British Columbia Chronicles

06/09/2024

Coming next week on The Chronicles…
Victoria’s Odd Couple

Although totally unlike the characters in the 1970s TV sitcom, William and Amelia Copperman must be regarded as Victoria’s very own Odd Couple. Their strange and stormy marital partnership amused, amazed and outraged fellow citizens for 15 incredible years.

They’re yet another reminder that they just don’t make real characters like they used to!

You’ll meet them both in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: There was seldom a dull moment in Victoria in the wild and woolly 1860s. —Author’s Collection
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06/09/2024

And you complain about the drive to work?

In another great Frank Swannell photo from the BC Archives, this one dated 1902, these surveyors are also going to work. But, to cross this river, they have to build a temporary bridge.

Still think driving in commuter traffic is a drag?

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

04/09/2024

Just another day on the job—if you were a land surveyor in 1910 and 1912, as shown in these BC Archives photos by the great Frank Swannell.

They’re crossing Stuart Lake, by the way.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

02/09/2024

For years, today's busy causeway linking downtown Victoria to James Bay by the Legislative Buildings was a bridge.

In a departure from his usual wilderness photos, renowned B.C. surveyor Frank Swannell obviously couldn't resist this snapshot of the James Bay crossing being rebuilt in 1901.

Happily for posterity, this photo and 100s of others taken by Swannell throughout his career are safe in the hands of the BC Archives.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

31/08/2024

Although he certainly didn’t mean to, this man set a Canadian (perhaps a British Commonwealth) speed record that has never been beaten.

His name: Frank Wagner, better known as the Flying Dutchman.

An American outlaw, he and partner Bill Julian went to the well once too often when they burgled the Fraser & Bishop store at Union Bay, V.I., in 1913. This time, the police were waiting for them.

Julian ran but Wagner, while resisting arrest, killed one constable and injured the other before being overpowered and arrested. Convicted of murder, he was sentenced to hang in Nanaimo.

Which he did, in the record time of 47 seconds, the work of executioner Arthur Ellis. The moment Wagner stepped onto the scaffold, Ellis placed a hood over his head, adjusted the noose and pulled the lever. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am!

Ellis was quite pleased with himself, having beat the record previously set by his uncle in England by 11 seconds; we know this thanks to journalist Bruce A. (Pinkie) McKelvie, who was there and who told the story years after.

Speaking of hangings and McKelvie, years ago a descendant allowed me to look through his papers. Among the manuscripts, photos, correspondence, was an engraved invitation—to a hanging.

An invitation for B.A. McKelvie—and guest!

Photo courtesy BC Archives

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

29/08/2024

Coming next week on The Chronicles…
This Phoenix Didn’t Rise From the Ashes
(Conclusion)

As we saw in last week’s Chronicles, Phoenix was nothing less than a city in every sense of the word: modern, substantial buildings, services, fine homes, rail connection to the outside world—all the latest amenities of the first two decades of the 20th century.

In a single generation the Phoenix mines yielded an amazing $100 million ($2.5 billion today) in copper, gold and silver ores that spelled riches for its owners and jobs for its workers—both its genesis and nemesis, and all within just a few years.

British Columbia has seen 100s of ‘ghost towns’ over the past century-plus but there never was another like Phoenix.

The conclusion to the incredible story of the ill-starred “highest incorporated city in Canada” in next week’s Chronicles.
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PHOTO: Hauling equipment into Phoenix, B.C. in 1899. Within a few short years, a modern city would blossom atop a Boundary Country mountain. —BC Archives
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27/08/2024

In walking almost the entire length of the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway mainline, and the Parksvillle-Courtenay spur, I’ve retraced the footsteps of this “engineering crew at Whiskey Creek,” as they’re identified in the BC Archives.

By walking the line, I don’t mean on the railway grade itself, but alongside in the bush when possible, looking for insulators and other artifacts on both sides while coming and going.

Besides insulators, friend Jennifer and I have found some beautiful old bottles, axe-heads (such as you see in the photo) and other evidences of railway and logging activities.

For us, it was fun—but you can bet that, for these navvies, the moment the photographer snapped the shutter, it was back to work!

27/08/2024

Fernie’s history as a coal mining town is well known but nearby Coal Creek, like many single-resource B.C. communities, has gone the way of the dinosaur and is all but forgotten.

A sad end for a mining town that, in May 1902, suffered one of the worst colliery disasters in Canadian history: 128 dead.

The accompanying BC Archives photos show the grim aftermath, “loading [the] dead on train” at Fernie.

24/08/2024

One of the prevailing stereotypes of British Columbia history is that our Chinese pioneers loved to gamble.

The accompanying 1890s BC Archives photo is entitled just that, “Chinese men gambling”.

When we consider that they were, for decades, denied the right to bring their wives and families to Canada, that they were ostracized from mainstream (White) society, is it any wonder that they may have found solace in playing fan tan and mahjong?

