What we know as Remembrance Day began a century ago as Armistice Day.
In November 1920 the City of Duncan and North Cowichan Municipality proclaimed a half-holiday in recognition of the second anniversary of the end of the Great War.
Last week Charles Dickie recounted his hilarious days as the
co-host of the rough and ready Alderlea Hotel, in what was then known as Duncan’s Station.
(Ah, the good old days, when men were men, the booze, sometimes watered, flowed free, the steaks were tough as leather and fist fights and crude practical jokes were the order of the day.)
First up in this issue of The Leader was the Board of Trade whose first order of business at its recent meeting was word from MP J.C. McIntosh that no immediate funds would be forthcoming from Ottawa for repairs to the Cowichan Bay wharf or the Lake Cowichan landing, despite the latter’s having been recommended by the government’s own engineer.
Repairs to the Mill Bay wharf were underway despite the popular belief that nobody used it. Better, sniffed the Board, that the $1500 had been put to the Cowichan Bay wharf which was used regularly for business purposes.
For most readers of the Chronicles this instalment of Charles Dickie’s colourful memoir will be much closer to home. After his all his wanderings and odd jobs in Michigan, California and Victoria, he arrives in the Cowichan Valley.
He becomes partners in managing Duncan’s first hotel, the ‘Miners’ and Loggers’” Alderlea where life was anything but dull. Fortuitously, his arrival coincided with the great copper strike on Mount Sicker, a short-lived boom that made fortunes for a few, set Duncan on the map and transformed Dickie’s career from that of an itinerant labourer to mining entrepreneur and politician...
Read MoreThe big issue of the day, the Temperance (Prohibition) Plebiscite, remained up in the air as the final results wouldn’t be posted until a day after The Leader went to press. Locally, there had been a good turnout with the only reported problem being voters who showed up at the wrong polling stations. Leader readers had to wait for the results; so will Chronicles readers, until next week.
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As I noted last week, you’re not likely to find Charles Herbert Dickie’s memoir, Out of the Past, “by an M.P.,” in a used book store—or even online.
Dedicated to the memory of carefree friends, it’s small (128 pages) and just 20,000 words in length.
But make no mistake: It’s a great read and of particular interest to students of Cowichan Valley and British Columbia mining history.
The United Farmers of B.C. are the lead story in this issue of The Leader but we’ll start with Duncan Council with Mayor Pitt and Clerk Greig reporting on the “good roads league of B.C.” and the Union of B.C. Municipalities which they’d attended on behalf of the City. Council then approved a recommendation of the UBCM that one per cent per head of each municipality be donated by each municipality towards a fund to assist Victoria in its appeal to to the province to be able to tax church properties.
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You’re not likely to find Charles Herbert Dickie’s memoir, Out of the Past, “by an M.P.,” in a used book store—or even online.
Dedicated to the memory of carefree friends, it measures 3.5 inches by five, and 128 pages, it’s just 20,000 words in length, more comparable to an e-book than to a pocket book, and it’s stapled rather than bound. All in all, it’s pretty small and likely was printed on the cheap.
But make no mistake: It’s a great read and of particular interest to students of Cowichan Valley and British Columbia mining history.
There’s no mistaking the lead story in this issue of The Leader. Two full columns in the middle of the front page (continued on page 10) are headlined IN FAVOUR OF PROHIBITION.
At least it was a change of view, after weeks of articles mostly criticizing B.C.’s experiment with legislated temperance. As the referendum on continuing a revised form of Prohibition or replacing it with government controlled distribution of liquor rapidly approached more and more citizens wanted to have their say at public meetings.
Cowichan’s legendary Tzouhalem is in the news again.
Not the Quamichan war chief himself—he’s been dead for well over a century—but the fact that he's going to be the subject of a movie.
Reporter Robert Barron recently reported in the Cowichan Valley Citizen that documentary filmmaker Harold C. Joe, a member of Cowichan Tribes, and a film crew are making a television documentary that will “examine the near-mythic figure of Chief Tzouhalem through interviews and creative re-enactments".
The operative word here is “creative” as the only existing written records that refer to Tzouhalem are the hand-me-downs of non-Indigenous (i.e. white) contemporaries (some of them in positions of authority and therefore adversarial).
With no fewer than 12 stories featured on the front page of the October 7, 1920 edition of The Leader it’s difficult to know which was meant to be the headline story. As the City and North Cowichan Councils shared equal billing with the Duncan Board of Trade, let’s begin with City Council.
