*British Columbia Chronicles special bonus section for Members Only.*
How times have changed. It wasn’t all that long ago that almost everybody smoked cigarettes, cigars and/or pipes.
But the latest statistics for Canada (2020) show that just one Canadian in 10 smokes cigarettes, down from 12% the previous year. More men (12%) smoke than women (9%). These statistics include those who smoke only occasionally.
Read MoreThe demolition, several years ago, of the 1890 Officers’ Mess and Quarters at Work Point, Victoria, inspired a letter to the editor of the Times Colonist warning against disturbing its two resident ghosts.
Read MoreReaders are forgiven if they’ve come to think of me as an unabashed union supporter based upon Chronicles that have been sympathetic to the struggles of the labourers of old. Such as the Vancouver Island coal miners and the unemployed (many of them veterans) who staged the occupation of the Vancouver post office then the great Trek to Ottawa in the depth of the 1930’s Great Depression.
Read MoreAs His Majesty’s Ship Nabob this small aircraft carrier—Canada’s ‘first’ flattop—has gone down in naval history for surviving a torpedo in August 1944 during an attack on the German battleship Tirpitz.
To the amazement of many, and thanks to the heroism of her crew, she made it safely back to port.
Read More(Conclusion)
It’s hard to believe now, so many years and worldly experiences later, that I once was young and innocent.
I actually believed those photos I saw in the travel magazines, National Geographic, books and on TV: photos of abandoned buildings standing tall, proud and intact.
Read More(Part 4)
It’s ironic, really. Today, 159 years after the discovery of gold in the Sooke and Leech rivers, almost every foot of the Leech and its tributaries continue to be staked and worked.
Read More(Part 3)
As we’ve seen, there were 1000’s of would-be miners in British Columbia in mid-1864; men and women who’d arrived too late to stake rich claims on the Fraser River or in the creeks of Cariboo.
Read More(Part 2)
Last week I set the stage for the Leech River gold rush which, ever so briefly, beginning in July 1864, kindled hopes of a new El Dorado right here on Vancouver Island.
Alas, a new Cariboo bonanza it wasn’t but, while it lasted, it certainly was exciting!
Read MoreGold!
There’s no other word in the English language quite like it.
We of the nuclear and digital age can’t really grasp the full depth and meaning of the word that once held humankind in its thrall. That’s because we take it for granted that most men and women, at least those of us in the western world, are for the most part the masters of our own destinies.
The world is our oyster, right?
Read MoreThere was a time in the age of wooden ships and iron men when a ship’s captain was God, answerable only to his conscience—if he had one.
Read More(Conclusion)
Two weeks ago, I introduced you to N.P. Nathan Dougan, Cobble Hill and area’s foremost historian, and his son, Bob, who carried the torch until his death in the 1990’s.
Read More(First of two parts)
Over the past two weeks, I introduced you to N.P. Nathan Dougan, Cobble Hill and area’s foremost historian, and his son, Bob, who carried the torch until his own death in the 1990’s.
Read MoreYes, 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.
Read MoreDoes 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 MoreWas 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 MoreIt’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 MoreLast 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 More(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 MoreMy 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.
Read MoreThe 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 More
