The Chronicles

It’s so easy to think of history as being, well, long ago and far away. In the past. Come and gone. Done with. Move on.

The reality, of course, is that history walks among us as a living, vibrant being. Rather than being static, it’s happening every minute of every day, even in our own backyards. Okay, sometimes it takes a while to be officially recognized and recorded as such; that’s what historians and archivists are for.

Conversely, and it’s happening more frequently these days, we turn the telescope around and, like the revisionists of Communist infamy, we try to undo history—making even more history. 

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As noted last week, I’m finally working on my tribute to the coal miners of mid-Vancouver Island after 25 years of field and archival research. 

This week’s Chronicle about the 1909 Extension mine disaster, and a revisit to Granby two weekends ago, brought back old memories and prompted these reflections on how transitory history can be. 

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Now the company that wants to salvage whatever valuable minerals are left in the ore dumps of the Tyee and Lenora mines on the Cowichan Valley’s Mount Sicker is looking to process the tailings piles of the Blue Grouse Mine.

Jennifer and I made several visits to the adjoining Blue Grouse and Sunnyside claims on the west shore of Cowichan Lake years ago, I’m happy to say, so it isn’t on my bucket list, or I’d be champing at the bit to check it out before they can go to work.

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Long gone are my feckless days of youth when I wrote with all the confidence of a new-born, all of it based upon my mimicking newspaper reports and the works of others, and none of it from the well of my own experiences. 

But time has marched on, times have changed—and, thankfully, so have I. 

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There’s an interesting item in this week’s Terrace Standard about Japanese triplexes at “the last intact cannery on B.C.’s north coast” having been restored as a vital piece of the region’s multicultural fishing heritage. 

The North Pacific Cannery in Port Edward, virtually unaltered to this day, goes all the way back to 1889 when salmon canneries were a major contributor to the provincial economy. Now it’s a national historic site and museum that offers visitors “an immersive glimpse” into the lives of cannery workers.

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One of the joys of researching in old newspapers is discovering smaller news items, nuggets I call them, that just don’t make it to the big time. By which I mean, they’re what some would cruelly call trivia, so get passed by.

But this one recently caught my eye and, if only momentarily, sucked me down the rabbit hole. I share it with you today. It’s from the Victoria Daily Times of Jan. 25, 1929.

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There’s an interesting footnote to today’s Chronicle about Louisa Townsend who came to B.C. on the bride ship Tynemouth and married Edward Mallandaine.

Their son, Edward Jr., born propitiously on July 1st, 1867, the same day as the Confederation of the Dominion of Canada, became an itinerant carpenter for several years after leaving school at the age of 14. He found himself (again propitiously) in the CPR construction town of Donald, B.C., in time to witness the driving of the Last Spike.

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“On this bright sunny day, May 13, 2025, the work commenced on our special project for 2025...”

So begins the latest issue of the Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria’s newsletter. The special project referred to is the restoration of the grave of Edna Farnsworth, the subject of this week’s Chronicles.

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Memory is a funny thing. It can be vivid, branded into the brain; it can be ephemeral, just a wisp-like fog that swirls about you from time to time but is always there, slumbering in the subconscious while it awaits a word, a sight, a smell or a sound—something, anything—to bring it if only momentarily to the fore. 

One that has always stuck in my mind from childhood concerns money. A stack of bills pulled from the wall of an old house, once a store my mother told me, as it was being torn down.

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It occurs to me that Chronicles readers who don’t follow me on Facebook (T.W. Paterson History Author) might enjoy these recent posts of a visit to the Nanaimo Cemetery. I didn’t find the headstone I was looking for, but was intrigued by these three… 

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It occurs to me that Chronicles readers who don’t follow me on Facebook (T.W. Paterson History Author) might enjoy these recent posts of a visit to the Nanaimo Cemetery. I didn’t find the headstone I was looking for, but was intrigued by these three… 

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Further to today’s post on the famous—and valuable—New Westminster Mint’s 10- and 20-dollar gold coins, the crown colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia also, ever so briefly, printed their own postage stamps. 

As an example, this photo is of the British Columbia & Vancouver Island Stamp #2 - Queen Victoria (1860) 2½d, Unwatermarked. 

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It’s all my fault.

So Stan Strazza told me at Sunday’s bi-annual South Wellington Day in the Cranberry Fire Hall. 

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Let’s start the day with another great digital colourization by Duncan computer whiz Nigel Robertson, this one of a BC Archives photo of an E&N passenger train crossing the famous Niagara Canyon trestle at Goldstream in 1902. 

Note that the photographer’s lens was too slow to ‘freeze’ the movement of the train as almost any camera or cell phone can do today. 

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At the risk of (heaven forbid) repeating myself, I’ve said before that you can always find historical nuggets in the current news. 

For example, a week ago it was reported, Judge orders sale of B.C.’s oldest pub. 

The pub in question is Victoria area’s Six Mile Pub, in business since 1855. That’s 170 years! You’d probably be able to fill one of the Great Lakes with the suds that have flowed from the Six Mile’s taps in a century and three-quarters.

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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.

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In 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.

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This 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!

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A 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 

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It 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.

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