Via this morning's Globe and Mail: B.C. authors band together to finish late historian’s magnum opus. Excerpt:
Chuck Davis was a Vancouverite whose love for his city drove him to take on a seemingly impossible task: to singlehandedly document and record its history, beginning with the birth, in 1757, of the English explorer George Vancouver. The task, as it turned out, was impossible. This year, some 40 people came together to finish what Mr. Davis had started, in an extraordinary collaboration which has itself become an important chapter in Vancouver’s history.
“His contribution to the city was amazing,” said Erick Villagomez, one of the people who stepped forward to help. “And for me to be a part of that, even in any minute way, I was more than happy to do that.”
Mr. Davis had made it to 1994 when in September, 2010, he stood up at one of former mayor Sam Sullivan’s public salons and stunned the crowd: He was dying, he said, and he needed people to help him finish his book.
A few weeks later – a year ago this weekend – Mr. Davis, who had just turned 75, did indeed die, of lung cancer, and the future of his herculean project was in question.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Comments