Memories preserved in the South Country

December 17th, 2020 1 Minutes

Memories Panel 2020 – Image courtesy of the Columbia Basin Institute and the Triangle Women’s Institute.

The Memories panel was created by the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History and The Triangle Women’s Institute as the beginning of a 20 part series of museum quality panels that will grace the Pioneer Hall walls in Grasmere.

Memory gives history emotional meaning. It is the way we choose to remember people, places, and events in our past.

The Letcher memoirs chronicle the family’s life over the years, one of the many accounts of the South Country’s early families. A passage from the memoir reads:

“Isabella (Letcher McDonald) would sell eggs, butter, and the garden vegetables to pay for the children’s board in Fernie when they were going to high school. The board was about twenty dollars a month”.

Other historians would recall the details that made the history of the South Country come to life in their writings. Alta Goodwin Hellman was one such writer who wrote of her life in an autobiography ‘Growing up in East Kootenay (1920-1935)’.

Bootlegging was a big thing in the years when we lived at Roosville. Those were the years of Prohibition in the ‘States, and many enterprising people took advantage of the thirst for alcohol south to border to make, if not fortunes, at least a considerable amount of money.
Alta Goodwin Hellman