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The heroine of this year-end Chronicle is of the seagoing variety.
Of them all, the Princess Maquinna truly captured the affections of crew and passengers. So much so, that Ian Kennedy has just written a book about her. Its very title spells it out: The Best Loved Boat.
Read MoreIs it really that time of year again? Where does time go...?
This week, the Chronicles observes the coming Yuletide with a look back at Christmas as it was celebrated a century ago in the Cowichan Valley, and as recounted by Margaret Williams in 1971.
Read MoreWhen we glance at history, be it that of British Columbia or anywhere else, it’s easy to think that it involved mostly men. And so it did.
Going simply by numbers, B.C. was indeed a man’s world well into the 19th century. Perhaps this was never more so than during the fabled Cariboo gold rush of the 1860s.
Read More(Part 2)
As we’ve seen, the aged and decrepit steamship Clara Nevada appeared to be doomed from the moment she cleared her Seattle dock in February 1898. But, somehow, bound for the Klondike gold rush with passengers and freight, she managed to make it to Skagway.
A Seattle newspaper termed her safe but eventful arrival as nothing less than a miracle.
Read MorePart I
Honestly, folks, I don’t make this stuff up. I don’t have the imagination. Take this story, for example:
“The Clara Nevada is probably America’s coldest cold case file. It is also the largest robbery in American history, twice the size of the Brink’s Job, and was the largest mass murder in American history until the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995...”
Gold!
It’s one of the most powerful words in the English language, able to—literally—move mountains.
Read MoreConclusion
Today, a wrap-up of my tribute to the lost airmen of Pat Bay Airport during the Second World War.
As we’ve seen, no fewer than 179 young trainees from Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand were killed, 1940-1945, without ever getting overseas. Fifty-eight of them have graves in Saanich’s Royal Oak Burial Park, Section D. Others are interred in collective graves at the crash sites. Some have never been found.
Read MorePart 2
As we’ve seen, during the Second World War, Patricia Bay (today’s Victoria International) Airport was part of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan in which 1000’s of Canadian, British, Australian and New Zealand airmen were trained.
179 of Pat Bay’s young airmen never made it overseas.
Read MorePart 1
During the Second World War, Patricia Bay (today’s Victoria International) Airport was part of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan in which 1000’s of Canadian, British, Australian and New Zealand airmen were trained.
179 of those young airmen never made it overseas.
Read MoreThe old store at the corner of Quadra and North Park Streets, for 80 years a Victoria landmark, is long gone, another victim of progress. But it wasn’t forgotten by its former owners who cherished memories of barley sugar sticks, hooped skirts, hand-blended teas–and of locked doors that slammed in the night when no mortal walked its darkened hallways.
Read MoreThe study, revival and use of British Columbia’s various First Nations languages is steadily gaining ground today, along with the inevitable challenges posed by spelling and pronunciation.
So it was for the explorers, fur traders and Native tribes of old: how to converse effectively in a multitude of European and Indigenous languages.
Read MoreThree-quarters of a century later, she’s still there—a rusted, broken hulk on the exposed, rockbound shore of Hippa Island, Haida Gwaii.
Read More“The strangest funeral procession that ever passed on earth.”
So said Father Henry ‘Pat’ Irwin, Kootenay’s unofficial saint, of the 1885 avalanche that buried a 16-man train crew. Ten were rescued but six were buried alive and Irwin was referring to the super-human efforts he and nine others made to return one of the bodies for proper burial.
Read More(Conclusion)
For more than 30 years, respected civil engineer Robert Homfray kept his promise not to publish his account of a dangerous surveying expedition in search of a shortcut to the Cariboo in 1861.
Finally, in 1894, at the insistence of friends, he agreed to tell of his epic ‘winter journey of 1861’. That was when he and six others had suffered innumerable hardships and near-death during an attempt to survey a new, shorter route to the gold fields of the B.C Interior by way of Bute Inlet.
Read More(Part 1)
For more than 30 years, respected civil engineer Robert Homfray kept his promise not to publish his account of a dangerous surveying expedition to the Cariboo in 1861.
Finally, in 1894, at the insistence of friends, he agreed to tell of his epic ‘winter journey of 1861’. That was when he and six others had suffered innumerable hardships during an attempt to survey a new, shorter route to the gold fields of the B.C Interior by way of Bute Inlet.
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I wrote about how some Facebook posts can generate an emotional response from readers. One that I wrote recently appears to have struck a chord.
It's a subject I've written about numerous times over the years, inspired by some of the fascinating, sometimes saddening, finds I've made in my travels. Let me explain...
Read MoreIt's not a very big book: half an inch thick, yes, but only 4 1/2 inches wide by less than six inches deep, and the type covers only 3 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches. It really is a pocket book.
But, proving that good things can sometimes come in small packages, there's a lot of great content in Chinook Days' 200 pages, 1000 copies of which were published in 1926 by the Vancouver Sun as a souvenir for the opening of the Grouse Mountain Highway.
Read More(Conclusion)
Last week’s Part 1 of A Tale of Two Soldiers was to be a doubleheader, the stories of both Gunner Ratcliffe, the villain, and Private Michael James O’Rourke, VC, MM—war hero, labour activist and, by all measures, an outstanding man.
(Part 1)
They couldn’t have been more unalike.
About the only thing they had in common was that they both served in uniform.
One was a hero, winner of the Empire’s highest medal for gallantry, the Victoria Cross, and the Military Medal.
Read MoreBuild it and they will come.
It may have worked in a novel and in a movie but, sad to say, it seldom works in real life. If ever you wanted proof, take the sad story of George Turner and his church.
He poured heart and soul, every penny he had and years of his life into building the Church of Jesus Christ of Christian Brotherhood that, today, minus its tower and bell, is a sales and service shop.
Read More