Two years after Armistice, Council expressed amazement upon learning that the War Trophies Commission had allotted the City a single machine gun and a trench mortar.
It wasn’t near good enough!
This special April 1955 issue of The Buzzer, entitled Rails-to-Rubber, “cordially invited” the public to “take a last ride FREE” aboard Vancouver’s street cars which were about to be retired.
This week I share this Buzzer with Chronicles readers who will, I’m sure, find the photos of this now long-gone mode of public transportation as fascinating as I have. Anyone who has ridden a bus lately will realize how far we’ve come in 65 years!
The report of the Cobble Hill Fair shared equal billing with news of the latest developments as the deadline neared for the plebiscite on Prohibition—two columns each.
But first the four smaller items on the September 30th front page.
The provincial government had approved the addition of 20 teachers at the Duncan public school. But the shocking news for the Consolidated Schools board was a government report that, within a year, facilities at the high school would be inadequate.
When Hayes Forest Services Ltd., an industry stalwart and one of the biggest contract logging companies on Vancouver Island, shut down in 2008, it ended the latest chapter in a forestry family tradition that went back three generations and left its hallmark on both logging and trucking.
Coincidentally, a showing of ‘antique’ logging trucks—not all of them really that old but most of them really, really big boys’ toys—at the Cowichan Exhibition grounds had included several Hayes logging trucks.
Yes, the just-held Cowichan Fall Fair was the headliner for this issue of the Cowichan Leader—but let’s start with a rash of auto accidents. This was 1920, remember, when cars on the road were still few and far between, if not the accidents.
Mrs. R.H. Whidden (married women went by their husband’s names and initials in those days), wife of the Duncan undertaker, had suffered a broken rib, Mrs. W.M. Dwyer (ditto) a scratch on the head, and Mr. And Mrs. James Marsh were severely shaken when the Duncan-Victoria stage (bus) left the road near the Malahat summit.
Long before there was an E&N Railway or the Island Highway over the Malahat, Maple and Cowichan Bays served as the gateways to the Cowichan Valley. Hence Maple Bay was a likely site for a Methodist church. Previously, Methodists had shared the Anglican chapel at Somenos, their minister attending from Victoria. In 1868 they held the first of three annual outdoor meetings at the site of today’s Maple Bay Inn. The Saanich-milled lumber from the ‘tents’ used for those occasions was recycled the following year in construction of a modest log church on 100 acres pre-empted by the Rev. E. White.
Read MoreThere were splendid exhibits at the 52nd Fall Fair—so proclaimed The Leader’s six-column-wide headline for September 16.
Livestock, garden produce and children’s displays were especially prominent as, once more, the Cowichan Agricultural Society presented the “busiest of scenes as...exhibitors from far and wide [brought] in their treasures”.
Highlights included, besides three classes of cattle and garden produce exhibits, what were termed educational entries. Horse entries were down slightly, thanks to the advent of gasoline tractors, but there were more poultry exhibits than ever.
I had no intention of following last week’s post on the Westwell’s tragedy with another tale of violent death by human hand.
And I wouldn’t want last week’s tale of a family tragedy brought on by mental illness to be equated with this week’s story—which is nothing less than a home-grown replay of the most infamous serial killer of all time, Jack the Ripper.
No, I must lay the blame on the ‘Visual Storytellers,’ an offshoot of the popular online nostalgic Facebook photo gallery, “You Know You’re From Duncan...” and their recent post about, of all sinister things, Duncan’s Holmes Creek.
A full-width headline reminded readers they had until 6 p.m. Saturday to enter the Fall Fair.
But the major news story was about the Labour Day reunion of veterans of the ‘Great War’ which had been favoured with ideal weather. “Everything passed off most successfully and the large number of visitors from all parts of the district enjoyed one of the best sports entertainments ever held.”
Unfortunately, the baseball game scheduled between Duncan and Granby didn’t materialize; however, some quickly mustered teams of local players filled the breach and “some snappy play was witnessed”.
The difference in journalistic style between a big city daily and a small town weekly newspaper couldn’t have been more different—even extreme.
The headline for the Mar. 26, 1949 edition of the Victoria Daily Colonist was wall-to-wall and set in type one and a-half inches high.
It’s the sort of headline that’s usually reserved for such extraordinary news events as wars, toppling governments, outrageous scandals and disasters.