British Columbia Chronicles

28/09/2026

Progress, ain’t it grand.

For a year now, the new bridge over Holt Creek on the Cowichan Valley’s stretch of the Trans Canada Trail has been open to traffic.

Works fine, of course.

But it’s just that, a bridge of concrete, a crossing. Gone is the charisma of a real, genuine hand-built railway trestle of old, with its creosoted (heaven forbid!) timbers and history.

They’ve since replaced the McGee Creek trestle, too. I guess I have to be grateful that the Kinsol Trestle is still standing. Like I said, progress...

Want to read a sampling of British Columbia Chronicles, sign up to receive the free weekly ‘Musing Out Loud’ at BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

Unknown Nanaimo and other in print books by TW Paterson are available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (please put books by TW Paterson in the subject line), or at https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books

Coming soon, TW Paterson’s latest book Along the Black Track, where you will read about Vancouver Island’s black past.

26/09/2026

Call me a trespasser if you will, but I make no apology for having walked almost the entire E&N Railway grade from Victoria to Courtenay, and the Port Alberni Spur.

Ah, the history, if you keep your eyes peeled and do some research before you head out, so that you recognize something for what it is—or was.

Here, friend Belinda passes Fiddick’s Junction in South Wellington. The Fiddicks were real pioneers with a great story to tell. That’s where the research comes in.

I still have 20-odd miles to go to complete both stretches of the E&N and really must cross them off my bucket list.

Want to read a sampling of British Columbia Chronicles, sign up to receive the free weekly ‘Musing Out Loud’ at BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

Unknown Nanaimo and other in print books by TW Paterson are available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (please put books by TW Paterson in the subject line), or at https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books

Coming soon, TW Paterson’s latest book Along the Black Track, where you will read about Vancouver Island’s black past.

25/09/2026

This week's Editorial
Musing Out Loud...
by T.W. Paterson

You don’t need me to tell you that time and the world around us are in a constant state of change. There’s even a saying to that effect, ‘The only thing constant is....”

Sometimes, however, it isn’t really a change per se, but a matter of degree. In other words, the stories are mostly the same, even when they’re decades apart, only the numbers vary. (Blame it on inflation.)To make my point, and for a change of pace in my weekly meandering, I offer this editorial on what we now know as the Old Age Pension. It appeared in the Vancouver News-Herald in July 1950.

Compare it with your OAP/CPP.

Read More >> https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/editorials-1/editorial-294
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You don’t need me to tell you that time and the world around us are in a constant state of change. There’s even a saying to that effect, ‘The only thing constant is....” Sometimes, however, it isn’t really a change per se , but a matter of degree. In other words, the stories are mostly the...

25/09/2026

We Canadians don’t seem to celebrate our heroes as Americans do.

Joseph Foy was manager of the Pacific Coast Coal Mine at South Wellington in February 1915 when the morning shift blasted through into the abandoned workings of the adjacent South Wellington Mine.

As millions of gallons of water cascaded into the PCCM’s lower workings, driving all—men and machinery—before it, Foy, who was on the surface, rushed below to see what he could do. And became one of the 19 drowning victims.

The Masonic emblem on his headstone in the Nanaimo Cemetery was defaced in recent years but has since been repaired. But who, today, remembers Joseph Foy?

Want to read a sampling of British Columbia Chronicles, sign up to receive the free weekly ‘Musing Out Loud’ at BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

Unknown Nanaimo and other in print books by TW Paterson are available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (please put books by TW Paterson in the subject line), or at https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books

Coming soon, TW Paterson’s latest book Along the Black Track, where you will read about Vancouver Island’s black past.

24/09/2026

This week on The Chronicles…
They’re Not Making the ‘Good Old Days’ Any More

Please bear with me. It's that time of year again. You know, when one day it's soaring hot (only a week or so ago, remember?) the next, someone turns a switch and—wham—it's fall... Autumn.

The time of year that, besides putting me to work cleaning my roof and gutters, raking leaves, and all those good things associated with preparing for winter, I become reflective.

Is it just me, or is this a natural, yearly twinning of season and mood change prompted by the first falling of leaves and the withering away of summer and all its happy associations of the beach, vacations, etc.?

