Capt. James Christensen: B.C.’s First Commercial Seal Hunter Was a Bust
When Capt. James Christensen, mariner retired, looked back upon a lifetime of adventure and achievement, few could challenge his claim to being British Columbia’s grand old man of seafaring. Thanks to Capt. James Christensen Victoria ultimately became homeport to a thriving sealing fleet during the 1890s. As trader, sealer, tugboat skipper, steamship captain and pilot, he’d survived shipwreck and almost single-handed provoked an international incident between Great Britain and the United States. To say the least, the career of Capt. James Christensen, a biographer noted in 1904, was “a chronicle of the development of British Columbia’s shipping”. Right up until his 80th birthday, when he reluctantly swallowed the anchor, Capt. Christensen had performed his duties “on the swaying rope ladder” with fellow pilots half his age. In fact, but for a government ruling that he was too old for...
Read MoreCoal Miner Joseph Mairs – ‘Martyr to a Noble Cause’
A century ago, coal miner Joseph Mairs was hailed as a hero, a martyr. Is he remembered today? Yes, he is, in fact–by many… A stroll through the Ladysmith cemetery can be a somewhat chilling experience, even on a summer day. On a windy, wet January Sunday, it’s even more so, figuratively and literally… The third Sunday in January can be cold, damp or sunny but still they come to honour ‘martyred’ coal miner Joseph Mairs. Coal mining was a risky business. Back in the heyday of the ‘black diamond’ on Vancouver Island, an estimated 600-odd men died underground over a period of 90 years, making our record among the worst in Canada. You just have to visit this attractive cemetery on the 49th parallel to confirm this. Headstone after headstone honours men who died in local mines, mostly...
Read MoreRMS Queen Elizabeth: WW2 Victoria’s best-kept ‘secret’
The Royal Mail Service Ship Queen Elizabeth was so huge she could be seen from Port Angeles–but no one ‘knew,’ early in 1942, that the world’s largest troopship was in the Esquimalt dry dock! One of the most beautiful ocean liners of all time, the RMS Queen Elizabeth sails from New York for the last time in 1968. —Wikipedia photo from a postcard by Louis Gardella. For 30 years I’d wanted to write this story but didn’t get around to it for lack of photographs. A need graciously filled by Chronicles reader Allan Scott whose grandfather, Allan Craig, was superintendent of the Esquimalt graving dock at the time. The saga of the wartime dry-docking of the Royal Mail Steamship Queen Elizabeth, then the largest passenger liner in the world, and an unanticipated draftee into wartime service as a troopship,...
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Mother Lode Mine Owners Killed Golden Goose
The now-extinct Boundary Country community pf Deadwood City was home to the Mother Lode Mine, one of the province’s greatest copper producers of all time. Until the blowing up of Ripple Rock 45 years later, it held the distinction of having hosted Canada’s biggest man-made explosion. Until the blowing up of Ripple Rock in 1958 the Mother Lode Mine was the greatest man-made explosion in Canada. –https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_Rock Prospectors Bill McCormack and Dick Thompson started the ball rolling in May 1891 when their attention was drawn to a prominent outcropping of copper at the 3500-foot level. The Mother Lode began operation more than four years later, after the partners sold out for $14,000–a pittance even in that pre-inflationary age–and the well-heeled American-owned Boundary Mines Co. set to work. The new management drew praise for their “adequacy of equipment and thoroughness...
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