Mike King’s close call with mother bear makes a great read
Chinook Days by Tom MacInnes, Sun Publishing Co., Vancouver, B.C., 1926 It’s not a very big book: half an inch thick, yes, but only 4 1/2 inches wide x less than six inches deep, and the type covers only 3 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches. It really is a pocket book. But, proving that good things can sometimes come in small packages, there’s a lot of great content in Chinook Days’ 200 pages, 1000 copies of which were published in 1926 by the Vancouver Sun as a souvenir for the opening of the Grouse Mountain Highway. An online bookseller sums up its contents thusly: “Historical sketches, legends and poetry including sketch of Jack Crawford the poet scout with some Klondike interest.” Another dealer goes further: “This book includes a variety of [MacInnes’] writings, such as historical recollections, legends, and...
Read MoreNew digs for the Maritime Museum of B.C.?
As of this month it’s reported that the Maritime Museum of B.C. is hoping to have new and permanent waterfront quarters in time for the 150th anniversary of B.C. joining Confederation. Evicted from its longtime home in the old provincial court house in Victoria’s Bastion Square in 2015, it has had to make-do with a paltry 3000 square feet of display space in Nootka Court on Humboldt Street. Meaning that the bulk of its fantastic collection of artifacts is in storage and unable to be shown. What a sad commentary that it has been up to volunteers to carry the ball over the years for an institution that should always have been fully funded by various levels of government. Victoria and B.C.’s maritime heritage is nothing less than phenomenal and deserves telling to the present and future generations. Much...
Read MoreHMCS Sackville, Last of Canada’s Corvette Navy
HMCS Sackville Anyone who knows anything about Canada’s naval contribution in the Second World War should be pleased to learn that one of our two surviving veterans is getting $3.5 in federal funding for “extensive repairs”. HMCS Sackville is the last of the Royal Canadian Navy’s famous Flower-class corvettes and Canada’s oldest warship. She has been owned and maintained by the non-profit Canadian Naval Memories Trust since the 1980s and serves as a museum ship in Halifax, home port to most of the Canadian naval vessels which fought and won the Battle of the Atlantic. Commissioned in December 1941, HMCS Sackville‘s active naval career was quite short; she was paid off in November 1944. Canada’s fighting corvettes became legendary and have been termed unique—“born of particular necessity at a particular moment—nothing like [them] had ever been seen before, nothing...
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