“Alex Lord, a pioneer inspector of rural British Columbia schools, shares … his experiences in a province barely out of the stagecoach era. Travelling through vast northern territory, utilizing unreliable transportation, and enduring climatic extremes, Lord became familiar with the...
It is a topic which evokes more than a little discussion. “Facts” are confidently tossed out for discussion, only to be called into question. Cited sources are rejected as incorrect. Photographic evidence is greeted with much skepticism. This is not a topic for the faint-hearted; to be unsure is...
Reminiscences of Clara Hallam (née Bailey) continued Hallam reminiscences 2 (pp. 27-30) Some stylistic changes have been made in the text to reflect modern usage. 1907 – 1909 “… There was to be a big skating party on Duck Lake one night so brother Bill, Phoebe and I were going down...
Reminiscences of Clara Hallam (née Bailey) The John A. Bailey family, John and Emma, who resided in Summerville, Oregon, followed friends to settle in Westbank, where they lived from 1895 until 1901. Clara was the fifth Bailey child, born on April 1, 1896. The Baileys relocated and lived for two...
If you can identify this object, your age may be showing! And that’s a good thing. I know what it is! It is a coal stoker! At least that was what I always called it. You, or should I say “I” would fill the bin with coal and an auger ran through the pipe into a coal fired...
Holiday Greetings to all of you from all of us at the Lake Country Museum and Archives. Ryan Donn is Lake Country’s very talented Cultural Development Co-ordinator and a Councillor on the Kelowna City Council. Ryan offers free downloads of this lovely song on his website. To...
I am walking through the silence of this cold and frosty night, I am treading on the diamonds that sparkle with the light. And the throbbing, beating pulses of the whispering cold night air, Have reached into my heart and found the memories lurking there. I can glimpse the roaring bonfire and the...
If you have a few more items to purchase for Christmas gift-giving you may want to consider Okanagan History. The 80th Report of the Okanagan Historical Society. This publication, which includes sections on Natural History, First Nations, Featured Artists, People and Events, and Lives Remembered,...
After reading Jim Taylor’s delightful blog post last week (Details) I was reminded of an old poem entitled The Strangers in the Box. This poem, which I read after my mother’s death, made me feel remiss that I hadn’t spent time with my Mom identifying the “strangers”...
Details make a difference. We got out some old pictures a while ago. Like so many old pictures, the prints had no date, no captions. A picnic table, with a broad river in the background; beyond it, a range of snow-capped peaks. Two young children, so swaddled in their bulky sweaters that it was...
In these days of modern secondary education it’s almost impossible to visualize a high school with all grades in one room. It’s equally difficult to imagine one teacher instructing about 25 students in every subject in that classroom. Such was the situation in Oyama when a group of...
The Westbury Hotel, built in 1908, was one of two hotels in Okanagan Centre in the early 1900s. On Halloween day in 1947, fire broke out and the hotel burned to the ground. Although no one was injured, the guests and the seasonal packinghouse workers who boarded there lost all their possessions....