THE KÜTNE READER

The village has nothing to do with Rossland, BC. But how did it get its name?

In the 1960s, a medal from the 1900 Rossland Winter Carnival was found north of Oslo. Also: how did Ferguson get designated a heritage site?

Martha Collins was a pioneer prospector and hotel keeper whose name was once known in every mining camp in the west.

New discoveries reveal that Doukhobors were finding their way to British Columbia several years before a mass migration began in 1908.

In 1956, local Greyhound driver Max Carne was taking his bus over the old Santa Rosa Pass between Rossland and Grand Forks — a gravel road otherwise known as the Hump. As Vancouver Sun reporter Tom Hazlitt once described it: It is the first, the highest, and the wildest provincial highway in BC. It was built with gold, sweat, and donkeys in the record time of seven months … Only on the Hump can you have a snowball fight in June or experience the eerie feeling of driving strai

During West Kootenay’s mining boom of the 1890s, newspapers popped up like Starbucks franchises. But lugging a printing press into a remote area was no small chore. Consequently, many presses churned out several titles before being retired. In 1962, during land clearing for a resort at Trout Lake, a bulldozer unearthed a hand-cranked press, seen above in the Nelson Daily News on June 23 of that year. The caption read in part: [T]his ancient Washington hand press … appeared f

I was thrilled to find a postcard for sale on eBay recently of Nelson/Rossland pioneer Wesley Ziegler. It was taken by Campbell Art Gallery of Nelson sometime in the 1910s but never mailed. The Nelson Museum has a slightly different view from the same photo session. I have written about Ziegler before, in a story for Route 3 magazine about West Kootenay’s mostly little-known black pioneers. Ziegler (or Zeigler), otherwise known as Old Zieg, was born into slavery in Montgome

This is the story of a local woman’s search for the place where her father died more than 60 years ago. It begins with Donald Edward (Ted) West. He’s six feet tall, 170 pounds, and in great shape. He’s handsome, athletic, has a brilliant smile and fine social graces. Furthermore, he’s kind, reliable, and adventurous. He’s a strong leader who isn’t afraid to challenge authority. He’s also an avid golfer, prominent at Edmonton’s Mayfair Golf and Country Club, where in 1939, at

One of West Kootenay’s best bits of folklore is the Flying Steamshovel , the story of an amateur aviation enthusiast who apparently built and flew a homemade helicopter in Rossland that crashed on its maiden voyage in 1902. (Since 1990, it has also been the name of a Rossland pub.) Historians Valerie Patanella and Ron Welwood have looked into it — both the tale itself and the man who popularized it, Father Thomas Freney. He collected affidavits from witnesses for a story publ

An amazing cabinet card sold on eBay last week for $181.50 US ($240 Cdn), showing two First Nations people in a studio portrait by Rossland photographer Thomas Henry Gowman. I don’t know for sure if these were Sinixt people, but their name for Rossland was kEluwi’sst or kmar k n, the former a generic name for “up in the hills” and the latter a term for “smooth top,” referring to Red Mountain. They knew it as a good area for huckleberries. While we do don’t know the names of

Six West Kootenay/Boundary residents and one former resident were among the 1,200 passengers and crew who perished when a German U-boat sank the RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915 off the south coast of Ireland. There was also one survivor from our area and three others who narrowly avoided sailing on that fateful trip. The RMS Lusitania is seen in a 1907 painting by Norman Wilkinson. (Wikipedia) The Chantry family Harold Chantry (or Chantrey), 23, and his wife Mina, 22, arrived i

Earlier this year I wrote about a billhead from the New Zealand Hotel that Jada Regis of the Northport Historical Society found in a gunnysack full of paper related to the Kendrick Mercantile and Northport State Bank. Here are a few more items from that batch that he kindly scanned and sent to me — although they are so contaminated with mold spore that they require mask and ventilation to work with. I wrote about the Hunter Bros. and Hunter-Kendrick Co. for Route 3 magazine

John Gibb Devlin (1865-1925), alias the Gunner from Galway, was a well-known early Kootenay character. One funny story about him is how he appealed for women to move to Rossland to even out the city’s gender imbalance and marry lonely miners — nearly all of whom, he insisted were “big, handsome fellows, making good money.” John G. Devlin (detail from Arrow Lakes Historical Society 2015-028-3) Apparently his call appeared first in some Toronto newspapers, but I haven’t found a

These Art Deco masterpieces, held by the City of Vancouver Archives , were drawn by the firm of Townley and Matheson , who designed Vancouver city hall, among many other buildings in that city. The first set is of a four-storey hotel intended for Trail, dated Dec. 30, 1927, followed by a three-storey version apparently intended for the same place. City of Vancouver Archives AM1399-S3---: CVA 1399-573 City of Vancouver Archives AM1399-S3---: CVA 1399-575 City of Vancouver Arch

In 1992, a classified ad appeared in The Mystery Review , a now-defunct quarterly magazine, that read as follows: Put Rossland, British Columbia in your mystery story and you'll earn a bonus from a BC booster! Here's the deal ... a cash payment for publicizing Rossland in a published (independent publisher, not self-published) mystery book, according to the size of the boost as per the following sliding scale: If you mention Rossland … $25 If your prose demonstrates some rese

Recently I posted the transcript of a letter from a little girl in Rossland in 1898 writing to her father to tell him what she received for Christmas. It was part of a small cache of envelopes, letters, and letterheads connected to the Old Gold Quartz and Placer Mining Co. that sold on eBay. I’ve now transcribed the other material and learned a bit about their author. The three letters were all mailed by Clara Grace Westfall in Rossland to Joe Cunningham in 1898-99. The firs

Three lots sold on eBay today featuring letterheads, letters, and envelopes from the Old Gold Quartz and Placer Mining Co. and Standard Gold Mines Ltd. of Rossland. They’re all interesting, but for my money (which in fact it was), the neatest document was a letter from Grace Florence Cunningham to her father Joe, dated Dec. 29, 1898 and transcribed here with the charming spelling mistakes intact: Dear Papa I will tell you what I got from Santy. I got to dolls and a book, a si

Here’s a gallery of photos I took on March 3, 2003 during filming in Rossland of the Kurt Russell movie Miracle . Columbia Avenue was transformed into 1980 Lake Placid, New York and Washington Street became Wabasha, Minnesota. The latter name must have been an inside joke: although US hockey coach Herb Brooks, whom Russell portrayed, was head coach of the University of Minnesota men’s hockey team in the 1970s, Wabasha (current population 2,500) had nothing to do with the Mira

Some of the most amazing West Kootenay postcards ever produced show the Rossland mines underground in the 1900s. I don’t know how the photographer managed to get such excellent images in extremely difficult light conditions. There are at least 13 cards in the series, taken in the LeRoi and Centre Star mines. While the photographer is unknown, it was probably someone from out of town given that some of them are labelled “Rosland, BC.” I have a couple, including the one seen be

A clear syphon from the Lion Bottling Works of Rossland and Greenwood (pictured below) sold on eBay this afternoon for $1,382 US, which is $1,722 Cdn. That’s the most I’ve ever seen paid for a local syphon. The auction attracted 19 bids from five bidders. The seller is in Brantford, Ont. According to Beer Barons of BC, published in 2011 by Bill Wilson, the Lion Brewery was formed in 1897 by Louis Blue and managed by James McCreath. The Columbia Bottling Works was built in 189