In the Headlines: What’s Old Is New(s) Again
One of the most amazing things about the Second Narrows bridge disaster is that any of the workers that day survived... --Vancouver Sun photo
Who’d have thought that COVID would bring with it, besides world-wide contagion, illness, death, financial devastation and workplace upheaval, the—return of the drive-in movie.
There was a time, way back in the 1950s, when drive-ins were the rage not just for what was showing on the screen but for what went on in the cars around you when the lights were turned down.
Many a love was consummated and many a Boomer conceived in the back seats of souped-up jalopies and Dad’s family sedan.
TV killed off the drive-ins long before you could rent a movie or buy a television set with a screen almost as big as those in a movie theatre. Weather, too, played a role. I remember the intense frustration of trying to watch the show through the sweep of the windshield wipers (they only had two speeds in those days, slow and fast). It was heartbreaking if the movie was good.
And if it was summer and Daylight Savings Time, the movie began while it was still so light that the picture was pale and hard to see until the sun set behind the giant screen. They always ended with a Warner Bros. cartoon—the best cartoons ever, with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Peppy Le Pew, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester, etc., and ended, of course, with Porky Pig’s “Tha-tha-that’s all, folks!”
(A character, even a cartoon character, with a stutter would be considered offensive today.)
Sometimes, too, you’d get a bad speaker that clipped onto the driver’s door; always, of course, when it was a Western, the only kind of movie that I really liked. Fries or a burger from the concession stand (poor Dad) did help to ease the pain somewhat.
When we kids got older we began to pay more attention to what was going on in neighbouring cars than what was happening on the screen. But, by the time I was old enough to even think of doing the like, it was too late.
During my time in Victoria it was the Tilikum Outdoor Theatre, now a major shopping centre, which ended its days as a highly popular flea market on Sundays. Once or twice after moving to Cobble Hill I went to a much smaller outdoor theatre on the Island Highway by the Duncan golf course. The only times I visited the Cassidy Drive-in was for its Sunday flea market when it, like the others, was awaiting development and oblivion.
But, according to the news, drive-ins are making a modest comeback in Canada and the U.S. since real theatres have been closed because of social distancing during the virus crisis. Not so outdoor theatres, so some entrepreneur with a long memory came up with reviving the outdoor screen such as that now showing in Dorval, Que. where they’re using—of all things—the parking lot from a shopping mall!
Oh, how the world turns...
A page from a Cowichan Exhibition program. Will there be a 'Cow Ex' this year with Covid-19?
On a less positive note, there won’t be—or so it appears at this time—any Fall Fairs.
At least, not the real things. Saanich Fair, one of the oldest continuous fall fairs in the province, will be online this year. There can be no social distancing with an anticipated attendance of 50,000 people. Ditto the smaller, more rustic (hence, in my mind, more enjoyable) Cobble Hill Fair. I don’t know yet what the folks at the Cowichan Exhibition have in mind.
Another victim of COVID is Shawnigan Lake’s 22-acre waterfront Camp Pringle Camp for children and families.
It’s a disappointing way to celebrate the Camp’s 70th anniversary but they’ve maintained their connections and spirits with an every-second-week “virtual camp fire” of storytelling and singing.
There’s some real history at Camp Pringle, on Shawnigan’s west shore. It’s named for two George Pringles, father and son. Capt. George Pringle Sr. was a Canadian Army padre in the First World War and was so badly gassed that he ultimately died of lung failure. Until his final stay in a sanitarium, however, he became known and respected the length of the B.C. coast as a seagoing chaplain. Previous to the war, he’d pioneered as a Presbyterian minister in the Yukon during the Klondike gold rush.
George Pringle Jr., born in Vancouver in 1913, paid his own way through university by working as a logger and served as captain of the UBC basketball team before following in his father’s footsteps by studying for the ministry. Upon being ordained by the United Church he served in several B.C. parishes until the outbreak of the Second World War.
In July 1940 he enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force and graduated, as a Pilot Officer, Observer/Navigator, at the top of his class. He and fellow crewmembers survived the ditching at sea of their Whitely bomber in May 1942 but all died in the crash, shortly after takeoff, of their Halifax bomber.
Gorge Pringle Memorial Camp and Retreat at 2520 West Shawnigan Lake Road was founded on 22 acres in 1949 bought thanks to the financial support of Chris Spencer of Spencer’s Department Store in Victoria. According to the Victoria Chamber of Commerce Facebook website, “The property was purchased from Colonel Armstrong and his wife, famous opera star Dame Nellie Melba, and converted into a sleepover camp by the Victoria Presbytery of The United Church of Canada.”
