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Can you believe it? 2025! A quarter of a century into the ‘new’ millennium!
Where did it go? More importantly, where is it going?
Well, here at the Chronicles, some things never change—just more stories to come about British Columbia’s rich and colourful history, of which there’s simply no end. As I’ve noted before, history is like digging a hole—it just gets bigger and bigger.
Read MoreHer real name and where she came from, no one knew. But that she’d been beautiful and a lady, all were agreed. Upon her death in a lonely B.C. mining camp, forsaken by all but the man who loved her—and the rose tree she’d nurtured and cherished with a mother’s devotion—her secret went with her to the little cemetery on the hillside.
Today, even her grave site is unknown and the mystery of Belle Castle, as she called herself, remains safe with the ages.
Read MoreWell, another year is about to bite the dust.
For most of us blessed to live in Canada, it likely has been another year of getting by in comparative comfort while complaining bitterly about inflation every time we go to a checkout. A minor plaint when you look around this embattled world of ours...
Read MoreI really wanted to begin the new year with more of an upbeat story. But...
I also didn’t want to do another shipwreck so soon after the S.S. M.G. Zalinski, either. But...
Read MoreIt should come as no surprise to Chronicles readers that I spend a lot of time delving into old newspapers. They’re a ‘popular’ historian’s lifeblood.
Read MoreIt should come as no surprise that the yuletide spirit has influenced our mapmakers. In British Columbia it can be found, in variations, at least 18 times.
Read MoreHere’s irony for you...
In researching today’s feature story on the sinking of the U.S. Army transport S.S. Brig.-Gen. M.G. Zalinsky, and the subsequent—and expensive—efforts to stem the bunker oil leaking from her hull, I found an article bearing this headline,
Oil Spills Are Bad For Shipwrecks
I mean, it’s ironic that sunken ships that leak oil and pollute the environment are subject to accelerated corrosion from their own oil! Sort of like being hoist with (her) own petard, as Shakespeare would say.
Read MoreMore than three-quarters of a century after she sank in B.C.’s remote Grenville Channel, an American army transport is back in the news.
Oil is leaking from the wreck of the S.S. Brigadier General M.G. Zalinski, posing an immediate environmental threat that must be dealt with, according to the Canadian Coast Guard. This, despite the fact that 44,000 litres of heavy oil and 319,000 litres of oily water were extracted from the wreck nine years ago.
Read MoreThere will be no great fanfare this week for the departing Phillipine Mars water bomber, as was the case for her sister Hawaii Mars back in August. Her final flight to a military museum in Arizona, after decades in the Alberni Valley, will be determined by weather conditions.
Read MoreFrom the man who brought us those memorable eccentrics, Messrs. David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Barnaby Rudge, Mr. Pickwick and Company—there came to Victoria in 1868 the slight figure, in flesh and in fact, of one Acting Lieut. Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens, RN.
Read MoreAs I write this, the 1000-foot-long S.S. United States, the “longest and largest ocean liner ever built in America,” and the record holder for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a passenger liner, is about to sail one last time.
Not under her own power but with the aid of five tugs.
Read MoreConclusion
It’s one of the Cariboo’s greatest mysteries—whatever became of the Halden family, Arthur, Adah and Stanley?
I don’t think I’ll ever become comfortable with Facebook.
Sure, I post something historical every two days and have built up a small following. It’s a modest way of self-promotion which, after all, is part of the publishing game. What’s the point of writing about our pioneers and historical events if there’s no one there to read them?
For the most part, it can be fun, requiring as it does little of the discipline necessary to researching and writing serious texts, and some of the comments are illuminating.
Read MorePart 2
As we’ve seen, in October 1920, Arthur, Adah and Stanley Halden appeared to have abandoned their Quesnel farm and left a number of outstanding debts around town. The biggest one, all of $1250, a large sum at that time, was a promissory note made out to their hired hand, David Arthur Clark. It was Clark who told those who asked that the Haldens had left for Spokane to attend Arthur’s brother’s funeral, but he’d had no word from them since.
Take notice that you have been sued in the Country Court, holden at Quesnel, by David Arthur Clark, and that a copy of the summons has been filed for you in the Quesnel Registry of the said Court. You are required to dispute the said action by filing a dispute note in the said Registry within twenty days of the first appearance of this advertisement.
Read MoreIn place of an Editorial, and in keeping with Remembrance, this week’s Chronicles theme, this tribute to Americans who volunteered to serve King and Country. Our King and Country.
Their sacrifice has been all but overlooked by most historians and is worthy of being recognized and remembered.
Read MoreTuesday’s issue of the Cowichan Valley Citizen marked the 25th year that I’ve written the Remembrance Day edition for my Duncan newspaper—a quarter-century-long labour of love.
For this week’s Chronicles, it’s a virtual visit to the CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum. This amazing place, even though situated within CFB Naden, on the CFB Esquimalt naval base, is open to the public, seven days a week, 10:00 to 3: 30 except on statutory holidays, at the cost of a donation.
Read MoreSurely, you don’t expect the Chronicles to be about anything but Halloween on this propitious date, do you?
And why not? Old newspapers, the fodder for historians and writers, are filled with stories about encounters with the supernatural. After all, everyone loves a ghost story, right?
Read MoreCommunities throughout British Columbia will shudder in mock terror tonight as, once again, ghosts and goblins haunt the streets for another brief Halloween.
Victorians are perhaps fortunate. None of them is old enough to have lived through a solid, spine-tingling week when readers of the Colonist thrilled to the eerie rattling and ramblings of a not-so-innocuous phantom, and marvelled at hints of a hidden murder...
Read MoreOne of the joys of historical research is that it's like a treasure hunt. You never know what the next document or deed, the turn of a page of an old newspaper, or a tip from a reader might lead to.
This nugget from the Nanaimo Free Press was sent along by a friend who’d been researching coal mine history at Vancouver Island University. It concerns lost treasure—the real thing.
Read More
