THE KÜTNE READER

Longtime Ymir and Salmo resident Evelyn Murray died on April 9 , 2019 in Castlegar at 96. While she was not the last person born in the old Ymir hospital, I believe she was the last person alive who entered the world there. This postcard of the Ymir hospital, taken sometime between 1908 and 1913, was the work of the Mystery Photographer . (Greg Nesteroff collection) Evelyn was the daughter of Edward Emilson and Sarah Rankin. Her father, a miner from Sweden, worked in the Lar

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

Sandon is an interesting place for many reasons. One remarkable but perhaps under-appreciated aspect is that it is (or ought to be) a Mecca for antique fire hydrant aficionados. At one time the town had 11 hydrants. Today there are 10, of which nine are pictured below, although only three are original to Sandon. Top row, from left: 1) Next to old laundry in upper Sandon. This one is several feet tall and is the most photographed Sandon hydrant. 2) At corner of replica buildi

Went for a walk with my wife in Trail’s Sunningdale neighbourhood and came across this curious building at 632 Isabella Crescent. It was clearly once a commercial building of some sort. (Trail has quite a few such buildings in residential areas that have been turned into homes.) 632 Isabella Crescent, as seen from the Monte Road side, looking southwest. Intrigued, I checked the BC Assessment site, which indicates it was built in 1951, although I subsequently discovered it was

Several of bestselling BC crime historian Eve Lazarus’ books have West Kootenay connections. I’ve discussed one before, how Canada’s Sherlock Holmes , Insp. John F.C.B. Vance, once worked at as assistant chemist in Trail. In a later post, I’ll detail a case she wrote about in Sensational Vancouver , about how a man wanted for murder in the US was caught in Yahk and then deported to face execution. Lazarus’ latest book, Murder by Milkshake , recounts the story of Rene Castella

This week, a rare envelope from the Hotel Pilot Bay, postmarked 1897, sold on eBay for $115 US. Making it all the more appealing, it was addressed to Henry Croasdaile, manager of the Hall Mines smelter in Nelson. Once the site of its own smelter and sawmill, Pilot Bay was busy enough in the 1890s to justify the existence of three hotels and two boarding houses. The earliest of these, the Hotel Clark, was first mentioned in the Victoria Daily Times of June 15, 1892: “A letter

Is anything more nostalgic (at least to certain generations) than a drive-in theatre? From 1947 to 2003, at least 10 of them operated in West Kootenay/Boundary. The peak era was the late 1950s, when six were in business simultaneously (among 32 in the province, including a few more in East Kootenay). Four survived into the 1980s, and the last two into the early 2000s. Today the sites are home to trailer parks, a campground, and a Walmart, among other things. However, two scre

Salmo first came to prominence as the result of a bar room murder in 1893. The town — then little more than a cluster of shacks — was known as Salmon City, and was headquarters for contractor Pete Larson, who was building the Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway. The spot was described as “near the forks of the Salmon river and about two miles from where the railway crosses the north fork.” It was also a rendezvous for placer miners on the Salmon (now Salmo) River and Hall Creek.

Pictured here is what is probably the most valuable and coveted baseball card with a West Kootenay connection. In 1897, Kaslo, Rossland, and Spokane were part of a professional baseball circuit known by several names, but generally called the Kootenay Washington League. Nelson was supposed to be part of the loop as well, but dropped out for lack of a suitable field. Trail and Sandon were both considered as replacements, but neither city fielded a team. The league’s most notew

The rare postcard below, which sold recently on eBay, shows the Burns Block at 560 Baker Street (formerly 514 Baker) in Nelson — although if the photo had been cropped any tighter on the right, it might have been impossible to recognize. The postcard is unmailed, but probably from about 1910. Fortunately, the distinctive ornamentation of the steer’s head and 1899 date stone above the front door is partly visible. This building was the Kootenay headquarters of Alberta beef bar

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

A few outstanding postcards and photos sold recently on eBay showing Nelson sports teams, one of which was an action shot of a lacrosse game against Spokane in 1911. Although it is badly creased, it is unusual to find such a crisp action shot on a postcard from that era. Here is a closer look at some of the players. You could have fooled me into thinking this match was played at the civic field in Nelson (now the parking lot of the Nelson and District Community Complex), for

A terrific postcard popped up on eBay recently, showing the A. MacDonald & Co. warehouse at 623-25 Front Street in Nelson, ca. 1910 — better known in recent years as the Corner Brick building, and home to many different businesses. Here is the building as seen from approximately the same location today: Here is a closer look at the unidentified gentlemen in the first image: BC Assessment puts the building’s construction at 1903, but Nelson: A Proposal for Urban Heritage Conse

Lot Willey had a lot of bad luck. And bad timing. He was a sort of anti-Forrest Gump, with an uncanny knack for arriving in a town just before disaster struck. Born on Aug. 19, 1848 (or 1851 or 1855) at Ekfrid, Ont. to Lot W. Willey and Catherine McPherson, he farmed at Ekfrid and Dulwich in the 1870s and 1880s. He married Elizabeth Wells in 1879 at Williams East, Ont., but she died within weeks of the wedding of rheumatic fever — the first of Lot’s recorded misfortunes. Will

The most unusual military grave in the Nelson cemetery is the one seen below, which belongs to Usaku Shibuta, who died at the Balfour sanitarium in 1919. He was one of 54 Japanese Canadians whose death resulted from serving in the First World War. Of those, 27 have known graves in France. Shibuta’s is the only one in Canada. Shibuta enlisted on June 19, 1916 at Medicine Hat, where he lived. He was born on Feb. 20, either 1888, 1889, or 1890 to Shiyotado (or Nobujiro) and Ku

One of the more venerable Boundary commercial institutions was Grand Forks Furniture & Hardware at 358 Market Ave. The business has been gone for almost 25 years but the building still bears its very faded signage on two sides. The photos seen here were taken in 2007. The store’s manager for decades was Joseph T. Simmons, who was born in England in 1883 and immigrated to Canada around 1899. The Grand Forks Gazette reported in 1913 that Simmons “recently arriving from Alberta

It sounds like something out of Game of Thrones, but the evocatively-named Crystal Hall at Willow Point on Kootenay Lake was made of wood.

A copy of a short-lived and long-lost Nelson newspaper has surfaced: it’s the Sept. 20, 1913 edition of The Independent , whose existence I only previously knew about because of a few mentions in its contemporaries: Slocan Record , Aug. 28, 1913: The Independent is a new publication issued in Nelson last week. It is a weekly and the first issue is small, but the paper will probably be enlarged as larger patronage comes to it. Whether a paper can be independent or not has yet

I bought the photo below about eight years ago. It shows a group on the lawn of the Outlet Hotel in Procter, long a popular spot for picnics and sternwheeler excursions. But what makes it really interesting is the six First Nations people seated at the front — two men, three women, and a girl. No photographer is listed and no date is given. I have a hard time guessing when it was taken; all I can say for sure is that it was after 1903, when the section of the hotel on the lef