Charles Hoey, VC
There ain’t nothing sacred. Among the six Cowichan Valley schools just slated for closure is Duncan’s Charles Hoey, VC School. VC, for those of you who don’t recognize these illustrious initials, stands for Victoria Cross, the British Empire’s highest award for bravery under fire. Maj. Charles Ferguson Hoey’s was one of only 100 awarded among the millions of service men and women who served in the Commonwealth armed forces during the Second World War. He’d previously earned the MM, or Military Medal, at Maungdaw, Burma [now Myanmar] in July 1943 for “his complete disregard for his personal safety. [Hoey] remained completely imperturbable in face of all difficulties and dangers. His personal example was an inspiration to all his men and contributed to a great extent to the success of the operation. The force succeeded in hitting at least 22...
Read MoreMungo Martin: ‘10 times a chief’
So his people called the bespectacled old man in mackinaw who worked for years in the cold wind of an open shed in Victoria’s Thunderbird Park. It was fitting title for this remarkable self-appointed guardian of a heritage threatened by extinction. The late Chief Mungo Martin’s unique story began at the opposite end of Vancouver Island, at historic Fort Rupert where, as a youngster, he began his apprenticeship in the secret art of carving at his father’s side. A sacred art among the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation (formerly known as the Kwakiutl Nation), totem carving was passed from father to son, like the artisans of medieval Europe. As part of his introduction to the legendary craft, the child had experienced the ritual of having had four eyebrows plucked and woven into a tiny paintbrush to “endow him with artistic gifts,” and...
Read MoreMount Bolduc bomber wreck a WW2 Tragedy
For the better part of an hour, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2003, they weren’t alone. For almost an hour that Remembrance Day, six young airmen who died for their country on a lonely mountain peak west of Cowichan Lake, April 25, 1944, were saluted in a special graveside service by military personnel and civilians. It was a deserving and moving tribute for FOs John Ernest Moyer and Ambrose Moynagh, W01 Lawrence Kerr, WO2 Brimley George Henry Palmer, Sgt. Harry Arthur Maki and LAC Murray Thomas Robertson, who are buried at the crash site. The inspiration behind the special Remembrance Day memorial service actually dated back to another tragedy of Sept. 15, 2001 when William Thomas MacFarlane suffered a fatal heart attack while visiting the site. Among the emergency crews who responded were members of the Honeymoon Bay Volunteer Fire Dept....
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Idyllic Protection Island belies a violent past
Its Gallows Point (originally Execution Point) takes its name from the fact that two native murderers were hanged there in 1853. Sixty years later, just offshore in the same immediate area, the ill-fated dynamite carrier S.S. Oscar ruptured her innards in an explosion that damaged much of downtown Nanaimo. Miraculously, there was neither loss of life nor serious injury. And it was at Gallows Point, near today’s lighthouse museum, that the New Vancouver Coal Co. (later the Western Fuel Co.) had its Protection Island shaft, 1890-1938. Linked underground (and underwater) to the No. 1 Esplanade Mine and an airshaft on neighbouring Newcastle Island, its miners could hear steamships as they passed overhead. Miners could tell the time by ships passing overhead Years ago, one of them told me that it was just like in the movies, when a destroyer passed over a hiding U-boat, its churning propellers chilling the...
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