Lunatic Writer's Blog

The Daily Colonist: Dec. 31, 1885

12/31/2012

What Some People Say

That an Italian, in New York, died after eating a salad, which is not to be wondered at as its constituents are given as sardines, codfish, olives, cauliflower, eggplant, onions, salt, sweet oil, vinegar, red pepper, black pepper and Cayenne pepper. It is a matter of surprise that his nine companions, who also partook of the dish still survive.

That there has been a great demand for Mr. Gladstone’s portrait during the election campaign, and one concern has issued no less than six hundred and fifty thousand copies of the Gladstone portrait.

That if you cannot go home at Xmas the next best thing is to send your photograph. Go to Hall & Lowe’s and get the very best.

That an American sojourner in a German university town was startled the other day to hear this question seriously put and hotly debated by a party of students: “Was Shakespeare drunk when he made his will?”

As the Year 1885 Comes to an End...

12/31/2012

The Mikado comes to Victoria, British Military Action in Egypt, and Sectarian Violence in Newfoundland.

Dec. 29, 1885: Domestic Dispute Makes Page Two

12/30/2012

Nothing like hanging your dirty washing out in public... Litigation, Accusation, Libel, all seem well established in 19th Century British Columbia. Thank you, Daily British Colonist...

Dec. 29, 1885: Dr. Dyer's Electro-Voltaic Belt

12/29/2012

Pay attention, nervous, debilitated men! This is for you, Mr. Sproule, or Mr. Reeder, Mr. Woodbury, Mr. Ainsworth, or even Mr. Baillie-Grohman--the answer to all your anxieties!

NERVOUS

DEBILITATED MEN.

You are allowed a free trial of thirty days of the use of Dr. Dye’s Celebrated Voltaic Belt with Electric Suspensory Appliances, for the speedy relief and permanent cure of Nervous Debility, loss of Vitality and Manhood, and all kindred troubles. Also for many other diseases. Complete restoration to Health, Vigor and Manhood guaranteed. No risk is incurred. Illustrated pamphlet in sealed envelope mailed free.
By addressing

VOLTAIC BELT CO., Marshall, Michigan.

Ayer's Pills: ad from the British Colonist, December 29, 1885

12/28/2012

I just HATE feeling bilious. And the "piles" are no fun either. Gotta get me some of those of those pills!

Apparently there was no end to Mr. Ayer's spirit of free enterprise:

Lily Langtry: a final word

12/17/2012

How does Jersey Lily relate to the story of Big Ledge?

Certainly there is no historical evidence that Mrs. Langtry ever set foot in the interior of British Columbia, but she certainly WAS in North America during the years of the Big Ledge saga. Her fame had reached all corners of that continent through its various newspapers. The likelihood that Sproule would have heard of the British actress is great and the possibility that his fevered imagination could conjure up her presence as he worked the Bluebell site seems more than possible.

And… who knows? Considering Lily’s impulsive nature, and Sproule’s quirky magnetism, maybe they actually DID meet?
Cue in the Twilight Zone music...

To learn more about the Big Ledge story, click HERE.

Lily Langtry Continued

12/14/2012

Lily as Rosalind

By 1880 rumours of Lily's impending divorce were rampant. Both husband and prince were no longer as forgiving of Lily’s behaviour. Suddenly Lily found herself no longer a “kept” woman. Overnight funds--at least enough to keep her in the style to which she had become accustomed--had dried up. Her good friend Oscar Wilde proposed an acting career and helped Lily forge the connections with the London theatrical crowd. Lily worked hard to learn the ropes and, by 1881, made her London debut in She Stoops to Conquer.

Critics tended to be harsh on her, nevertheless Lily generally played to full houses. After getting her feet wet on the English stage, in 1883 she sailed to New York City to begin the first of many tours of North America. Here her popularity was even greater than in England, as were the financial rewards. She played many different roles during her tours, one of the most famous being, Rosalind, from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Lily played in all of America’s great cities and in smaller ones too, wherever a healthy income was to made. Later her tour extended to major Canadian cities as well.

