THE KÜTNE READER

Uhachi Kihara’s burial site is marked, but the cause of his death is unknown. The cause of Yet Sue’s death is known, but we don’t know where he was buried.

The only person killed in the fire that destroyed most of Sandon in 1900 has long been forgotten, despite a marked grave that notes the circumstances of his death.

In the 1930s, a Kaslo resident claimed to be the first — and for a time, only — woman in Canada digging graves.

It was the end of the work day at the Abbott mine on Jan. 8, 1896. The property was at the head of Healy Creek, near Trout Lake, on the...

Salmo first came to prominence as the result of a bar room murder in 1893. The town — then little more than a cluster of shacks — was...

The most unusual military grave in the Nelson cemetery is the one seen below, which belongs to Usaku Shibuta, who died at the Balfour...

Despite being such an historic and picturesque site, little has been written about the history of New Denver’s cemetery — until now. This story originally appeared in the Winter 2019 edition of The Silver Standard , the newsletter of the Silvery Slocan Historical Society. The Silvery Slocan Historical Society hosted a well-attended tour of the New Denver cemetery in October 2018. (Paula Cravens photo) In the upper, lower, and Masonic sections lie the remains of nearly 1,000 p

Of the 100 or so cemeteries in West Kootenay/Boundary, two dozen can no longer be visited because they were either flooded out, exhumed,...

The dramatic story of the Bluebell murder, how Thomas Hammill (or Hamill, or Hammil) died near present-day Riondel on Kootenay Lake, allegedly at the hands of Robert Sproule, has been told many times. But the story of Hammill’s grave and grave markers — there are two or three of the latter, depending on how you count them — has not. Remarkably, none of these markers now denote the precise location where Hammill was buried. To briefly recap the case: Sproule staked the Bluebel

One of most poignant epitaphs I’ve ever seen appears on twin gravemarkers in what is probably West Kootenay’s most remote cemetery. The Hamel siblings, Adélia Annee Lilly and Willy Joseph Alphonse, died at Comaplix, on the northeast arm of Upper Arrow Lake, in 1903. Their gravemarkers read in French: Quand on est pur comme à ton âge le dernier jour est le plus beau . Translated, “When one is pure as at your age, the last day is the most beautiful.” I’ve written about them bef

In 2008, I wrote a story for Route 3 magazine about the Thomas (or Tomas) Higstrim grave at Ainsworth Hot Springs, which dates to 1891 and is West Kootenay’s oldest marked grave in situ . There are certainly many older, unmarked First Nations graves. There are also older sets of remains that were re-interred in Nelson Memorial Park and the Sinixt burial ground at Vallican. But Higstrim’s posthumous distinction is that he’s been in the same marked grave longer than anyone els

Sam McGee wasn’t cremated in the Yukon — he was buried in Kaslo. Here’s his grave marker to prove it, as it appeared in 2008: I say this tongue in cheek, of course. The Kaslo McGee had nothing to do with Robert Service’s famous poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee , published in 1907. But it’s nevertheless startling to read the name on this weathered wooden headboard — one of a few such remaining markers. The full epitaph is: In memoriam Sam McGee Born Co. Donegal Ireland Died Ma

In 1989, Donna Bishop and Joan Field produced a report for the Salmo Arts and Museum Society entitled Dewdney Trail 1865. They wrote the following of the confluence of the Salmo and Pend d’Oreille rivers under the heading “Ghost Flats.” There are many stories as to who was buried here. Some say the graves have been there since the turn of the century. What we do know is that they were travellers or settlers on the Dewdney Trail. This gravesite was apparently moved in 1949 wh

There’s an oft-heard tale about the burial of a black brothel keeper in the Slocan cemetery. According to the Castlegar News of June 24, 1976: [Harry] Nixon recalls a story told him of a grave just outside the cemetery. A lady of ill repute died and the women of the church refused to have her buried in the cemetery. In a history of Slocan, Frank Hufty wrote: They had a red light district in Slocan too. When the madam died, the townspeople wouldn’t let her be buried in the ce