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(Conclusion)
This week, the conclusion to Noel Robinson’s 1922 profile of Capt. Alex McLean, the “real” Sea Wolf of literary fame in Macleans magazine:
While Captain Alexander McLean never owned or sailed the Casco—a boat always associated with Robert Louis Stevenson because the novelist sailed in her and wrote at least one of his novels aboard her—McLean had a strong desire to possess her and at one time tried to buy her.
Read MoreFour years ago, I told the story of the amazing Capt. Alex McLean who was made immortal—and infamous—by novelist Jack London. The source for my Chronicle was an author much closer to home, Tom MacInnes, in his 1920s book Chinook Days.
Read MoreAnother Christmas, and time to reach into my archives for another Yuletide BC Chronicle.
This year, I’m sharing from a book that I found years ago in my travels, an original printing (it’s now available online as a reprint) of F.A. Robinson’s book Trail-Tales of Western Canada, published in 1914.
Read MoreLike dominoes, they keep falling—traditional geographical, so-called place names, long rooted on our maps which have come to be challenged by today’s moral and ideological standards.
Places and topographical features which were named to honour pioneers who played pivotal roles in BC history but who now find themselves under the glass for their beliefs, in particular their publicly expressed or demonstrated stands on racial issues. Sometimes, too, and more and more often lately, not for reasons of moral judgment but to belatedly acknowledge First Nations precedents.
Read More(Part 1)
To Englishman John (Jack) Green goes the honour of being Savary Island's first permanent resident. After years as a placer miner in the American Southwest, followed by some successful real estate ventures on Vancouver Island, he first set eyes on the island in the Strait of Georgia, northwest of Powell River, as a seagoing trader.
An Awful Accident to a Railway Train on the Union Colliery Line
Six Men Reported to Have Met Instant Death– the Wires Down
Such were the headlines of the Victoria Daily Times, Aug. 17 1898…
Read MoreOne of the benefits of being a regularly published writer is that one automatically becomes a ‘destination’. By this I mean, I rarely know who my readers are but they know me, and how to contact me.
And when they reach out it sometimes becomes a gift—more grist for my mill.
Read MoreFor months now we’ve been watching the drawn-out demise of Canada’s oldest corporation, the Hudson’s Bay Co.
Major department stores have been failing in recent years; companies we grew up with, trusted and patronized while eagerly awaiting the latest catalogue in the mail from Eaton’s, Woodward’s, Sears and the Bay, to name the four biggest.
Read More(I originally wrote this touching wartime reminiscence for the Cowichan Valley Citizen in 2005, the Year of the Veteran, with the help of the late Jean Phillips of the Royal Canadian Legion, Cowichan Branch 53.)
The BC Chronicles rarely strays beyond our geographic borders but I believe Remembrance to be universal. Speaking is the late John Cannon of Duncan, B.C.
Read More(Conclusion)
He was barely middle-aged, this man of iron will, stamina and religious zeal. But he’d challenged his health so many times and now he was weighed down by sorrow. His closest friends noticed that he seemed to have aged perceptibly, and at least one of them expressed fear for his life.
None could foresee that, after all he’d done for others, Henry Irwin was already running out of time. His premature passing remains one of the sadder ironies of our history.
Read More(Part 3)
Was there ever a bigger heart than that of pioneer missionary Henry “Father Pat” Irwin?
A man who did nothing by halves—he only gave his all.
What bitter irony that, at the moment of his greatest joy, he should be struck by double tragedy.
Read More(Part 2)
As we saw last week, a young Henry Irwin had, as his biographer Anne Mercier wrote in 1909, “laughingly declared his intention of choosing a cold climate and being a missionary there; and he...fulfilled this intention by choosing British Columbia as the province, and New Westminster the diocese, where he would begin work.
“The life of a missionary priest in Canada amongst settlers is not often an eventful one. It generally presents a record of hard, monotonous work like that of a poor priest in a scattered agricultural parish in England. There are, however, some points of difference...”
So wrote, in 1909, The Right Reverend John Dart, D.D., Bishop of New Westminster and Kootenay, in his preface to Mrs. Jerome Mercier’s forthcoming book, Father Pat:
A Hero of the Far West.
(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.
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