Lily Langtry: the "Love" Interest

12/13/2012

The last major character in Big Ledge (so far; things could change as the novel develops) is Lillie Langtry (nee Emilie Charlotte Le Breton). In North America her name was commonly rendered as “Lily” or “Jersey Lily”.

Lily was often described in the press as the most beautiful woman in the world. This, in itself, was enough to make audiences flock to the theatre to see her—men and women both—though not necessarily for the same reasons. In addition to her reputation for physical beauty, Lily had obtained a legendary notoriety as the mistress of the Prince of Wales, later to be King Edward VII.

Growing up in Jersey with several older brothers, Lily Langtry acquired a toughness and practicality that stood her in good stead all her adult life. Interestingly, her own father, Rev. William Corbet Le Breton, himself engaged in several extra-marital affairs which may have contributed to how easily Lily later followed in her father’s footsteps.

At the age of twenty, Lily married a wealthy landowner, Edward Langtry, whom she correctly calculated as her ticket out of the backwater of the Channel Islands. They moved to a fashionable district of London and, almost instantly, Lily made a great splash in society. Portrait painters jostled for the opportunity to paint her. She was invited to all the most important functions, including those of royalty.

More about Lily on the next post.

Ainsworth: Capitalist Extraordinaire

12/7/2012

Of all the characters involved in the saga at Big Ledge, by most standards, John C. Ainsworth would be regarded as the most noteworthy. At any rate, he has an article dedicated to him in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Ainsworth

For some, his crowning achievement would be his becoming California's first Mason grand master.

Ainsworth began his working life on steamboats in the Mississippi and became a river master by age twenty-five. Unlike most young men of his generation, Ainsworth traveled out West not to make his money panning for gold, but to provide the transportation and supplies that would be desperately needed by his starry-eyed peers.

Ainsworth was a rich man by the time the California gold rush was over; most of the prospectors weren’t. He went on to repeat the pattern in British Columbia, using his steamer to ferry men up the Fraser River.

Successful as he was with his steamers, by the 1870’s, Ainsworth quickly realized that railways would soon displace them, and began seeking other schemes to increase his wealth.

When word leaked out about mineral riches in the Kootenays, Ainsworth wasted no time.

Wily as always, Ainsworth understood that both Ottawa and Victoria were scared witless by the prospect of the wealth of the Kootenays being sucked southward. The Northern Pacific railroad almost touched the Canadian border. From there it was a short hop to Kootenay Lake and all its mineral riches. Very little infrastructure would be required to haul the ore out to American smelters.

So Ainsworth presented himself to the authorities in Victoria as something of a saviour. He proposed building a spur line railway—at his own cost—all within the Canadian border. It would run from what we now call Arrow Lake to Kootenay Lake, not far from present day Balfour. This would allow the minerals to be transported the short distance from Big Ledge to the spur line and then, by another of Ainsworth's ferries, up to the Columbia River. There it would meet the CPR (whose completion was still three years in the future) and finally safely to a Canadian smelter.

All Ainsworth asked for in exchange for his investment was a deed to all property on either side of Kootenay Lake and its tributaries to a distance of six miles from the shore! A huge tract of land! And had the government in British Columbia agreed to it, it would have finalized one of the greatest land grabs in Canadian history.

Before long, saner voices rose in protest, making it clear to Victoria what a bad deal this actually was. Along with these cautionary tales came a proposal from an English entrepreneur, Baillie-Grohman, who proposed putting a steamer onto Kootenay Lake and transforming the flooded lands south of the lake into lucrative farm land.

For a while, Victoria hemmed and hawed, thinking perhaps they might find a way to have their cake and eat it too. Eventually, however, they turned down the Ainsworth proposal and John C. had to content himself with whatever profits he could make off activity at the Big Ledge mine site. Even this notion soon became problematic. By 1886 Ainsworth decided not renew any of his mining interests at Big Ledge, leaving its development entirely in the hands of Hendryx and the Kootenay Lake Mining & Smelting Company.

Baillie-Grohman: Visionary or Buffoon?

