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Karma. It’s a curse, I tell you. Hard as it is for me to believe, it’s been almost 50 years since I wrote Ghost Town Trails of Vancouver Island and it’s still in print after several changes of format and cover, and a slight tweak of the title and byline.
Read MoreThis is beginning to look scary. The April 28th headline of the Cowichan Valley Citizen was a stark reminder that time is running out for the E&N if it’s to be saved as a working railway and not be converted into a recreational trail.
Read MoreMore than a century after he was immortalized in bronze, his honorary title is to be erased in the name of Reconciliation.
Read MoreSome months ago, a shopper at Walmart asked me if I knew anything about the “piano” in the bush along the Cowichan Valley Trail. Was it the one, he asked, I’d once mentioned in a Citizen column?
Read MoreIn February, the Royal British Columbia Museum acquired an 1883 oil painting of the entrance to Victoria Harbour by American artist, lithographer and cartographer Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918).
Read MoreEven in death a ship does not sleep soundly. Timbers creak in eerie symphony with wind and wave, nesting pigeons converse in dark corners, ghostly shadows walk decks and passageways where, once, seamen ran to their stations in weather fair and foul...
Read MoreThe old made way for the new in October 2005 when much of what was left of Paldi, once home to one of the largest Sikh communities in Canada, went up in flames.
Read More(Conclusion)
So: who dun it? Readers may have drawn some conclusions of their own from the few facts ascertained by Victoria police and private parties acting unofficially as detectives in the fatal shooting of the young clerk, October 28, 1885.
(Part 1)
Police surmised that his attackers ‘dogged’ him for hours, awaiting their chance.
“Have you hiked the old Mount Sicker Railway grade?”
Read MoreGoogle the term ‘hell ship’ and you’ll find that it has come to be applied to the Japanese transport of American and Allied prisoners-of-war for slave labour in the home islands during the last two years of the Second World War.
Read MoreCan you even imagine downtown Duncan without its iconic City Hall?
Read MoreAll these years later, I can see and hear him now. The late Jack Fleetwood, the man with the photographic memory, the man fellow local historians regarded as the Oracle of the Cowichan Valley, was addressing a small gathering of the Shawnigan Lake Historical Society.
Read MoreWe’re following the incredible story of one of the most colourful mariners ever to sail out of Victoria. Capt. Jemmy Jones has gone down in history as, of all things, a pirate.
Read MoreHe was a public nuisance, a drunkard and a scamp; some even said he was crazy. Others went so far as to brand him a pirate. But when he’d finished he’d, single-handed. defied and defeated the courts of three nations.
Read MoreHer only known photo is fascinating in itself. She’s young (23), fair skinned with a clear complexion, plainish bordering on attractive, without makeup and neatly coiffed. She isn’t looking into the camera but slightly upward to her right, as if at something across the room. You can’t read anything in her expression other than that she shows no visible emotion.
Read MoreAs I recently reported, the Cowichan Station Area Association, operators of the Hub, is working to take possession of the deconsecrated St. Andrew’s Church. Negotiations are underway with the Anglican Diocese of B.C. Apparently the beautiful century-old church beside the Koksilah River needs serious and expensive repairs and funding remains to be determined.
Read More“Great excitement has been recently produced in Victoria by the exhibition of a nugget of pure gold weighing 14 ounces, procured by the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company from the Indians of Queen Charlotte’s Island. There is a generally prevalent impression founded on the discovery of gold in that island in the year 1851, that it will yet become a productive gold field.”
Read MoreTo his superiors he was a rebel, a troublemaker and a bore; to his students he was a stern taskmaster whose word was law and whose temper, uncertain at best of times, was to be avoided at all costs. Still, he left his name on our maps.
Read MoreThis week we conclude our comparison of the ‘On-To-Ottawa Trek’ by thousands of unemployed men in 1935 to the recent three-week-long occupation of Ottawa and the blockading of crucial border crossings by truckers and supporters virulently opposed to continuing government health mandate.
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