The stretch of Highway 97 has been completed, directing through traffic from the lakeshore (now Pelmewash Parkway) to higher levels. This is not the first or last change in route for the Kelowna to Vernon road. The road was originally completed in 1875 and was known as the Vernon to Mission road,...
Soccer was a popular sport in the Central Okanagan while Claude Bissell was teacher and coach, first at Oyama High School and later in Rutland. This photograph of the Okanagan Zone Soccer Champions shows the Rutland team about to leave by bus for Penticton where they caught the overnight train to...
The Okanagan today is identified with beaches, orchards and vineyards, rather than the Wild West. However, this letter, written in 1910, is a glimpse into the Okanagan’s frontier past. James Goldie, manager of the Rainbow Ranche in Okanagan Centre, was questioning George C. Goulding of...
Pelmewash Parkway is about to be devoted entirely to local traffic, providing Lake Country with the wonderful asset of seven kilometres of lakeshore for all manner of recreation. This seems to be an opportune time to discuss the origin and possible meaning of the name “Pelmewash.” I confess that...
“The Railroad” was the name used on the earliest colonial maps, before the settlement in Lake Country, to refer to the isthmus at Oyama. The term certainly did not refer to any European-made feature; it had to refer to either a natural or an Okanagan Indian structure. What was it? Until the late...
April 29, 2013: e-mail to Mits Hikichi, son of Rainbow Ranche (Lake Country) Foreman Sam Hikichi, from Laura Neame, archivist of Lake Country Museum and Archives. Hello Mits Hikichi, We are hoping you can shed some light on a mystery. We received some donated papers from the Rainbow Ranche. Tucked...
The following poem, by Meiri (Koyama) Itami, was written in 1980 to honour Eijiro Koyama. Koyama farmed in the Winfield area in the 1920s. Eijiro Koyama died on January 17, 1956. A Day with Dad on the Farm As certainly as dawn crept over the hills he was awake. No clock rang by Dad’s bed;...
On page five of the Thursday, November 16, 1911 edition of The Kelowna Courier and Okanagan Orchardist appeared the following article: DIED – At the Hospital, on Monday, Nov. 13th, Frank Reiner, Okanagan Centre, aged 52. Mr. Reiner had been ailing several weeks, but the immediate cause of death...
How did one travel from the Okanagan to the coast in the first decades of the twentieth century? Crossing the coastal mountains was no easy task. The Dewdney Trail, connecting the South Okanagan to Hope, had been built during the Gold Rush, and for years supplies came into the Valley by pack train...
Last week I attended the OKANAGAN READS presentation by folk singers Rika Ruebsaat and Jon Bartlett, of Princeton, and was charmed by Jon’s reading of a poem from the newspaper, the Princeton Star (23rd of June 1927). I include it here. TEACHING THEM TO DRIVE The Sweetheart To learn to drive...
Included in the recently acquired Heddle papers is an unidentified newspaper article, date unknown and most likely from the Vernon News. The article quotes from a journal kept by W. T. Heddle of Oyama during an auto trip that he made from Oyama to Vancouver, via Wenatchee, Washington State. The...
British Columbia’s first Family Day will be held on the second Monday in February, making the date for the first Family Day this Monday, February 11, 2013. As we prepare for this celebration it is interesting to think of some of Lake Country’s pioneer families. One of the most...