Dame Nellie Melba of Melba toast fame and her estranged husband Col. Armstrong—now there’s a story for you! (But not today.)
Back to the founding of the camp, the “first campers arrived in 1950 and slept in the Silver Palace (the old barn painted with silver paint from Capital Iron). Today, Camp Pringle offers campers, students, families and private rental groups rustic cabins, heated showers and a spectacular dining hall constructed in 2010. We provide opportunities for campers of all ages to experience God’s love in close relationship with other people and the natural environment.”
(To see the Camp’s magnificent new Spencer Hall obviously named for the beneficent department store family), go to https://pacificmountain.ca/camp-pringle-unveiled/ .
On the provincial historical scene we’ve had another government apology for the infamous Komagata Maru “incident” of 1914 when this chartered steamship with its cargo of 400-odd East Indian would-be immigrants, many of whom had served the Dominion in the First World War, was turned away at gunpoint from landing in Vancouver.
It’s one of our more shameful chapters in B.C. history, one which drew an apology from the federal government some years ago and also from B.C. In May, Premier John Horgan was prompted to do so again, on the 106th anniversary of the ship’s arrival in May 1914, by reported incidents of racism against Asian citizens during the COVID crisis which originated in China.
Premier Horgan urged British Columbians to learn from the past while building a better, more inclusive future.
He said the window of his Vancouver office overlooks where the ship was anchored for two months of bitter stand-off as those on board were denied permission to land, even deprived of adequate food and water. Horgan said the anniversary made him wonder how “the students, labourers and ex-soldiers from the British Indian regiment abroad would have enriched Canada if given the opportunity to stay in the province”.
For a great selection of photos of the Komogata Maru and its maligned company visit the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) website at https://museumofvancouver.ca/ .
Also from Vancouver is a story about the legendary saloon keeper Gassy Jack Deighton whose statue in Gastown is on the hot seat, so to speak, now that it’s common knowledge he took a 12-year-old First Nations girl for his second wife.
A petition is being circulated to have his bronze image removed from its prominent perch rather than leave it standing as a tribute to, in effect, a pedophile. The publicity has led to the statue’s being vandalized with red paint.
The City of Vancouver is soliciting comments from the public at publicart@vancouver.ca.
Supporters of the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum want more than your comments.
They’re fundraising to pay for critical repairs and restoration to the city’s oldest building and museum. They’re almost there (as of this writing) with $35,652 raised of their $40,000 goal. A letter to the editor of the Vancouver Sun criticized the City of Vancouver Council for not having contributed to the museum’s restoration.
“This should be seen as an opportunity for council to show they care about the history of the city, and want to show Vancouver families and tourists what early residents lived through and helped make what the city is today,” wrote Alfred Scholes, of Pitt Meadows.
“To allow [the museum] to fall into neglect with no or such paltry support and lease it to volunteers who do care enough to try to save it and educate Vancouver families is a dereliction of their responsibilities as leaders of the community...”
It’s an old, old story, not just in the case of the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum but of other priceless heritage sites throughout the province. Always, it comes down to money. As I’ve argued before, the money can always be found when the political will is there.
Too often, though, political ideology gets in the way. It’s amazing how governments can find the funding for something that suits their political agenda but, too often, heritage just doesn’t seem to, at least in their minds, buy votes.
For further information check out their website: www.hastingsmillmuseum.ca.
Once the west coast sea otters were trapped almost to extinction for their furs.
During the 1970s, 89 sea otters were reintroduced to their former habitat and protected by the Species at Risk Act. They’ve since recovered to the point that it was recently announced they’re adding $50 million a year to the provincial economy.
Not with their furs but as a result of the key role they play in the environment. Underwater kelp forests have grown 20-fold because of the otters’ penchant for urchins. This means new habitat for rock fish such as ling cod (which have tripled) and salmon. The resulting new fisheries alone is worth almost $10 million.
It goes on: carbon storage is worth about $2 million annually and tourists spend an amazing $42 million each year to watch the cute critters cavort in their watery playgrounds. Other millions of dollars add up to a win-win: what’s good for the otter, all but wiped out during the fur trade, is good for the provincial economy. (Even if they do eat a lot of fish.)
This isn’t just an economic about-face but an historical turnaround as well.
Demands are being made—again—for the closure of William Head minimum security prison (long known, derisively, as “Club Fed”) and the seaside property’s return to the Sc’ianew First Nation (Beecher Bay).
