THE KÜTNE READER

During its 22 years as a bona fide city, Sandon had seven mayors — and four receivers. Sandon city hall was built in 1900 following a fire that consumed much of the downtown. Today it’s the Prospector’s Pick. Sandon was incorporated under Section 20 of the Speedy Incorporation of Towns Act (the same legislation that granted city status to Nelson, Rossland, Grand Forks, and Greenwood). However, the letters patent is confusing. It’s dated Dec. 30, 1897 but says Sandon “shall, f

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

George Motosawa was a restaurateur and laundry owner in two West Kootenay ghost towns. We know he was born April 6, 1867 and immigrated to Canada in 1888. He shows up in our neck of the woods in 1898 at Brooklyn, a railway boom town on Lower Arrow Lake, operating the Mikado Laundry. This is the first ad from the Brooklyn News of Aug. 13, 1898. By mid-October he switched gears and took over the Queen Restaurant: In the 1898 civic directory, he was listed as proprietor of the