Everyone likes to read stories about lost treasure. But how often do you read stories about found treasure?
Well, here’s your chance!
Local author/historian T.W. Paterson’s latest book (his 29th) is all about lost treasure — and treasure found — some of it almost underfoot.
In fact, he offers numerous examples as encouragement to armchair enthusiasts who “confine their treasure hunting to television, movies and daydreams….Few realize that, while there definitely is gold in some of ‘them thar hills,’ it can also exist, in various forms, much closer to home.
“In fact, it might well be under your very nose, unsuspected, at this precise moment.”
That said, he admits that, for all the great stories of treasures lost in British Columbia, the opportunities for striking it rich, at least in the monetary sense, are pretty slim. For all his years of research and scratching about with a metal detector, he has yet to find gold or silver or diamonds although, as he argues, he possibly measures value differently than most treasure hunters:
“To me the ‘gold’ is in the story, and every rusty relic that I’ve hauled home from some historic site such as an abandoned mine or logging camp or ghost town is worth its weight in gold to me for what it represents: our history, our heritage.”
Treasure Lost & Found In British Columbia is a revised and expanded version of his first book which he self-published in 1971. Even in its original and crude form it was a minor bestseller, thanks to his being well-known for his weekly historical articles in The Daily Colonist.
As proof that treasure can be found, sometimes underfoot, he offers the experience of Saanich youth Joseph Johnson who was hired to excavate the basement floor of a home on Dupplin Road for an oil tank. Young Joseph dug in — and struck paydirt in the form of a piece of stainless steel containing five $100 bills, three $50 bills, 20 $20 bills and 10 $10 bills, for a grand total of $1,150. Dated between 1935 and 1937, the currency was in a good state of preservation and quite negotiable.
And: When Mrs. Mary Hilda Hawkins died at the age of 72, in September, 1964, official county administrator Ian Horne found himself in custody of shopping bags containing stocks worth no less than $11,000. Mrs. Hawkins had lived in Victoria’s Beverley Hotel and in the York Hotel on Johnson Street for a week before departing for Vancouver, en route to Winnipeg. Taken ill before boarding the train, she died in hospital. At last report, her valuable treasure was being held for safekeeping by the provincial treasurer until any heirs were located.
When Walter Doerksen, 24, and Neil Woelk, 23, both of Cranbrook, were moving an old iron bed at the home of Doerksen’s parents, they accidentally broke a caster off a leg and $700 in 1937 $10 and $20 bills, rolled up in an empty shaving stick container, fell out. Examining the leg closer, they found a second $700. Doerksen’s parents had bought the bed at an auction 20 years before for $10, Walter sleeping in it for 15 years, before he married and left home. He split the windfall, 50-50, with friend Woelk.
More recently, a Shawnigan Lake woman who spent 50 cents on a packet of Q-tips in a Duncan thrift store got considerably more than she paid for. As she later explained to a reporter, her “eyes got big” when she opened the box. “I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I took out a string of pearls first, and when I did, all the rings started falling out.”
She returned them to the thrift store which re-sold them for more than $1,000.
Some treasures can be deceptive in their appearance and usually require that their finder have some expertise. (You can always ask an expert!) In 2006 one of the most collectible books ever published on photography (Man Ray’s Photographies 1920-1934) turned up in Saanich’s Hartland landfill; it was retrieved by a man dumping off cardboard. He in turn sold it at a flea market where it was spotted by a rare book dealer who priced it, even in its somewhat battered condition, at $3,500!
T.W.’s point is, you don’t have to search (at least, not always) rugged mountain peaks or brave lethal blizzards in quest of lost treasure and he offers numerous other examples of treasures found in the most unlikely of places and under the most unlikely circumstances.
But there’s much more in Treasure Lost & Found in British Columbia — 29 exciting chapters telling of lost gold mines, platinum (the so-called ‘white gold’ that the original miners mistook for being worthless), missing payrolls, gemstones and gold bullion.
And, of course, the inevitable tales of murder, madness, curses and deathbed-drawn maps showing where X marks the spot.
As for T.W.’s own treasure hunting efforts, he says, “I’m (the fates willing) by no means finished and my childhood fascination for tales of lost treasure hasn’t abated — I still go out with my metal detector every chance I get and I shall continue to do so as long as I’m able.”
T.W. will be selling copies of his newest book, Treasure Lost & Found In British Columbia, this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Christmas Chaos in the Island Savings Centre.