Wood and Elegance: the Era of Organs This piano is classified as a reed organ. Many Canadians purchased them, through the mail order catalogue, from the T. Eaton Company, around year 1900. The manufacturer of this instrument was Bell Piano & Organ Co. LTD., from Guelph, Ontario. These...
“This is the 1172th column I have written for the Lake Country Calendar newspaper. In the autumn of 1995, Jack McCarthy called me. ‘How’d you like to write a column for us?’ he asked. That’s how it began. Jack was the owner and publisher of The Calendar, a weekly...
Anthony T. (Sigh) Kobayashi was the first born son of Denbei and Hiro Kobayashi. Sigh was born in a cabin, in the area now known as Seaton Park, on April 20, 1915. He was a model student, and he was well-liked by adults and children. Sigh would wait each day for the SS Sicamous to dock at the...
Which birds might I see today? Osprey Which of us has not thrilled to the sight of an Osprey hovering over the lake, then diving down with feet outstretched to catch a fish and fly off triumphantly with it? I never tire of watching the performance; the search, the plummet, the powerful wingbeats...
Oyama during World War II The final featured Heritage Marker will be placed where the Okanagan Rail Trail crosses Oyama Road. Like the other markers in the series, this one was prepared with the assistance of a Canada 150 grant. The crossroads of Highway 97 and Oyama Road was the commercial hub of...
Lake Country Museum given Mary Bull painting by David Madison Vernon artist Bob Kingsmill made a purchase at a recent auction of some local paintings. One of the works proved to be an original, by the late Kelowna artist Mary Bull, of the cabin in which Father Pandosy had lived. Kingsmill donated...
Which birds might I see today? White-crowned Sparrows Sometime in April my phone might ring and someone will ask, “I have lots of these birds in my yard I’ve never seen before; they have black and white stripes on their heads; what are they?” They are White-crowned Sparrows, and thousands upon...
A tin can from the large collection on display in the “general store” at the Lake Country Museum is an interesting artifact. This can was shipped from Spanish-speaking Argentina, under the label Flora De Lis. This packaging was commonly used from 1907 until 1942 when international...
The fourth heritage marker panel examined in this series is entitled “Water before Rail,” dealing with the transport of fruit and other goods by water, roughly between the opening of the canal connecting Kalamalka and Wood lakes in 1908 and the completion of the Canadian National Railway (CNR)...
Okanagan Lake froze over in 1929. Temperatures remained consistently below zero long enough that serious concern over food supplies were quite real. This meant that the paddle wheelers had to break their way through the ice to reach their docking points. Local inhabitants took the opportunity to...
Which birds might I see today? Ducks that dive Remember the dabblers and the divers – the two categories into which we group ducks? In an earlier posting we took a look at the dabblers, and in this posting we’ll focus on the divers. All of the species featured here can be found in our valley...
The Lakeshore Garage was built by E. Swanson in 1947. It was later owned by Al Nagel and taken over by his son, Randy, in the 1970s. After that the building was leased to Alvin Meyer. The last gas was pumped on December 19, 1987. The garage was demolished when the highway was widened. The...