When a bird flies into the window of a home it is likely to fall to the earth, shake its head tentatively, and then resume flight. If the impact is of sufficient force, of course, it may cause instant demise. Having seen this happen, I was puzzled when I saw a young bird sitting unmoving on the wooden walkway in front of our patio doors. An hour later, I was surprised to find it had not moved. It appeared to be in a state of stupor and I guessed it must have struck the glass hard enough to become disoriented. At this time it was still in shade, but I knew if it didn’t move the scorching heat of the Hedley sun would soon sap any strength it still possessed. I felt uncertain as to how I should respond to the bird’s dilemma and drew Linda’s attention to it.
Fortunately she remembered that our 83 year old neighbour, Frank Schroeder, is an avid birder. He has worked in federal prisons and has been a successful realtor. But his great unwavering interest over the years has been observing birds. Linda put in an SOS phone call to him. Instantly intrigued and concerned, he dropped what he was doing and knocked on our front door in under 5 minutes.
Not wanting to frighten the bird, he approached it slowly, speaking in soothing tones. Fearing he was a predator, the young bird willed itself to take a few steps, but then lost its balance and tumbled off the walkway. Frank’s large hands encircled it and he cradled it gently.
“It’s very young, a meadow lark,” he said, examining the little creature. “This may have been it’s maiden flight. Possibly it hasn’t yet really figured out how to fly, or it may have just got lost.”
I observed that he was entirely comfortable holding the bird. “My fascination with birds began when I was six years old,” he explained. “We lived on a farm and I had been watching the young swallows sitting on the rim of their nest, built against the end wall of our barn. They were not yet willing to take flight, but I decided the time had come for them to venture out.”
It was evident Frank’s mind was reliving this earlier scene. “I leaned my dad’s ladder against the end of the barn. Due to a growth of bramble bushes, I needed to place it almost straight up. I climbed to the nest, removed one of the little ones from its perch on the rim and tucked it into a pocket. This really rattled the parents. They began buzzing me, beating their wings hard against the back of my head. When I inadvertently pushed the ladder and myself away from the barn wall, I suddenly found myself launched backward into the air and landed in the prickly bramble bushes. Fortunately I suffered no broken bones. More important, the baby swallow wasn’t injured. My pride was the only casualty.”
Frank departed, still holding the infant meadow lark in his hands. I called him the following morning to check on his patient. “In the evening yesterday,” he reported, “I placed it in a box on a chair where no preying cat could reach it. I put water and food in the box. This morning when I came out onto my porch the bird had managed to fly to the top of the backrest of the chair. I went inside to have breakfast. When I came back out, the bird had flown down and was on my sidewalk, seemingly waiting for me. It glanced back, as though it knew me. Then it flew into some bushes and was gone. I consider it a successful rescue on our part.”
Manning Park Resort in winter (before the additions)
For years my wife Linda and I stopped at Manning Park Resort on our way to the Fraser Valley. In summer the towering green mountains inspired us. Covered with snow in winter, they were equally sensational. Also, the resort’s coffee pleased our palates. It was disquieting when an employee in the store told us the resort had been placed in receivership and she expected to lose her job.
After languishing in receivership for several years and then being closed, we heard the resort had been acquired by the ownership of Sunshine Valley. Initially I wondered if this was a case of over reach. To me it seemed Sunshine Valley might not have the resources for such a complex acquisition.
Several weeks ago Linda and I participated in the resort’s annual promotional tour. At breakfast on the second day we quite unexpectedly noticed Kevin Demers, the new owner, and another individual on the far side of the spacious dining room. When they rose to leave, I approached Kevin, introduced myself and asked if he had time to talk. “I can give you 10 minutes,” he said.
Kevin Demers, owner of Manning Park Resort
Sitting at a table, coffee cup in hand, he began with, “The resort was in receivership and things were so bad, we were advised not to touch it. There was a 3 million dollar mortgage. The resort was losing $200,000 a year. With the passing of time though, and no serious buyers, the price went down sufficiently for us to take a look.”