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

22/08/2024

Coming next week on The Chronicles…
This Phoenix Didn’t Rise From the Ashes

This was no Wild West town of false-front buildings lining a single street with a scattering of shacks. The Boundary Country’s Phoenix was nothing less than a city in every sense of the word: modern, substantial buildings, services, fine homes, rail connection to the outside world—all the latest amenities of the first two decades of the 20th century.

Then—it was gone, just a man-made lake on top of a mountain in the wilderness.

In a single generation the Phoenix mines had yielded an amazing $100 million ($2.5 billion today) in copper, gold and silver ores. But Phoenix was a company town, dependent upon a one-horse economy that spelled riches for its owners and jobs for its workers—both its genesis and nemesis, and all within just a few years.

British Columbia has seen 100s of ‘ghost towns’ over the past century-plus but there never was another like Phoenix.

The incredible story of the ill-starred “highest incorporated city in Canada” in next week’s Chronicles.

*******

PHOTO: Phoenix, B.C. —BC Archives

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21/08/2024

You see them often in old scrapbooks and historical photo collections, such as this one from the BC Archives: a bear cub on the bow of the United Church mission boat, Edward White.

(The group scene, dated 1930, shows the White and “some of her passengers”.)

Sometimes, the cubs had been orphaned so it was a case of trying to raise them as pets or putting them down. Some, of course, ended up in zoos. But the others? Once grown, and a cute cub no longer, a bear is a formidable animal even if accustomed to humans, when chained up or caged.

Years ago, you could still see where a chain had been secured to a mature fir tree behind the Horseshoe Bay Inn in Chemainus. In the good old days, this popular watering-hole was right out of the Wild West with its regular clientele of thirsty loggers and equally parched seamen from the foreign ships that called at the Victoria Lumber & Manufacturing Co. sawmill.

When they weren’t scrapping with each other, these hardy pioneers could prove their manhood by wrestling a black bear chained out back. At least until, the story goes, the bear all but crippled a man and it was party over.

For the bear.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

19/08/2024

As you can see, the caption for this BC Archives photo reads, “a group of hard workers, Dawson, 1899”.

That’s Dawson, Yukon Territory, of course at the time of the Klondike gold rush.

Now, if I had an evil mind, I might think that these were working girls, all right, but not lady loggers. Of course, such a thought would never enter my mind or, I’m sure, that of readers.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

17/08/2024

The unidentified woman in this 1915 BC Archives photo looks pleased with herself. We can assume that she shot the bear (a grizzly?), not a common pursuit for women more than a century ago. Nor today, for that matter.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

15/08/2024

Coming next week on The Chronicles…
Diary of Death

“Been out of food for two months. For God's sake pick us up."

Whenever tragedy struck the west coast of Vancouver Island during the years immediately preceding the Second World War, it usually was a Ginger Coote Airways plane to the rescue. Sometimes, however, even its dauntless pilots couldn't help.

So it was for Vancouver trappers James H. Ryckman, 56, and Lloyd Coombs. Their sad story in next week’s BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: The mining stampede set off by the discovery of gold in Zeballos had peaked by the time trappers Ryckman and Coombs realized they were in trouble. When, finally, a passing aircraft spotted their distress signal it was too late. —BC Archives
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15/08/2024

This BC Archives photo is captioned, “Bullion Mine, Quesnel Forks, gold samples, 1902”.

Those are some samples!

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

13/08/2024

This Vancouver City Archives photo of just-trimmed skids for a donkey engine is one of the best I’ve seen for sharpness of detail.

Taken in the 1920s, it’s quality should come as no surprise because it’s a Leonard J. Frank (1870-1944) shot. He’s without doubt one of British Columbia’s finest industrial photographers whose work is in many museum and archives.

The logs were felled on the British Properties, by the way. You can judge their original diameter by the man posing with the broad axe.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

11/08/2024

Count the head of oxen in this BC Archives logging scene.

Can you imagine what it took to feed, tend and care for what amounted to a herd of cattle out in the forest, in all weather?

It’s said that the teamsters of the day were known for their profanity. We can guess why.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

09/08/2024

This half-tent, half-shack is, believe it or not, Prince Rupert’s combined police office and courthouse in 1908!

Shown left to right, according to the BC Archives caption, are Judge Young, Lionel Crippen, William Manson, and W.H. Vickers.

Google it to see the difference.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

07/08/2024

Usually, old photo repositories, in this case the BC Archives, give you something to go on.

But the caption for this one reads, simply, “Logging truck collision.”

Who’d have guessed?

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

05/08/2024

How’s this for riding the rails in style?

The guy in the front is, obviously, the chauffeur, the guy in a suit the inspector. We can probably guess who fed the boiler.

Photo courtesy the BC Archives.
www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

04/08/2024

Meet Joseph Camille Claus.

