Forest Workers Memorial Park, Lake Cowichan
With everyone’s thoughts on the COVID-19 crisis, this year’s national Workers’ Day of Mourning passed quietly. For some years now April 28th has been officially designated the annual Day of Mourning to “remember those who have died on the job, and to reflect on what needs to be done to prevent more deaths and injuries”. Locally, it has become the practice of representatives of various labour councils and others to gather at Forest Workers Memorial Park, the first of its kind in B.C. It’s situated in Lake Cowichan because the Cowichan Lake region has a long history of logging and milling and because it’s where a loggers’ union, the IWA, first took root in the 1920s. Funded by the sale of Commemorative Bricks, the local Credit Union Legacy Fund and local industry, the small park consists of a fountain,...
Read MoreWhatever Became of Lillian Alling?
The incredible Lillian Alling set out for Siberia or bust: 6000 miles on foot, at 30 miles a day! Some years ago a Kelowna adventurer announced plans to make a third attempt to cross Bering Strait by ski and paddle. This frozen waterway separating Alaska from Russia is only 84 kilometres as the crow flies—but even with the help of El Nino it would have been a challenge for Gordon Thomas and his Russian companion. Perhaps someone should have told them that it’s been done. Seventy years before. By a woman. Maybe! Lillian Alling had “the instincts of a homing pigeon,” the late Francis Dickie wrote of Lillian Alling. From New York City to Alaska this Russian woman, compelled by an obsession to return to Siberia through “some of the most life defying mountain wilderness in the world,” set...
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Royal Roads University’s Mysterious Roland Stuart
February 16, 2020 ROYAL ROADS UNIVERSITY’S MYSTERIOUS ROLAND STUART Today we know this magnificent property beside the Esquimalt Lagoon as Royal Roads University. Its previous claim to fame was as coal baron James Dunsmuir’s Hatley Castle–as prime a waterfront estate as any man could have dreamt of, and well befitting the wealthiest man in the land. Come to think of it, with its breathtaking views of Juan de Fuca Strait, Washington’s Olympic Range and Esquimalt naval base, it’s as classy a classroom as one could hope for, too. But, as Hatley Park, Colwood’s crown jewel predates James Dunsmuir, having been the private preserve of Gilzean Roland Whately Stuart, a colourful and mysterious character whose brief presence has been all but overlooked by most historians. Born at Little Shelford, Scotland, he’s supposed to have been a twice-failed candidate for a...
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The Missionary and the Madman
Few men could have been more unalike than Archbishop Charles John Seghers and murderer Francis Fuller. Archbishop Charles Seghers was dedicated, dignified and fired with the confidence of a noble cause. Archbishop Charles John Seghers Francis Fuller, brooding Irish immigrant, farmer, watchmaker and frustrated layman was consumed by a very different fire—that of the damned. Born in Ghent, Belgium, Charles John Seghers studied for the missions of far-western America, arriving in the promised land of unsaved souls in 1873 to assume the duties of first Bishop of Vancouver Island. Despite a near-fatal illness, the man who was fated to become the northwest’s sole “martyr” soon undertook the strenuous task of visiting every portion of his far-flung diocese, which included Alaska, then a gruelling inspection tour by Indian canoe of the west coast of Vancouver Island. After serving for a...
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