Memoirs The Gift That Keeps On Giving
Was it Hallmark Cards that used this line as their sales motto? The gift I have in mind is of far, far greater value and lasting meaning than any greeting card. It’s one I’ve known about for years. I became aware of it as both a writer/historian, and in my other life as a commercial printer/publisher. Over 25-odd years, I turned from printing business cards, office stationery and the like to specializing in an area where my journalistic skills were called into play, the printing of books, many of them—indeed most—telling the clients’ life stories. I’m referring to family histories, autobiographies, memoirs, life histories, reminiscences, whatever you want to call them. Genealogy has become a popular phenomenon for family researchers and historians, both on hobby and professional levels. But a family tree goes only so far. Where’s the flesh...
Read MoreGreat Fraser River Flood, 1948
Hopefully, the worst is over in this year’s flooding in the Fraser Valley. Happily, the damage done to date hasn’t come even close to that during the crisis of the spring of 1948 when many of British Columbia’s rivers ran wild. From Prince Rupert on the coast eastward through Prince George to the Alberta border, and all the way south to Vancouver, rampaging rivers, fed by snow-melt, threw off hastily-erected bonds of sand and gravel and drove hundreds of refugees before them. Despite these efforts homes, farms and businesses had to be abandoned as thousands of acres vanished beneath seas of mud amid early reports of two fatalities. Prince Rupert was besieged by a rising Skeena River, Terrace was cut off from the outside world when its highway and railway links were washed away, and residents of Remo, Usk...
Read MoreLaurel Point Environmental Clean-Up Long Overdue
An environmental clean-up program that could cost as much as $25 million is about to be launched to remove a century’s worth of industrial contamination at Victoria’s Laurel Point. The City of Victoria’s share is about 10 per cent of that budget for remediating the point’s park after the work is done. It’s known that the toxic stew left behind by previous owners includes metals, petroleum hydro-carbons, chlorophenols and polychlorinated biphenals (the notorious PCBs). The contaminated soil will be removed and replaced with clean fill, both to be carried to and fro by barge. The project, expected to take up to 18 months, is set to begin in September. Today’s Laurel Point, the site of a luxury hotel, is nothing like it was when Jacob Sehl bought it as “a barren rocky spot” in Victoria’s Inner Harbour. There, where...
Read MoreMike 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...
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