Here’s an interesting headline for you: “NORTH COWICHAN PROBLEMS – Council Attacks Them Manfully.”
(They just don’t write newspapers like they used to.)
Many of you will know that the copper mining activity on Mount Sicker at the turn of the last century has intrigued me from even before I moved to the Cowichan Valley. I’ve since written about it in newspaper articles, columns and even a book, Riches to Ruin: The Boom to Bust Saga of Vancouver Island’s Greatest Copper Mine, from which much of today’s story is taken. To tell the incredible story of Mount Sicker in as few words as possible (my 2007 book is 300 pages)!
Read MoreTwo deaths, one accidental the other mysterious, were in the news 100 years ago but the big story on the front page of The Leader was about coming to a decision about the War Memorial.
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As I’ve said so many times before, history just keeps on coming.
Everywhere I go, every time I open my mail, every time I read the paper, there’s something ‘old’ in the news. So often lately that they’re ganging up on me. So, next week I open my mail bag and my clippings and email files and share with you some of these news stories whose roots are firmly in the past.
Some of them may surprise you. I promise they will entertain you.
That’s this week in the Chronicles.
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church was on a roll 100 years, with intentions to enlarge its accommodation after becoming debt free by paying off its mortgage. Although only 30 families attended St. Andrew’s they totalled 100 adults and children.
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Back in 2007 the Nanaimo Star ran a look-back piece on the city’s ‘Costco Caper’ robbery of Mar. 7, 1996.
This was a rather ingeniously planned heist of Loomis Armoured guards as they made a delivery of cash to Costco’s ATM machine. The lone robber escaped with seven cassettes of currency; the amount stolen has never been released to the public.
For those of us who’ve become used to, even jaded by, world news of catastrophes and political crises, it was a very quiet week in the Cowichan Valley, a century ago. Every front-page news item on the front page of The Leader for this week in January 1920 was hum-drum, mostly about agricultural affairs.
That’s something we don’t have much of today: news about local farming. The Valley still has a large dairy industry and other agricultural enterprises, of course, but when did you last read about them in the Citizen or saw a feature on TV?
It took well over a century but the hardy Chinese miners who helped to carve a province from wilderness enjoyed the last laugh.
Today, decades later, thousands of recreationists throughout British Columbia are participating in a modern-day boom in their eager search for that once derided ‘green gold,’ jade.
Today’s prospector are called rockhounds but the name of the game is the same—the thrill of the hunt and the pride of achievement that comes from transforming a piece of stone into a beautiful gem.
Read MoreThe big news story of the day was the forthcoming municipal elections. A.C Aitken had been nominated for the reeveship of the Municipality of North Cowichan by incumbent A.A.B. Herd (said to have been a surprise) and Thomas Pitt was returned by acclamation to the mayor’s chair in Duncan for a third term. All the aldermanic seats of both municipalities and those of school trustees and police commissioners were up for grabs by incumbents and newcomers.
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For years I’ve been a devoted fan of garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores, always on the lookout for the useful, the exotic and the unique—as I define the terms.
One of my more outstanding treasures turned up in a community 'free store' on Gabriola Island years ago. It’s a framed colour photo of a church memorial window. Not in itself a real turn-on for me.
But that changed when I read the penned caption. It identified the window as a memorial for Michael F.A.Ney, RCN. RCN, of course, stands for Royal Canadian Navy.
In that long-ago age before COVID-19, when friends could safely get together to greet the New Year, they did just that. To celebrate New Year 1921, according to The Leader headline, the Duncan Volunteer Fire Brigade and 300 “friends” ushered out the old year and welcomed the new with “the noisy clarion of cow bells, the throwing of coloured serpentines and the singing of Auld Lang Syne”.
Everyone present, it was reported, was out to have a good time and their wish was certainly granted, the Opera Hall having been decorated for the occasion with coloured paper and green branches, while at one of the exits were hung a Roll of Honour, with the names of all the Volunteer Firemen who’d enlisted during the war, and a framed picture of former members of the Fire Brigade.
It should go without saying that we live in a world of constant change.
One of those changes is profound, even in a world besieged by pandemic.
I’m referring to the recent tsunami wave of consciousness of our colonial past. For Americans, it’s acknowledging a groundswell of resentment for more than two centuries of mistreatment of indigenous and black people. Even the Confederate flag, revered by millions, has come into disrepute.
Falling between Christmas and New Year’s, this issue of The Leader was light on hard news.
First up was North Cowichan Council which had met on the 27th for their last time of the year. Clrs. Hilton and Smith announced that they weren’t going to run for re-election.
The annual general meeting of the Cowichan Creamery Co-op was the big news story of the day for the Christmas edition of The Leader.
92 members and 32 non-members were present in the Knights of Pythias Lodge room to discuss financial and directors’ reports, one of which was that farmers should expect no discounts when buying farm machinery.
On the 22nd day of December, 1860, nearly forty-four years ago, I sat in the editorial rooms of the Colonist office on Wharf Street preparing a leading article. Mr. DeCosmos, the editor and owner, had contracted a severe cold and was confined to his room at Wilcox’s Royal Hotel, so the entire work of writing up the paper for that issue devolved upon me.
Read MoreThe lead story for this edition of The Leader is, in my mind, Au Revoir, a tribute to the departing Dr. Watson Dykes who was off to England for further study.
A century ago, Dr. Dykes had achieved almost legendary local status as a doctor and chief medical officer for the Cowichan Valley. He it was who’d guided residents through the horrors of the Spanish ‘Flu epidemic of 1918-19, to name but one of his many accomplishments.
Today, he’s almost of mythic status—a doctor whose shingle read, ‘Open All Hours.’ Can you believe it, a doctor on call around the clock? He also put up much of the money for the King’s Daughers’ Hospital’s x-ray machine with the proviso that returned servicemen were charged half-price.
Our own west coast claim to a momentous maritime tragedy, the 1945 explosion of the steamship S.S. Greenhill Park in Vancouver Harbour in March 1945. 2020, of course, marks that tragedy’s 75th anniversary.
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At the time—Oct. 1, 1951—the crash of a Queen Charlotte Airlines Canso on Nanaimo’s Mount Benson was the worst aviation accident in British Columbia history. It’s now the 18th which shows you how far we’ve come in 70 years.
Although I’ve always been fascinated by old aircraft and plane wrecks are a natural extension of that interest, I’ve only managed to get to a few over the years. The one on Mount Benson, six miles west of Nanaimo, is the one that has intrigued me most of all. I first heard of it as a kid and was reminded of it in the mid-1970s as I came out of a north Nanaimo department store and saw the sun glinting on something on the southeast face of Mount Benson.
We begin with the Kings Daughters which had held a successful sales event in the Agricultural Hall—so successful that it had attracted numerous male customers, said to be novelty. Among the draws was Mrs. Robinson’s “prettily arranged” handkerchief stall (always a favourite with men, particularly at Christmas, I’m sure!)
“Time and Talent” was the name of a stall selling what were said to be the result of the ingenuity of Mrs. Leather and the Misses Rice and Simpson. Cakes, pies and fancy biscuits were provided by the ladies of the ‘Look-Out Circle’ and Miss Dove drew the children to her so-called bran tub.
As did Mrs. MacGregor with her impression of Mother Goose.
“Reporter packed a heater on the police beat,” is the sensational headline of one newspaper article about the legendary British Columbia journalist B.A. ‘Pinky’ McKelvie.
Other than the gang shootings in recent years, which seem to have died down now, it’s almost beyond our comprehension in this day and age that a newspaper reporter who covered the crime beat in Vancouver a century ago would pack iron.