Although it doesn’t show in this BC Archives photo, he’s handcuffed to his chair, having been arrested on the Klondike trail for murdering his two partners with an axe and rifle.

Quickly arrested (he’d had virtually zero chance of escaping to the coast), he was taken to Nanaimo. There, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to hang. But he beat the gallows by taking strychnine leaving, unsolved, the mystery of how he obtained the poison.

Only his wife and lawyer had been allowed to see him and they both strenuously denied providing him with his means of cheating the hangman.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

01/08/2024

This week on the Chronicles...
No Mercy for Camp 6 Sweetheart

I long ago lost track of the number of historical articles and columns I’ve written over the decades.

We’re talking millions of words in print, all of them celebrating the accomplishments, adventures and, sometimes, missteps of Canadian (specifically, British Columbian) men and women who pioneered our great nation.

I can’t speak for my readers but some stories stand out for me.

One with particular resonance recently resurfaced without effort on my part. Maureen Alexander and the Mill Bay Malahat Historical Society have launched, for the second time, a theatre company to enact “fascinating true stories from Vancouver Island’s past”.

One of those Messages in the Dust is that of 1920s school teacher Mabel Estelle Jones who was driven to su***de by jealousy and vicious gossip. Her tragic death prompted the provincial government to reboot the public schools system.

Too late for poor Mabel, but to the benefit of the 100s of young women schoolteachers who followed in her footsteps.

Next week in the Chronicles, a second look at her tragic tale. In the meantime, the Seeds & Salt Theatre Co. are coming to a venue near you, as shown on the accompanying poster.

I’m looking forward to seeing how scriptwriter Will Johnson has interpreted Mabel’s story from my inked rendition of 20 years ago.

*******

PHOTO: Messages in the Dust - Seeds & Salt Theatre Co.

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01/08/2024

When’s the last time you saw in the news that a train was stuck in the snow?

Well, a century and more ago, it was an almost daily threat in wintertime for trains crews operating in the mountains of mainland B.C.

A threat not just to CPR, CNR, GNR and KVR scheduling, but to life and limb. Many a freight crew was buried alive.

The legendary “Father Pat” Henry Irwin wrote of the memorable and terrifying time he and a crew of volunteers hauled the body of a railroader home to his widow from where he’d been buried in an avalanche. It took them days of dragging a sled over hummocky snow, all the while having to dodge slides that continually descended upon them with what he described as the roar of cannon.

He described it as “the most memorable funeral procession ever”.

This BC Archives photo captures a CPR Railway crew trying to dig their way out of a slide in 1916.

www.BritishColumbiaChronuicles.ca

31/07/2024

30/07/2024

Fingerprinting, once the greatest police tools ever discovered, isn’t as important now since the introduction of DNA analysis.

In this BC Archives photo, BC Provincial Police detective A.H. Bailey is shown in the force’s fingerprints division, 193-.

Today, those file cabinets would qualify as antiques.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

28/07/2024

These soldiers are having fun--”auto” polo.

The Vancouver City Archives isn’t sure of the year, but sometime in the 1930s.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

26/07/2024

Coming next week on The Chronicles…
No Mercy for Camp 6 Sweetheart

I long ago lost track of the number of historical articles and columns I’ve written over the decades.

We’re talking millions of words in print, all of them celebrating the accomplishments, adventures and, sometimes, missteps of Canadian (specifically, British Columbian) men and women who pioneered our great nation.

I can’t speak for my readers but some stories stand out for me.

One with particular resonance recently resurfaced without effort on my part. Maureen Alexander and the Mill Bay Malahat Historical Society have launched, for the second time, a theatre company to enact “fascinating true stories from Vancouver Island’s past”.

One of those Messages in the Dust is that of 1920s school teacher Mabel Estelle Jones who was driven to su***de by jealousy and vicious gossip. Her tragic death prompted the provincial government to reboot the public schools system.

Too late for poor Mabel, but to the benefit of the 100s of young women schoolteachers who followed in her footsteps.

Next week in the Chronicles, a second look at her tragic tale. In the meantime, the Seeds & Salt Theatre Co. are coming to a venue near you, as shown on the accompanying poster.

I’m looking forward to seeing how scriptwriter Will Johnson has interpreted Mabel’s story from my inked rendition of 20 years ago.

*******

PHOTO: Messages in the Dust - Seeds & Salt Theatre Co.
________________
Want to Read the Full Article…? Consider becoming a Chronicles subscriber: https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/join
A 1-year subscription fee of $24 for 52 weekly columns - that’s just $2 a month!

26/07/2024

The Major J.S. Matthews collection of 1000s of photos in the Vancouver City Archives is absolutely priceless and a joy to surf. You never know what’s going to catch your eye.

This one shows Boy Scouts demonstrating their first-aid techniques to the public in 1910. By their apparent ages they’d have had been able to practise their skills for real in the First World War, 1914-18.

www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca