THE KÜTNE READER

In the early 20th century, Slocan City’s brothels were on the west side of Block 36, at the south end of Main Street between Giffin and Fitz avenues (pictured below on the original townsite map). Today Giffin does not connect to Main; the area in question is behind the W.E. Graham school field. This area was seldom spoken of. These are the only references I’m aware of in the Slocan Drill , published from 1900-05. Aug. 3, 1900: “Sunday evening Officer Christie was called upon

In the summer of 2017, Dian Aylwin made a remarkable discovery in her father’s garage in New Denver: tacked to the wall was the townsite plan of Aylwin, a phantom city in the Slocan that her grandfather and his brother started in the 1890s. Although the town is mentioned in a few history books, the map was not thought to have survived. It provides new insight into a pioneer family and the vagaries of real estate development associated with the Silvery Slocan mining rush. This

There’s an oft-heard tale about the burial of a black brothel keeper in the Slocan cemetery. According to the Castlegar News of June 24, 1976: [Harry] Nixon recalls a story told him of a grave just outside the cemetery. A lady of ill repute died and the women of the church refused to have her buried in the cemetery. In a history of Slocan, Frank Hufty wrote: They had a red light district in Slocan too. When the madam died, the townspeople wouldn’t let her be buried in the ce

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

Long before Japanese Canadians were interned in the West Kootenay during the Second World War, a small number already lived here. They worked in forestry and ran restaurants and laundries. One such pioneer was Yodo Fujii (or Fugii, or Fuji). We don’t know much about him, but on July 11, 1903 the Revelstoke Kootenay Mail announced: “Messrs. Fujii & Ito have taken over the restaurant business formerly conducted by Mrs. Blake and hold their opening today. It will be known as the

In the early 1890s, three American cities boasted saloons called the Slocan. They don’t appear to have been connected and their proprietors may not have had anything to do with the Slocan either. In light of the silver rush, the word simply had a prosperous connotation. (Similarly, there were many Klondike Hotels nowhere near the Yukon, including one in Nelson.) The Slocan Exchange Saloon in Spokane was at the northeast corner of Main Avenue and Howard Street. Its infrequent