12/5/2012

1885

Of all the major players in the Big Ledge saga, William Adolph Baillie-Grohman is likely the most complex. Portrayed by his detractors as a pompous idiot and by himself as a semi-heroic sportsman and entrepreneur, the truth of his character probably lies somewhere in between.

There can be no doubt that Grohman was an accomplished big game hunter and competent mountaineer. He described his exploits in several books and had the heads from his most successful safaris mounted on the walls of his Austrian estate. Moreover, unlike many of his contemporaries, he had developed a true sympathy for the idea of wildlife conservation, publicly lamenting the rapidly diminishing numbers of game all over North America.

Certainly Grohman was more than just a gentleman-sportsman. Traveling through the flooded lowlands south of Kootenay Lake, he realized at once its potential as agricultural land. If, only, somehow the vast spring runoff could be managed. And potentially it could, because the source of all this water was the Upper Kootenay River, which, near its origin, came marvelously close to the other great river of the region, the Columbia. A short canal joining the two rivers would divert the flow of the Kootenay and greatly diminish the downriver flooding. (Of course, it would likely have devastating effects on the banks of the Columbia.) It was a scheme which both engineers and the government in Victoria thought feasible, and they gave Grohman permission to undertake it.

Certain historians have suggested that the canal diversion did not originate with Grohman. This may be so, but he certainly championed it. And, to his credit, in spite of many obstacles—both financial and bureaucratic—he actually built the canal. The fact that it did not, in the end, do what it was supposed to do, is another story.

Grohman pointed out that another way to deal with the flooding was to increase the Kootenay River’s outflow. This could be done by dredging the West Arm of the lake, just south of the modern town of Nelson. This would allow a much greater volume of water to flow via that route, instead of backing up and overflowing the south bank of Kootenay Lake.

And, in fact, the dredging was tried, half-heartedly many years later, though, by this time, any scheme that had been recommended by Baillie-Grohman was suspect.

It was largely by coincidence that Grohman found himself in the vicinity of Big Ledge in 1883. The year previous he had been to the north end of the lake, hunting mountain goats. That winter he hatched his scheme for the canal and river diversion and made trips to Victoria, England and points in between to sell his proposal. By the time he was back on Kootenay Lake in the summer of 1883 he had been appointed Justice of the Peace for the region. He traveled in the company of Sproat and Farwell whom the provincial government had hired to do a proper survey of the region. Grohman could not help but notice all the activity going on at Big Ledge. He soon found himself in the middle of a huge dispute over mining claims and, learning that Sproule’s party had no legal representation, offered his own modest services in the cause.

Grohman, with no legal training whatsoever, and arguing against a very competent lawyer from Victoria, somehow managed to convince gold commissioner Kelly to rule in favour of Sproule and all of Sproule’s party. The Ainsworth Syndicate, for the time being, at least, was effectively cut off from activity at Big Ledge. In recompense for his trouble, Sproule gave Grohman a third interest in the Bluebell Mine.

Regrettably, Grohman seems to have spread himself too thin. He was constantly traveling back and forth from the Kootenays to England, to raise capital, to promote his scheme, to hire qualified partners. He was nowhere to be found, in 1884, when Ainsworth had launched his appeal of the preceding summer’s rulings. Not only was Grohman absent from the proceedings, so was the lawyer Grohman had engaged to take his place. To add a final insult to previous injury, Grohman, short on funds, soon after put his share in Bluebell up for auction. Thomas Hammill immediately snapped it up.

According to Grohman (who some historians accuse of gross exaggerations) Sproule tried to shoot him in the woods of northern Idaho that spring. More outrageous still, Grohman claims that Sproule held him at gunpoint on a train heading west out of Sandpoint and threatened to kill him at the next stop.

From that point on, Grohman had nothing to do with the goings on at Big Ledge, instead concentrating on his diversion plans. Grohman never wavered from his great vision. He was convinced that, through his singular efforts, he could create a little Arcadian paradise at the south end of Kootenay Lake: a retirement home, a well-earned reward for soldiers of the Commonwealth, both English and Canadian. This was the legacy he had in mind for himself, and he almost pulled it off.

The Wikipedia article

To learn more about the Big Ledge project, click HERE.