British Columbia Chronicles (2025)

25/03/2025

Okay, everyone has seen photos of Siwash Rock in Stanley Park. This one in the Vancouver City Archives caught my eye because it’s in the Leonard Frank portfolio and I know him best known for his commercial and industrial photography.

Frank (1870-1944) became one of British Columbia’s foremost professional photographers upon moving to Vancouver in 1916. Fortunately for posterity, according to Wikipedia, he left behind a massive body of work, much of it found at the Alberni Valley Museum, the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia, and the Vancouver Public Library.

To the Squamish people, the Rock is known as Slhx̱i7lsh, or sometimes Lhilhx̱í7elsh. Mariners favoured the name Nine Pin Rock because of its resemblance to a bowling pin.

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23/03/2025

Look at the length of this coal train heading from the Extension coal mines to tidewater at Ladysmith. Much of the rail grade shown in this BC Archives photo has long disappeared, the victim of development, but, years ago, friends I walked what little was left. Ah, the stories it could tell...

B.C. is still a major exporter of coal and much of it is still transported by rail. But you’d never know now that we did that, too, on Vancouver Island. You know, in the good old days.

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21/03/2025

Coming next on The Chronicles…
The Second World War is Still With Us

Officially, the Second World War ended with Japan’s surrender, 80 years ago. In at least one sense, however, the war goes on.

Although no hostile action was fought on Canadian, let alone British Columbia soil, we too have a history of live ordnance turning up in the unlikeliest of places; at least thrice, it has killed.
As surprising as it may seem, as recently as in 2012 the Victoria Times Colonist felt compelled to editorialize on the need to “recover leftover bombs”.

The story of B.C.’s deadly war against live armaments and munitions from past wars in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Bomb disposal expert Sergeant Rupert Frere checks the fuse on an unexploded 1000-pound bomb at a building site. — https://okok1111111111.blogspot.com/2015/03/bomb-disposal-expert.html
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21/03/2025

Looking like a large kid’s toy, ‘The Nanaimo’ actually was a workhorse, the third locomotive operated in British Columbia. J.K. Hickman is the engineer in this BC Archives photo.

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19/03/2025

There wasn’t a lot that respectable dating couples could do without a chaperone at the turn of the last century.

So why not a stroll to a Nanaimo coal mine, as depicted in this postcard, courtesy of the BC Archives?

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17/03/2025

Legend has it that whoever sent the biggest wreath to a gangster’s funeral during the Al Capone days was the party who’d had him killed.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Vancouver Island coal baron Robert Dunsmuir was a gangster. Let’s just say that he was less than loved by many if not most of his miners for having steadfastly resisted giving better wages and better working conditions, demands which, with the help of the provincial government, he met with martial law, militia, special police and strikebreakers.

The caption for this 1889 BC Archives photo doesn’t tell us who sent this handsome floral arrangement and, no, he wasn’t assassinated. We must assume, some of us reluctantly, that he really was mourned in some quarters. Perhaps by fellow robber barons or member of the provincial Conservative government of the day who stood by him and other mine owners during the two-year-long Great Strike.

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15/03/2025

Remember Ernestine, comedian Lily Tomlin’s telephone operator? “Are you the party to whom I am speaking?”

You can bet that the Nanaimo telephone operators shown in this 1951 BC Archives photo heard some equally dumb questions while doing their jobs.

To Nanaimo–more specifically, Wellington–goes the double honour of having had, and manufacturing, the first telephones in British Columbia. Just a year after Alexander Graham Bell’s miracle, a description of it in The Scientific American prompted F.D. Little, the Wellington Mine’s chief engineer, to assign mechanic William H. Wall to build such a contraption in 1877.

Made of shop scraps such as the copper hoops (copper so as not to create a spark) used to kegs of blasting powder, the prototypes were pretty crude, the caller speaking into and listening from the same instrument, like kids’ tin cans on a string.

For testing, they were linked together by several hundred yards of No. 14 steel wire. Primitive, yes, but they worked.

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13/03/2025

Coming next on The Chronicles…
The Man With the Touch of Gold

If there is a single name that is synonymous with lost treasure in British Columbia that would have to be Neville Langrell (Bill) Barlee, school teacher, politician, entrepreneur, environmentalist, historian, writer, publisher, prospector and treasure hunter extraordinaire.

By all appearances, he scored at almost everything he did or touched.

Bill Barlee died in 2012 in his 80th year after a lengthy illness. But his legacy, on television re-runs and in the printed word, lives on.

Meet the man who spent the best of his adult years chasing (and finding) pots of gold at the end of rainbows in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Bill Barlee, second from right, brothers and friends play at an abandoned mine in Rossland. What a childhood! —BC Archives
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13/03/2025

Here we are, mid-March, and almost time for the BC Forest Discovery Centre to open for another season.

I do enjoy wandering the site, snapping photos of old time logging equipment, big and small.

So, to quote General MacArthur, “I shall return.”

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13/03/2025

If you’ve ever wondered how they managed to ventilate miles of underground workings in coal mines, this is how they did it: humongous fans, this one at the No. 4 Mine, Cumberland, 191-.

