Of all the coal mining disasters in Vancouver Island’s history that of the Pacific Coast Coal Mine in South Wellington stands out on two counts.
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Of all the coal mining disasters in Vancouver Island’s history that of the PCCM in South Wellington stands out on two counts.
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This year’s Extension Miners Memorial service, Ladysmith’s annual tribute to the 32 miners who lost their lives in a tragic explosion on Oct. 5, 1909, was held last week in front of the Metal Collage on the corner of First Avenue and Gatacre Street.
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As you may have seen in the news, and in last week’s Chronicle, North Cowichan Municipality is looking to expand Mountain View Cemetery into an adjoining forest of mature fir and maple trees—proving that even dead people come first.
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From the craggy shores of Isle Arran they came, five brothers seeking their fortunes in the New World.
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I’ve long joked that I’ve sunk more ships than Lord Nelson—in print. And I owe that dubious claim, in part, to a lady who, long ago, did me a small favour.
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As entertainment convener for the Cowichan Historical Society, I’d just announced that the next month’s speaker would be John Adams of the Old Cemeteries Society, Victoria
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One of his best stories is that of Anna Ullman, a young woman who set out to hike the Yukon Telegraph line from Hazelton to Telegraph Creek in 1932.
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Ozzie Hutchings, machinist by trade, historian and clock repairman by choice, was a born storyteller as you’ll see in this week’s Chronicles with his blood chilling story…
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I recently reported that a new book has been released across the line in Washington. Byron Riblet: Forgotten Engineering Genius by Ty A. Brown is the second book written in recent years of the man
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Romantic though it may seem to some today, Victoria’s famous sealing industry was a brutal business.
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Based primarily on Carlton Stone’s Hillcrest: A History of Vancouver Island’s Hillcrest Lumber Company by Duncan author/historian Ian MacInnes. This is the conclusion of two parts.
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Even today, 72 years after his death, Carlton Stone is a legend in the Cowichan Valley.
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Prospector, packer and painted lady; merchant, gambler and thief; they all called rip-roaring Fort Yale home at the height of the Fraser River and Cariboo gold rushes.
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Karma. It’s a curse, I tell you. Hard as it is for me to believe, it’s been almost 50 years since I wrote Ghost Town Trails of Vancouver Island and it’s still in print after several changes of format and cover, and a slight tweak of the title and byline.
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This is beginning to look scary. The April 28th headline of the Cowichan Valley Citizen was a stark reminder that time is running out for the E&N if it’s to be saved as a working railway and not be converted into a recreational trail.
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More than a century after he was immortalized in bronze, his honorary title is to be erased in the name of Reconciliation.
Read MoreSome months ago, a shopper at Walmart asked me if I knew anything about the “piano” in the bush along the Cowichan Valley Trail. Was it the one, he asked, I’d once mentioned in a Citizen column?
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In February, the Royal British Columbia Museum acquired an 1883 oil painting of the entrance to Victoria Harbour by American artist, lithographer and cartographer Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918).
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Even in death a ship does not sleep soundly. Timbers creak in eerie symphony with wind and wave, nesting pigeons converse in dark corners, ghostly shadows walk decks and passageways where, once, seamen ran to their stations in weather fair and foul...
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