The Chronicles

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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I’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.

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This 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.

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Does 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.

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Viewer 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.

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Oyez! 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! 

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NEWS 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.

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Most 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. 

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Can 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.

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