Photographs were still new to The Leader in 1921 so the March 31st issue is unusual in that it has two pictures on its front page, both of St. Andrew’s Church, Cowichan Station. At the top of the page is a close-up of the just unveiled memorial window honouring the church’s 13 war dead. Thanks in part to glorious spring weather, Cowichan churches celebrating Easter services had been well attended and the “ladies” were commended for their efforts in decorating the various churches with seasonal flowers and greenery.
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I’m taking this long to tell the story of George Cruickshank being charged with stealing $5000 in American gold pieces from the safe of the bank where he was employed as accountant because of the story’s curious twists.
Read MoreThis is going to be an abbreviated front page of The Leader for this week. Fully one-third of the page is dedicated to THE POULTRY SITUATION, a matter of great concern to many Valley residents when most of them lived on small acreages and even those who lived in town kept chickens.
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.
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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.)
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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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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.