Pretty impressive electrical technology for over a century ago, eh? The operator in this BC Archives photos shows its size.

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09/03/2025

Time and again, Vancouver Island’s coal miners were hurt—or worse—on the job.

This BC Archives photos shows the ambulance car, a mini hospital on rails, for emergency runs from the Extension Colliery to better medical facilities in Ladysmith.

God help the miner who was in intense pain and conscious.

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07/03/2025

I bet you that few residents of Ladysmith today realize they once were home to the copper smelter shown in this BC Archives photo.

It’s just as well it isn’t there any more, the primitive smelting process having consisted of the ore being ‘cooked’ in open trenches, a process that took weeks of smoking, fuming fires.

If you’ve ever read anything about the smelters at Anyox and Trail, you’ll know that the toxic fumes killed vegetation for miles around and, anecdote has it, turned cow’s milk blue.

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07/03/2025

No one is alive to day who personally remembers the “Great Strike” of Vancouver Island coal miners, 1912-1914. But that doesn’t mean that traces of the anger and bitterness didn’t survive up until quite recent times.

Twenty years ago, I knew a lifelong Ladysmith resident, then in her 80s. She was born a generation after the time that Ladysmith was placed under martial law and armed militiamen patrolled the streets and stood guard, with field pieces and machine guns, at major intersections.

She told me of a teenage girl rushing home from school, probably in the 1980s, to breathlessly tell her mother that Johnny B. was going to take her to the prom.

“The hell he is,” snorted Granny. “His grandfather was a scab.”

The first BC Archives photo shows strikers marching in downtown Ladysmith. After violence, including gunfire and major vandalism of company equipment erupted at the nearby Extension mines, the second photo shows arrested strikers being marched off to jail.

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03/03/2025

Here’s a scene you’ll never see again—laying down streetcar tracks in Vancouver. Another reason for appreciating that the Vancouver City Archives has amassed and preserved a treasure of archival photos for posterity.

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01/03/2025

Mid-morning, June 12, 1913.

The Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway’s northbound No. 1 is high-balling at 30 mph. Just north of Duncan, it approaches the blind curve at Sherman’s Crossing.

Too late, motorists Capt. Clifton and passenger V.V. Murphy, a 32-year-old Irish immigrant, heading south at 10 mph, find themselves part way across the tracks as the locomotive rounds the bend and begins blowing its whistle.

Engineer Fred Bland later testified at the inquest that he’d immediately blown his whistle and hit the brakes but, too late, and his locomotive struck the car on its left rear side where poor Murphy was seated.

The mangled vehicle was dragged the length of the engine and seven cars before it came to rest; incredibly, Capt. Clifton was uninjured although his Everett roadster was described as having been “smashed to matchwood”. (In the photo the car appears to be surprisingly intact considering the impact.)

To the coroner’s jury, Bland damned Sherman’s Crossing as one of the worst crossings on the E&N line because, when travelling north, “it was impossible to anything at all on the right side”

And, because of the incline, motorists had to lean on their gas pedal as they approached the crossing.

A popular cricketer, the highlight of Murphy’s well-attended funeral was a floral wreath in the shape of a bat and in his club’s colours.

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28/02/2025

Whenever I see old group photos, unless they were taken indoors, I instinctively look for the dog(s).

And here he is, front and centre, in this great hand logging photo from the R.I. Dougan collection.

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27/02/2025

This week...
Exploring a Railway Legacy
Guest column by Tom W. Parkin
Photos © TW Parkin

B.C. history faces increasing challenges. Historic sites and museums are experiencing funding cuts, public figures who shaped our past are losing recognition, and railways that once built nations are being abandoned. Vancouver Island’s Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway (E&N)—although it’s not even called that anymore—is a prime example. Its last spike was driven in 1886 by Robert Dunsmuir and Sir John A. Macdonald. Today, just six miles of track within the City of Nanaimo remain in service.

Yet, where trains no longer run, people are finding new purpose for the track. Walking the rails has become a way to connect with history and appreciate an industry on the brink of disappearance. This guide highlights four accessible sections of the E&N, each with its own character. Along the way, I’ll share practical tips and historical insights.

Lace your boots, grab your camera, and let’s meander through southern Vancouver Island’s scenic and storied landscape.

PHOTO: Approaching Koksilah River E&N bridge in a frosty November morning. — © TW Parkin
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25/02/2025

In these Vancouver City Archives photos, blowing smoke, cigarette in hand, she’s the epitome of 1940s cool.

Her name was Veronica Foster but to Canadians who saw her Second World War posters plastered everywhere, she was Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl.

She worked on a production line manufacturing this British-designed light machine gun for the John Inglis Co., in Toronto. Images promoting her war job became so well-known and popular that she was allowed to show something of her personal side while dancing and partying.

Some believe she inspired creation of her American counterpart, Rosie the Riveter.

With peacetime, ‘Ronnie’ laid down her tools and began singing with Matt Kenny and His Western Gentlemen, where she met and married trombonist George Guerrette. She passed away in 2000, aged 78.

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