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Times had indeed changed for John King Barker, back in 1906.
Gone was the fortune he’d spent a lifetime wresting from the soil; gone were his youth and his health. Old, bent and feeble, the miner hoped to visit an old friend one last time before joining those of his comrades who’d passed on before him.
Read MoreFurther to this week's Chronicle, the conclusion to the tragic story of 1920s Cowichan Lake school teacher Mabel Jones, this is the second time in 15 years that the Mill Bay Malahat Historical Society has chosen to bring history to life via the stage.
Read More(Conclusion)
Garish headlines greeted morning readers of the Victoria Daily Colonist on Nov. 1928. Unlike Duncan’s twice-weekly Cowichan Leader which also published that day but had been caught on the cusp of going to press, the Victoria daily’s initial report was able to give far more detail.
As I write this, B.C.’s greatest icon of the Cariboo gold rush era is in danger of destruction by a forest fire.
It was back in 1967, Canada’s Centennial, that this ‘ghost town’ was rescued from eventual oblivion and since has become one of the province’s greatest tourist attractions.
Who hasn’t visited Barkerville?
According to the Quesnel Cariboo Observer, the BC Wildfire Service “has had sprinklers installed on every building...as the area remains under an evacuation order on Tuesday. July 23...”
Read MorePart 1
It’s funny how some things turn out. Funny, that is, if such a term can be applied to human tragedy—particularly to that of a sensitive young woman who was driven to taking her own life by a confined, uncaring, even malevolent community.
Such, however, is the story of Mable Estelle Jones. Almost a century after her death, her story serves as the subject of a teacher’s course in ‘historical studies’ and as a lesson in human behaviour.
Too bad that we never seem to learn from history…
Read MoreAlthough it sometimes feels like it, I’m not the only author who celebrates British Columbia history. Obviously, as Chronicles readers are sure to be aware, there are others beating the drum of history.
However, a full-page story in this week’s Cowichan Valley Citizen is a happy reminder that, right here in my own backyard, a dedicated band of volunteers is hard at work promoting Vancouver Island’s colourful past.
Read MoreFor 60 years, most provincial ferry service was provided by the Canadian Pacific Princess ships which operated on the legendary Triangle service between Victoria, Vancouver and Seattle, and between Nanaimo and Vancouver.
Among the most popular of these vessels was the Clyde-built, 6,000-ton flagship Princess Kathleen which began her coastal career on May 12, 1925.
Read MoreJohn Milton Bryant (1887-1913), who’s acknowledged as “one of the first American barnstormers,” had acquired his aviator’s license only six months before his death. An inset on his headstone in the Los Angeles Odd Fellows Cemetery reads:
In Memoriam
August 6, 1913 – The first fatal airplane accident in Canada occurred when John M. Bryant, husband of Alys (Tiny) Bryant, was killed in the crash of his plane at Victoria.
Read MoreVictoria entered the air age with a crash, 111 years ago.
During Carnival Week, August 1913, performing American aviator Johnny Milton Bryant plummeted to his death in downtown Victoria.
Read MoreFurther to today’s story on the collapse of the Second Narrows Bridge in June 1958....
History almost repeated itself in May 2006 when it took the combined efforts of seven tugboats to keep a freighter from crashing into the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing.
Read MoreWe’ve just passed the 66th anniversary of that tragic day in June 1958 when two spans of Vancouver’s new Second Narrows Bridge, then under construction, collapsed.
Two weeks ago, the Langley Advance marked that momentous event with an interview with Lou Lessard. Now 91, the former ironworker is the last survivor of that horrendous event of June 7, 1958.
Read MoreFurther to today’s feature article on engineer extraordinaire Andrew Onderdonk, an attempt to answer: Hero or Heel?
Read MoreFame can be a fleeting thing—today’s “celebrity,” tomorrow’s nonentity. It can get worse than that—yesterday’s hero, today’s heel!
Even though he has a British Columbia mountain named for him, if you google Andrew Onderdonk, he gets little mention beyond the first two listings of several pages of other Onderdonks which include members of his own family, and doctors and lawyers, etc.
Read MoreAs told in this week’s Chronicle, Stuart Henderson’s courtroom record was perhaps without equal: he lost just five cases of 50 over a half-century of defending clients accused of serious crimes, usually murder.
Read MoreIn 50 years before the bench, from prime minister's drawing room to frontier jail cell, he never turned down a case. He was a legend in his own lifetime, celebrated from the Maritimes to the Klondike as the greatest criminal lawyer of his age: Stewart William Henderson.
His death, aged 81, made the front page of the New York Times.
Read MoreLast week, I wrote that I’m not the only one who collects old photos. Al Maas had sent along a copy of a somewhat battered photo he’d bought at Whippletree Auction, years ago. “...It’s a local picture of rail workers? Bridge builders?”
Read More“A man out west is a man, and let him be the poorest cowboy he will assert his right of perfect equality with the best...”
Author, sportsman, dreamer. Such was William Adolph Baillie-Grohman.
Read MoreI’m not the only one who collects old photos. From Al Maas, this query:
Hey, Tom
Thanks for getting back to me, I'm hoping someone will be able to identify some of these people. I got the picture at the Whippletree Auction years ago, so am hoping it's a local picture of rail workers? bridge builders? Beams are quite long and may have been used for trestles etc? Hope you see something here that you might recognize.
Thanks, Al
Read MoreWhile at Ross Bay Cemetery recently, I checked out a subject long of interest to me: Billy Barker, the namesake for Cariboo’s Barkerville.
I had to smile—Billy’s an RBC ‘star,’ having an end-of-the-row marker denoting his final resting place. Better yet, he has a handsome and expensive retro bronze marker giving a brief biography. What a far cry from the time of his death in Victoria’s Old Men’s Home for indigents.
Read MoreLast Sunday, for the second time in 30-odd years, I wandered about the base of the Bay Street bridge.
It will always be the Point Ellice bridge to me, the site of the worst streetcar disaster in Canadian, even North American history.
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