THE KÜTNE READER

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 .

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 Powe

A few strange stories worth sharing. The following appeared in the Nelson Daily News, of Jan. 14, 1914, under the headline “Pigs show...

I was delighted to find in my disorganized storage locker last weekend a box of cassette tapes – one of which contained some radio newscasts that I had given up for lost, and previously detailed in a post about Holy Grails of local history . Both were recorded on Oct. 24, 1999. The first is the KBS 8 a.m. cast read by Jayne Garry, who you can still hear every day on EZ Rock. I saved it because it includes a story I filed about the 75th anniversary of the train explosion that

In a guest post, Ted Burns looks at some of the corner stores that operated in Nelson during the 1950s.

Below is one of the strangest souvenirs ever made of our area, courtesy of the Greenwood Centennial Committee. The committee was first struck in 1958 to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Colony of British Columbia, and revived in 1965 ahead of the 100th anniversary of the amalgamation of the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, and of Canada’s 100th birthday. The committee decided to issue a commemorative card of Greenwood’s smelter, which operat

I bought a bunch of negatives showing Trail in 1953 (judging by the license plates on the cars in one of the shots) and had them scanned this week. Seen below is one of the more interesting shots, of the 1300 block of Bay Avenue. From left, we have the Bluebird Cafe, Mandy’s Recreations (snooker/bowling/billiards/food bar), the Salvation Army, three buildings with no visible signage, and the Crown Point Hotel. Going to the 1953 civic directory (coincidentally the only one ava

In July 2000, I visited Verigin’s Tomb (later renamed Verigin Memorial Park ) at Brilliant, the burial site of Doukhobor leader Peter (Lordly) Verigin , his son Peter P. Verigin, their wives Evdokia Grigoryevna and Anna Fyodorovna, and Peter’s daughter Anna Markova. (Markova’s son John J. Verigin has since been buried there.) I can’t remember whether I spotted a sign that said “Historical site” and asked the attendant about it, or if the attendant told me to look for the sign

When Kinji Nagatani died at Willowhaven Hospital on Kootenay Lake’s North Shore in 1970, with him went the amazing story of a roving gambler who stowed away aboard a trans-Pacific freighter, lost his life savings in a game of chance, and briefly avoided the Japanese-Canadian internment by hiding in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Fortunately he told much of it to Nelson’s Jim Sawada, who shared it with me. Kinji Nagatani lived at 606 Front Street in Nelson, seen here in a photo recrea