July 28, 1921
What was happening a century ago this week from the front page of the Cowichan Leader.
July 28, 1921
Some things never change. As sure as summer you have heat, swimming...and tragedy. In July 1921 it was that of 12-year-old Donald Smith Hawkins, a student of Duncan Public School and the adopted son of James Hawkins, foreman of the James Logging Co., Cottonwood Creek.
While his father worked in camp Mrs. Hawkins and Donald lived at Tyee Siding; but she was away so Donald was staying with his dad in a floating shack, at Youbou, downstream of Cottonwood Creek on the North Shore.
At the inquest held by Dr. H.F.D. Stephens, RN, Coroner, the only witness to appear, camp cook Frank Lacom, said he saw Donald on the floathouse porch late in the evening. He’d told the boy to go to bed and turned in himself.
A quarter of an hour later, Hawkins Sr. called him to ask where Donald was; Lacom replied that he thought he was in bed. But Donald wasn’t in the bedroom; neither were his nightclothes or a peavey that had been standing on the porch.
A search was immediately begun but, by late the next day, volunteers were dragging the lake looking for a body. B.C. Const. William Kier, who as it happened was at Lake Cowichan, was informed and took charge. First they recovered the peavey then the body, in 70 feet of water and just 15 feet from the floathouse. Donald was wearing his clothes over his nightdress.
What the peavey had to do with his drowning remains unanswered; after the inevitable verdict of accidental death by drowning, Donald Hawkins was interred in the little cemetery of St. Mary’s, Somenos.
A non-swimmer, his drowning prompted Const. Kier to urge parents to ensure that their children could swim and he recommended the swimming, life saving and first aid courses offered by the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides.
Work on the Mount Prevost war memorial was finally done, R..G. Mellin and his cerw having finished the job by clearing trees from around the site so as to make the cairn, in the form of a lighthouse, clearly visible. They’d also straightened, widened and blazed the trail from Mines Road on Mount Sicker to the memorial for easy access on foot and on horseback. They’d also placed an inscription bearing the dates of the First World War, 1914-1918, and bearing these lines:
Gaze on the prospect before you, the homesteads of Cowichan Valley.
And pause to thank God for the men who laid down their lives for its freedom.
Let their sacrifice be as a trust to yourselves and your children committed.
That in public and in private your lives be memorials men may look up to.
The results were posted for 17 more graduates of Duncan High School and 21 students who’d passed to the next grade at Duncan Consolidated School.
The Duncan Board of Trade was still dissatisfied with the Ottawa government’s failure to publish the report of the D.M. Eberts fishery commission. For once the politicians and the bureaucracy couldn’t be accused of procrastination, Eberts himself having admitted to being the cause of the delay because of ill health and his other judiciial duties.
Board members thought it a lame excuse and resolved to continue to press for the report’s release. They also discussed the importance of tourism, somethng it seems that local farmers couldn’t see as being an asset to the Island economy. Curiously, the Board’s proposed solution was to promote tourism by calling “a congress of British subjects(!) on the Island to discuss the reasons why the Island’s progress did not make more strides”.
A fundraising drive by the King’s Daughters’ Hospital had raised $1561.81 and the Leader gave full credit to those involved by listing the name of every single Daughter who’d canvassed the Valley.
On a negative note, a copy of the recent resolution passed by Duncan Council to do whatever was in its power to discourage the ownership of land by ‘Orientals” had been mailed to every town and municipal council and board of trade in the province. To date, Vancouver was in favour, Revelstoke wanted to discuss it further and Victoria ignored it.
The job of laying steel water mains on Station Street was in need of a “thoroughly competent man” to supervise the operation so Council endorsed hiring Harry Owen of Victoria for $225 per month.
Ald. Whidden reported that a culvert on Jubilee Street had been widened, a sidewalk renewed on Trunk Road, Front Street (Canada Avenue) was to be oiled with oil left over from previous work and, if any remained, the process would be applied to the ‘lower portion’ (east end) of Station Street. (Another account refers to a new plank sidewalk on Government Street.)
Ald. Dickie reported that logging operations had fouled the City’s water supply; with the support of the City solicitor he’d immediately taken up the matter with the parties concerned and had the debris from the dam pond removed.
On the same subject, it was agreed that the City needed more water mains so that, when necessary, water could be shut off but affect fewer homes and businesses. Dr. W. Turley Brookes’s complaint that his household water was yellow, had an odour and had given him and his family sore throats was filed.
The matter of war trophies just wouldn’t go away; the latest development was a proposal from North Cowichan for a meeting to discuss their disposition. The Municipality “hoped that at the meeting the trophies might be located permanently in the most effective position and to the satisfaction of all concerned”.
Duncan filed this letter, too.
The Cowichan Natives (sic) and the Duncan Nine met on the baseball diamond, the former winning 4-3. The latest poll of Valley farmers revealed that pure bred Jerseys held the lead in popularity, there being 64 of them to 27 Holsteins, 11 Guernseys and a single Ayrshire. But the holsteins, the prevailing milk cow of today, was gaining, there being no fewer than 300 in total when the Nanaimo area was included.
The Game Conservation Board had been informed that the goverment was considering the appointment of several professional cougar hunters to the district, and the Liquor Control Board was about to open a store in Duncan—in the Masonic Temple building, opposite the railway station.
Finally, the sun, moon and sea had combined for a perfect Water Carnival held by the Ladies’ Guild of St. Andrew’s Persbyterian Church
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