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In last week’s Chronicle, based upon my first interview as an aspiring young journalist, the late Charles Taylor recounted some of the Alberni Valley’s colourful, often tragic history.
This week, we cut out the middleman and go straight to the horse’s mouth, so to speak...
Read MoreThe recent three-part series on Klondike killer Joseph C. Claus drew some fascinating new information from subscriber Louise C. who has a family connection to the three Vipond brothers.
As readers will remember, they left Nanaimo in the spring of 1898 with Claus, Charles Hendrickson and James Burns, all out to make their fortunes in the Klondike gold rush. But, once on the trail, there was a falling-out, the Viponds going their own way.
Read MoreTragedy was an inevitable part of pioneer life and the Alberni Valley had its share.
The late Charles Taylor, introduced in last week’s Chronicles, was the first person I ever interviewed—initially at the urging of my employer, the Victoria Colonist, then, when he and I became unlikely friends, by choice.
Read MoreYes! It’s official!
The last airworthy Martin Mars water bomber is going to make one last flight, this one to the BC Aviation Museum in Sidney.
Read MoreEveryone has to start somewhere, to state the obvious.
In my case it was in the lowly capacity of copyboy with The Daily Colonist before its merger with the Victoria Daily Times—two years of my doing everything and anything but writing, at least on company time.
Any writing I did was on my own dime.
Read MoreThis photo of Duncan’s historic Keating Farm house, my neighbour to the west, is several years old now but the farm continues to be alive and well in the loving care of George and Rebecca Papadopoulos. The couple, who purchased this magnificent 27-acre property from The Land Conservancy and have restored the manor-like farmhouse and barn, celebrated their 10th anniversary there this past weekend with an Open House.
Read MoreConclusion
As we’ve seen, to Joseph Camille Claus of Nanoose Bay goes the dubious honour of committing “the first cold-blooded premeditated murder...in the frozen north,” in this case the Stikine River country.
Read MoreWell, it’s officially Spring. The birds are swarming my feeders, the snowdrops have all but come and gone, it’s the turn of crocuses and daffodils, Japanese cherry trees, choke cherry, Indian Plum...
Read MorePart 2
As we’ve seen, to Joseph Camille Claus goes the dubious honour of committing “the first cold-blooded premeditated murder...in the frozen north”.
According to the Victoria Colonist, anyway. Claus, it should be noted, had yet to face trial let alone be convicted by a jury of his peers.
Read MoreIf I and Chronicles readers had nothing better to do than my writing, and they reading, my mutterings on a daily basis, I still couldn’t keep up with yesterday’s news.
By which I mean current events that have their roots deep in our historical past. Sort of deja vu, if you will. Even when history doesn’t quite repeat itself, it certainly plays out, in sometimes eerily similar ways, over and over again.
Read MorePart 1
If it seems to be a long way from remote northwestern British Columbia’s Stikine River and the Yukon-Alaska border to Nanaimo, mid-Vancouver Island, it is.
But no greater than the fabled long arm of the law, as was amply shown in June 1898 when 12 good citizens took their places in the jury box in a Nanaimo courtroom.
Read MoreThere’s no room in this week’s post, ‘Zeballos Streets Really Were Paved With Gold,’ to introduce its best known resident of the late 1930s gold rush era, Maj. George Nicholson.
Read MoreLast year, when telling the saga of the Leech River gold rush of 1864, I referred to it as Vancouver Island’s only real gold rush.
By that I meant gold rush in the generally accepted sense of a wild stampede of fortune seekers converging in a frenzy and from all directions upon some promised El Dorado.
Read MoreLast week’s post on patent medicines drew several responses.
Two readers pointed out, too late, as I’d realized upon reading it myself in the cold light of day, did I remember that I meant to bring the story up to date with a reference to over-the-counter cold medications, specifically, decongestants.
Read MoreCommunities—villages, towns, sometimes even cities—can come and go. Then we call them ghost towns.
British Columbia has had its share—100s of them, in fact. That said, hands up Chronicles readers who can name, say, six of them. Two? One?
Of the province’s many lost communities, two have achieved legendary even mythic status: Phoenix, which, unlike its namesake, never did rise from the ashes, and Wahlachin.
Read MoreAyer’s Sarsaparilla—the best of its kind
To strengthen the body and brighten the mind!
Then what is more worthy of pencil or song
Than Ayer’s Sarsaparilla? IT MAKES THE WEAK STRONG.
Where are they now, those wonderful patent medicines that promised to relieve every ailment, human and otherwise, from “female complaints” to fallen arches and falling hair?
Alas, they’ve gone, gone the way of the old-fashioned drugstore and the dinosaur. Victims, for the most part, of advances in medicine and tightened drug laws, they’re now part of our vanished heritage.
Read MoreLast week, I wrote that “one of the occupational hazards of being a writer of history is that some people come to believe that I actually know what I’m writing/talking about and they seek me out for answers to questions or for more information...
Most recently, Duncan librarian Marina emailed to ask about one Oliver Pike at the behest of a VIPL user.
Read MoreAs a lifelong practitioner of the written word, it galls me to have to admit the truth of that old expression, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
But, as that more modern saying goes, “It is what it is.”
Read MoreOne of the occupational hazards of being a writer of history is that some people come to believe that I actually know what I’m writing/talking about and they seek me out for answers to questions or for more information.
Sometimes, I do have an answer for them, from off the top of my head or from my files. But sometimes, too, I’m stumped. Most recently, Duncan librarian Marina emailed to ask about one Oliver Pike at the behest of a VIPL user.
Read More
