WWI

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

• Map of the Russian front featured prominently on the front page, but most of the stories are about Antwerp.
• "Antwerp Gets Usual Orders" - food to be provided to Germans, etc..
• Canadian training and staging area in England established on Salisbury Plain
• Germans reported to be producing heavy guns with an unprecedented range of 25 miles (40 Km).
• Boston Braves win the World Series.
• And in local news, pod of "blackfish" [killer whales / orca] "spoil" sport fishing for most of the day in the Sannich Arm by scaring off all the salmon.

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

Most of the news is the dénouement for the fall of Antwerp. The stories conflict. Generally it seems that the Belgian army sabotaged their own forts before retreating so the Germans wouldn't be able use the city as a fortified base. It seems that some British troops accidentally (by British accounts) or intentionally (by German accounts) crossed into the neutral territory of the Netherlands and were disarmed by the Dutch. The Germans are reporting that they have secured vast resources for their army [which will come at the expense of those left in the area. To this day, 100 years later, I find it all but impossible not to eat whatever I am offered, regardless of whether I am actually hungry or not, because of my grandmother's constant insistence to "eat for the hunger that comes." She is 10 years old in 1914, and will soon be starving under the German occupation, and then will go through it all again in 1940. 1914 may seem like ancient history, but here I am, still touched by it in a direct way.]

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

• Antwerp has fallen to the Germans.
• London instituting blackout order and taking other preparations in case of a Zeppelin attack
• C.P.R. executive predicts a very busy tourist season in Canada in 1915.
• Imperial Order Daughters of Empire to provide Thanksgiving dinner for troops in Victoria
• Pantages Theatre to show a theatrical recreation of the wreck of the Titanic.
• Half-page map showing the locations of all fighting in the war thus far.
• The usual summary of the week's events in the children's section of the Sunday magazine
• My usual collection of ads that caught my eye.

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

• Things are downright horrible in Antwerp now. Fighting is back behind the second line of forts now...
• Meanwhile in Brussels, people are starving because the Germans are appropriating all the food for themselves.
• British aeroplanes bomb a German Zeppelin shed
• Indications are very strong that the Ottoman Empire will enter the war on the side of Germany
• A photographer's account of trying to photograph the destruction of Antwerp.

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

• Assurances from "Tokio" that "Japan has no intention of retaining the Marshall Islands."
• Siege of Antwerp is the main news. City is being shelled and bombed by Zeppelins.
• Editorial on the arrival of the first Canadian expeditionary force.
• Account of German shelling of Tahiti

#dailycolonist1914 - News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today:

Even the paper is bored of the lack of substantive news from the Western front, "War Summary on Usual Line" reads the headline, so naturally the paper is full of interesting things...

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

• Half page ad for subscriptions [which brings up an aside about the first telephone in Victoria]
• Trench warfare becoming more, well, entrenched.
• Canada to double the number of soldiers it has overseas.
• Nine Austrians captured trying to flee Canada
• 1/4 page add for Russell Cars

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

• Tale of arrest and detention as a possible spy of UBC librarian on book-buying journey during the outbreak of the war.
• Absolutely accurate method for converting "Centigrade" [Celsius, used in France at the time] to Fahrenheit
• Argument to stop all nickel exports to enemy nations.

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

• Germans advancing on Antwerp, two of the outer forts have fallen.
• Survey of the conditions of colonies on the west coast and northern areas of Vancouver Island.
• The Sunday magazine, as usual, has a wonderful summary of the weeks events
• Full page travel article on Mount Robson in the magazine section, recently made accessible by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
• The usual collection of ads and advertising illustrations that caught my eye.

#dailycolonist1914 - News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today:

• Details of the German cutting of the trans-Pacific cable at Fanning Island emerge as the ship dispatched to fix cable arrives in British Columbia
• Map of Antwerp's defences [Wilrijk is directly between the forts marked F6 and F7 on this map.]

http://www.britishcolonist.ca/dateList.php?year=1914