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- 72 REMINISCENCES OF OLD VICTORIA
British Columbia. Next the bank was the Daily Standard building, built and owned by Mr. De Cosmos; then T. L. Fawcett & Co., upholsterers; then T. C. Nut-tall, Phoenix insurance; William Heathrow, bootmaker; next comes the post-office, a single story frame structure with a wooden awning in front, as were all stores in those times. Mr. Wootton was postmaster. One of the few brick buildings on Government Street comes next, built for and occupied by William Burlington Smith, and containing a public hall upstairs. It was in this hall that the British Columbia Pioneer Society was organized on the evening of April 28th, 1871, the writer being secretary of the meeting. Since died. William P. Sayward, who resides in San Francisco, and myself are the only two remaining of those pioneers who met in Smith's Hall that night and formed the first society of British Columbia Pioneers. Next we have the Adelphi saloon, on the site of the Government offices of 1860. This is as far as the photo shows, and so I must close.
CHAPTER VII.
THE VICTORIA GAZETTE, 1858.
THROUGH the kindness of a " fifty-eighter " I am enabled to give my readers, especially the old-timers, some extracts from this, the pioneer newspaper of Victoria, if not of British Columbia. To me, although only a " fifty-niner," and at the time a juvenile, these extracts are very interesting, for I remember nearly all the personages mentioned, and it is the incidents that these names are connected with that I mention. The editors announce in this, the first number, that they at first intended to name their paper The Anglo-American, but on second thought changed it to the Victoria Gazette, as more appropriate. The editors and proprietors were Williston & Bartlett, and the paper was a semi-weekly.` To show the primitive and makeshift nature of things in early Victoria I will quote the first local item: " It is cheering to note the increase in frame and canvas buildings that are springing up."
Mr. Thomas Harris, of the Queen's market, is the first to open a butcher shop in the Island.
The arrival of the first batch of Chinese by the steamer Oregon. The sign of the first to go into business appears as " Chang Tsoo," washing and ironing.
The beautiful view of the Olympic range covered with snow, as seen from Government Street, is commented on as a sight worth seeing.
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