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(Conclusion)
“My conscience is clear. It was no fault of mine for I did all that I should have done. The lights were on and the gates were locked.”
So said bridge tender Thomas Dodson, four days after one of B.C.’s worst public transit disasters in history, third only to the collapse of Victoria’s Point Ellice Bridge on May 26, 1896, and a collision between a railway car and a streetcar in November 1909 that killed 15.
Read More(Part 1)
Such was one of the horrific headlines of Vancouver’s The World newspaper, Nov. 10, 1916.
Beneath the page-width banner, FOURTEEN KILLED IN B.C.E.R. WRECK, startled readers were informed that a “motor stage,” as multi-passenger forerunners to buses were defined a century and more ago, had plunged into the Fraser River with a load of passengers.
It’s one of B.C.’s worst public transit disasters in history, third only to the collapse of Victoria’s Point Ellice Bridge on May 26, 1896, and a collision between a railway car and a streetcar in November 1909 that killed 15.
Read MoreFor years in a previous lifetime I spelunked on weekends. In other words, I and friends explored caves, small, large, often wet and dirty, but sometimes breathtaking.
Which probably accounts for my particular interest is this legend of a lost cave as told by Rev. William Henry Collison, one of B.C.’s legendary missionaries among coastal First Nations. He tells the story in his fascinating memoir, In the Wake of the War Canoe (edited and annotated by Charles Lillard).
Read MoreToday’s so-called ‘war on drugs’ has an interesting parallel in history. In 1917, after a contested and controversial referendum, Prohibition was declared and, overnight, Canada Dry became more than a popular soft drink.
Officially, at any rate. In practice it was more a case of business as usual, despite the efforts of police.
Read MoreIt’s interesting to speculate as to how many ways there are to turn a dishonest dollar. There must be as many variations to the old shell game as there are operators, and B.C. has known its share of these shady types.
Almost a century ago, Jacob Jacobsen (if that was his real name) earned his niche in provincial criminal lore when, under the alias John Hellsing, he worked a novel dodge on a Victoria realtor. His was, as a newspaper reported put it, a “smooth scheme,” and one not without its charm if something less than original.
Read MoreIt was a colourful career that Thomas Herbert Murphy reflected upon in the summer of 1930. A lifetime that had been seen him in the mixed roles of sailor, blackbirder, prospector and Justice of the Peace.
Read MoreIt’s so easy to just go with the obvious, to accept old newspaper accounts at face value. After all, the story is exciting enough that others have done it before you, so why look a gift horse in the mouth?
Heck, I’ve done it many times!
Read MoreEveryone has seen the story in the news: B.C. Ferries has contracted to spend billions—billions—of dollars, building new ferries in China.
The only surprise is China; we’ve been buying ferries from European countries for years.
Read MoreSo soon we forget; it’s almost part of the Canadian character, it seems.
How many times have I encountered cases of true heroism, often to the point of supreme sacrifice, during my extensive historical research. But even war heroes come and go in memory; civilian heroes rising to the call at home and in peacetime rarely rate more than a momentary ripple.
Monuments? Hardly. Immortalized in school textbooks? Not a chance.
Read More“With her holds full of water and possibly abandoned by the underwriters, the 10,000-ton American freighter Golden Harvest is lying at the mercy of North Pacific waves, a hoped-for harvest of the natives living along the rim of the inner Aleutian Islands and the bleak Alaska coast when the seas break her up and distribute the cargo remaining in her holds along the beaches of the northern coast...”
It wasn’t often that the mighty steam tug Salvage King had to admit defeat. For 15 years her name achieved almost legendary status in B.C. maritime circles—as fine a working lady as ever secured a bowline.
Read MoreThe date: Mar. 4, 1910.
The site: Rogers Pass.
The toll: 62 railway workers swept away or buried alive.
The legacy: the worst avalanche disaster in Canadian history.
Read More(Conclusion)
Last week, we ended the first instalment with the investigation into what was suspected to have been a bomb aboard CP Air 21 underway...
By this time the on-site examination of the wreckage was declared to be completed upon removal of items of interest for laboratory examination. These included as many pieces of the tail section as could be found having been transported for re-assembly to a vacant hangar at the Vancouver airport.
Read MoreA month short of 20 years before Air India Flight 182 was blown out of the sky by British Columbia-based terrorists, B.C had its own aerial mass murder.
Late in the afternoon of July 8, 1965, CPA Flight 21, bound for Whitehorse, Y.T. via Prince George, Fort St. John, Fort Nelson and Watson Lake from Vancouver, exploded in the sky near 100 Mile House, 170 miles northeast of Vancouver, crashing and killing all 52 persons aboard.
It’s B.C.’s worst mass murder and—unlike Air India—has been all but forgotten.
Read MoreA wander through the Ladysmith Cemetery and you see it, not once, not twice but again and again: the date, October 5, 1909.
That was “Ladysmith’s Day of Horror” of 116 years ago when, as B.A. McKelvie wrote in the Vancouver Province in 1957, The Mine Blew Up.
Read MoreMore than one seagoing lady of the night has called Victoria, B.C., home port over the years. Ladies of ill repute who’d ghost into harbour unannounced, rest and restore then, as the city slept, quietly weigh anchor for destinations unknown.
To the curious, their masters and crew had little to say beyond a terse, “Bering Sea,” or equally vague “North Pacific.” Asked as to cargo, they’d grunt a muffled reference to “ballast,” and push on by.
Read More‘He lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.’
We haven’t heard from our old friend D.W. Higgins for a while. Not for want of material, I assure you, as my file for this pioneer journalist and one of B.C.’s all time great storytellers continues to grow.
Read More“May Day, May Day, May Day—!”
The distress call pierced the grey stillness of Feb. 18, 1965. Then the voice was cut off, and static reigned the airwaves.
Read More“Mr. President: It is with much diffidence that after repeated urging on your part I undertook to contribute a paper to this society...”
So began, modestly, George Hope Johnston’s address to the Calgary Historical Society in February 1920.
Read MoreLong before the famous war brides of the Second World War there were the brides of colonial days; young British women, aged 14-20, who sailed halfway round the world to “the colonies” in hopes of finding husbands.
Read MoreA century and a quarter has passed since 19-year-old Edna Farnsworth died. Her suicide made headlines from Victoria to San Francisco. She had no money but was given an expensive, fancy plot in Ross Bay Cemetery.
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