In my recent caption for the coming Christmas Chronicle, I sort of joked that, thanks to email, hardly anyone mails Christmas cards any more, with or without an envelope.
Read More
Because the Leader published weekly, Christmas 1921 was four days old when readers received their newspaper; hence there was a single and short reference to the holiday just passed.
Read MoreHeads up! those of you who aren’t CBC Radio listeners: What must be one of the finest 20-minute Christmas radio documentaries ever, is again upon us.
Read More
Christmas Day, 1858. For pioneer British Columbia journalist D.W. Higgins this was his most memorable Yuletide of all—the time Christmas dinner almost cost him his life.
Read MoreSince we did Christmas In the Stores, the main feature on this week’s front page, last week, this is going to be an abbreviated ‘100 Years Ago’.
Read MoreI told you so! In last week’s post I itemized numerous chance finds of lost treasure—no need to hike Death Valley with your burro, no diving deep to a sunken shipwreck, no having to risk life and limb looking for Slumach’s accursed mine.
Read More
Today I’m taking you back in time to December 15th, 1921 when (if we don’t factor in inflation) prices are cheap.
Read MoreProof as to how much things have changed in a century is this issue of the Leader’s main headline, POULTRYMEN’S BUSINESS.
Read MoreA very nice lady on the phone tapped me on my Achilles heel the other day...She was calling on behalf of the Cowichan Intercultural Society which is working on a history project.
Read More
Lost treasure is where you find it—quite possibly under your very nose! I offer this as encouragement to armchair enthusiasts who confine their treasure hunting to television, movies and daydreams. Ironically, few realize that, while there definitely is gold in some of 'them thar hills,' it can also exist, in various forms, much closer to home.
Read MoreThere are two big news stories in this issue of the Leader.
Read MoreFor years, Mike Bieling, the man behind the White Cross program in the Cowichan Valley, has been trying to learn more about a man who's buried in All Saints' Cemetery, Westholme; he's a possible candidate for a White Cross.
Read MoreI've wanted to write this story for years. But I was missing a key element so I set it aside then misfiled it. It's been so long now that I forgot how I happened to learn of it in the first place.
Read MoreTwo full columns of this issue of the Leader are devoted to a public debate between the Hon. S.F. Tolmie, the Dominion minister of agriculture, and federal electoral opponent (and home candidate), city alderman C.H. Dickie.
Read MoreSo much mail over the past two weeks I hardly know where to begin. But the big event of those two weeks, of course, was Remembrance Day, so I'll start with a really positive email from Daryl Ohs of the Nanaimo Historical Society.
Read More
It wasn't long after I began researching B.C. and west coast shipwrecks that I first read of the sinking of the S.S. Islander. The Victoria-based coastal passenger liner had struck an iceberg in Alaska's Lynn Canal during the Klondike gold rush.
Read MoreHow quiet it was in the Cowichan Valley, a century ago!
Read MoreWhat a wondrous technological age we live in! Hardly had last Thursday's Remembrance Day edition of the Cowichan Valley Citizen hit the streets than I had a response to my lengthy history of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)--all the way from Portsmouth, Virginia, U.S.A.
Read More
As a kid I thrived on shipwrecks--in magazines and books, anyway. Photos in National Geographic and travel magazines of rusted hulks on semi-tropical beaches, underwater scenes of Spanish treasure galleons, and of Second World War naval ships on the sea bottom in the southern Pacific really turned me on.
Read MoreAlmost three-quarters of the front page of this issue of the Leader is devoted to the week-old story of the unveiling of Duncan's Memorial Cross, better known today as the Cenotaph.
Read More