The Great Chocolate Bar ‘War’
Would you believe that a handful of teenagers once took on the largest candy makers in the land? They did, you know, during the Great Chocolate War of the 1940s? They made international news, if only briefly, but the memory of their rebellion lives on… It can be satisfying, sort of, to know that some things never change. You know, ried and true stalwarts such as inflation Why, (I’m giving away my age) I can remember when a bottle of pop cost 8 cents. Mind you, it was a smaller bottle before they ‘super-sized’ it and it went to 12 cents. What is it, today? A dollar–plus GST, bottle return and environmental fee? Believe it or not, in the 1950s when I was growing up in Victoria, 50 cents (my weekly allownace) bought me bus fare to and from...
Read MoreThe Legendary Bluenose to Sail Again
From the start, the original Bluenose earned her title, ‘Queen of the Banks.’ NEWS ITEM: “Problems turning Bluenose II’s rudder mean it’s unlikely to sail this summer.”–Times-Colonist, June 24, 2014. In July 1967 a Halifax brewing company turned back the hands of time to Canada’s most glorious chapter in sail by launching the second Bluenose whose illustrious predecessor owed her genesis to a bitter ‘Scotian defeat at the hands of New England mariners in 1920’. For years, doughty Grand Banks fishermen had derided the world-known American Cup race, sneering that the rakish yachts were mere toys, unable to weather anything stronger than a summer breeze. What would happen, they loudly crowed for two decades, if REAL men in REAL deepwater boats raced? Their chance came when a Halifax newspaper publisher offered $4000 to the speediest Nova Scotian or New...
Read MoreSmuggling has always been with us–and no end in sight
Today, it’s narcotics and, sometimes, illegal immigrants. Unlike the latter, the narcotics flow both ways, B.C. ‘Bud’ going south, cocaine coming north, often as contra. Back then, it was narcotics from the Orient in the form of opium, then Chinese immigrants using B.C. as a doorway to the U.S., then rumrunning in the 1920s. As current news accounts remind us from time to time, this war between smugglers and law enforcement agencies, Canadian and American, goes on. For some of those involved in the heyday of smuggling and rumrunning, the returns out-weighed the risks and they not only ‘grew grey in the service’ but made their fortunes. For some of their clients, however, the possibility of arrest and imprisonment was the least of their worries. I’m referring to illegal Asian immigrants who made it to B.C. then had to...
Read MoreYou’ll Never Forget Fighting a Forest Fire Firsthand
It’s unlikely that anyone who has seen a forest fire at close quarters, or helped fight one, soon forgets the experience. The blaze which scalped Mount Douglas in Saanich in the 1960s was the single time I took my place in the fire lines. It provides a haunting memory to this day, composed not of crystal clear incidents, but rather a shadowy montage of colours, sounds and smells–a kaleidoscope of nature run wild. The arcing red glow of an auxiliary policeman’s flashlight greet us at the lane leading to Mt. Douglas’s summit, late that second evening of the fire. Finally locating a parking space, wmy friends and I, all in our early 20s, walked back to the men and teenagers standing in groups about the nearest fire hydrant. Shovels and picks leaned at crazy angles as their owners, many...
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