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Maintaining the wire: The story of a forgotten telegraph line
Maintaining the telegraph service between Nelson and Kootenay Landing between 1898 and 1930 was not for the faint of heart.
Michael A. Cone
Feb 111 min read
483 views
6 comments


The Coffee Creek coffeehouse
What happened to the coffeehouse and resort that existed at Coffee Creek in the late 1940s and early 1950s?
Greg Nesteroff
Oct 10, 20248 min read
688 views
8 comments


Crawford Bay Canning and Preserving
The story of a rare jam tin from an obscure company that operated on the East Shore of Kootenay Lake in 1909.
Greg Nesteroff
May 13, 20243 min read
429 views
2 comments


The legendary Jack Lloyd: Effective, controversial, and enduring
The West Kootenay connection to a famous but divisive fishing lure.
Michael A. Cone
Mar 5, 202410 min read
945 views
5 comments


The Nelson boathouse fire of 1915
Intrigued by a photo of the charred remains of boathouses in Nelson, Michael Cone tracks down what happened.
Michael A. Cone
May 6, 20236 min read
574 views
0 comments


The remarkable steam launches of Captain Troup
While James W. Troup was renowned for building sternwheelers in the West Kootenay, Michael Cone recounts three steam launches he owned.
Michael A. Cone
Mar 30, 20237 min read
494 views
2 comments


The phantom miner of Crawford Bay
A ghost story from a local mine, presented for the first time in 121 years.
Greg Nesteroff
Oct 30, 20223 min read
1,557 views
0 comments


Doukhobors at Procter and Sunshine Bay
The 1918 and 1919 civic directories listed a Doukhobor beekeeping colony at Procter. Who were they?
Jonathan Kalmakoff and Greg Nesteroff
Aug 4, 202114 min read
1,463 views
2 comments


The Balfour store
The following memoir by Allison Holt of Victoria looks back on the store that her family ran at Balfour from about 1913-15 and 1919-45....
Greg Nesteroff
Jun 17, 20206 min read
695 views
0 comments


The Housekeeping trestle
One of the chief set pieces of the movie Housekeeping, filmed in the fall of 1986 in and around Nelson and Castlegar, was a huge wooden...
Greg Nesteroff
Jun 7, 20205 min read
2,216 views
0 comments


First mention of the Cody Caves
Prospector Henry Cody (1861?-1921) is said to have stumbled across the cave system near Ainsworth that bears his name in the late 1880s....
Greg Nesteroff
Dec 28, 20193 min read
1,510 views
0 comments


The hotels of Pilot Bay
This week, a rare envelope from the Hotel Pilot Bay, postmarked 1897, sold on eBay for $115 US. Making it all the more appealing, it was...
Greg Nesteroff
Mar 23, 201917 min read
3,425 views
1 comment


10 West Kootenay Boundary drive-in theatres
Is anything more nostalgic (at least to certain generations) than a drive-in theatre? From 1947 to 2003, at least 10 of them operated in...
Greg Nesteroff
Mar 17, 201916 min read
6,936 views
6 comments


A Japanese-Canadian soldier’s grave
The most unusual military grave in the Nelson cemetery is the one seen below, which belongs to Usaku Shibuta, who died at the Balfour...
Greg Nesteroff
Feb 28, 20198 min read
1,109 views
2 comments


Crystal Hall
It sounds like something out of Game of Thrones, but the evocatively-named Crystal Hall at Willow Point on Kootenay Lake was made of...
Greg Nesteroff
Feb 22, 20192 min read
427 views
1 comment


First Nations faces in Procter
I bought the photo below about eight years ago. It shows a group on the lawn of the Outlet Hotel in Procter, long a popular spot for...
Greg Nesteroff
Feb 8, 20191 min read
543 views
0 comments


An aquatic prodigy on Kootenay Lake
In 1923, Frances West (also known as Florence), the six-year-old daughter of Edbert West, manager of the Ogilvie elevator in Taber,...
Greg Nesteroff
Jan 21, 20193 min read
1,374 views
0 comments


Clark Gable in Kuskonook?
Helena White’s 1984 booklet, Sixty Bloomin’ Years: A History of Creston, British Columbia contains this statement on page 21: “Moviegoers...
Greg Nesteroff
Jan 10, 20192 min read
640 views
0 comments


Fake news, 1899: a wedding and a coffin on Kootenay Lake
The following story is completely fabricated. The names and circumstances were made up but passed off as genuine. It says something...
Greg Nesteroff
Jan 1, 20195 min read
607 views
0 comments


The Balfour Bugle
At the bottom of this page is a rare copy of the debut issue of The Balfour Bugle, the newspaper published by and for convalescing...
Greg Nesteroff
Sep 30, 20184 min read
1,481 views
1 comment
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