S.S. Delta King, King of the Riverboats
In February 2014 it was announced that a Baltic Sea cruise ship, the Silja Festival, was being converted in a Vancouver shipyard to provide living accommodations for as many as 600 construction workers in Kitimat. Shades of deja vu all over again In 1959 the old river boat Delta King called at Victoria during what many thought would be her last voyage before the scrapyard. Her (ships are feminine) days of splendour on California’s Sacramento River were distant memories by the time the filthy, paddle-less derelict crept into the Inner Harbour astern of a tugboat, that March evening. Her tall funnel, a proud standard in happier times, seemed ashamed of its nakedness atop a peeling superstructure which once had gleamed as white and saucy as Scarlett O’Hara’s petticoats. But more than 30 years had passed since Delta King and...
Read MoreSo, you think juvenile delinquency is new?
An editorial in the Nanaimo Free Press, November 1, 1884: The growing tendency of the age is the loosening of the restraint which parents and guardians impose upon their children or wards. That this greater freedom of motion to children ranging from 10 to 18 years is conducive of the most dire results must be apparent to the general reader. In the city of Nanaimo, the evil is a growing one and it should be checked. Several nights during this present week gangs of youths ranging from 12 to 18 years of age, and some of respectable parents, have been reeling through the streets of this city in a state of intoxication. It is but justice that we should state here that the intoxicating beverage was not procured by the boys themselves from any licensed house. We have been...
Read MorePowders, potions and pills–those amazing patent medicines of old
Ayer’s Sarsaparilla–the best of its kind To strengthen the body and brighten the mind! Then what is more worthy of pencil or song Than Ayer’s Sarsaparilla? IT MAKES THE WEAK STRONG Where are they now, those wonderful patent medicines which promised to relieve every ailment, human and otherwise, from ‘female complaints’ to fallen arches and falling hair? Alas, they’ve gone; gone the way of the old-fashioned drugstore (remember when they just sold drugstore items, not everything from motor oil to appliances?) and the dinosaur. Victims of advances in medicine and, more importantly, tightened drug laws, they’re part of our vanished heritage, replaced by what we now call health supplements. One of the greatest successes in patent medicines was also its longest surviving institution, one that didn’t succumb to changing times until the 1970s. For generations Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable...
Read MoreOld Family Photos Cry Out to You
You see them all the time. At garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores, they stare back at you from over the years. How do these family photos, so very personal and, you would think, once so meaningful to their owners, find their way to a sales table? Who was he? For the prospective buyer, usually a collector of what’s fancifully termed ephemera, the thrill of the hunt can be dampened by a nagging sense of guilt. These were real people whose private lives so painfully preserved in family albums are now bared to the prying eyes of strangers–you! It’s an invasion of privacy They should be tucked safely away for family posterity. Instead, there they are for the world to see, jumbled in a box, sometimes still framed, or in their original albums. It’s a moral dilemma...
Read More