THE KÜTNE READER

Second in a series on signs that outlived the businesses they advertised. This one is on the back of the building at 607 Front St. in Nelson and is visible from Lakeside Ave. According to BC Assessment, the building was put up in 1910. J.Y. Griffin & Co. Ltd. of Winnipeg operated a meat packing business there. W.M. McGillis was listed in the civic directory as the local manager. In 1914, the directory shows that Swift Canadian Co. was now at that location, with T.E. Lavasseur

The photo below is probably the second most-reproduced image ever taken in West Kootenay (next to R.H. Trueman’s vertigo-inducing shot of a train stopped at Payne Bluff on the Kaslo and Slocan Railway). This early selfie shows photographer Mattie Gunterman being punished for some transgression at the Nettie L cookhouse near Ferguson by sisters Annie and Rose Williams, ca. 1903. It has appeared in numerous books and magazines since it was first published in Bruce Ramsey’s Gho

There is a space between Vernon and Lake streets in Nelson that, near as I can tell, has always been vacant. Several buildings have been proposed, but none ever built. The area is seen below in a ca. 1899-1900 photo that belongs to Doug Jones, and extends between the Lakeview Hotel seen at left and the Kootenay Supply Co. at right. By 1945, the City of Nelson owned the property. Nelson Auto Wrecking had previously expressed interest in the seven lots (Block 67, Lots 18-24). N

Last September, a group including scuba diver Brian Nadwidny went looking for a Caterpillar tractor supposedly lost in Kootenay Lake at Garland Bay, north of Riondel. Instead they found what appears to be a grapple loader, in 120 feet of water. They think it’s from the 1950s or ‘60s. Brian notes that the engine, batteries, and hydraulic hoses have all been removed. A sign on the back of the truck cab appears to read “TIDL*** Contractors.” Do you know when, how, or why it ende

This is the first in a series looking at phantom signs of West Kootenay/Boundary. I thought I would start with a Nelson building that has two of them: 524 Vernon Street, now home to Jackson’s Hole restaurant. The more obvious sign, which was touched up perhaps 20 years ago, is for Algernon Sidney Horswill, who operated his wholesale business here from the 1910s until 1929 in what was previously known as the McDonald block. (Prior to that Horswill was at 420 Baker St.) Horswil

Notorious train robber Bill Miner had a lookalike in Nelson. This story appeared in the Nelson Daily News on Nov. 16, 1911 and was located by former Castlegar-area resident Byng Giraud. It was published shortly after Miner was nabbed for one of his many prison escapes. WILLIAM NOBLE, NELSON MAN, INTRODUCED AS BILL MINER Mistaken for the notorious train robber “Bill” Miner, followed by amateur sleuths for days, questioned by regular detectives, and finally introduced by his fr

Did crooner Bing Crosby (pictured below in a Wikpedia photo) hang out in the West Kootenay before stardom? There are several suggestions he did but proof has been hard to come by. Crosby was born in Tacoma in 1903 but his family moved to Spokane when he was three. In Tracks of the Beaver Valley & Pend’Oreille (2002), Anna Reeves writes on p. 61: “Joan and Leo Langergraber were listening to a talk show host interview Bing Crosby concerning Bing’s early boyhood days in Spokane.

On Oct. 26, 1892, the sternwheeler Columbia was on the Arrow Lakes, en route from Little Dalles, Wash. to Revelstoke, when a passenger went in to labour. Letta Holliday was moving from Pullman, Wash. to Edmonton along with her husband Andrew and one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Mattie, but the family’s new addition wasn’t willing to wait for the journey’s end. Near Hall’s Landing, on the upper lake between Galena Bay and Revelstoke, Letta gave birth to a “fine, plump” baby g

In 1992, a classified ad appeared in The Mystery Review , a now-defunct quarterly magazine, that read as follows: Put Rossland, British Columbia in your mystery story and you'll earn a bonus from a BC booster! Here's the deal ... a cash payment for publicizing Rossland in a published (independent publisher, not self-published) mystery book, according to the size of the boost as per the following sliding scale: If you mention Rossland … $25 If your prose demonstrates some rese

The City of Trail bought the Union Hotel (pictured below) and a neighbouring building last year with plans to tear them down and sell the lots for redevelopment. The Union joins several other Trail heritage buildings and sites that have met the wrecking ball in the last 20 years, including the old Legion (now the site of Lordco), the Tadanac staff house, the Project 9 tower, the Auto-Vue Drive-In (now the site of Walmart), and an entire block of homes in the Gulch (now a tru

