The Daily Colonist, June 29–July 5, 1915

#dailycolonist1915 - The news out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago.

[No significant changes on any front this week. The news from the front is repetitive and it seems the editors are aware that. no matter how important the war may be, vague tales of a few yards gained here, a few yards lost there, aren't holding the public interest and so there are more stories of local interest. It is mostly stories of the Ukrainian internment (as it is now known) and the terrorist bombings in Windsor that caught my attention this week. The stories on the Ukrainian internment are especially relevant now because the new "Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act" (previously Bill C-24) that allows for the stripping of Canadian citizenship from people who hold or are eligible to hold a second citizenship makes what went on in the internments of WWI entirely possible again.]

• Tuesday, June 29, 1915
  • Miners from Fernie and Michel [Michel does not exist anymore. The mines were played out and the town was completely abandoned over 40 years ago] that were rounded up for being born in enemy countries, regardless of their current citizenship, is reported as having "had borne fruit". Two of the detainees have filed a writ of habeas corpus to fight their arrest and imprisonment. [Note well that this the new "Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act" (previously Bill C-24) that allows for the stripping of Canadian citizenship from people who hold or are eligible to hold a second citizenship makes what went on in the internments of WWI and WWII entirely possible again.]
    
  • More details on the writ of habeas corpus filed by two of the detainees from Fernie and why their arrest and internment is illegal.
    
• Wednesday, June 30, 1915
  • Fears that an areoplane flying over the Windsor jail might be attempting to rescue the German terrorists from Detroit that blew up a factory in Windsor and attempted to blow up the Windsor Armouries causes the local militia unit to be mobilized. The article aslo contains details of other planned acts of sabotage and terroism planned by the Germans from Detroit.
    
• Thursday, July 1, 1915
  • An article on the "rounding up" and forced registration of Canadian citizens of Austrian and German origin at Phoenix, British Columbia [another mining community that no longer exists, abandoned in the 1920s]. The article notes that many pioneers in Alberta had not filed for Canadian citizenship when taking up their homesteads [I believe my four paternal grandparents from Galacia would fall in this category.] 
    
• Friday, July 2, 1915
  • A heat-wave is being felt throughout the Vancouver and Victoria area and down the coast to California. All-time record high temperatures in Victoria, reaching 83 ⁰F [28.3 ⁰C] recorded at the Dominion observatory at Gonzales Hill. Downtown was hotter. [And it is hotter now, 100 years later.]
    
  • A live baboon is sighted on Gorge Road in Victoria. The police are called, but have no idea how to catch a baboon, so they call the pound. The dog-catcher's equipment is not up to the task of catching a baboon. Everyone gives up after sunset, "leaving the monkey to its own devices". By morning it is gone and no one is quite sure where it came from or where it went.
    
  • The first whaling ships from the newly formed Victoria Whaling Company leave port. A good season is expected.
    
• Saturday, July 3, 1915
  • A weird little jab at a competing newspaper, the Kamloops Sentinal, and the "limited intelligence" of its readers is printed as filler on the editorial page. 
    
• Sunday, July 4, 1915
  • Two hundred internned "alien enemies" are now at work constructing a road from Arrow Lake to Vernon for the benefit of an American-owned mine. The article states "the prisoners do this work volunarily" yet it was reported on June 5 that the prisoners were marched out at bayonet-point with two of them being stabbed in the process for refusing to work. 
    
  • A full page ad for the new 1916 model Hudson motor-car.
    
  • A picture of the new statue of Queen Victoria that is being cast from bronze and nearly ready for installation in front of the Parliament Buildings in Victoria.
    
• Monday, July 5, 1915
  • [no paper on Mondays]

[ source: http://www.britishcolonist.ca/dateList.php?year=1915 ]