Yes, I’ve been writing the Chronicles for a long time now, first in the Cowichan Valley Citizen for 23 years and, since then, here online.
But Nathan Dougan was way, way ahead of me.
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One might not, at first blush, think of Gordon Lightfoot, Canada’s legendary troubadour, as an historian. But, in many ways, he was. He wrote about real life, about real Canadians, about real events, such as the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald and its lost company.
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Does a mystery tunnel, complete with steps carved into a solid rock cliff—with a cache of gold bars—exist in a Vancouver Island rain forest?
The answer to this question would solve what must be one of the most intriguing tales of lost treasure in British Columbia history—and the key, like that to 'Rattlesnake' Dick Barter’s alleged hoard (another story for another time)—lies within 25 miles of Victoria!
Read MoreI’m sure you’ve heard this expression before: “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
Well, the provincial government appears to be on a course of fixing things up real good when it comes to our—I repeat, our—heritage.
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Was John Sharp really who he claimed to be—who many, in fact, also believed him to be—the infamous Confederate guerrilla leader, William Clarke Quantrill?
If he was an imposter, then who was he? No John Sharp appears in the existing records.
Read MoreHistorically speaking, it’s a mix of good news/bad news this week. On the positive side, this article on Union Bay’s post office: Canada’s only wooden post office stamping its way into history in Union Bay - Marking more than a century of mail in the Comox Valley community.
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It’s generally accepted that the infamous Confederate guerrilla leader William Quantrill died a week after being shot and paralyzed from the shoulders down in a skirmish with Union irregulars in the weeks following the official end of the American Civil War. But—did he?
Read MoreI am curious as to whether any of Victoria’s streetcars are still alive and well or did they all end up in the trash bin? I was told by my Dad that the old Jolly Friar that served a minimal menu of delicious burgers, fries, etc was also a converted streetcar.
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Last week I outlined William Quantrill’s career as a Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War. I also described his death and the dispersal of his remains.
But there’s more to this part of the story that’s crucial to our understanding the belief that, 40 years after the end of the Civil War, John Sharp, Coal Harbour watchman, was in fact a fugitive Quantrill who’d escaped death in Kentucky.
Read MoreIf you care to make the trip to Nanaimo this evening, guests are welcome at the Nanaimo Historical Society’s April 13 general meeting. Tonight’s entertainment is of interest to Cowichan residents, a video by NHS directors of the old Hillcrest Chinese cemetery at Sahtlam.
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(Part 1) Google William Clarke Quantrill and you’ll find reference after reference to a man who’s immortalized not as a hero or great Confederate general of the American Civil War but as what we term today, a war criminal, a mass murderer. From school and Sunday school teacher to “the bloodiest man in American history” in a matter of just a few years, his was quite a career—one that ended violently at the age of 27 during a skirmish with Federal troops.
Read MoreI’m sure that not many Chronicles readers grew up in post Second World War Victoria as I did so they won’t remember downtown businesses as I knew them in my childhood and teenage years.
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My intent this week is to focus on the growing trend of museums to surrender the priceless antiquities of ancient worlds—treasures often held by museums far from their creators and national origins—but particularly those much closer to home, right here in British Columbia.
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Historically, the big news story of the past week is the closure of one of Victoria’s most significant historic sites, Point Ellice House Museum and Gardens, for want of sufficient government funding.
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The Royal BC Museum has certainly been in the news lately—most of it bad, unfortunately. You’ve needed a program to follow recent developments, all of which have been reported in the news media and in Chronicles editorials so don’t bear repeating today.
Instead, I’m gong to turn back the clock to the very beginning of our senior museum and archives, to the man who did so much to found the former by donating his personal collection of stuffed and mounted animals.
Read MoreIt’s Spring and I’ve been housecleaning my files.
Among the many newspaper clippings that have been gathering dust, this one since last September, is an obituary for Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, aged 89.
What an amazing career.
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Until I embraced the digital age and all that it offers, including finger-touch research capabilities, my most thumbed reference books were the Oxford Dictionary, the B.C. Department of Mines’ Annual Reports, the British Columbia Gazetteer and Capt. John T. Walbran’s British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906.
Read MoreEverywhere I go, everything I do, everything I read....there’s history there!
I read three regional newspapers each week, daily seek out past and present events and personages online, and I’m forever surprised by the nuggets that I continually find in today’s news that link to or recall past happenings.
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It’s uncanny how history mimics if not actually repeats itself. Last month’s excitement over a series of so-called ‘scientific’ research balloons from China provided an eerie reminder of the Second World War. That’s when the Japanese attempted to ignite our forests with incendiary bombs delivered via the air currents of the aptly-named Japanese current.
Read MoreAs I hope you noticed, the Chronicles was off the air last week thanks to a four-day power outage. Which also meant, of course, that I was offline, so there was no way to go to press with last Thursday’s latest instalment of “Cowichan’s ‘Hanging Tree.’”
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