History as a ‘Positive Role Model for Youth’
This post may seem out of place on a website singing the praises of our pioneers. I assure you that it’s absolutely germane to our theme of learning about and from our past. How do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re coming from? ‘Positive roles for youth’ was the headline of an opinion piece in the Victoria Times–Colonist that Alexis Marie Chute wrote after the tragic death of actor Cory Monteith. She’s identified by the T-C as a visual artist, photographer, creative writer and the mother of two young children. After citing several deaths of other notoriously troubled celebrities she suggests that they’re “evidence of a generation in trouble”. As a parent she’s worried “about the message that our current batch of teen and young adult celebrities are sending our children”. She faults the...
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Cranbrook’s Great Elephant Hunt of 1926
From far and wide they came, that hot summer of 1926. Expectant children and nostalgic adults, by car, train and wagon, they poured into Cranbrook for that greatest of occasions, Circus Day. But the colossal extravaganza that Sells-Floto Circus inadvertently staged was to make history and completely overshadow any of the acts it had headlined beneath its big-top. Those British Columbians who were there long remembered with affection and a smile that riotous time when seven grey monsters terrorized a countryside–the Great Elephant Hunt. For most of its western tour, Sells-Floto had been troubled by its 14 pachyderms. The nervous giants had created disturbances at Edmonton and Calgary, but it was the high altitude and smoke from forest fires–some maintain a barking dog was to blame–that triggered the stampede at Cranbrook when they were being unloaded from their boxcars....
Read MoreTo Everything there is a purpose…
I’ve already outlined my belated introduction to Canadian history in school and the eureka! moment when an American television program opened my eyes to the fact that British Columbia, Canada–not the American Wild West I’d grown up on, in books and movies–had a frontier history, too. A history that’s every bit as exciting and fascinating as anything that happened below the 49th parallel. I’ve never looked back and never tired of reading and writing about our rich and colourful past. I’ve been doing it for half a century now, for untold thousands of readers in magazine articles, newspaper columns and books. Am I running out of material? Hardly! History isn’t dull and boring My point is, history isn’t dull and boring as we were conditioned to believe in school. It’s a living, breathing and vibrant theatre of sound, fury,...
Read More1906 Disappearance Another Story For My Mill…
A question often put to me is, Where do I get my ideas for the 52 Chronicles columns I write each year for the Cowichan Valley Citizen? As surprising as it may sound, although my favourite ‘deja vu’ angle of using a contemporary news event to take you back in time should be a pretty good clue, a major source comes from my reading. My reading of newspapers for the most part although the Spring 2013 issue of British Columbia History is a departure from the norm. Not a departure from my usual reading but that this great lead for a column came from a non-newspaper. This magazine, if you’re not familiar with it, is the quarterly publication of the B.C. Historical Federation (www.bchistory.ca and info@b.c.history.ca). It’s well worth the annual subscription price of $20 ($32 U.S.). I buy...
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