November 18, 1920
What was happening a century ago this week from the front page of the Cowichan Leader.
November 18, 1920
Another industrial accident, this one on the Canadian National Railways (formerly the Canadian Northern Pacific Railway) bridge over the Cowichan River, was the headline story for this week. Bridgeman Daniel McSherry had died in the Duncan hospital, hours after he was rushed to town by speeder and an ambulance. The single, 49-year-old Ontario man was crushed and “scorched” when the derrick, apparently overloaded, toppled over onto its side, crushing and burning him with its steam boiler.
He left his mother in Ontario and the local IOOF Lodge was handling his funeral arrangements.
The drive to raise $2000 for a war memorial was ongoing but the host of civic dignitaries led by Mayor Pitt and Reeve Herd acknowledged that outlying Valley communities wanted “cairns” of their own, not just one centralized memorial in Duncan. To date, $500 and two loads of gravel had been donated towards erecting a memorial by the courthouse on Government Street. It’s interesting to note that the $500 had been contributed by organizations rather than individuals and that, just two years since Armistice, fund raisers were encountering “considerable apathy”.
This appears to have been the result of the proposed memorial site and conflict of interest and misunderstanding between the City of Duncan and the Great War Veterans Assoc.
North Cowichan Council had its own challenges. In the absence of Reeve Herd, Clr. Hilton took the chair. As usual, roads were the big issue, the municipality facing a further expense of $463 to close the books on the arbitration necessitated by the expropriation of a roadway through Swallowfield Farm to the Cowichan Estuary. The arbitration process alone had cost $1000. This hefty expense for legal costs didn’t deter Council from expropriating land for a new Vimy Road, however.
Advised that they were facing $5000 deficit, councillors resigned themselves to seeking a bank loan for 1921. In the meantime, they urged the roads committee to see if they could at least see that the worst offenders, Mount Sicker Road and roads around Quamichan Lake, were “passable”.
In Chemainus news the Victoria Lumber & Manufacturing Co. had received an order for 13 rail carloads of railway ties and shipped 1 million feet of lumber to South Africa aboard the American schooner Commodore. More railway ties and more lumber were on order. Fortunately, several equipment breakdowns and a small fire in the mill “did not amount to anything”.
20 local ladies had shown their enthusiasm for starting a dressmaking class and the regular meeting of the Chemainus General Hospital reported a quiet month, with revenues of $11.68 and expenses of $9.31—a net of $2.37! A tag day had netted the hospital a further $110.
Nurse Jamieson was also attending, privately, to a young Namaimo man who was recovering at home after being shot in a hunting accident.
The Leader criticized the Chemainus basketball team for not “playing a good clean game” against Duncan and the Cavalry Baptist Church took up a collection for the Vimy Ridge Memorial Church. Dr. D.E. Kerr, dentist, was in town seeking an office place, and hunting season, so far, had yielded several deer, pheasant and quail.
Mr. And Mrs. C. Cryer hosted an enjoyable card party for friends, Miss Violet Robinson Victoria, was staying with her cousin, Mrs. J. Robinson Russell.
The provincial election campaign had opened with the usual platitudes and promises by the two local candidates, Independent Kenneth Duncan and Conservative George Cheeke. The latter charged his ‘independent’ opponent with being—perish the thought—a Liberal in disguise. Duncan heatedly rejected the charge as slanderous.
(They both had much more to say, of course, but I’ll spare readers the details of what was really was just another election and the usual blarney.)
The Duncan Hospital had been busy in October with 55 in-patients and 5 out-patients, and at the regular directors’ meeting thanks were given to local churches for their donations of money, fruit and vegetables. Miss Measures, the day supervisor who’d undergone minor surgery, was back on duty and Miss Gilmer, a probation nurse, was leaving for England for three months, her duties to be performed by Miss Robinson.
It was agreed that nurses weren’t to work more than 56 hours per week. the board was seeking a grant from the provincial government for an isolation ward, and bills totalling $1680.11 were paid. In place of the resigned Dr. W.T. Rutherford was Fleet Surgeon H.F.D. Stephens, RN (Retired).
The Cowichan Valley had observed its second Armistice Day with a half-holiday but with little in the way of public remembrance. “Scarcely a flag flew in the town and there was no concerted observance of the two minute silence,” grumbled The Leader. “The one bright spot amid this desert of apathy could be found in the sunlit church of St. John’s Baptist, where a laurel wreath hung on the framed roll of service and an all too scanty congregation gathered to join with an augmented choir in an impressive service of thanksgiving and remembrance...”
The editor, obviously angry, wasn’t done: “The war should have taught us the brevity and uncertainty of life, the necessity of doing one’s little bit now. It should have taught us that the true life is lived in the service of others, that the ideal of the Christian life was not peace at any price but peace through warfare and victory. Thanks to those who had gone would best be given by striving to carry out the ideals for which they died...”
At a children’s service in the church hall that evening, only uniformed Scouts and Guides attended. They were asked to never forget what would have happened had the Germans won.
(So it was in the Cowichan Valley in mid-November 1920. A century after we ask ourselves, were they truly “apathetic” or grieving privately?)
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