Journeying toward the upper course of the Capilano River, about a mile citywards from the dam, you will pass a disused logger’s shack. Leave the trail at this point and strike through the undergrowth for a few hundred yards to the left, and you will be on the rocky borders of that purest, most restless […]

Unique, and so distinct from its surroundings as to suggest rather the handicraft of man than a whim of Nature, it looms up at the entrance to the Narrows, a symmetrical column of solid grey stone. There are no similar formations within the range of vision, or indeed within many a day’s paddle up and […]

THE LIONS You can see them as you look towards the north and the west, where the dream hills swim into the sky amid their ever-drifting clouds of pearl and grey. They catch the earliest hint of sunrise, they hold the last color of sunset. Twin mountains they are, lifting their twin peaks above the […]

“Yes,” said my old tillicum, “we Indians have lost many things. We have lost our lands, our forests, our game, our fish; we have lost our ancient religion, our ancient dress; some of the younger people have even lost their fathers’ language and the legends and traditions of their ancestors. We cannot call those old […]

There is one vice that is absolutely unknown to the red man; he was born without it, and amongst all the deplorable things he has learned from the white races, this, at least, he has never acquired. That is the vice of avarice. That the Indian looks upon greed of gain, miserliness, avariciousness and wealth […]

Far over your left shoulder as your boat leaves the Narrows to thread the beautiful waterways that lead to Vancouver Island, you will see the summit of Mount Baker robed in its everlasting whiteness and always reflecting some wonderful glory from the rising sun, the golden noontide, or the violet and amber sunset. This is […]

Great had been the “run,” and the sockeye season was almost over. For that reason I wondered many times why my old friend, the klootchman, had failed to make one of the fishing fleet. She was an indefatigable workwoman, rivalling her husband as an expert catcher, and all the year through she talked of little […]

It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon,And we two dreaming the dusk away,Beneath the drift of a twilight grey–Beneath the drowse of an ending day.And the curve of a golden moon. It is dark in the Lost Lagoon.And gone are the depths of haunting blue,The grouping gulls, and the old canoe,The singing firs, and the […]

The steamer, like a huge shuttle, wove in and out among the countless small islands; its long trailing scarf of grey smoke hung heavily along the uncertain shores, casting a shadow over the pearly waters of the Pacific, which swung lazily from rock to rock in indescribable beauty. After dinner I wandered astern with the […]

Did you ever “holiday” through the valley lands of the Dry Belt? Ever spend days and days in a swinging, swaying coach, behind a four-in-hand, when “Curly” or “Nicola Ned” held the ribbons, and tooled his knowing little leaders and wheelers down those horrifying mountain trails that wind like russet skeins of cobweb through the […]

“Have you ever sailed around Point Grey?” asked a young Squamish tillicum of mine who often comes to see me, to share a cup of tea and a taste of muck-a-muck, that otherwise I should eat in solitude. “No,” I admitted, I had not had that pleasure, for I did not know the uncertain waters […]

How many Canadians are aware that in Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and only surviving son of Queen Victoria, who has been appointed to represent King George V. in Canada, they undoubtedly have what many wish for–one bearing an ancient Canadian title as Governor-General of all the Dominion? It would be difficult to find a […]

Few white men ventured inland, a century ago, in the days of the first Chief Capilano, when the spoils of the mighty Fraser River poured into copper-colored hands, but did not find their way to the remotest corners of the earth, as in our times, when the gold from its sources, the salmon from its […]

There is a well-known trail in Stanley Park that leads to what I always love to call the “Cathedral Trees”–that group of some half-dozen forest giants that arch overhead with such superb loftiness. But in all the world there is no cathedral whose marble or onyx columns can vie with those straight, clean, brown tree-boles […]

Holding an important place among the majority of curious tales held in veneration by the coast tribes are those of the sea-serpent. The monster appears and reappears with almost monotonous frequency in connection with history, traditions, legends and superstitions; but perhaps the most wonderful part it ever played was in the great drama that held […]

There had been a great deal of trouble in the Norris family, and for weeks old Bill Norris had gone about scowling as blackly as a thunder-cloud, speaking to no one but his wife and daughter, and oftentimes muttering inaudible things that, however, had the tone of invective; and accompanied, as these mutterings were, with […]

“Be pretty good to her, Charlie, my boy, or she’ll balk sure as shooting.” That was what old Jimmy Robinson said to his brand new son-in-law, while they waited for the bride to reappear. “Oh! you bet, there’s no danger of much else. I’ll be good to her, help me Heaven,” replied Charlie McDonald, brightly. […]

The great transcontinental railway had been in running order for years before the managers thereof decided to build a second line across the Rocky Mountains. But “passes” are few and far between in those gigantic fastnesses, and the fearless explorers, followed by the equally fearless surveyors, were many a toilsome month conquering the heights, depths […]

The Story of a Life of Unusual Experiences [Author’s Note.–This is the story of my mother’s life, every incident of which she related to me herself. I have neither exaggerated nor curtailed a single circumstance in relating this story. I have supplied nothing through imagination, nor have I heightened the coloring of her unusual experiences. […]