Sue War Laundry

Here's some more ghost signs from Chinatown. The one above is on Herald Street and the clearest words I can make out are the "Sue War Laundry" which appears twice. Chinese laundries were so common in the old west that they have become a cliche. But though many Chinese may have come here as lowly laborers, they quickly moved into unoccupied niches in the business world (such as laundries) and within a few generations they had migrated into the professions as was the case in other parts of the world. While I was in Maui a few weeks ago I was interested to discover some parallels between Chinese who went there to work on the sugar plantations and Chinese who came here to work on the railroad or in the gold fields. BC was known to China as "The Golden Mountain" while Hawaii was called, "The Sandalwood Mountain."

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Fellow victoria blogger Mike Laplante has also collected some interesting local ghost signs you can see on his blog by clicking HERE.

Everybody Smokes Old Chum

It's always interesting to see these old ghost signs and there are quite a few on the sides of buildings in the oldest parts of Victoria. The one above is on Fisgard and has obviously been painted over a few times. I can also make out the phrase "navy cut" which referred to tobacco cut a little coarser than normal for cigarettes. But the phrase appears to be painted under the words Old Chum. Above it I think I can see a faint "Players", the name of a brand of cigarettes that utilized navy cut tobacco. People still smoke but their numbers are decreasing every day. Today there are half as many smokers as there were 50 years ago, and soon, like this sign, smoking will just be a historical curiosity.