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.

Documents released by Library and Archives Canada help put names and faces to people otherwise omitted from history books.

Larry Kwong was the first Chinese Canadian to play senior hockey in the Kootenays. But he was not the only one.

Several envelopes that sold at auction have intriguing connections to West Kootenay Japanese-Canadian, Chinese Canadian, and mining history.

When Kinji Nagatani died at Willowhaven Hospital on Kootenay Lake’s North Shore in 1970, with him went the amazing story of a roving gambler who stowed away aboard a trans-Pacific freighter, lost his life savings in a game of chance, and briefly avoided the Japanese-Canadian internment by hiding in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Fortunately he told much of it to Nelson’s Jim Sawada, who shared it with me. Kinji Nagatani lived at 606 Front Street in Nelson, seen here in a photo recrea

After writing about Chinese-indigenous births at Rock Creek , I received a message from Nelson’s Mona Smith, who noted that her mother, aunt, and uncles were born to Chinese-Canadian parents in Midway in the 1920s. She put me in touch with her uncle in Ontario, Johnnie Bing, and loaned me several volumes of family history he compiled. Therein lies a fascinating tale. This old truck from the 1940s or so sits on the Bing property at Willow Point. Johnnie’s dad, Soo Bing Quan, a

You heard it here last: Larry Kwong , the NHL’s first player of Asian descent and the oldest Trail Smoke Eaters alumnus, died on March 15, 2018 in Calgary, age 94. Kwong played for Trail in 1941-42 and 1945-46. I was reminded of him today when I came across the team program for 1946-47 at the Selkirk College Archives, which featured his picture and biography (seen at right and below). Though he only stood 5-foot-6, Kwong had a giant nickname: King Kwong. The Vernon native wa

The Nelson Museum recently posted a photo of the wedge-shaped building at 606 Front Street their Flickr account. It doesn’t look like much today, and looked like even less in the 1960s or ‘70s when that photo was taken. Today it has a vaguely Tudor-style look to it, and I always imagined it dated to the 1940s or ‘50s. Wrong. It turns out this not-so-stunning building is actually of high historic value: it’s one of only three surviving buildings from Chinatown. (The others ar

I recently wrote about Holy Grail historical items — things I once saw somewhere and couldn’t find again. I’m pleased to report that I’ve rediscovered one. I had a vague memory of coming across the names of some Chinese chefs on the SS Slocan and thinking it was an interesting nugget of information. But not, it seems, interesting enough that I bothered to note where I found it. I thought it might have been in one of the civic directories, which did list crew members, or at

Between 1872 and 1923, at least 12 Chinese Canadian births occurred at Rock Creek. This was noteworthy for a few reasons. First, there was perhaps only one other such birth elsewhere in the Boundary during that time. Most of these births preceded the first Chinese Canadian births in West Kootenay (two in Nelson and five in Kaslo during the same period). But even more intriguing: all 12 people were actually of mixed ancestry, part Chinese and part Indigenous. Rock Creek is see

The photo below, taken in 1950, shows the evocative Mar Sam laundry at the corner of Front, Lake, and Ward streets in Nelson. You’ll recognize it as the spot where Charcuterie Totoche is today. The laundry was in business in Nelson for nearly 60 years. Mar Sam was first listed in the 1892 and 1893 directories as running a laundry on Vernon Street, the west end of which was then Nelson’s Chinatown. At the 1894 Dominion Day celebration, Mar Sam finished first in the “200 yards,

In 2018, the Kootenay Lake Historical Society reprinted the 1980 book Pioneer Families of Kaslo in a revised and expanded form. My contribution was providing notes about and securing photos of Jim Kee, a Chinese-Canadian merchant. Jim and Annie Kee, 1947. (Courtesy Russel Lang) One weak spot of the original book was that it only contained profiles of white families, and mostly British ones at that (not the fault of the folks who put it together; they put out a call for submi

Only one building from Nelson’s red light district survives: 601 Lake Street (pictured below in the fall of 2017), now home to Full Circle Family Health, Little Dragon Medicinals, and Starr Healing. According to Nelson: A Proposal for Urban Heritage Conservation , the legal description is Parcel A of Block 61, Lots 23 and 24, and it was built in 1900. (The BC Assessment Authority puts the date as 1901, but that is usually code for “we don’t know how old it is.”) I don’t know