The Chronicles

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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Well, another year is about to bite the dust.

For most of us blessed to live in Canada, it likely has been another year of getting by in comparative comfort while complaining bitterly about inflation every time we go to a checkout. A minor plaint when you look around this embattled world of ours...

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It should come as no surprise to Chronicles readers that I spend a lot of time delving into old newspapers. They’re a ‘popular’ historian’s lifeblood.

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Here’s irony for you...
In researching today’s feature story on the sinking of the U.S. Army transport S.S. Brig.-Gen. M.G. Zalinsky, and the subsequent—and expensive—efforts to stem the bunker oil leaking from her hull, I found an article bearing this headline,

Oil Spills Are Bad For Shipwrecks

I mean, it’s ironic that sunken ships that leak oil and pollute the environment are subject to accelerated corrosion from their own oil! Sort of like being hoist with (her) own petard, as Shakespeare would say.

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There will be no great fanfare this week for the departing Phillipine Mars water bomber, as was the case for her sister Hawaii Mars back in August. Her final flight to a military museum in Arizona, after decades in the Alberni Valley, will be determined by weather conditions.

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