1913 Victoria, BC, Canada

Bedford Regency Hotel, Victoria, Canada

formerly the Hibben-Bone Building

Newspaper report from
The Week  12 April, 1913
(Victoria, BC, Canada)

Personalities

I see that my old friend Vasco de Gama Loureiro Peacherino is in town again. I regard him as one of the mysteries of the age. He has the facility of disappearing and reappearing. With him it is a case of 'now you see him and now you don't'. I begin to wonder where he spends his spare time. I know that in the summer months he may generally be found on one of the 'Empresses' in the Sound or in the Straits, sketching profiles. I know that in the winter he is supposed to go south, which means to Australia. But this winter he must have broken his rule, because he was in Victoria with the 'Vigilantes' or the 'Versatiles' or the 'Elks', or whatever they call themselves. Last week end he attracted the usual crowd by sketching the 'Elks' Antics' in Hibbens' windows; but when the 'Antics' were over he disappeared again, and now I haven't the least idea where he is. However, I am quite sure that he will bob up again serenely. He will be sketching, and he will be wearing the soft cap and long silk flowing tie, without which no Bohemian artist considers himself properly dressed.

Notes:

-       'Vasco de Gama' was a reference to Vasco Loureiro's more famous Portuguese namesake.
-       'Peacherino' seems like local slang of uncertain meaning. It suggests 'cool'.
-       The 'Empresses' were Canadian Pacific Rail's trans-Pacific liners. The ships Vasco worked on in the Sound and Straits are more likely to have been CPR's 'Princesses'.
-       If Vasco 'went south' in the period 1909-1913, it was not to Australia. His most likely destination was California but he may also have travelled to eastern Canada. He returned to Australia in late 1913.
-       The 'Vigilantes', 'Versatiles' or 'Elks' probably refers to a meeting of the Elks, a fraternal lodge.
-       'Hibbens' window' refers to the Hibben-Bone Building. Now the Bedford Regency Hotel, the ground floor windows of this building appear largely unaltered and, in mid-2012, there was a piano. Do people still perform in the window? It was part of Vasco's modus operandi that he would employ again in a tailor's window in High Street Brightlingsea in 1917, a year before his death.