THE KÜTNE READER

The remarkable postcard seen below sold in 2020 on eBay for $168 Cdn. It’s a previously unknown image of the Patrick Lumber Camp No. 1 near Slocan City and was mailed from Slocan to a Miss Nellie Moore of Truro, Nova Scotia on Jan. 26, 1909. The message reads, verbatim: “what do you think of a lumber jacks home in BC in a ceader swamp.” While I can’t say for certain, the fellow in the light-coloured shirt in the first row could be hockey legend Lester Patrick, whose father Jo

I’ve previously written about sites in West Kootenay associated with the Patrick family, famous for their exploits in early lumbering and hockey. But I didn’t realize until recently that yet another notable site directly connected to them still stands. What’s more, the rambling house at 414 Falls St. in Nelson (formerly 412 Falls) has a fascinating history: it was built by a mining magnate who died in bizarre circumstances, and later became home to other well-known mining fig

Around 1995, Nelson’s Heritage Inn renamed its basement lounge Taffy Jack’s. This was an interesting choice, for while Taffy Jack was a real figure from Nelson’s past, he was an obscure one. In the bar’s logo, he appeared as a barrel-chested rugby player, alongside his dog: In truth, Taffy Jack — also and perhaps better known as Candy Jack — was a candy maker and street peddler with a slightly unsavory and unhygienic reputation. As a sportsman, he was mainly interested in fis

Between Kootenay Lake Hospital and Gyro Park in Nelson are decorative lights that are often seen but seldom remarked upon. They’re visible from Front Street, the lower end of Baker Street, and entering the city from the west. Nelson Hydro sets them to different patterns depending on the time of year. Usually it’s a yellow crown in keeping with the city’s nickname of the Queen City of the Kootenays. There is also a blue star for Christmas and a red heart for Valentine’s Day, w

I’ve long been curious about a yellow brick building at 103-05 Chatham St. in Nelson’s Fairview neighbourhood, seen below. It’s an oddity on an otherwise residential street, as it obviously once had a commercial use, but what? I’m pleased to report that I finally know the answer — and it happens to involve a Jewish pioneer. Nelson: A Proposal for Urban Heritage Conservation says it was built in 1910 in Queen Anne style and was formerly a commercial building, but didn’t state

I was intrigued to read in John Mackie’s This Week in History column in The Vancouver Sun : The first films in BC were shown in Victoria on Sept. 28, 1895 on an Edison Kinetoscope. But the Kinetoscope only allowed one person to look at the films through a viewer, like a peep show. The first projected films came along 16 months later. “The earliest (projected films) I have found in BC (were shown by) a company called the Edison Bioscope Novelty Company that pops up from Spokan

Here are some more in a series of negatives I bought on eBay last year showing Trail in 1953. These two views show the west side of the 1200 block of Pine Avenue. The building on the corner and the one to the right of it are Carberry’s Flowers and Carberry Funeral Home at 1298 Pine. BC Assessment gives a construction date of 1948 for the funeral home, but I am presuming that is only the portion on the right. The home was either torn down or renovated beyond recognition into

The Paterson and Nelway border crossings both have peace monuments erected by Kiwanis clubs on both sides of the border amid much fanfare, but which probably don’t get much up-close inspection anymore. Kiwanis peace monument at Paterson These were among a series of peace plaques erected at border crossings by Kiwanis International beginning in 1935. The first went up on Ambassador Bridge which connects Detroit and Windsor. According to a very comprehensive list compiled by E

Below is an ad from the Nelson Daily News of Jan. 31, 1953 for Avenue Grill and Groceteria, which operated at 714 Ivy St. in Castlegar, across from Stanley Humphries Secondary School. I don’t know much about the building, but it’s still standing. BC Assessment indicates it was built in 1949, a year before the high school opened. The proprietor was listed in the 1953 civic directory as M.P. Zaitsoff. The following appeared in a book published in 1992 on the history of the Cast

Before the Nelson Daily News moved to 266 Baker St., it was in the building now home to Jackson’s Hole.

