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There's some confusion as to whether J.H.S. 'Sam' Matson actually built this large Cobble Hill farm house in 1908 or whether a French Canadian named Gravelle already had a house on the site. It's more credible that Matson, a wealthy Victoria newspaper publisher and businessman, engaged a Chinese crew to build a residence here in 1914. Did he have it designed by the renowned Victoria architect Sam Maclure? That's another mystery for heritage buffs.
Read MoreBefore getting down to things that go bump in the night I must introduce you to Hudson’s Bay. Co. fur trader John Tod. Not only was he one of a kind but so is this unique description of him by the gilt-penned historian Hubert Bancroft.
Read MoreJournalism has certainly changed in a century. Today this story would top the front page with a full-width, blaring headline; in 1921 it’s one of the smallest items (just five paragraphs) on the page and almost buried in the middle of columns of type.
Read MoreAs I admitted in last week’s promo, I ‘borrowed’ this great title from authors and historians Ian Baird and Peter Smith. Several years ago they coined it for their ‘hiking and biking’ guide book to abandoned railways on southern Vancouver Island. These included the two major former railway grades in the Cowichan Valley which are now the Cowichan Valley and the Trans Canada Trails, formerly the E&N Railway extension from Duncan to Lake Cowichan, and the Canadian National Railways mainline from Sooke to Lake Cowichan.
Read MoreAlmost the entire front page of the April, 1921 edition of The Leader is dedicated to WAR MEMORIAL GIFT WEEK, the fundraising drive to erect a Cenotaph in Duncan and a memorial on Mount Prevost. Two and a-half years after Armistice, the Cowichan Electoral District War Memorial Committee was determined to honour the Valley’s war dead.
Read MoreIn my promo for this week’s post on what is today’s Pioneer Square in Victoria, I lamented that cemeteries are supposed to be hallowed ground and treated with due respect—meaning that the graves and headstones are kept up, in effect, for all time. But, as I sorrowfully pointed out, such isn’t always the case and what originally was the Quadra Street burying ground, or cemetery, home to some of Victoria’s earliest and most historically significant pioneers, is now treated and used as a park.
Read MorePhotographs 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.
Read MoreI’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.
Read MoreThe 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 MoreNever 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 MoreI’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 MoreVictoria’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 MoreOne 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.
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