It Was Alberni Or BUST Despite No Malahat Highway!
Last week Frank Boucher told us of his first trip by road over the Malahat in 1911 . It had taken him, his wife and sister-in-law 18 hours to make the 20-kilometre trek, they having had to walk most of the way to relieve Frank’s just purchased, old and tired horse. (Speaking of tired, so were they when they finally reached Duncan!) Compare then, this dramatic account of a motor (i.e. automobile) cavalcade from Victoria to the Albernis just four years before the Bouchers’ adventure. Note that these daring pioneers didn’t tackle the ‘Hat but went the long way round, via the original wagon road through Sooke and the foot of Cowichan’s Shawnigan Lake… The most excitement ever! “Never before in the history of the country from the summit of Sooke Mountain to Alberni Canal was there such a...
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Frank Boucher’s Malahat Adventure Makes Today’s Driving Look Easy!
For the British Columbia government that 20-kilometre stretch of mountainous road known as ‘The Malahat’ must be an ongoing headache because of the never-ending calls to “fix it.” For 25,000 motorists who daily drive the ‘Hat there’s the frustration of repeated, hours-long closures because of accidents and construction. Several times this past summer, trying to get to and from work on time must have seemed like shooting craps. The fact remains, we modern-day drivers are spoiled. Toiday’s paved Malahat, for all its curves and climbs, is nothing like it was in the good old days when a trip between Victoria and Duncan could take up to eight hours or more because of road conditions. It was quicker to take the train. Back then, the Malahat was little more than “a glorified trail, narrow in places, gravel, many curves and...
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Island Highway’s Malahat Stretch Has Always Challenged Motorists
The Malahat is in the news again. In fact, the Malahat, Greater Victoria’s vital mountainous link to the rest of Vancouver Island, has been in the news repeatedly this summer because of almost weekly accident-caused traffic stoppages. 25,000 vehicles use this 20 kilometre-long stretch of highway daily. It seems, sometimes, as if it has ever been thus: the calls for widening, or a by-pass, or a tunnel, or a bridge or improved ferry service across Saanich Inlet. Or a revived E&N Railway commuter train or a busline using the railway grade. Or a combination of any and all of the above. Why doesn’t the damn government do something? Most recently, Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughan Palmer got into the act with a study of the challenging and expensive problems facing politicians and planners who must deal with a growing chorus...
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Mapmakers Unkind to Original Indigenous Name-Givers
News Item: The Vancouver Parks Board is conducting a ‘colonial audit’ that includes the provenance of place names… One of history’s many injustices is the way in which so many Indigenous geographical names were erased in favour of European nomenclature. Admittedly, even those names that survive can offer challenges in spelling and pronunciation for non-Aboriginals. More recently, some names that were appliex—sympathetically or otherwise—to suggest Aboriginal title have come into disrepute. Long used to denote “an American Indian woman or wife” and employed 11 times throughout the province, ‘Squaw’ has been declared to be unacceptable and is being deleted (no easy task) from maps if not memory. Some words and terms have changed meaning Certainly it has nothing on Hul’qumi’num’s Cowichan (an Anglicized corruption) or Chemainus or Khenipsen or Koksilah or Quamichan, Somenos, Tzinqauw, Tzouhalem or a host of...
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