British Columbia Chronicles

05/09/2025

Looks like a postcard, right?

And on a sunny summer afternoon it’s as peaceful as it looks.

But, come nightfall, do spirits roam this secluded cove bordering Georgia Strait?

Because, if ghosts really do exist, they should be at home here in Newcastle Island’s Kanaka Bay.

This is where, just offshore from downtown Nanaimo, Hawaiian labourer Peter Kakua, aka Kanaka Pete, was arrested and this is where he’s buried after his remains were refused interment in existing cemeteries. Hence Kanaka Bay.

In short, while in a drunken rage, Pete killed his wife, her parents—and his own baby daughter—with an axe. Justice was both swift and harsh in 1868 and he was quickly found guilty and hanged. When neither the White nor the Indigenous community would accept him in their cemeteries he was buried where he’d been arrested, in an unmarked grave at Kanaka Bay.

Thirty years later, an unidentified body was accidentally unearthed there but quickly reburied when someone recalled the sad tale of Kanaka Pete.

As I said, if ghosts do exist, they should feel at home here at postcard pretty Kanaka Bay.

Read more stories at www.britishcolumbiachronicles.ca

Newest release Unknown Nanaimo is now available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (please put Unknown Nanaimo in the subject line), at https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books or at Volume One in Duncan.

04/09/2025

Coming next on The Chronicles…
Any Which Way But Honest

It’s interesting to speculate as to how many ways there are to turn a dishonest dollar. There must be as many variations to the old shell game as there are operators, and B.C. has known its share of these shady types.

Almost a century ago, Jacob Jacobsen (if that was his real name) earned his niche in provincial criminal lore when, under the alias John Hellsing, he worked a novel dodge on a Victoria realtor. His was, as a newspaper reported put it, a “smooth scheme,” and one not without its charm if something less than original.

But running afoul of the law in those pioneer days could be harsh, especially if one were sentenced to hard labour.

You’ll meet Mr. Jacobsen and other illuminaries in next week’s BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: B.C jails had their own versions of the ball and chain brigade, shown here in an American state. —Wikipedia .
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03/09/2025

Do these miners returning from the Klondike in this BC Archives photo look filthy rich to you?

Well, they were, many times over.

If you allow for inflation, a million dollars in 1898 would be the equivalent of $38,921,449.67!

The real challenge lay ahead for most of them—how to hang onto their hard-won gains.

Read more stories at www.britishcolumbiachronicles.ca

Newest release Unknown Nanaimo is now available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (please put Unknown Nanaimo in the subject line), at https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books or at Volume One in Duncan.

02/09/2025

Labour Day weekend after an August of record setting temperatures: this summer is going to last forever right?

Not likely—winter, like Thanksgiving Remembrance Day and Christmas, is on its way!

Let’s hope it’s nothing like February of 1916 when much of southern Vancouver Island was buried—literally—in snow as high as the rooftops. So high that that army was called out to help move it.

This 1916 BC Archives photo doesn’t capture the real depth of that record snow but it serves as a reminder to us that if Mother Nature can deliver scorching summers she can also bury us in winter snows.

Here’s hoping. We’ll know soon enough!

Read more stories at www.britishcolumbiachronicles.ca

Newest release Unknown Nanaimo is now available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (please put Unknown Nanaimo in the subject line), https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books or at Volume One in Duncan.

31/08/2025

The closest many of us have come a to cattle roundup, like this one near Kamloops in 189-, is in the movies or on TV.

In the good old days of the Wild West, in other words.

Need I say that cattle ranching continues as a huge business? Not just in the U.S., but on the Prairies and much closer to home, as shown in this BC Archives photo, in B.C.

I shouldn’t think that the arrival of the digital age has done much to improve the taste of your next steak.

Read more stories at www.britishcolumbiachronicles.ca

Newest release Unknown Nanaimo is now available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (put Unknown Nanaimo in the subject line), https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books or at Volume One in Duncan.

28/08/2025

Coming next on The Chronicles…
Thomas H. Murphy, Miner and Adventurer

It was a colourful career that Thomas Herbert Murphy reflected upon in the summer of 1930. A lifetime that had been seen him in the mixed roles of sailor, blackbirder, prospector and Justice of the Peace.

Nova Scotia-born, he’d followed the will-o-wisp of adventure to the West Indies, Europe, China, the South Seas, New England, New Zealand, Australia, the United States and—finally—British Columbia.

As a seaman before the mast he’d known the great tea clippers. However, upon reaching Australia, he’d been bitten by the gold bug and, “once into mining you could not turn me to anything else".

