It has become obvious to me that I ain’t never going to keep up with, let alone get ahead of incoming subject ideas. They’re relentless—they’re in my emails, they’re in the news—there’s something popping up almost every day.
Read MoreIt wasn’t as if George Cruickshank was the first citizen or colonial administrator to be charged with dipping into the till in those early years of Vancouver Island as a crown colony.
Read MoreThe next big item was a replay of THE EGG SITUATION, the challenge that local poultry farmers faced in reaching markets beyond the Valley by competing with cheaper eggs imported from China and Washington State. As we’ve seen it was an uphill battle, some figures showing that at the end of a laying season many farmers with an average of 1000 Leghorn hens, showed a loss between $250-500.
Read MoreI always acknowledge, if not immediately answer in full, requests for information from readers and others who track me down. But there are far more of you than there are of me and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to keep up, so please bear with me. But make no mistake: I’m not complaining. I’m simply pointing out that while my archives doesn’t always contain the specific answers I’m looking for, it usually points me in the right direction. It’s the ferreting out that takes time...
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The sinking of the American steamship Clallam while en route to Victoria is one of the worst in provincial record. But, more than a century later, there’s so much more to this tragedy than just the date, place and circumstances of her foundering in a storm in Juan de Fuca Strait.
Read MoreThe big story of the day must have sent chills down the spines of North Cowichan residents: Tax Rate Will Total 19 Mills. The Leader predicted that this would come as a shock to taxpayers who, while expecting an increase, hadn’t expected anything like this. (The previous year had been eight per cent.)
Read MoreAnother challenge to answering the numerous requests for information made of me is that my filing system over the years has occasionally proved to be something less than perfect. I never subscribed to the Dewey Decimal System and, overall, my ad hoc approach to filing has worked. There have been exceptions, of course, and they can be maddening.
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Never a week goes by but I receive fascinating emails from both regular readers and from those who track me down online or are referred to me with their queries and, not as common but best of all, offers to share their family histories and scrapbooks. These come from close to home and from afar, two of the most recent and most promising being from the Maritimes and the United Kingdom.
Read MoreI’m sure readers will forgive me—you may even thank me—if I cut some of this week’s look-back at a century ago to the bone. The front page of this issue of The Leader is divided into three main news stories. Now, for those readers who raise chickens professionally or are dairy farmers, I’m sure these stories would be fascinating. But I really don’t think I have many of such callings among my subscribers and I’m going to chance editing this down, down, down...
Read MoreIt wasn’t a Nanaimo building but it certainly was a landmark beside the Trans Canada Highway just south of the Silver Bridge. I can remember, when still living in Saanich in the 1960s, driving my mother who was an avid collector of carnival glass and women’s things, to the cabin which was operated as a silversmith and antique store.
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I’ve never understood the human fascination with crime but there’s no denying its universal appeal. Crime stories, particularly those about true murders, unsolved and otherwise, are the subject of movies, plays, books, magazines and websites; they’re on television and radio, and among the headliners of daily newscasts.
Read MoreNorth Cowichan Council chambers presented a very animated scene, as the Leader so quaintly put it, when those for and against blasting restrictions appeared to present their respective cases. Against were poultry farmers who were then raising chicks in incubators and for whom loud explosions were detrimental; for were those who wanted to go about their business of road building, construction, mining and land clearing without hindrance.
Read MoreI probably shouldn’t admit to this but I’m not the only British Columbia historical website available to you online. In fact, they’re growing in number all the time, to the point that I begin my work day by opening my email and checking, on average, 20-30 emails (plus more throughout the day). Some of them I subscribe to, some are of little interest to me, but rarely are they spam.
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Victoria’s famous Dallas Road waterfront has always been a ‘high rent district’. It wasn’t necessarily the houses that made these properties so expensive as most of them, 50 years ago, were older, some of them pretty modest if you went by appearances. It was that mantra of real estate, location, location, location (if you focused on the sweeping views of Juan de Fuca Strait and the Olympic Mountains and ignored the Ogden Point lumber wharves). Since then cruise ships (pre-pandemic) have taken the place of lumber piles, freighters and a grain elevator, and succeeding years and upgrading have made Dallas Road more popular and ever more expensive.
Read MoreAs befitting a quiet rural backwater such as the Cowichan Valley, there are no blaring headlines of gruesome crimes or other sensational events in this issue of the Leader, just the usual weekly wrap-up of city and municipal council news and social events. All in all, one might say, it had been a dull week.
Read MoreIt’s no coincidence that for two weeks in a row the latest Chronicles have had their roots in the present. One of the first and most valuable things I learned as an historical storyteller was to forge, when possible, a vicarious link between then and now.
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One of the joys of publishing what really amounts to an online magazine is that it often draws a response from readers, usually as brief comments but, sometimes, something much more ambitious.
Read MoreHere’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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