He reflected a moment, then continued, “The receiver closed the doors in April, 2013 and we re-opened them in May. Nearly everything was broken or wouldn’t work. We needed to buy new vehicles and hire staff. Plus, we needed to repair the resort’s tarnished image.”
Robyn Barker was born at Manning Park.
We had learned something about the difficult receivership years the previous day while on a bus tour with Marketing Coordinator, Robyn Barker. Her parents had lived at Manning in an earlier time, and she was born in staff housing with the assistance of 2 mid-wives. After the family moved to Hope, they returned to Manning regularly. “I pretty much grew up here on weekends,” Robyn said. “At about age 15 I started giving skiing lessons. Before the receivership we had great camaraderie, but with the bankruptcy that fell away. Morale was low and the optimism was gone. We refer to that time as The Dark Years.”
During the tour Robyn mentioned Kevin was an ex-RCMP officer. I now asked him how a Mountie had managed to buy the resort. “I joined the RCMP when I was 19 and served from 1964–1987,” he replied. “I knew I wanted something more. In 1978 I bought my first campground. In 1980 I bought the Bridal Falls Park. By the time I bought Manning, I already owned 6 successful RV parks. Even now the banks won’t touch this place, so everything we do comes from cash flow. I sat on the board of Envision Financial and got an education there.”
Kevin was warming to his subject and he blew through the promised 10 minutes. “We’ve spent a lot of money to get the best,” he said. “We built 5 premium cabins and we’ve started another 8. There’s already a waiting list for them. Our orange chairlift was 49 years old, and by this winter we will have replaced it with a new Quad Chairlift at a cost close to $3 million.”
He paused, then said, “We added the Alpine Room to accommodate larger weddings, education events and conferences. We want to add 4 floors and an elevator to the Lodge, as funds become available. Our long term plan is to continue expanding. We’ve given BC Parks a new master plan that will extend our permits to 80 years.” He glanced at his watch and said, “I have a meeting.”
“The Last Resort”, a favorite venue for large groups.
For Linda & me, the 2 days created memories. We were captivated by the colour and serene beauty of Lightning Lake. We’d like to return and hike into the other 3 lakes, Flash, Strike and Thunder. Another highlight was our visit to Cascade Lookout, elevation 1830 ft. It was blustery up there, but the view created memories that will likely never totally fade. Even higher are the alpine meadows with their colourful wild flowers. Manning Park Resort again has a lot to offer. Enough to add plenty of delightful sizzle to just about any bucket list.
(The following is the text of a talk delivered by William L. Day at the Hedley Historical Museum celebration of Canada Day (2019). A part-time resident of Hedley, Day is a former President of Douglas College, and more recently, a Citizenship Judge. In this talk he challenges the commonly held view of Judge Matthew Begbie as the “Hanging Judge”. A.M.)
Judge Matthew Begbie
Some of this material was sourced from the Victoria Times Colonist and material written by Stephen Hume in the Vancouver Sun newspaper.
Matthew Begbie was the colony of B.C.’s first judge from 1858-71 and the new province’s first Chief Justice from 1871-1894. He held court in almost every settlement in the province, often under trees or in tents. He was an appointee of the then British Colonial Office and as such was the unassailable final legal authority in the future British Columbia.
Begbie proved to be the ideal man for the job. He was tough, hardy, adventurous, adaptable, fair-minded and determined. He wasn’t popular except with First Nations chiefs, with whom he was prepared to communicate and whose rights he frequently defended.
In 1865 alone, he covered about 5,600 kilometres on foot, on horseback and by canoe. In the Stikine country in 1879, the year he turned 60, his party lived mainly off the land, “eating rabbits, grouse and squirrels, most of which Begbie himself shot.” He loved the outdoors. He is a hero to lovers of Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park for his ruling in 1884 preserving it from development.
But the so-called “Hanging Judge” was controversial almost from the moment he stepped off the boat in 1858. The phrase apparently stemmed from references to him as the “Haranguing Judge” from his extended diatribes during and after jury trials. It was transliterated in later years after his death, by people ignorant of the actual circumstances of his life and work.