Like legions before and since, Murphy was addicted to seeking his fortune and he spent the rest of his life in search of El Dorado.

His colourful story in next week’s BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Looking every inch the old prospector, Thomas Murphy, —findagrave.com
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28/08/2025

Ever wonder how the pioneers endured brutally cold winters?

Quite comfortably, if they had food and firewood and, according to one old prospector whose memoir I just read, good friends to join in a chin wag around his pot-bellied stove.

So we can assume that the men posing in this BC Archives photo of their cabin on McKee Creek, Atlin, were enjoying the downtime of winter. Spring and all the back-breaking work of placer mining would come soon enough.

Read more stories at www.britishcolumbiachronicles.ca

Newest release Unknown Nanaimo is now available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom (put Unknown Nanaimo in the subject line), https://britishcolumbiachronicles.ca/books or at Volume One in Duncan.

26/08/2025

Time, gentleman, please!

There was a time when you couldn’t buy bottled water, when you couldn’t be sure of the purity of the water that was available.

So what to do? Why, drink liquor of course, and clean your plumbing at the same time, as these gentlemen are doing in this BC Archives image.

So step up to the bar, boys, (sorry ladies).

Read more stories at www.BritishColumbiaChronicles.ca

Newest release Unknown Nanaimo is now available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmaillDOTcom (please put Unknown Nanaimo in the subject line) or visiting Volume One in Duncan, BC.

25/08/2025

Now you can buy T.W. Paterson's books on BC Chronicles!

BOOKS by T.W. Paterson
Since his early teens T.W. Paterson, the author of 38 books and thousands of magazine and newspaper articles on British Columbia history, has been researching the forgotten, dramatic, humorous, tragic, heroic—and sometimes not so heroic—events of our past, and the men and women who made them happen.

Since his early teens T.W. Paterson, the author of 38 books and thousands of magazine and newspaper articles on British Columbia history, has been researching the forgotten, dramatic, humorous, tragic, heroic—and sometimes not so heroic—events of our past, and the men and women who made them hap...

24/08/2025

No explanation needed here in this image courtesy of BC Archives – read the caption!

Read more stories at www.britishcolumbiachronicles.ca

Newest release Unknown Nanaimo is now available by emailing firgrovepublishingATgmaillDOTcom or visiting Volume One in Duncan.

23/08/2025

I may have used this one before but this B.C. Archives photo of Sam Harris’ ‘hotel’ at Cowichan Bay, taken 1866-70, is worth repeating.

Sam was quite the character. You’ll notice the flag pole in the middle of the picture. That’s because Sam, a former Life Guard in the Old Country, was a patriotic Brit to the core who served briefly as a special constable.

Besides his rustic hotel, he provided a saloon, a jail and, on Sundays, church services. Sam called his abode Harrisville and/or Harrisburg. But he didn’t last long, being, alas, his saloon’s best customer.

The buildings shown are long gone, of course, Sam’s lockup having been moved intact for use as a chicken house.

Read more stories at www.britishcolumbiachronicles.ca

Newest release Unknown Nanaimo is now available. Email firgrovepublishingATgmailDOTcom to purchase or for more information. Please put Unknown Nanaimo in the subject line.
It is also available at Volume One in Duncan.

21/08/2025

Coming next on The Chronicles…
A Murderer’s Love Story

It’s so easy to just go with the obvious, to accept old newspaper accounts at face value. After all, the story is exciting enough that others have done it before you, so why look a gift horse in the mouth?

Heck, I’ve done it many times!

But recently, while researching another subject, I came upon an article—ah, the wonders of the digital age—in an 1890 edition of the Winnipeg Chronicle.

Winnipeg, need I say it, is a long way from British Columbia, but the Tribune story, prompted by a hanging in Kamloops, added a new dimension to the accepted story of American outlaw Frank Spencer. He’d escaped a previous date with the executioner below the line, it was said, then killed one man too many, this one above the 49th parallel where British justice prevailed.

Such is the accepted story, which reads like something out of the American Wild West. But is there more?

Of course there is; “life” is layered. And so was Frank Spencer.

I’ve told his story—as I knew it at the time—in my book, Outlaws of the Canadian West. Next week, courtesy of the Winnipeg Tribune and the Rev. T.W. Hall who attended to Spencer during his last hours while awaiting the gallows, the BC Chronicles will look at him again—but through a slightly different lens.

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PHOTO: While on the run from the law below the border, Frank Spencer lay low on a Kamloops area cattle ranch. —BC Archives
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