If you haven’t, this is the story behind it.
Because the participants have been mostly families with young kids, the weekly prizes have changed to things that might appeal more to kids than precious metals, but the monthly gold bar is still on offer.
Easter passed, but then Braye came up with the idea of a treasure hunt.
Braye is on disability, so he has the time for projects like this, and he manages his finances very carefully, so he has some extra cash around.
Braye created a Facebook group, Lake Cowichan Treasure Hunters, where he posts clues for the hunts.
Over the first few weeks, Braye made the weekly hunt about more than just the bar of silver, adding prizes for kids like squirt guns, chocolate coins and other candy, and colouring books to the haul.
Although the money for the first few treasure hunts came out of Braye’s pocket, The Tube Shack recently got in touch with him to help out.
The weekly hunt may have changed, but the monthly gold hunt is still on, with the first one taking place on May 29.
Braye had taken his own copy of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and cut a hole out of the pages with an X-acto knife just big enough for the bar of silver.
Gerrie and her four grandchildren — Kenley and Mylan Knott, 12 and 9, respectively, from Lake Cowichan, and Karmyn and Gavin Say, 5 and 2, respectively, from Sidney — were watching eagerly as the 11 a.m.
They sat in Knott’s truck in the middle of town, refreshing Facebook repeatedly.
“They were jumping, they were so excited,” Knott remembers.
If Braye’s vision continues to come to life, he will soon expand the treasure hunt idea to Duncan, Chemainus, Nanaimo, Victoria, Vancouver and beyond, bringing in new people to coordinate the hunts in each community.