THE KÜTNE READER

From 1909 until the early 1950s, the Cornwall Cup was awarded for the men’s hockey championship of the Slocan. Officially engraved as the Slocan District Hockey Trophy, at least six towns played for it at various times: Slocan City, Silverton, New Denver, Sandon, Nakusp, and Kaslo — even though the latter two are not in the Slocan. Sandon had a head start on the other Slocan cities, icing its first team in 1897. There was no league back then — just a series of exhibition game

On Sept. 4 and 5, 1999, Trail hosted a reunion of Western International Hockey League players and officials. The senior league existed from 1946 to 1987, succeeding the West Kootenay Hockey League. The mainstays were the Trail Smoke Eaters, Nelson Maple Leafs, Spokane Spartans/Flyers/Jets/Chiefs, Kimberley Dynamiters, and Cranbrook Royals. Other teams included the Rossland Warriors, Elk Valley Blazers, Portland Buckaroos, Calgary Stampeders, Los Angeles Ramblers, and East Koo

A previous post enumerated historical finds I have made only to lose track of them or fail to document their discovery, to my everlasting chagrin. Here are a few more. WIHL reunion photos The Western International Hockey League, which existed from 1946 to 1988, included teams from Nelson, Trail, Rossland, Cranbrook, Kimberley, Spokane and Fernie — plus at various times Los Angeles , Portland, and Calgary. In 1999, former players held a gala reunion in Trail. I did impromptu

Starting in 1919, a newspaper was published by and for convalescing soldiers at the Balfour sanitarium.

In addition to a number of faux phantom signs in Greenwood, there are a few real ones.

The dramatic story of the Bluebell murder, how Thomas Hammill (or Hamill, or Hammil) died near present-day Riondel on Kootenay Lake, allegedly at the hands of Robert Sproule, has been told many times. But the story of Hammill’s grave and grave markers — there are two or three of the latter, depending on how you count them — has not. Remarkably, none of these markers now denote the precise location where Hammill was buried. To briefly recap the case: Sproule staked the Bluebel

Here’s the oddest list I’ve come up with yet. Five guys who a) were premier of BC, b) had some connection to our area, and c) were named John. John Robson (1889-92) The community of Robson owes its name to BC’s ninth premier . However, he never visited his namesake town nor had anything to do with it. (In this, Robson shared something with Lt.-Gov. Hugh Nelson, who never visited or had anything to do with Nelson.) The name was first mentioned in the Nelson Miner on March 14,

Lauriente’s was synonymous with business in the Gulch in Trail from the early 1900s until the men’s wear store by that name at 730 Rossland Avenue finally closed in 1996. But the tile in front remains. The building became an ill-fated youth centre, then was sold to a car restorer, and is now the Salvation Army Community Services centre. In addition to the clothing store, the Laurientes ran a grocery one block over. Two generations were involved in their operation. In 2008, I

Photos of what is now called Nelson’s Railtown neighborhood prior to the construction of the Highway 3A-6 interchange in the early 1970s are inexplicably scarce. The project resulted in the relocation of some homes and demolition of many others, as well as the loss of a rock wall, a set of stairs on Silica Street, and the portion of Falls Street that used to descend into the area where the Cottonwood Market is now. It drives me crazy that the Department of Highways does not s

The old Trail Legion (also known as the Memorial Hall) was built in 1924 on Victoria Avenue to honour those killed during the First World War. “This memorial … means a recognition by the citizens of the sacrifices made by the fathers and mothers and relatives of those men who fell, fellow citizens,” the Trail News of April 6, 1923 wrote as a fundraising campaign kicked off. “But it means even more than that, it means a place where the descendants of heroes will be able to ac

Here are a couple of radio newscasts from the same day in July 1995. The first is Erica Waters reading the 8 a.m. news on the Kootenay Broadcasting System (now EZ Rock), with reports by Graham Currie and Renee Bernard. Morning man Dan Szabo is heard briefly in the beginning. Click on the play button below to hear it. I like that it contains the lengthy legal ID giving the station’s many frequencies. The news stinger itself was used into the early 2000s. I can’t remember if we

A little to the northeast of the Sandon cemetery — which is on a hillside about 1.4 km northwest of the ghost town — lies a concrete slab with the inscription: “July 8, 1942/Ken Sato.” It’s not a gravemarker, although I suspect its proximity to the cemetery has led to the erroneous belief that Japanese-Canadians were buried there during the internment era. There were cremations at Sandon, but no burials I am aware of. According to the BC vital events index, 14 Japanese-Canad

Recently I’ve been posting photos by the late Ellis Anderson on the Lost Kootenays Facebook site . Anderson was a Creston photographer who took brilliant colour shots of the Kootenays in the 1960s and ‘70s and produced postcards, some of which you can still buy in stores and museums. After Ellis died in 1990, Don Lyon acquired his photo collection — thousands upon thousands of yellow and pink packages of negatives, positives, and small prints. When Don died in 2013 , his wife

The Nelson Museum recently posted a photo of the wedge-shaped building at 606 Front Street their Flickr account. It doesn’t look like much today, and looked like even less in the 1960s or ‘70s when that photo was taken. Today it has a vaguely Tudor-style look to it, and I always imagined it dated to the 1940s or ‘50s. Wrong. It turns out this not-so-stunning building is actually of high historic value: it’s one of only three surviving buildings from Chinatown. (The others ar

I devoted an earlier post to West Kootenay sites associated with hockey’s Patrick family, including the Crescent Valley beach, where the...

Nelson historian/author Peter Bartl shared this amazing rendering with me, showing a planned new library for the Notre Dame University campus in Nelson that was never built. Notre Dame University/DTUC fonds (Courtesy Nelson Museum) Ron Welwood, head librarian at Notre Dame and its successor, David Thompson University Centre from 1969 to 1984, says the image “brings back distant memories because it hung in my office for many years until the old dilapidated facility was abandon

For those who grew up in the Kootenays before 1950, the word Gassosa must be intensely nostalgic. It means soda in Italian and was the name of a Trail soft drink company that operated in the Gulch. According to the book Trail of Memories, company founder Dominic Daloise came to Canada from Italy in 1904. He initially worked for the CPR in South Slocan, but soon transferred to Trail, and then spent several years at the smelter until his fellow Italian workers chose him to mana

An obituary appeared in the Vancouver Sun for Norma Evelyn Schiller of Mission, who died Aug. 9, 2018 at age 100. She was born in Sandon. Sandon, between 1904 and 1907. (Greg Nesteroff collection) In 2008, Schiller wrote a tribute to her father , Joseph Birling Johnson, that also appeared in the Sun . Johnson immigrated to Oregon from Sweden in 1892 and to Canada in 1907, arriving at Silverton. He became renowned for his mining prowess. When he arrived in Silverton in 1907,

Visting Sandon in August 2018, I was surprised to see a hand-carved wooden sign on the old brothel as you enter town that reads: “Greentree 1 mile.” The sign must have been added fairly recently, I figured, as I certainly didn’t remember it and it doesn’t show up in photos I’ve taken of the building in years past. What came to mind was the short-lived Greentree Hotel, which operated for a few months in 1897 between Sandon and Cody. Its exact location is unknown and no photos

The following concept sketch of an aquatic centre for Nelson’s Lakeside Park appeared in the Daily News of Oct. 25, 1949, signed by local architect Bill Williams. It was proposed by the local Kinsmen Club. According to the caption: The completed building will include, on the ground floor, a bathhouse of four sections, men, boys, women, girls; a checkroom, a first aid room, a large concession booth, a furnace room and the Rowing Club. The top floor will include a large ballro