When he wasn’t out sleuthing, Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street in London. According to Wikipedia , at the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his stories in the 19th century, that fictional address did not exist. But when the real Baker Street was extended, the Abbey National Building Society moved into 219-229 Baker, and “employed a full-time secretary to answer mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes.” In 1990, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, at 237-241 Baker, installed a

Recently I posted the transcript of a letter from a little girl in Rossland in 1898 writing to her father to tell him what she received for Christmas. It was part of a small cache of envelopes, letters, and letterheads connected to the Old Gold Quartz and Placer Mining Co. that sold on eBay. I’ve now transcribed the other material and learned a bit about their author. The three letters were all mailed by Clara Grace Westfall in Rossland to Joe Cunningham in 1898-99. The firs

Sam McGee wasn’t cremated in the Yukon — he was buried in Kaslo. Here’s his grave marker to prove it, as it appeared in 2008: I say this tongue in cheek, of course. The Kaslo McGee had nothing to do with Robert Service’s famous poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee , published in 1907. But it’s nevertheless startling to read the name on this weathered wooden headboard — one of a few such remaining markers. The full epitaph is: In memoriam Sam McGee Born Co. Donegal Ireland Died Ma

Did novelist Jack London once work in a tie camp at Lardeau? Jack London (Wikipedia/ Little Pilgrimages , p. 235) The author is best known for his works related to the Klondike Gold Rush, including The Call of the Wild and White Fang. This story appeared with a Vancouver dateline in the Nelson Daily News of Oct. 3, 1929, under the headline “Jack London was no good as BC lumberjack, says [sic].” Jack London may have been in a class by himself in writing about the rugged nort

Former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg was assassinated on Dec. 30, 1905 when a bomb exploded at his house in Caldwell. The sole person convicted of the crime — although he implicated others — was Albert Horsely, aka Harry Orchard (1866-1954). Orchard spent time in Nelson and Pilot Bay in 1896-97. We know this because of Orchard’s testimony at his sensational trial and what he wrote in The Confessions and Autobiography of Harry Orchard (1907), p. 14-15. Albert Horsely, aka

My wife recently surprised me with the gift of a 1978 Robert Inwood print of Malone Manor. For 88 years, it was one of Nelson’s most prominent heritage homes. But fewer and fewer people even remember it existed. The house was at the corner of Front and Cherry streets. This is the description given in Nelson: A Proposal for Urban Heritage Conservation, which listed its street address as 1102 Front Street (formerly Water Street) and its legal description as Lots 1-4, Block 80.

The photo below, taken in 1950, shows the evocative Mar Sam laundry at the corner of Front, Lake, and Ward streets in Nelson. You’ll recognize it as the spot where Charcuterie Totoche is today. The laundry was in business in Nelson for nearly 60 years. Mar Sam was first listed in the 1892 and 1893 directories as running a laundry on Vernon Street, the west end of which was then Nelson’s Chinatown. At the 1894 Dominion Day celebration, Mar Sam finished first in the “200 yards,

Three lots sold on eBay today featuring letterheads, letters, and envelopes from the Old Gold Quartz and Placer Mining Co. and Standard Gold Mines Ltd. of Rossland. They’re all interesting, but for my money (which in fact it was), the neatest document was a letter from Grace Florence Cunningham to her father Joe, dated Dec. 29, 1898 and transcribed here with the charming spelling mistakes intact: Dear Papa I will tell you what I got from Santy. I got to dolls and a book, a si

Was the Mirror Lake post office once listed by Guinness as the world’s smallest? I first encountered this claim on p. 199 of Kaslo: The First 100 Years (1993): “1970 — Mirror Lake post office moved to the SS Moyie site in Kaslo. The little building was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest post office.” The post office in situ , ca. 1960s. (Ellis Anderson photo) It was pretty tiny, all right: 96 square feet (nine square meters). About the size of a tool shed

In Silverton’s early days, Amy Carey was among the community’s leading entrepreneurs. She owned hotels, a grocery store, livery stable, and dairy. A postcard view of early Silverton, ca. 1900s. (Greg Nesteroff collection) But how she honed her business acumen is a mystery. Amy Ellis was born somewhere in Ontario, either in January 1863 or on June 15, 1865, according to conflicting census returns. We know nothing about her upbringing. She married Alfred William Carey, date and