MLA, mining historian Bill Barlee remembered

One of British Columbia’s best known historians, host of Gold Trails and Ghost Towns, passed away in Victoria on June 14. He was 80.

The Nelson Star remembered the former politician, publisher, TV host and—above all—chronicler of BC mining history:

His greatest ambition was to save Sandon, mining capital of the Silvery Slocan, whose ghostly atmosphere cast an unbreakable spell on him. In 1970, readers told him the old Virginia Block was being demolished, so he went to check it out.

“I had to make a decision,” he wrote. “I could drive out of there and never go back, and it wouldn’t cost me a penny. Or I could stop the destruction and bring the old town back to something like it was before. I decided that I had to try to save it.”

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