Cowichan’s Old Stone (‘Butter’) Church
Its stained glass windows and doors long gone, the empty shrine of grey sandstone gazes sightlessly over the valley and bay below. Well over a century has passed since Cowichan’s famous Old Stone, or ‘Butter’ Church hosted religious services within these silent walls. Below, to the east, Cowichan Bay is shrouded in early morning mist and no sounds reach here from the road below. To the right of the front door (until it was stolen), a plaque, dated 1966, told the church’s history in a single paragraph: “This landmark was built in 1870 by Father Peter Rondeault, pioneer Oblate missionary to [the] Cowichan Indians [sic]. Helpers were paid through the sale of butter churned by the priest. It was abandoned in 1880 in favour of St. Ann’s at Tzouhalem. Restoration was a 1958 Centennial project of the Cowichan Indians,...
Read More‘Hanging Judge’ Matthew Begbie Fought Discriminatory Laws
So said a Victoria Times-Colonist ‘commentary,’ in January. In addressing B.C.’s heritage of racial prejudice (see Chinese Head Tax Got Off to a Slow Start), professors Hamar Foster and John McLaren (ret’d), of the University of Victoria faculty of law, noted that Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie, “B.C.’s first judge,” was a staunch defender of human rights. This, in 1884, when such views were totally out of sync with the province’ s general (white) population. Begbie defended Chinese immigrants by highlighting their well-known “prominent qualities” of industry, economy, sobriety and law abiding-ness. It was these qualities which so put them at odds with the majority of the population that was the real basis of their being discriminated against, he said. He also walked the talk by striking down repeated attempts by the B.C. Government to draft racially discriminatory legislation and...
Read MoreVictoria’s Mayfair Mall: Brickyard to Boutiques
Good grief, has it really been that long since I was a kid, messing about in the old Baker Company brickyard? I was prompted to ask this of myself by the 50th anniversary of Victoria’s Mayfair Mall. You’d never know it today, that these acres of glittering glass and cinder block and parking on the eastern shoulder of Douglas Street, between Tolmie and Finlayson, were, for years, derelict–a wasteland of tumbled-down structures, clay piles and ponds inhabited by frogs and tadpoles, snakes and water weeds. Which is precisely what drew us kids to its barren landscape, those frogs Now, I’m not talking basketball-sized bull frogs but our own native species, vivid green and smaller than a Mandarin orange. Why? you ask. To catch and release them in our parents’ back gardens to eat the bugs. It was our childish...
Read MoreInfamous Chinese head tax got off to a slow start in British Columbia
Premier Christy Clark recently formally apologized to Chinese-Canadians on behalf of the B.C. government for the infamous $500 head tax and 100 laws, regulations and policies that discriminated against citizens and immigrants of Chinese descent since the province entered Confederation in 1871. Clark called the racism of past B.C. governments “a stain on our history. We cannot undo the past, but by acknowledging it, by apologizing for it, together we can ensure that we and our children learn from these mistakes and never ever make them again.” Chinese miner Ah Lock A century and a half ago, the Saltspring Island member of the House of Assembly for the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island, moved a motion to impose a $10 tax upon Chinese immigrants. To this, The British Colonist took exception and, in its...
Read More