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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 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.
Part 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 marked the 128th anniversary of the worst streetcar accident in North American history—the collapse of Victoria’s Point Ellice bridge from the weight of a trolley carrying more than twice its legal limit of holidayers. Within minutes, 55 people were dead, 27 injured.
Read MoreShe made naval history—only to die on a Vancouver Island beach.
But she hasn’t been forgotten.
Read MoreDuring a recent tour of Victoria’s beautiful Ross Bay Cemetery, Old Cemeteries Society guide John Adams pointed out the headstone for onetime U.S. Consul Allen Francis.
Coincidentally, in his latest bestselling book, Untold Stories of Old British Columbia, friend and fellow historian Dan Marshall pays tribute to a mutual hero of ours, David Williams Higgins, whom I’ve introduced to Chronicles readers on several occasions.
There’s a strong and fascinating connection between Francis and Higgins.
Read MoreOvernight, progress and prosperity came to Steamboat Mountain and environs, with not one but three township springing up where, but weeks before had been virgin wilderness...
Few British Columbia will have heard of Steamboat Mountain. Yet, a century and a-quarter ago, it was the site of the richest gold strike in provincial history.
Read MoreProbably few of the 1000s of commercial and pleasure craft annually plying British Columbia waters have much fear of navigating Seymour Narrows.
True, this 2500-foot-channel between Vancouver, Maud and Quadra islands is still hazardous.
But, within living memory, this was the dreaded lair of the worst marine hazard of the entire West Coast—Ripple Rock.
Read MoreVancouver Island was in a state of emergency, 156 years ago.
While members of the Volunteer Rifle Corps and special constables patrolled Victoria streets, British men-of-war stood at the alert in Esquimalt Harbour and cruised Juan de Fuca Strait.
This is the little-known chapter of Vancouver Island's exciting history when it was feared to be the intended invasion target of the outlawed Irish nationalist society, the Fenian Brotherhood.
Read MoreIn last week’s Chronicle, based upon my first interview as an aspiring young journalist, the late Charles Taylor recounted some of the Alberni Valley’s colourful, often tragic history.
This week, we cut out the middleman and go straight to the horse’s mouth, so to speak...
Read MoreTragedy was an inevitable part of pioneer life and the Alberni Valley had its share.
The late Charles Taylor, introduced in last week’s Chronicles, was the first person I ever interviewed—initially at the urging of my employer, the Victoria Colonist, then, when he and I became unlikely friends, by choice.
Read MoreEveryone has to start somewhere, to state the obvious.
In my case it was in the lowly capacity of copyboy with The Daily Colonist before its merger with the Victoria Daily Times—two years of my doing everything and anything but writing, at least on company time.
Any writing I did was on my own dime.
Read MoreConclusion
As we’ve seen, to Joseph Camille Claus of Nanoose Bay goes the dubious honour of committing “the first cold-blooded premeditated murder...in the frozen north,” in this case the Stikine River country.
Read More
