Talk:John Deighton
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[edit] Title should be John "Gassy Jack" Deighton
Or Jack Deighton, as he was known when not referred to by his sobriquet. John may have been his legal name, which is why Canadian Biography lists him that way, but it's not his "name" in terms of BC history. One reason is that most people who might know who Gassy Jack is and even might know his name was Jack Deighton would not make the John-Jack association, especially if they're not native anglophones. I'll be adding a writeup on his prior adventures in BC as well as some of the social politics of Gastown and New Westminster which affected him; from the Olga Ruskin book which unfortunately I don't own a copy of any more and will have to find. I'll see if I can find a public-domain image of him also.Skookum1 23:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
- Gassy Jack is a redirect to this page. --Dogbreathcanada 04:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I know; but it should be in the primary title - that's what I'm saying.Skookum1 07:21, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] POV statement regarding crime
Had to take it out after a second look today:
- The opening of the bar brought crime, with in a year a patron of the bar was brutally murdered. Still today a large part amount of murders in Vancouver occur in the general area of gastown.
My original inline comment: "this is higly POV and out-of-context for old Gastown; it was hardly Jack's fault that loggers, millworkers and sailors were a bunch of murderous thugs, drunk or not; this sounds like police anti-alcohol propaganda, not surprising given the external link; and it's not as if there weren't violence throughout the colony, either, given the nearly all-male nature of the society"
But to continue, the idea that bars and violence are linked is as old as civilization; but so are cities and violence, money and violence, humans and violence. The statement here obviously came from the crime site in the References section, and is tainted in its very tut-tut tone; "the general area of gastown" (sic) here obviously also used to refer to East Hastings, which actually isn't in Gastown. And, back to the quote, murder was commonplace on the frontier for all sorts of reasons; accelerated by alcohol perhaps, but this is hardly the story of the Globe, or Gassy Jack; it's very much the anti-bar politicking common in Vancouver authorities' media releases, however. A more relevant context for "within a year" is the number of other businesses that opened in the same one-block stretch (to Abbott, more or less), and it should be remembered that other establishments that opened - hotels and restaurants - also served alcohol (as did any business in BC until Prohibition). The person who was murdered was doubtless also a patron of the Granville Hotel, Wah Sing Laundry, and Joe Silvey's store - "the opening of the laundry brought crime, and within a year a patron of the laundry was brutally murdered" is almost a comparable phrase (all the moreso because Wah Sing probably sold shots, like everybody else). OK, if there was a killing IN Jack's bar - on the premises - then the fact that the killer and victim were also patrons of Gastown's other businesses is less to the point; but given the rain, the demographic, the lifestyle, it's not as if this murder wouldn't have happened in the mill's barracks, or on the docks (if it was a sailor), i.e. if the bar/alcohol hadn't been there. Maybe woulda helped if the local constable wasn't a full-time lush! Moodyville was famously dry, by the way; Gastown made no pretense of being so, and crews and captains from ships docked at Moodyville drank on the south side of the inlet, likewise workers from Barnet. The only dry establishment I can think of in early Gastown was Mrs. Sullivan's Methodist Hall. But back to the murder - this was a rowdy, hard-living North Pacific port town, connected to San Francisco, Canton, Hawaii, Panama, Sydney, Manila, etc, and it's not as if these guys spent time reading prayer-books. So "the onset of international commerce brought crime" is a reasonably equivalent statement (then as now).
I have more details on the Globe and Jack's own history (remember from the Ruskin book, which I'll get from the library so I can do page-cites in a rewrite). One main item worth fixing here is that the reason that the Globe was built where it is (dang near in the middle of the crowfoot intersection formed by Alexander, Powell, Carrall and Water - actually sort of in the angle of Alexander and Water) was it was the VERY EDGE of the mill property, right where the mill's original clearcut ended and the "primeval forest" began. There was also a small beach at that spot, with the location ringed by small maples, hence the old Squamish or Musqueam name Lucklucky, meaning "maples". Doesn't sound like much unless you consider the relative rarity of deciduous growth in the first-growth era; and the lighter colour, smaller boles and so on (easier to clear). Shoddy civic history funding has seen the erection of a monument to Lucklucky in Crab Park, claiming to be the location of Jack's landing-spot, but that was a good hundred yards offshore in deep water in those days.Skookum1 20:07, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
PS and Jack returned to riverboat work when his relations took over the bar for a bit; it was in fact his first work after his arrival in BC, and he was one of the first guys to voyage Harrison Lake (under sail on a raft, as steam engines took a while to ship) and was a regular steamer captain between New Westminster and Yale in the heyday of the Fraser Canyon and Cariboo gold rushes; the Globe in New West was where he'd invested his bankroll from that, and the Globe in what was to become Gastown was an echo of that name.Skookum1 20:07, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
