A response to last week’s blog post, Write in on the Heart: The sentiment behind this little poem [Fur Traders by Harry Robinson] is that the terms of trade between the fur traders (North West Company or Hudson’s Bay Company) and Indians were manipulated to favour the European traders....
On last week’s blog the mention of the possible origin of the name Kalamalka was interesting but it left the impression that there is agreement on the derivation of the name. Carmen Weld suggests that Kalamalka may be a form of the name Kenamaska, the name of the chief who lived at the northern...
In the days before good road and rail communication serviced Oyama orchardists, the most efficient way to move fruit to market was via steamer to the north end of Kalamalka Lake where it was transferred to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) station at Vernon. This photograph, part of the George...
Fourteen years ago (2000) Ken Ellison published a book, Irrigation is King: A Century of Water in Oyama, BC. 1892-2000. This work exhaustively examined and interpreted the land, water and irrigation records of Oyama, BC. Now, a complementary video, Flume. The story of the original irrigation...
During the early years of the fur trade, hundreds of young men moved to Rupert’s Land and the Columbia to work for the North West Company or, after 1821, the amalgamated firm, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). No white women accompanied these men and if the men stayed for more than a few years they...
The earliest domestic cattle in the interior arrived from the Columbia Valley in the 1840s, trailed in by the Hudson’s Bay Company and traded among the Okanagan Indians. By 1850, Okanagan Chief Nicola owned a large number of horses and “a good many cattle.” During the Gold Rush, large herds...
Oyama, or Island Lake was originally stocked under the initiative of the Kelowna Rod and Gun Club in about 1931, using fingerlings from the Summerland Fish Hatchery. Jack Trewhitt and Ron Allingham packed in two cream cans full of fry on Allingham’s workhorse, stopping once on the way up to...
Lake Country Museum and Archives has received a donation of McCarthy family photographs from Donna Day of Winfield. Her late husband, Max Day, found a package of family photographs in the old McCarthy barn, which was an iconic historical building situated on Bottom Wood Lake Road. The photo...
Charlie and Harold Thomson constructed a diving tower in front of the family home on the shore of Kalamalka Lake in the summer of 1933. As can be seen from the photograph of the tower under construction, it was made of poles and boards lashed and nailed together. The first platform was at the...
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Canada it was common for children to live with their parents until age fourteen and then to live with an employer or surrogate parent where they could learn a trade or, at least, life experience. Girls, except those from upper class homes, generally...
The British Columbia Ministry of Justice has proclaimed March 31 to April 6 “Make a Will Week” in the province, encouraging everyone to make a will or update wills already prepared. “People who don’t make a will lose the opportunity to choose their beneficiaries,” said Vernon lawyer Rob Culos,...
Allan Mills arrived in Sunnywold in 1909, joining his brother, William, who had been farming there since 1894. Allan and his wife added to their original Sunnywold pre-emption by purchasing their neighbours’ land, as it became available, from the Siddons, Whites and McLounies. The Mills’ 1340-acre...