THE KÜTNE READER

A few months ago I was forwarded this tattered but terrific photo, previously unseen (at least by me). It shows the Silver King Hotel and Hyde, Titsworth & Co. grocery in Nelson, sometime between 1896 and 1900. The building stood on Baker Street near Ward, next to the KWC block (although this photo was taken before the latter was built). It’s now the site of Still Eagle, Phoenix Computers, and until recently, Sandrella’s Boutique. I’ve included another image at bottom that pl

Second in a series on signs that outlived the businesses they advertised. This one is on the back of the building at 607 Front St. in Nelson and is visible from Lakeside Ave. According to BC Assessment, the building was put up in 1910. J.Y. Griffin & Co. Ltd. of Winnipeg operated a meat packing business there. W.M. McGillis was listed in the civic directory as the local manager. In 1914, the directory shows that Swift Canadian Co. was now at that location, with T.E. Lavasseur

There is a space between Vernon and Lake streets in Nelson that, near as I can tell, has always been vacant. Several buildings have been proposed, but none ever built. The area is seen below in a ca. 1899-1900 photo that belongs to Doug Jones, and extends between the Lakeview Hotel seen at left and the Kootenay Supply Co. at right. By 1945, the City of Nelson owned the property. Nelson Auto Wrecking had previously expressed interest in the seven lots (Block 67, Lots 18-24). N

This is the first in a series looking at phantom signs of West Kootenay/Boundary. I thought I would start with a Nelson building that has two of them: 524 Vernon Street, now home to Jackson’s Hole restaurant. The more obvious sign, which was touched up perhaps 20 years ago, is for Algernon Sidney Horswill, who operated his wholesale business here from the 1910s until 1929 in what was previously known as the McDonald block. (Prior to that Horswill was at 420 Baker St.) Horswil

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

When he wasn’t out sleuthing, Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street in London. According to Wikipedia , at the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his stories in the 19th century, that fictional address did not exist. But when the real Baker Street was extended, the Abbey National Building Society moved into 219-229 Baker, and “employed a full-time secretary to answer mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes.” In 1990, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, at 237-241 Baker, installed a

Former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg was assassinated on Dec. 30, 1905 when a bomb exploded at his house in Caldwell. The sole person convicted of the crime — although he implicated others — was Albert Horsely, aka Harry Orchard (1866-1954). Orchard spent time in Nelson and Pilot Bay in 1896-97. We know this because of Orchard’s testimony at his sensational trial and what he wrote in The Confessions and Autobiography of Harry Orchard (1907), p. 14-15. Albert Horsely, aka

My wife recently surprised me with the gift of a 1978 Robert Inwood print of Malone Manor. For 88 years, it was one of Nelson’s most prominent heritage homes. But fewer and fewer people even remember it existed. The house was at the corner of Front and Cherry streets. This is the description given in Nelson: A Proposal for Urban Heritage Conservation, which listed its street address as 1102 Front Street (formerly Water Street) and its legal description as Lots 1-4, Block 80.

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,

Nelson boasts about 350 heritage buildings — commercial, residential, and institutional — based on those listed in 1981 in Nelson: A Proposal for Urban Heritage Conservation . However, the city’s heritage planning webpage identifies 206 heritage sites (not all buildings), including 69 on the Canadian Register of Historic Places, of which 12 are municipally designated. One of the latter ( the CP station ) is also federally designated. There are also 137 more sites on the comm

From 1907 to 1911, members of the Patrick family lived in Nelson while operating a lumber company that owned timber limits in the Slocan Valley. The Patricks shaped hockey as we know it, introducing innovations such as the blue line, assists, penalty shot, farm system and playoff system. Brothers Lester and Frank were all-star players, coaches, and managers who led Nelson to a provincial championship in 1909 and made noises about challenging for the Stanley Cup . Sisters Dora

I just wrote a blog post for Nelson Kootenay Lake Tourism about Nelson’s Big Orange Bridge, which was originally silver, as seen in the postcard below. You can read it here . The same page has lots of interesting information about local attractions, historical and otherwise, including Streetcar 23, the Lardeau Valley Historical Centre, and Nelson Fire and Rescue Museum under the Arts, Culture, and Heritage tab. Here’s the front cover of the program from the bridge’s opening.

Last year I bought three letters on eBay mailed in 1905-06 by Alexander Howard McIntyre from Nelson to his family in Middleville, Lanark County, Ont. I’ve transcribed and annotated them — they’re fun reading, and it was fun to figure out what happened to the man who wrote them. As a preface, it helps to know that McIntyre was born in 1883 in Middleville, the youngest of five children of Alexander Robb (Allie) McIntyre and Mary Somerville. Mary died scarcely two months after H

Below is an ad that appeared in Trade and Commerce magazine in March 1962. It’s a fascinating aerial photo of Nelson from an unusual angle. Judging from the lack of snow, I presume it was taken sometime in 1961. Of particular note is the bottom section (which I really wish they they hadn’t obscured with a black bar). It shows the seldom-photographed intersection of Front and Hall streets, including several buildings that no longer exist. The large building on the far left (la

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

When the Nelson Daily News celebrated its 50th anniversary in April 1952, they printed a special supplement that included mugshots of all of their employees. The most intriguing was Amelia Thompson, about whom a short story appeared elsewhere in the same section: “She was highly respected,” said the late Alan Ramsden, who then worked at CKLN, the radio station owned by the Daily News. “She was one of the proofreaders, particularly of misused words, like their/there/they’re. S

The man who carved the signs seen below (or at least their original iteration) has died at 94. According to his obituary , Art Waldie was a wood carver from the age of five until carpal tunnel syndrome forced him to stop in his late 70s. He was a prolific artist, whose work included a coat of arms to commemorate a visit to Nelson by the Archbishop of Canterbury. But his best-known works were Nelson’s welcome signs. In 1995, with the city’s centennial a couple of years away,

I was sorry to hear of the passing of Nelson’s Lois Arnesen (pictured below) on New Year’s Eve. I wrote a profile of Lois in 2012 for the Nelson Star ’s Kootenay Pioneers series. Lois was a life-long resident of Nelson. Her parents, Bert and Jeanne Whimster, arrived here in the early 1920. She was well known for her 21 years as a Welcome Wagon hostess — in fact she greeted me to Nelson in 2010. She was named Nelson’s Citizen of the Year for 2012. She was also one of three p

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