At one of his first trials, he told the assembled miners – mostly Californians – that in the U.S. they might govern “by the Bowie knife and the Colt’s pistol,” but not in British Columbia.
Begbie was also controversial for his racial attitudes, telling a royal commission in 1884 that the “four prominent qualities” of the Chinese were “industry, economy, sobriety and law abidingness.” And that, he said, was the main reason they were unpopular. The Daily British Colonist (now the Times Colonist) criticized him for this, maintaining that the Chinese were “hereditarily on a lower plane of civilization.”
With reference to Begbie’s attitude toward native peoples, in 1860, Governor James Douglas had to deal with complaints that Begbie had allowed a white man to be convicted of assault at Yale “wholly on testimony from Indians.”
In the ensuing years, Begbie continued to condemn “racial jealousy” and set aside convictions under discriminatory bylaws dealing with such matters as licences for Chinese laundries and pawnshops whenever these issues came before him. A century before Canada adopted its Charter of Rights, he described such laws as an infringement “at once of personal liberty, and of the equality of all men before the law, and also a negation of international rights.” On his last circuit in 1889, when he was 71, he renewed old acquaintances in the Cariboo, describing the Chinese who had been there since the gold rush 30 years earlier as “better British Columbians than nine-tenrhs of the later arrivals.”
Other decisions also raised eyebrows. In 1889, he overturned the conviction of a man who had pleaded guilty to potlatching, holding that the law against it was too vague and unfair to support lawful convictions. This rendered the potlatch ban a “dead letter” until, after Begbie’s death, Parliament strengthened it.
His positive opinion of B.C.’s Indigenous Peoples, formed early on, did not change throughout his lifetime.
Begbie protected the territorial integrity of the Songhees Reserve in Victoria City, a case that illustrated his belief that, if at all possible, justice should trump legal technicalities. He was a skilled lawyer and judge, but as he put it himself, camping on the hard ground and coping with an overturned canoe were more important than legal niceties in the new colony.
Unlike most of his contemporaries, Begbie was fluent in several languages, including the Chinook Jargon – the trading language of the entire Pacific Coast – and made a concerted effort to learn some of B.C.’s Indigenous languages.
Was he a “Hanging Judge”? Where he had discretion, he could certainly impose a harsh sentence if he thought it was justified. But he had no discretion in capital cases: When the jury convicted someone of murder — and all such trials in Begbie’s court were jury trials — the death penalty was mandatory.
His biographer could find no evidence that he was described as a hanging judge in his lifetime. Ironically, Begbie never considered a career in the military because he “found it abhorrent to take human life.”
Begbie is also controversial today for his role as Presiding Judge in the trial of the Tsilhqot’in chiefs who made war on the mainland colony in 1864. The evidence strongly suggests that they were tricked into surrendering and the jury convicted five of the six notwithstanding that they had meant “war, not murder.” The death penalty was automatic. Begbie’s own notes at the time stated that the native chiefs viewed themselves as at war. These very notes were used in the Canadian Supreme Court decisions supporting the Chilcotin government’s legal case over land control in their territory.
In his report on the trial to the governor, Begbie said that it “seems horrible to hang five men at once — especially under the circumstances of the capitulation. Yet the blood of 21 whites calls for retribution.” He added that he was glad the decision was not his to make.
Both levels of government have since exonerated the executed men. The Law Society of British Columbia has removed Begbie’s statue from the foyer of its building, citing his role in the Tsilhqot’in trials. New Westminster Council has voted to remove the Begbie bust from the courthouse at Begbie Square.
What would Begbie have thought of this? His instructions to his executors were that “no other monument than a wooden cross be erected on my grave, that there be no flowers and no inscription but my name, dates of birth and death and ‘Lord be Merciful to Me a Sinner.’ ”
British Columbia’s first chief justice is often called “The Hanging Judge.” In fact, Matthew Begbie was progressive, lenient, championed the rights of indigenous and other minorities exposed to racism, and didn’t hesitate to speak truth to power — in his case, colonial authorities.
William L. Day
01 July, 2019
A small town perspective on people, community, politics and environment.
