Valerie Green - Above Stairs. Social Life in Upper-Class Victoria 1843–1918

L: Senator G.H. Barnard. R: Sir Frank Stillman Barnard.
IMAGE CVA 98108-33-3371 + IMAGE CVA 98610-01-2860

[Barnard]... made a gallant fight and the time will come when... [his]... action will be fully appreciated by the party which unfortunately for them as they will find out could not stand together in a trying and difficult period in its history.

Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, January 1902, describing the results of a by-election involving Francis Stillman Barnard as Conservative candidate and George Riley, the Liberal

Two nights before, the noise had been deafening. An angry mob threatening to storm the building was quite terrifying.

It was May 1915, and Frank Barnard, lieutenant-governor of British Columbia, sat in his office at Government House pondering the events that had led up to the terrible night of May 15 when news of the sinking of the Lusitania had reached the city. He could not, in truth, blame the people. They were justified in being disillusioned and depressed by the news coming from the war, and the Lusitania had merely been the catastrophe necessary to incite them to violence. One of Victorias own, a Dunsmuir no less, had gone down with the ship.

The mob had gathered in town and marched to various buildings, leaving a path of destruction in its wake, the object of the crowds anger being any German name or German connection.

When someone suggested they march on Government House, they had not taken much persuading. The people remembered that Franks wife, Martha, was a Loewen, and the very sound of her maiden name was more than enough for a mob in full stride. Frank could still hear the angry shouting, the distressing abuse hurled at his beloved Martha. It had sent her to her bed, where she had remained ever since, overwhelmed by the hatred being addressed to her.

Frank had tried to explain that she was merely a scapegoat. The people hardly knew what they were saying; it was a scenario typical of mass hysteria. But his words of comfort had fallen on deaf ears. She told him she would never understand such unreasonable fury.

Now, guards were patrolling the grounds and were positioned at the gates. Things had quieted down, and Frank knew that eventually life would return to normal. Or would it? Was this, he wondered, perhaps the end of the old order? Was the attack not merely against Germanythe enemybut also against a certain way of life that, after this terrible war was over, would no longer exist?

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