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The Daily Colonist, November 5, 1914

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today.

• News from the war against the Ottoman Empire
• Washington state elections (prohibition passed and other news)
• The Ukrainian Internment starting, railway sabotage and more...


The Daily Colonist, November 3, 1914

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today:

• Front page map of Kiao-Chau Bay [ Jiaozhou Bay / 胶州湾 ] and area around Tsing-Tau [ Qingdao / 青岛 ]. German fort expected to fall soon.
• North Sea officially closed to commercial traffic due to surreptitiously deployed mines.
• United States secret service warns the Canadian government of a suspected attack on the Welland Canal (the locks that allow ships to bypass Niagra Falls) [with wording that echoes the "terrorist" rhetoric of 2014.]


The Daily Colonist, October 31, 1914

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today, including a suitably macabre story of a shipwreck off the Yorkshire coast near Whitby, war news from four continents, and more.


The Daily Colonist, October 30, 1914

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today.

• Troops from India featured in photographs on the front page
• British navy fully equipped, no need for additional volunteers for naval service at this point.
• Estimated three million Belgians starving [including my maternal grandparents]
• Turkey, using a ship acquired from Germany, has attacked the Crimean port of Theodosia (a former Ottoman possession, lost to the Russian Empire in 1789), effectively entering the war against Russia on the side of Germany and Austria. At this point the Ottoman Empire is not at war with Britain.
• Three men arrested as spies in Halifax
• [meanwhile on the moon] French troops are fighting Germans in French equatorial Africa [now Chad]
• The Komagata Maru has finally returned to India, arriving in Calcutta, where an "unfortunate incident" occurred. [British authorities in India tried to arrest several of the men on the boat, resulting in a gun fight and the death of 19 passengers.]
• Man who walked stark-naked into the woods near the Oregon-California border in a 30-day scientific experiment in survival will be speaking at the Pantages
• Ads that caught my eye


The Daily Colonist, October 29, 1914

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today:

• Conspirators in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife sentenced. Killer gets 20 years. Four conspirators get death sentence. So since this is what started the war, everybody can go home now, right?
• Britain's army now at an estimated strength of 1.5 million men.
• Four Germans arrested in Baja California, including a former San Diego detective, for violating Mexican neutrality by operating a radio out of Mexico.


The Daily Colonist, October 28, 1914

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today.

• Front page has pre-war pictures of French city of Lille, now all but leveled by the war.
• Telegraph restrictions lightened. Messages may now be sent using any of several approved standard codes.
• German forces routed by British Indian troops. German casualties estimated at ten times British losses (20,000 vs. 2,000).
• Canada sells two ice breakers to Russia to keep White Sea port of Archangel open throughout winter. This is necessary with the Baltic cut off by Germany and the Black Sea cut off by Turkey.
• Canada has barred all foreigners (i.e. not citizens of the British Empire) except citizens of the United States from entering Canada.
• Ad for a sale on opera cloaks


The Daily Colonist, October 25, 1914

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today.

A lot of interesting stuff in the paper "today" and I am a bit late getting this up.

• Front page feature map of "Extreme Left in Western Theatre" where the Germans are still unable to push forward toward the French ports on the English Channel.
• Meanwhile on the Eastern Front, the Russians have the Germans and Austrians on the run.
• Enemy aliens in Canada are becoming a "hard problem" since they cannot find work because no one will hire them and they cannot leave the country because of travel restrictions. [The "solution" will be concentration camps and forced labour building things like Banff National Park.]
• British forces in the Pacific and Africa are taking over many German colonies, securing shipping and cutting off German supplies and communication.
• American insurance companies whining about having to pay out life insurance policies on dead soldiers.
• Gilbert and Sullivan revival at Royal Victoria theatre much anticipated. Photo of cast of "H.M.S. Pinafore" featured.
• Meanwhile "The Great Question" to play at the Pantages. "The Great Question" being, "Are society women who paint their faces and dress immodestly really to pitied if they are insulted in the streets?" [This, plus last week's black face minstrel act really brings home that the some things really have improved in the last hundred years.]
• Full page feature on "The Submarine" [too much to reproduce in full]
• Scenic photos of Salisbury Plain where Canadians are camped for training, including a picture of Stonehenge.
• Half page article by Sir Ernest Shackleton on the provisioning of his trans-Antarctic expedition.
• [Amazingly patronizing] Article on the "Eskimos and Indians" living in the far north.
• The usual excellent summary of the week's events in the children's section including several events I haven't already covered [and just imagine a children's section of a newspaper today starting out with "The death of the Marquis de San Giulano" and ending with "Not so much has been heard this week about cholera in Galicia."]
• And the ads that caught my eye.


The Daily Colonist, October 24, 1914

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today.

• Headline "Little Ground Gained or Lost" sums up progress on the Western front. However, the article includes story of a foiled attempt to lead a British ammunition convoy into an ambush that is rather interesting.
• More praise for British troops from India, this time from the Italian foreign office in Berlin, who also go on to condemn "French black troops from Senegal" as "bloodthirsty".
• Two Sikhs arrested in Vancouver for "conspiring to procure persons to murder other persons".
• German aeroplanes chased away from Paris by French aeroplanes.
• Germans have developed a way to launch torpedoes from Zeppelins and plan to use the new technology in naval attacks on the North Sea.
• Details of the shoot-out with Sedro-Woolley bank robbers.
• Further negotiations to secure preferential lumber trade with Australia.


The Daily Colonist, October 22, 1914

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today.

• Panoramic view of River Aisne
• Germans planning aerial raid on London. London preparing.
• Evidence that Germans had been laying foundations for gun emplacements near Dunkirk before the war started.
• Evidence that Germany established a supply and communications network in Russian Poland before war started.
• Sedro-Woolley bank robbery suspects arrested in Burnaby
• Internments of "enemy aliens" beginning in England [Canada won't be far behind]
• Quarter page ad urging merchants to push "Made in Canada" goods.
• Ad for gasoline at 18¢ per gallon [that's about 3.9¢ per litre]
• Fantastically illustrated quarter page ad for Fry's Cocoa


The Daily Colonist, October 21, 1914

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today.

German attempts to advance along the coast of Belgium toward the English Channel continue to not go well. Serbians have taken forts in Sarajevo (and even though that's were the war started, it does seem like a side-show now.)

• An estimated two million Belgians are refugees outside Belgium
• Body washed ashore near Carmanah
• Bomb explodes in Montréal.
• Proposal to build "airships of all types" in Victoria.
• Miss Frankie Seigel, "first-rate blackface comedian of the Bert Williams type" to perform at Pantages Theatre.
• "More Reports of Atrocities" by Germans at length and in gruesome detail.


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