laid out for him to cherry-pick as he chose.
I’ll never know if he goes on to major in history or to become, say, an anthropologist or an archaeologist or if he pursues some similar vocation. It really doesn’t matter if, in his reading about our history, he learns to be a proud Canadian and becomes a productive, participating citizen.
And if I’ve contributed to that noble goal in some measure, so much the better!
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Speaking of Christmas craft shows, by the way, I have two more coming up: the Shawnigan Lake Recreation Centre this coming Saturday, the 26th, and Providence Farm on Saturday, Dec. 3rd. My good friend Belinda is subbing for me at Queen Margaret’s School this coming Saturday.
And since I’m blowing my horn, a plug for my latest project, Celebrate Cowichan, what I believe to be the Valley’s only scenic 2023 Calendar.
