NOMINATE a GREAT TEACHER Submit a story about a teacher who has made a difference!
vicnews.com/contests
Deadline May 31, 2015
GOLDSTREAM Mom crowned
Self-esteem a major byproduct of pageants Page A3
2015
NEWS GAZETTE
COMMUNITY: Mighty garage sale set for weekend /A3 ARTS: Four Seasons brings the swamp to Langford /A7 SPORTS: National designation for Olympic View /A22
• Chain Link Fence • Deer & Garden Fences • Wood Panels • Custom Wood Jobs
2960 Sooke Rd. t. 778-406-0901 f. 778-406-0903
e:northwestfencing@shaw.ca
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
www.goldstreamgazette.com
Engineering marvel’s history spotlighted in film by Belmont teacher Missing links to story of region’s water supply chain described in book Mike Davies News Gazette staff
In a dusty, massive chest in the basement of a home in Tacoma, Wash., retired University of Victoria psychology professor Charles Tolman found a key. Not a real, physical key, mind you. A metaphorical one. It was the key to completing the puzzle of the Sooke Flowline – a massive engineering feat in the early 1900s that is the foundation of how the Capital Region gets its potable water, even to this day. He didn’t know that’s what he’d found, though. “There were all these old photographs,” says Eric Tolman, Charles’ son, who teaches social studies at Belmont secondary and has made a film about his father’s book, Bringing Water to Victoria, recently published by the Sooke Region Museum. Many of those photographs were of his great cousin, Harry Huston Crawford, an engineer from Missouri who worked on
railroads in the early 1900s. Crawford, Eric says, needed a break from building railroads, so he took a job in a faraway town called Victoria to work on a pipeline project while he was on his way to Alaska, because he thought it sounded interesting. It turns out Crawford was something of a documentarian. He took hundreds of photographs and made books of notes on the project. Charles took these documents, cross referenced them with source material from the time period – such as archived newspaper articles and other documents – and fleshed out the story of how the Sooke Flowline came to be. Curators at the Sooke Region Museum were thrilled when they discovered these pieces of our region’s history had been found, and were happy to help Charles turn his meticulous research into a book. The decision to get Victoria’s water from Sooke Lake was
Photo courtesy Tolman family
The photos and notes of Harry Huston Crawford, second from the left somewhere on the water pipeline route, were the impetus for Charles Tolman’s book, Bringing Water to Victoria, and his son Eric’s film of the same name, examining the building of the Sooke Flowline in the early 1900s. driven by the fact that the Goldstream lakes were, at the time, controlled by the Esquimalt Waterworks Company (EWC). Politicians of the day determined that water should be a publicly owned resource, rather than bought and sold. The water in Beaver and Elk lakes, piped to homes and businesses at the time, was not of a high quality and people were calling for a solution, with the
population growing. “Once Victoria decided to go to Sooke Lake (for their water), they first had to find a way to get the water from there to Victoria, obviously,” Eric says. They had to build a concrete flowline – essentially a series of short concrete sections of tube, four or five feet wide and four feet in diameter, grouted together one by one along the length of the route.
This route was far longer than would have been ideal, as they had to go around the property owned by EWC. The engineering feat of making it run on a more or less constant decline, to allow gravity to take effect, was extremely complicated considering the crude surveying equipment of the day. PLEASE SEE: Father and son, Page A4
Fight Fire with Fire! COLWOOD CORNERS #6 - 310 Goldstream Ave.
250-478-3244
www.houseofnutrition.com
Anti-inflammatory for joint pain relief & more!
Health First® Curcumin-Supreme features the Also contains MSM for additional anti-inflammatory patented Phytosome® curcumin Meriva®. Twenty times support and Alpha Lipoic Acid and Grape Seed Extract more bioavailable than regular curcumin, Meriva® has for antioxidant action. 60 veggie caps - $19.98 been proven in clinical studies to provide effective relief of inflammatory-related joint pain and immobility, and On Sale 120 veggie caps - $38.98 reduction of inflammatory markers in the blood. *Sale ends June 14th, 2015 or while quantities last.