THE KÜTNE READER

A draft script of the Steve Martin movie filmed in Nelson in 1986 that I found on eBay is much different than the finished product.

If the greatest name in jazz history performed at the Civic Arena, how many people would turn up?

Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Wanda Jackson all performed in Trail as part of the same show in 1957.

Before Evel Knievel was a motorcycle stuntman, he was Bob Knievel, hockey player.

The singer-songwriter behind Don’t Worry Be Happy spent at least one month of his youth in Nelson.

The Chad Mitchell Trio, who counted Trail native Mike Kobluk as a member, performed in Trail on Feb. 19, 1962.

Folk singer Pete Seeger said he once performed a concert in Trail. But when?

A man Miles Davis called “the greatest musician in the world” briefly went to school in Nelson.

In 1937, prominent suffragette Nellie McClung visited Nelson. (Pictured in an undated photo from Library and Archives Canada, PA-032012.) She wrote about it in her book More Leaves from Lantern Lane , a collection of her newspaper columns, published later that year (one of 18 books she wrote). Then a Victoria resident, she recorded observations about snow conditions, the lack of a bridge across Kootenay Lake, the newly-built Civic Centre and its theatre, opposition to fundin

1930s stage and film actress Victoria Hopper (1909-2007) spent part of her childhood in Trail. Although the city has done an excellent job of celebrating the successes of its native sons and daughters, her Kootenay connection has mostly flown beneath the radar. Victoria Hopper depicted on a 1934 tobacco card promoting the film Lorna Doone . Hopper was born in Vancouver to Matthew Garfield (Gar) Hopper and Elizabeth Jane Rutherford, who were both from Dunston-on-Tyne England.

It’s sort of well known that before earning stardom as Frankenstein’s monster, Boris Karloff performed on the stage in Nelson. But it has not been previously revealed that another future horror movie star appeared there as well. Karloff joined the Jeanne Russell Co. at Kamloops in September 1911, despite having no stage experience. He was actually an Englishman named William Henry Pratt. Part of his stage name probably came from a character in the play The Man on the Box . De

Helena White’s 1984 booklet, Sixty Bloomin’ Years: A History of Creston, British Columbia contains this statement on page 21: “Moviegoers were thrilled to learn that Clark Gable had been recognized in the area. The actor was on holiday at Kootenay Cottages on the lake.” Intrigued, I asked Creston Museum manager Tammy Bradford about it. She quickly found the source, an item in the Creston Review of Aug. 11, 1939. Bradford adds: “I took a quick look at the local and personal

Inventor Thomas Edison (seen below in a Wikipedia photo) passed through Nelson 110 years ago. While his visit was fleeting, he told a reporter that concrete houses were the way of the future. He was wrong, although he spent considerable efforts experimenting with molds to create such houses, going so far as to create a demonstration cottage at his New Jersey home. The following appeared in the Nelson Daily News on Sept. 6, 1908. I’m indebted to Greg Scott for discovering it

Many’s the time I’ve come across something historically interesting in a newspaper only to: a) Fail to fully appreciate its significance and not bother to write down the information or its source; b) Write down the information but not the source; or c) Write down the information and the source but lose the slip of paper. This may be followed by years of fruitless efforts to rediscover the said item, often led astray by own hazy memory. Below are six examples of these Holy Gra

Did William Randolph Hearst (pictured below in a photo from Wikipedia), the larger-than-life American newspaper publisher who invented (or at least popularized) tabloid journalism, vacation in West Kootenay? Walter McRaye, sidekick to Pauline Johnson, the poet who toured Canadian concert halls in the early 1900s, related the following anecdote in his memoir: I was told a good story in Nelson not long ago by J.E. Carter of the CPR who, by the way, once lived in Winnipeg and ma

Notorious train robber Bill Miner had a lookalike in Nelson. This story appeared in the Nelson Daily News on Nov. 16, 1911 and was located by former Castlegar-area resident Byng Giraud. It was published shortly after Miner was nabbed for one of his many prison escapes. WILLIAM NOBLE, NELSON MAN, INTRODUCED AS BILL MINER Mistaken for the notorious train robber “Bill” Miner, followed by amateur sleuths for days, questioned by regular detectives, and finally introduced by his fr

Did crooner Bing Crosby (pictured below in a Wikpedia photo) hang out in the West Kootenay before stardom? There are several suggestions he did but, while it’s not impossible, the proof is scanty. Crosby was born in Tacoma in 1903 but his family moved to Spokane when he was three. In Tracks of the Beaver Valley & Pend’Oreille (2002), Anna Reeves writes on p. 61: “Joan and Leo Langergraber were listening to a talk show host interview Bing Crosby concerning Bing’s early boyhood

Did novelist Jack London once work in a tie camp at Lardeau? Jack London (Wikipedia/ Little Pilgrimages , p. 235) The author is best known for his works related to the Klondike Gold Rush, including The Call of the Wild and White Fang. This story appeared with a Vancouver dateline in the Nelson Daily News of Oct. 3, 1929, under the headline “Jack London was no good as BC lumberjack, says [sic].” Jack London may have been in a class by himself in writing about the rugged nort

In 1950, a man registered himself in a Vancouver hotel as Walt Disney. He certainly looked like the famed cartoonist. On that basis, he “was wined and dined … by the manager of a city club.” He also promised to visit children’s hospital and draw for the patients. “I like to feel I am working for the kids,” he said. But he wasn’t Disney. In fact, he was a cook from a logging camp near Nelson. Someone got suspicious and complained to police, who arrested him, and had an ingeni