*British Columbia Chronicles special bonus section for Members Only.*
I must shuffle my Current Affairs files more often. Too late for last week’s feature article on Second World War explosives that continue to threaten life and limb in our own backyard, I noticed two overlooked clippings.
The first, and more apropos to the Chronicles, was a small Canadian Press article in the Victoria Times Colonist, headlined, Surrey RCMP office evacuated after grenade turned in.
Read MoreIn this week’s Chronicle about unexploded ordnance, I focus on the lethal legacy of the Second World War. But the problem—the threat to life and limb—goes back long before WW2.
Read MoreThis week’s story on Bill Barlee brings back so many memories for me...
How I envy his childhood!
Imagine being born in a community of abandoned gold mines with derelict buildings and equipment for a playground!
Read MoreA recent Canadian Press news story prompted a visit to my archives and this week’s ramble...
‘Vancouver heritage building demolished, at risk of collapse’ headlined Ashley Joannou’s article on the demolition of downtown Vancouver’s Dunsmuir House, 500 Dunsmuir Street. Although formally registered as a heritage building, it was condemned as a threat to pubic safety because of terminal “structural deterioration” due to years of neglect by its owners
Read MoreIt took several attempts because of engine trouble (she hadn’t flown in almost 20 years) but the Philippine Mars has reached her final home at the Pima Air and Space Museum, Arizona.
Read MoreI’ve mentioned before my lifelong love affair with the Island’s railways. Living just one door away from the CNR shortline beside Saanich Lake as a kid, “the tracks” were our playground.
When the train came along, it meant hitching a ride (hanging unseen by the crew from the end of the last boxcar) to the last stop, the Growers Winery, then filching grapes through the hatches of the refrigerator cars.
Read MoreThis is of necessity short notice but, assuming that we haven’t had any more snow since I wrote this on Sunday, there’s a good talk to be had tonight at the monthly meeting of the Nanaimo Historical Society.
It’s entitled Fundraisers, Axe-wielders and Star Witnesses: Women on Both Sides of the Vancouver Coal Miners’ Strike by Aimee Greenaway, curator at the Nanaimo Museum.
Read MoreDoes it never end? Every time I turn around, there’s more, more: new leads, followups to old stories, emails, letters from readers, unfinished business, research, deadlines. More to do, more to do.
Oh, the hardships of an author/historian/publisher...
Seriously, I’m always mildly surprised by the number of current news stories that have historical roots and thus provide more fodder for the Chronicles’ editorial page. So let’s begin to catch up, and my apology for its being even more of a grab-bag than usual.
Read MoreViewer Discretion Advised.
*In his 1905 reminiscence, The Passing of a Race, then-retired Colonist publisher D.W. Higgins credited Butts with having been instrumental in swaying public sentiment against Vancouver Island’s being annexed by the United States in 1866. “Butts suddenly became intensely loyal, and erected a miniature gallows on Wharf Street, from which he used to turn off the annexationists, naming each ‘traitor’ as the drop fell.
Read MoreOyez! Oyez! Oyez! (Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!)
Town criers, or just criers, go back a long—all the way back to the Roman Empire. In the centuries before newspapers, when few people were literate, they were an established social institution throughout Europe
Often uniformed in a red and gold coat, white breeches, black boots and a tricorne hat (think pirate), they’d stroll village and city streets, crying Oyez!
Read MoreNEWS ITEM: 15 acres added to John Dean Park
“Some of the last old-growth stands of Douglas fir and Garry oak on the [Saanich] Peninsula are now part of 15-acre parcel of land added to the border of John Dean Provincial Park...after being acquired by the B.C. Parks Foundation from a private landowner for $1.63 million...”
So reported the Times Colonist in November.
Read MoreMost Chronicles readers, I’m sure, have seen the news about the loss to fire of the well-known and highly-regarded Whale Interpretation Centre at Telegraph Cove. The 20-year-old natural museum housed a wonderful collection of marine mammal specimens including the skeleton of a 20-metre fin whale.
The cove’s buildings and docks were much older, with a rich history of their own.
Read MoreCan you believe it? 2025! A quarter of a century into the ‘new’ millennium!
Where did it go? More importantly, where is it going?
Well, here at the Chronicles, some things never change—just more stories to come about British Columbia’s rich and colourful history, of which there’s simply no end. As I’ve noted before, history is like digging a hole—it just gets bigger and bigger.
Read MoreWell, another year is about to bite the dust.
For most of us blessed to live in Canada, it likely has been another year of getting by in comparative comfort while complaining bitterly about inflation every time we go to a checkout. A minor plaint when you look around this embattled world of ours...
Read MoreIt should come as no surprise to Chronicles readers that I spend a lot of time delving into old newspapers. They’re a ‘popular’ historian’s lifeblood.
Read MoreHere’s irony for you...
In researching today’s feature story on the sinking of the U.S. Army transport S.S. Brig.-Gen. M.G. Zalinsky, and the subsequent—and expensive—efforts to stem the bunker oil leaking from her hull, I found an article bearing this headline,
Oil Spills Are Bad For Shipwrecks
I mean, it’s ironic that sunken ships that leak oil and pollute the environment are subject to accelerated corrosion from their own oil! Sort of like being hoist with (her) own petard, as Shakespeare would say.
Read MoreThere will be no great fanfare this week for the departing Phillipine Mars water bomber, as was the case for her sister Hawaii Mars back in August. Her final flight to a military museum in Arizona, after decades in the Alberni Valley, will be determined by weather conditions.
Read MoreAs I write this, the 1000-foot-long S.S. United States, the “longest and largest ocean liner ever built in America,” and the record holder for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a passenger liner, is about to sail one last time.
Not under her own power but with the aid of five tugs.
Read MoreI don’t think I’ll ever become comfortable with Facebook.
Sure, I post something historical every two days and have built up a small following. It’s a modest way of self-promotion which, after all, is part of the publishing game. What’s the point of writing about our pioneers and historical events if there’s no one there to read them?
For the most part, it can be fun, requiring as it does little of the discipline necessary to researching and writing serious texts, and some of the comments are illuminating.
Read MoreIn place of an Editorial, and in keeping with Remembrance, this week’s Chronicles theme, this tribute to Americans who volunteered to serve King and Country. Our King and Country.
Their sacrifice has been all but overlooked by most historians and is worthy of being recognized and remembered.
Read More
