My First Interview
Everyone has to start somewhere, to state the obvious.
In my case it was in the lowly capacity of copyboy with The Daily Colonist long before its merger with the Victoria Daily Times—two years of my doing everything and anything but writing, at least on company time.
Any writing I did was on my own dime.
But knowing and getting along well with editor John Shaw no doubt helped me make my first freelance sale to the paper’s Sunday edition, The Islander. This led to assignments—interviewing people suggested to Shaw and to the city desk but who weren’t considered newsworthy enough to justify a reporter’s time.
Victoria was a retirement Mecca in those days and many seniors could tell of incredible experiences and adventures, including service in both world wars—if only they had a way to share their stories. Some actually tried writing their memoirs.
But they’d spent their working lives as loggers, sea captains, army officers…they weren’t professional writers.
Neither was I but, yet, but I was better at it than they were. So came the day that I girded my young loins and made my first contact with an elderly gentleman.
Next week in the Chronicles, some of Charles Taylor’s great stories about his childhood and the colourful pioneers of the Albernis of a century and more ago.
* * * *
Want to Read the Full Article…? Consider becoming a Chronicles subscriber.
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