This week’s story on Bill Barlee brings back so many memories for me...
How I envy his childhood!
Imagine being born in a community of abandoned gold mines with derelict buildings and equipment for a playground!
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If there is a single name that is synonymous with lost treasure in British Columbia that would have to be Neville Langrell (Bill) Barlee, school teacher, politician, entrepreneur, environmentalist, historian, writer, publisher, prospector and treasure hunter extraordinaire.
By all appearances, he scored at almost everything he did or touched.
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A recent Canadian Press news story prompted a visit to my archives and this week’s ramble...
‘Vancouver heritage building demolished, at risk of collapse’ headlined Ashley Joannou’s article on the demolition of downtown Vancouver’s Dunsmuir House, 500 Dunsmuir Street. Although formally registered as a heritage building, it was condemned as a threat to pubic safety because of terminal “structural deterioration” due to years of neglect by its owners
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As told in last week’s Chronicles, Morris Moss was as colourful an adventurer as they come. Fur trader, mining speculator and customs officer, he survived shipwreck, at least one murder attempt, chased bootleggers, became embroiled in the aftermath of the Chilcotin War, was caught up in the Pelagic Sealing controversy, then— disappeared.
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It took several attempts because of engine trouble (she hadn’t flown in almost 20 years) but the Philippine Mars has reached her final home at the Pima Air and Space Museum, Arizona.
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We don’t cherish our heroes in Canada.
Oh, briefly perhaps, at the moment of their celebrity, but as the years pass so do they—into the mists of time and forgetfulness.
I can’t offer a better example than Morris Moss who once was described as “one of the most colourful figures this coast has ever seen”.
Morris who?
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I’ve mentioned before my lifelong love affair with the Island’s railways. Living just one door away from the CNR shortline beside Saanich Lake as a kid, “the tracks” were our playground.
When the train came along, it meant hitching a ride (hanging unseen by the crew from the end of the last boxcar) to the last stop, the Growers Winery, then filching grapes through the hatches of the refrigerator cars.
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This is of necessity short notice but, assuming that we haven’t had any more snow since I wrote this on Sunday, there’s a good talk to be had tonight at the monthly meeting of the Nanaimo Historical Society.
It’s entitled Fundraisers, Axe-wielders and Star Witnesses: Women on Both Sides of the Vancouver Coal Miners’ Strike by Aimee Greenaway, curator at the Nanaimo Museum.
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Feuding Governors: The Grand Inquisitor versus the Monopolist.
Recent notice of this talk by acclaimed historian Barry Gough as one of the Marion Cumming Lecture Series hosted by the Oak Bay Heritage Foundation, reminded me yet another great story within a great story.
In this case, how the northern Deserter Islands near Port Hardy got their name.
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Does it never end? Every time I turn around, there’s more, more: new leads, followups to old stories, emails, letters from readers, unfinished business, research, deadlines. More to do, more to do.
Oh, the hardships of an author/historian/publisher...
Seriously, I’m always mildly surprised by the number of current news stories that have historical roots and thus provide more fodder for the Chronicles’ editorial page. So let’s begin to catch up, and my apology for its being even more of a grab-bag than usual.
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Interest in the Bridge River Valley’s mineral potential dates all the way back to 1865 when a government-sponsored mining exploration party reported having found gold in “that part of the country lying between the Chilcoaten and Bridge Rivers,” specifically on Cadwallader Creek on the South Fork of the Bridge River.
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Viewer Discretion Advised.
*In his 1905 reminiscence, The Passing of a Race, then-retired Colonist publisher D.W. Higgins credited Butts with having been instrumental in swaying public sentiment against Vancouver Island’s being annexed by the United States in 1866. “Butts suddenly became intensely loyal, and erected a miniature gallows on Wharf Street, from which he used to turn off the annexationists, naming each ‘traitor’ as the drop fell.
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Conclusion
While serving yet another sentence for bootlegging, John was stricken with paralysis from the waist down and taken to the hospital in a hand cart. There, he was again examined to ensure that he wasn't faking. Upon being satisfied that he was indeed paralyzed (a test involving needle pricks, no doubt), hospital staff gave him every attention.
Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! (Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!)
Town criers, or just criers, go back a long—all the way back to the Roman Empire. In the centuries before newspapers, when few people were literate, they were an established social institution throughout Europe
Often uniformed in a red and gold coat, white breeches, black boots and a tricorne hat (think pirate), they’d stroll village and city streets, crying Oyez!
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Part 1
So who is Victoria's most outstanding character?
Such a distinction might seem to be a difficult one to assign, given the many weird and wonderful individuals who’ve walked our Capital’s streets during the past 160-plus years. But there is one man who stands head and shoulders above all the others.
Without doubt, the most fabulous character ever to call Victoria home port is John Butts. Or John Charles Butts, ‘town cryer to her Britannic Majesty,” as this rogue preferred to call himself. A newspaper of the day expressed the view of many citizens when it declared John to be “a greater scourge than cholera or smallpox.”
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NEWS ITEM: 15 acres added to John Dean Park
“Some of the last old-growth stands of Douglas fir and Garry oak on the [Saanich] Peninsula are now part of 15-acre parcel of land added to the border of John Dean Provincial Park...after being acquired by the B.C. Parks Foundation from a private landowner for $1.63 million...”
So reported the Times Colonist in November.
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Too late, as I admitted last week, did I realize I had the perfect play on the popular Spaghetti western movie title, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
With a difference—women.
By too late, I meant the correct sequence: I’d already led with Belle Castle, The Bad (in the sense that she was a ‘fallen’ woman who redeemed herself too late for love). making Nellie Cashman, The Good, the second instalment by default.
But now we’re back on track with Agnes, The Ugly.
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Most Chronicles readers, I’m sure, have seen the news about the loss to fire of the well-known and highly-regarded Whale Interpretation Centre at Telegraph Cove. The 20-year-old natural museum housed a wonderful collection of marine mammal specimens including the skeleton of a 20-metre fin whale.
The cove’s buildings and docks were much older, with a rich history of their own.
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This week, it’s the turn of The Good - The Miner’s Angel whose name was synonymous with warmth and generosity in every mining camp from Mexico to Alaska.
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Nine years ago, Victoria's old Cemetery Society established a special Nelly Cashman Fund to raise money for a centennial stone to be placed on her grave in Ross Bay Cemetery. “Nellie Cashman deserves our recognition,” the Society’s Patrick Perry Lydon and Donna Chaytor told the Times Colonist.
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