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British Columbia history that informs readers while entertaining them.

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SCHOONER CASCO KNEW FAME, INFAMY

Posted by on Mar 4, 2021 in Articles | 5 comments

It was said that customs officials suffered insomnia because “it was generally conceded that once Casco spread her wings nothing on the high seas could catch her”. If ever haunted lady darkened Pacific Northwest waters, it was the ghost-ridden schooner Casco. For haunted the Casco must have been: by the memories of a distant maidenhood when she’d known respectability—even fame—to the moonless nights of middle age when she’d descended to the iniquity of smuggling and murder. Even had Dr....

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Merry Christmas

Posted by on Dec 24, 2020 in Articles | 13 comments

Merry Christmas to one and...

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JOHN KERGAN: HERMIT OF TRIAL ISLAND

Posted by on Dec 23, 2020 in Articles | 3 comments

Who was John Kergan? We know no more about him today than Victorians did over a century ago:  that he had been a seaman on the Great Lakes and that he was adept at boat building, inventing and painting.  Some even thought him a mechanical and artistic genius. To one and all he was the “Hermit of Trial Island.” Whatever his past, Kergan seemed to have but one desire in life:  to live by himself without interruption or the...

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Remembrance: 75 Years Since Second World War

Posted by on Nov 12, 2020 in Articles | 0 comments

I grew up on the Second World War. On a street like Brett Avenue in Saanich, where every able-bodied father but one served in uniform, playing war was as natural to us kids as playing cowboys and Indians. And there was no question as to who were the good guys and who were the bad. We took turns wearing ‘Big Gordie’s’ army helmet. When, in my teens, I last saw it, it was lying in the bushes in the...

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