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As I write this, the 1000-foot-long S.S. United States, the “longest and largest ocean liner ever built in America,” and the record holder for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a passenger liner, is about to sail one last time.
Not under her own power but with the aid of five tugs.
Read MoreConclusion
It’s one of the Cariboo’s greatest mysteries—whatever became of the Halden family, Arthur, Adah and Stanley?
I don’t think I’ll ever become comfortable with Facebook.
Sure, I post something historical every two days and have built up a small following. It’s a modest way of self-promotion which, after all, is part of the publishing game. What’s the point of writing about our pioneers and historical events if there’s no one there to read them?
For the most part, it can be fun, requiring as it does little of the discipline necessary to researching and writing serious texts, and some of the comments are illuminating.
Read MorePart 2
As we’ve seen, in October 1920, Arthur, Adah and Stanley Halden appeared to have abandoned their Quesnel farm and left a number of outstanding debts around town. The biggest one, all of $1250, a large sum at that time, was a promissory note made out to their hired hand, David Arthur Clark. It was Clark who told those who asked that the Haldens had left for Spokane to attend Arthur’s brother’s funeral, but he’d had no word from them since.
Take notice that you have been sued in the Country Court, holden at Quesnel, by David Arthur Clark, and that a copy of the summons has been filed for you in the Quesnel Registry of the said Court. You are required to dispute the said action by filing a dispute note in the said Registry within twenty days of the first appearance of this advertisement.
Read MoreIn place of an Editorial, and in keeping with Remembrance, this week’s Chronicles theme, this tribute to Americans who volunteered to serve King and Country. Our King and Country.
Their sacrifice has been all but overlooked by most historians and is worthy of being recognized and remembered.
Read MoreTuesday’s issue of the Cowichan Valley Citizen marked the 25th year that I’ve written the Remembrance Day edition for my Duncan newspaper—a quarter-century-long labour of love.
For this week’s Chronicles, it’s a virtual visit to the CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum. This amazing place, even though situated within CFB Naden, on the CFB Esquimalt naval base, is open to the public, seven days a week, 10:00 to 3: 30 except on statutory holidays, at the cost of a donation.
Read MoreSurely, you don’t expect the Chronicles to be about anything but Halloween on this propitious date, do you?
And why not? Old newspapers, the fodder for historians and writers, are filled with stories about encounters with the supernatural. After all, everyone loves a ghost story, right?
Read MoreCommunities throughout British Columbia will shudder in mock terror tonight as, once again, ghosts and goblins haunt the streets for another brief Halloween.
Victorians are perhaps fortunate. None of them is old enough to have lived through a solid, spine-tingling week when readers of the Colonist thrilled to the eerie rattling and ramblings of a not-so-innocuous phantom, and marvelled at hints of a hidden murder...
Read MoreOne of the joys of historical research is that it's like a treasure hunt. You never know what the next document or deed, the turn of a page of an old newspaper, or a tip from a reader might lead to.
This nugget from the Nanaimo Free Press was sent along by a friend who’d been researching coal mine history at Vancouver Island University. It concerns lost treasure—the real thing.
Read MoreInternational borders, it seems, are an invitation to smugglers of humans and goods. You know, build it and they will come.
Certainly, the international waters between Victoria and Washington State, primarily those of the San Juan and Gulf islands, have been the arenas of illicit activities almost since the arrival of the first Whites.
Read MoreI wonder how many people ever pause to think that they’re literally walking on air as they go about their business in downtown Nanaimo.
The ‘air’ beneath their feet being that formed by abandoned coal mines—miles of them—now mostly flooded, but, in many cases, otherwise intact. This false floor is something that City building inspectors and contractors must take into account when they plan new works.
Read MoreThroughout the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the last century there was no argument as to the Speed Queen of the Seas: the CPR flagship Princess Victoria. With three funnels belching black smoke, the sleek liner raced between Victoria, Vancouver and Puget Sound ports, showing her stern to all challengers.
Read MoreI’ve mentioned before that history is ever with us, even in the breaking news which media prides itself on. It isn’t always apparent, as in a flashback or an overt reference to an historical event or personage, but often hidden between the lines.
In other words, you have to know something about history to recognize it when you see it.
Read More(Conclusion)
As we saw in last week’s Chronicles, John A. ‘Cariboo’ Cameron pickled his dead wife then then set out to haul her body 400 miles over the snow and ice by sled to take her, first to Victoria, then back home to Upper Canada.
An unsung jewel is the Esquimalt Naval & Military Museum at Naden, Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt. It’s open seven days a week (10-3:30), including statutory holidays. Admission is by donation.
As the son of a career Royal Canadian Navy man, I feel almost at home during my too infrequent visits. Almost every which way I turn, there’s an artifact on display—a bell, a crest, a model, a photo—of one of my father’s ships. About the only one that I didn’t notice this past Sunday was his last ship, the light cruiser HMCS Ontario.
Read More(Part 1)
Anybody who’s ever read anything about the Cariboo gold rush has heard of John Angus Cameron.
Not by his formal name, maybe, but by the moniker by which he’s still remembered, ‘Cariboo’ Cameron.
Read MoreTalk about a labour of love. Fourteen years and 100 interviews later, Duncan author Lynn Starter’s opus, a coffee table took of 1200 pages of photos and facts is off the press and available.
Read MoreIt happened in an instant, with a single flash of flame like that of a lightning bolt.
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We know that more than 600 miners were killed on the job in Nanaimo area coal mines over that industry's 80-year history. If we take into account those who died later, sometimes much later, from their injuries or from work-related illnesses, the death toll must be much greater.
Read MoreIn last week’s editorial I shrugged off the impending demolition of the historic Holt Creek trestle at Mile 59.7 on the Glenora stretch of the Trans Canada Trail as inevitable and, well, c’est la vie.
It’s to be replaced with a purely utilitarian span of steel and concrete with a wooden deck.
Read More
