When retired commercial pilot Keith Mecham pulled the back out of an antique mirror he was restoring at his Pablo Creek home Jan. 11, he found a March 12, 1910 issue of The Globe Saturday Magazine.
“It was in the backing of the mirror,” Mecham said. “When you turned the mirror over there was laminate on the back and it was curling and I could see just a corner of the paper.”
Using a nail remover, he took off the backing and revealed what looked pretty “interesting” to him.
The front cover is a black and white photograph of a woman with holding snowshoes, titled the “Snow Shoe Girl.”
It’s a picture Mecham wouldn’t mind putting in a frame, he said.
Flipping through the brittle and discoloured pages, Mecham chuckled.
“I like this one,” he said of the humour section. “You don’t see these anymore, these strips of comedy. Those always used to be in the papers. Cartoon characters and things like that.”
The issue also included a story about the Maori, about a new pool and gymnasium for women only, a group shot of the 12th British Columbia legislature, King Edward in the British parliament, and the winning portrait photo of a woman, but it doesn’t include her name.
The mirror is the type that has coat hangers on the top.
“It was in an old building since I was a kid growing up in Bella Coola,” Mecham recalled. “It was around before I knew about.”
When the building was torn down, Mecham ended up with the mirror and now that he’s retired, was planning to restore it.
“The coat hangers were kind of rusty, and I thought I didn’t want to take the rust colour away, but thought maybe I’d Shellac it and clean it up. It was when I turned it over, because the back was all coming off, that I saw the paper.”
Mecham brought the paper to the Tribune because he thought someone reading the story might be interested.
“I didn’t want to get rid of it,” he said. “The age for starter interested me.”
The Globe was the predecessor to The Globe and Mail, founded in 1844 by Scottish immigrant, George Brown, later one of the Fathers of Confederation. Kind of fitting considering Mecham (Meekum) is of Scottish descent.
“I phoned in for pizza one time. When they asked how I spell my name I said, ‘Mike Echo Charlie Hotel Alpha Mike,’ so when I picked up the pizza that’s what they had written on the pizza,” he recalled.