THE KÜTNE READER

Inventor Thomas Edison (seen below in a Wikipedia photo) passed through Nelson 110 years ago. While his visit was fleeting, he told a...

Many’s the time I’ve come across something historically interesting in a newspaper only to: a) Fail to fully appreciate its significance...

I previously wrote about some strange circumstances surrounding the death of Doukhobor leader Peter V. Verigin in a train explosion near...

Mi chael Kluckner ’s new graphic novel, Julia , is a biography of Vancouver’s Julia Henshaw (1869-1937). She was, among other things, a...

One of most poignant epitaphs I’ve ever seen appears on twin gravemarkers in West Kootenay’s most remote cemetery. The Hamel siblings,...

The postcard below is part of a sequence showing Lieut. George Knopp Trim’s flight around Nelson during the fall fair of 1919 — and crash...

The first newspaper Robert Thornton Lowery was involved in — and the last still in business — is folding after 139 years. This cartoon,...

There are two curious things about the stock certificate seen below, issued by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Co. of British...

Below I’ve transcribed a six-page letter in my collection mailed by a woman visiting Kaslo with her mother shortly after the death of...

Nelson has had three Kootenay Lake Hospitals. The first, built in 1893 near 40 High Street, had a dozen beds. According to Dr. Lorris E....

The death of Doukhobor leader Peter (Lordly) Verigin in a train explosion between Castlegar and Grand Forks on Oct. 29, 1924 is the West...

In 2008, I wrote a story for Route 3 magazine about the Thomas (or Tomas) Higstrim grave at Ainsworth Hot Springs, which dates to 1891...

Did William Randolph Hearst (pictured below in a photo from Wikipedia), the larger-than-life American newspaper publisher who invented...

Between 1872 and 1923, at least 12 Chinese Canadian births occurred at Rock Creek. This was noteworthy for a few reasons. First, there was perhaps only one other such birth elsewhere in the Boundary during that time. Most of these births preceded the first Chinese Canadian births in West Kootenay (two in Nelson and five in Kaslo during the same period). But even more intriguing: all 12 people were actually of mixed ancestry, part Chinese and part Indigenous. Rock Creek is see

You’d think if fire destroyed a town’s business district, the date would be well documented. Not in Fruitvale’s case. Much of the town...

There was a time (primarily in the 1950s) where it was common practice to honour individuals (usually trustees and other politicians) by...

Go for a walk on Beatty Avenue in Nelson, down by the waterfront next to the RCMP station, and you will come across this curious...

John Gibb Devlin (1865-1925), alias the Gunner from Galway, was a well-known early Kootenay character. One funny story about him is how...

This amazing little item is in the midst of being transferred from the Touchstones Nelson archives to the Slocan Valley Historical...

The remarkable postcard seen below shows two friends, Anna Norris of Boundary, Wash., and Velma Shields, of Waneta, who didn’t let a...