The escape of two inmates whose criminal records should have kept them in institutions of higher security, and the murder of an unsuspecting nearby resident for which they are now awaiting trial, prompted this latest controversy.
The land on which the prison sits has some of the most colourful history to be found anywhere. Before it was a prison it was a quarantine station, a role it served for decades. But this is such a great (and big) story it’ll have to wait another day.
It has been suggested that Victoria’s Clover Point, “the most spectacular point on the Dallas Road waterfront,” be returned to nature.
City historian Janis Ringeutte wants the small peninsula removed of cars and pavement to allow for more benign pedestrian activity. This is where, when Hudson’s Bay Co. Chief Factor James Douglas landed in 1842 to found Fort Victoria, he “waded through clover, tall grasses and ferns”. It was Douglas who named the point for its most prominent feature, the lush red clover. As he wrote in his journal: “In two places particularly we saw several acres of clover, growing with a luxuriance and compactness more resembling the close sward of a well managed lea than than the product of an uncultivated waste”.
But that was in its unspoiled state of 1852. For 30 years the point served as a military rifle range then, during the Second World War, as the site of a searchlight battery. Today, according to Ringuette, there’s a parking lot and a sewage outfall. But no clover.
And, since we’re speaking of history, the Royal B.C. Museum is asking British Columbians for stories, photos and objects that will “help describe their time living through the greatest global virus outbreak in their lifetime”.
They’re calling it the COVID-19 Collecting For Our Time Project.
The Provincial Museum and Archives are looking for information, perspectives, photos and objects that will help it “tell the story of this moment for future generations,” according to the Times Colonist.
Intended to be a partnership with the community, the project is extremely eclectic in its targets which range from the goals stated above to rolls of toilet paper to memorialize the buying panic that followed the declaration by governments that COVID had achieved pandemic proportions.
Readers can learn more details about the ACOVID-19 Collecting For Our Time project at royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/tell-us-your-covid-19-story.
Another historical project of interest is the Nanaimo Historical Society’s Facebook Project, Into the Mist: Vancouver Island’s Disappearing Heritage.
“Need to get out of the house?” they ask online. “Want to satisfy your interest in all things old and mysterious? Organizing your photographs during stay-at-home and have come across some real gems?
“The NHS invites you to submit photographs of VI structures that are on their last legs or are no longer standing. It can be a cabin in the woods, a house, a barn, a store, industrial remains of any man-made structure that strikes your fancy.
“Submit your photographs with as much information as possible. At a minimum, please make sure to write about the location of the structure. Please do not go on private property without permission. Submissions will be posted on our FB page.”
After reminding potential participants that they don’t need a Facebook account of their own to view the Nanaimo Historical Society’s page, they urge them to, camera in hand, “go out and enjoy spring [I’m sure this project is ongoing through the summer—TW] and send us your shots!
You can email your photographs and information to christinenanhistsoc@gmail.com.
I can think of a prime candidate here, beside the highway, at the southern entrance to Duncan. Just north of Allenby Road on the west side, in full view of passing traffic, is a falling-down log cabin that, when my family and I first got into antiquing before moving from Victoria, operated as an antique store. More recently it has served as crude accommodation for the homeless.
Every time I drive by I remind myself that I really should take a photo of it for posterity before it’s razed or torched (something that happens with suspicious regularity to abandoned structures in the Cowichan Valley).
Finally, at least for now, June 17 marked the 62nd anniversary of the collapse of Vancouver’s Second Narrows Bridge during its construction in 1958.
A postcard of the Second Narrows Bridge (today's Ironworkers Memorial Bridge)after its official opening, Aug. 28, 1960--two years after the disastrous collapse.
When several spans collapsed, 79 workers were plunged 98 feet (30 metres) into the water. Eighteen were drowned as was, days later, a skin diver searching for their bodies. Four other workers also died during the bridge’s lengthy construction process. This tragedy, considered to be one of British Columbia’s premier industrial accidents, was ultimately attributed to an engineering miscalculation.
In 1994 the bridge was renamed the Ironworkers Memorial Second narrows Crossing. A ceremony of remembrance has been held each June; as of this year just a single survivor of that horrific day in June 1958 is alive.
(To really gauge the magnitude of the bridge collapse, Google Second Narrows Bridge collapse or Ironworkers Memorial Bridge.)
It’s interesting to note that its predecessor was long known as the “Bridge of Sighs” for the numerous times it was involved in accidents with marine traffic.
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