Bill Brown of Barkerville
April 1925 marked the highlight of a lifetime for 86-year-old prospector Bill Brown of Barkerville.
On his first visit ‘outside’ in 53 years, he saw his first moving picture show in Quesnel. “The actors and actresses were there on the stage,” Bill marvelled, “just as if they were there in real life, only they were not there at all.”
The guest of longtime Cariboo resident and historian Louis Labourdais, Brown said that he hadn’t realized such a thing was possible.
For more than half a century he’d been all but out of touch with the world beyond Barkerville and vicinity. Ever since his arrival in the spring of 1872, the six-foot tall, white-haired miner had picked and panned his living from the Cariboo’s once-rich gold creeks.
There have been 10s of 1000s of men like him in B.C.’s history.
Pioneers who, unknown to us today, helped to lay the foundation for those who followed. We’ll never know their stories, or even their names. But, every so often, one of them—in this case prospector Bill Brown—escapes obscurity if only momentariy from old newspaper clippings.
Bill Brown’s story in next week’s BC Chronicles.
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Hi Tom:
I have been missing your columns in the Citizen of late and have not passed you walking along Koksilah Road when driving in to Duncan from Fairbridge.
We were stuck on our plantation in Thailand for an extra 5 months thanks to the pandemic and didn’t get back here until July 12th.
At any rate I was wondering if you may be writing anything up around Remembrance Day this year and if you wanted any information we have in the Fairbridge Chapel including plaques etc. We are going to be working over at the chapel most of this week after Tuesday as we have to clean the exterior of the clock tower. Give me an email or call (250 746-7519) or just pop by. I live in the old office building at 4718 Fairbridge Drive.
Ron
Hi, Ron:
Thought of you recently when filing some of my columns including the ones I did for last Remembrance Day. (I get waaaay behind sometimes).
Thanks to COVID the Chronicles were dropped from the Citizen after 23 years because of tanking advertising revenues.
So I’ve reinvented my column as http://www.CowichanChronicles.com; it’s much more of en e-zine than a blog with posts as long as 5000 words instead of the 1000 as in the paper. I publish weekly, on Thursday, just as the paper did when it dropped to a single issue a week.
Bottom Line: There will be my usual Remembrance Day special edition, but online, in November.
Because my website offers me almost unlimited scope I offer much more in the way of photos, graphics etc. than I could before, so I would be interested in doing something with the Fairbridge Chapel plaques, etc.
As you can see, email works best for me.
Please remind me in a few weeks of this conversation. I’m working 16-hour days and weekends so I’m going to put the onus on you to follow up.
In the meantime enjoy our beautiful weather. Cheers, TW
Love your articles.
Thanks, Rick. My subscription website, http://www.CowichanChronicles.com, sucks up most of my time and energy these days so I have difficulty in writing posts for twp.com, my free site. Hope you keep on reading, though. I will continue to add posts as I can. –TW
So do I (he said modestly). Thanks, Rick, please keep reading. You can also try my subscription site, http://www.CowichanChronicles.com for bigger and better posts. –TW