On the heels of discovering that the last office of the Nelson Tribune (and probably the Nelson Ledge and Lowery’s Claim ) is still standing, I’ve made two more discoveries about Nelson newspaper offices. (You can read about the other one here .) Much to my surprise, the building home to the weekly Nelson Economist , probably for its entire existence from 1897 to 1906, is also still standing. David M. Carley established and operated this newspaper, which had a much differe

Prospector Henry Cody (1861?-1921) is said to have stumbled across the cave system near Ainsworth that bears his name in the late 1880s. The Nelson Daily News of Oct. 3, 1902 said the cave was “known to the people of Ainsworth as Cody’s cave from the fact that it was discovered by Mr. Henry Cody, now a resident of Kaslo. This cave was discovered many years ago.” (Cody visited the caves that summer with Theodore Adams and Jack McKinnon.) This is the second-oldest known photo

One day I’d like to write a book or booklet about the lost bullion of Slocan Lake, one of our region’s most enduring treasure stories. On Dec. 22, 1903, a boxcar went off the transfer slip at Slocan City into the lake, carrying brakeman Edward O. Connolly (or Conley) to his death along with about 700 lead bars from the Trail smelter. Most of the shipment was recovered right away, but what was left inspired a who’s who of BC divers to go looking for it — based at least partly

It’s sort of well known that before earning stardom as Frankenstein’s monster, Boris Karloff performed on the stage in Nelson. But it has not been previously revealed that another future horror movie star appeared there as well. Karloff joined the Jeanne Russell Co. at Kamloops in September 1911, despite having no stage experience. He was actually an Englishman named William Henry Pratt. Part of his stage name probably came from a character in the play The Man on the Box . De

A previous post looked at the last home of the Nelson Tribune , which, much to my surprise, is still standing on Baker Street. Tracking the various locations of The Tribune and its rival paper, The Miner , is not easy. The Miner was founded by John Houston and partners Charles Ink and Gesner Allen in 1890. Through 1892, The Miner was at 14 East Baker Street, although we don’t know exactly where that was. Houston, Ink, and Allen also had their real estate office in this bu

The starting point for studies of Nelson heritage buildings is often Nelson: A Proposal for Urban Heritage Conservation , an excellent and exhaustive document produced by the Heritage Conservation Branch in 1981, based on work completed in 1978. But while it enumerates hundreds of noteworthy buildings, it also has some blind spots. For example, it says “The 100 and 700 blocks [of Baker Street] contain no buildings rated of heritage significance.” This was an astonishing state

A couple of years ago, I wrote about Doug Jones’ quest to find an original copy of what he describes as the holy grail of Nelson maps: a bird’s-eye-view map of Nelson in 1897 or early 1898, created by Augustus Koch, one of the most prolific pictorial map makers of the 19th century. The BC Archives has a foggy glass plate negative of it, but the original would have been in colour. Alas, no original copy is known to exist. Since then, I’ve learned that Koch also produced a pan

Here’s a story left out of Kootenay News — my exhibit at Touchstones Nelson on the history of Nelson’s newspapers — for lack of space. While the former Nelson Daily News office is a well-known landmark at 266 Baker Street — it was the paper’s home from 1908 to 2010 — it’s not at all well known that two former Nelson Tribune locations are also still standing. The Tribune was the city’s second newspaper, founded in 1892 by John Houston a few months after he sold The Miner. Hous

Naomi Chester recently gave me a collection of slides and prints of West Kootenay taken by her stepfather, Al Peterson, mostly in the 1970s and ‘80s. There were also two negatives I had scanned and present here, showing a rarely photographed building at the southwest corner of Baker and Stanley streets in Nelson. Completed around May 1892, this wooden building was modest, but not unattractive, and I’m at a loss to explain why so few photos of it exist. The pictures here show

Here is another photo from a series of negatives I recently purchased showing Trail in 1953. Pictured is the intersection of Bay and Spokane streets, with the Arlington Hotel on the right. If we didn’t otherwise know the date, we’d be able to tell based on the license plate on one of the parked cars. Here is the view today from the same spot. The chief differences are the top two storeys have been lopped off the Arlington (more on that below), exposing the West Kootenay Power