As I, we, get older, I think the phenomenon becomes more pronounced.

Ah, nostalgia, ain’t it great? A look back at a simpler world in this week’s BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: The kids in this 1930 photo of the PNE are enjoying the pony rides. When I came along, the daily radio reports of the Vancouver extravaganza meant doom and gloom—that summer was almost over. —Wikipedia
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23/09/2026

Hardly anything remains of the Greater Nanaimo area coal mines, despite a century of mining activity from Granby in the south, to Wellington, and Protection and Newcastle islands.

A rare exception is the tipple of the Pacific Coast Coal Mine at South Wellington, today a somewhat bizarre tower of concrete in the middle of a cow pasture.

What stories it can tell!.

Want to read a sampling of British Columbia Chronicles, sign up to receive the free weekly ‘Musing Out Loud’ at BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

Unknown Nanaimo and other in print books by TW Paterson are available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (please put books by TW Paterson in the subject line), or at https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books

20/09/2026

Fort Victoria was founded in 1843; less than 20 years later, it had all but disappeared, having been replaced by what would become ‘downtown’ Victoria.

In at least one case, that of one of three Fort buildings still standing in 1864, its demise was premature, the Colonist reporting that fire broke out in the early morning hours: “In a very few minutes the fire champions, with their apparatus, were on the spot and had a copious stream of water playing over the burning structure”.

But it never was a contest, the wooden structure being totally destroyed although the heroic firefighters did save its immediate neighbour.

Alas, the burning building, one of the three remaining structures of the original fort, had to be “pulled down by the Hook and Ladder Company... Some 30 tons of hay were destroyed by the conflagration.”

All we have to show for Victoria’s founding today is Fort Street.

Want to read a sampling of British Columbia Chronicles, sign up to receive the free weekly ‘Musing Out Loud’ at BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

Unknown Nanaimo and other in print books by TW Paterson are available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (please put books by TW Paterson in the subject line), or at https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books

18/09/2026

This week’s Editorial….
Musing Out Loud...
by T.W. Paterson

Well, some good news in the news for a change.

The worst of another devastating summer of wildfires appears to have peaked, and the Fraser Canyon’s historic Alexandra Lodge has come through it, unscathed.

A month ago, it was reported that the recently restored landmark was threatened by a blaze that “came perilously close”.

Read more → https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/editorials-1/editorial-293

PHOTO: Co-owner Ken MacKinnon poses in front of the historic lodge that he and wife Shirley have been restoring for years. Its loss to fire would have been a severe blow to history as well as to the MacKinnons. —langleyheritage.ca
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Subscribe to receive The Chronicles Weekly Editorial for FREE.
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Well, some good news in the news for a change. The worst of another devastating summer of wildfires appears to have peaked, and the Fraser Canyon’s historic Alexandra Lodge has come through it, unscathed. A month ago, it was reported that the recently restored landmark was threatened by a blaze th

18/09/2026

Antique truck lovers, take note of this great BC Archives shot of three Federal Motors trucks. They’re fully loaded and ready to head out on their deliveries for the Marpole Coal Co., Vancouver, in 1924.

Want to read a sampling of British Columbia Chronicles, sign up to receive the free weekly ‘Musing Out Loud’ at BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

Unknown Nanaimo and other in print books by TW Paterson are available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (please put books by TW Paterson in the subject line), or at https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books

17/09/2026

This week on The Chronicles...
The Wh**ky-Selling Livermores

They were as unholy a pair as ever bedevilled a police department.

Notorious for their chosen calling, the whisky-selling Livermores, known respectively as Liverpool Jack and Wh**ky John, became courtroom regulars during their careers.

As far as is known, they weren’t related, although it seems surprising that there could have been two John Livermores in such a tiny outpost as Fort Victoria in the 1860s. But no matter, bootleggers they were.

Meet these blackguards from our past in this week’s BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: The Bastion Square police barracks, which doubled as Victoria’s jail, became the two bootlegging Johns’ second home. —BC Archives
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The Chronicles Thursday Edition newsletter
Weekly Editorials by T.W. Paterson
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