Seasons Greetings The Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History’s 2022 Historical Desk Calendar is here. Enjoy 12 months of spectacular Basin images curated by the Institute. To order a copy, please email info@basininstitute.org and inquire about details. Calendars are $15 each, and a limited number are available. We are proud to present the perfect Christmas…

The Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History is proud to present our latest installation, a web exhibit chronicling the Triangle Women’s Institute from Grasmere B.C. and its origins in the South Country. This project was sponsored by the Columbia Basin Trust, Heritage BC, and the RDEK. Special thanks to creators Erin Knutson and Derryll White…

In his memoirs, ‘Jim Wardner, by himself 1900,’ Jim writes of the experience of establishing Wardner B.C. “I met Capt. F.P. Armstrong on the Canadian Pacific Train and at once joined him in an enterprise which, but for the cold hand of fate, would have realized us both a considerable fortune,” he said. In part,…

The abundant minerals in the southern end of the East Kootenays and its proximity to Crowsnest, Elk Valley, and Flathead (over 500 million tonnes of coal have been produced since 1898) made Wardner a miner’s dream. On April 13, 1897, the Spokane Spokesman-Review described the mining rush in the East Kootenays, according to businessman John…

Steamboats like the Gwendoline, North Star, and Ruth were the only means of travel to move materials and passengers before the railroad’s arrival. Steamboating was the way of life in the East Kootenays until a road bridge was built in 1909, crossing the Kootenay River. The riverboat era was not without adversity, and both the…

Join us in our multi-part series on Wardner B.C. for a glimpse of pioneers and adventurers in the late 1890s. Trials and tribulations were part of founding the area and inherent in the great strides necessary to forge ahead through gritty, turbulent, and harsh conditions. The town of Wardner in early 1897 was the last…

It’s back to school, everyone, and the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History is sharpening its pencils over the next couple of weeks to celebrate the season. We will be honouring the arrival of the new school year with some throwbacks to a great tradition. The Cranbrook Public School was the first purpose-built school in…

In response to many queries, the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History (CBIRH) went on a quest to discover the naming of Mount Bill Nye. We contacted the Provincial Toponymist who searched the Geo Names Archives and Resources Library for the name origins of Mount Bill Nye. According to her findings, the mountain was named…

In 1885 the town of Donald B.C., known originally as ‘First Crossing’, was located where the C.P.R. first crossed the Columbia River, 28 Kilometres west of Golden. It was a rather lively canvas town in its heyday, consisting of numerous stores, saloons, and gambling houses. Money and liquor were plentiful, and 2,000 C.P.R. men worked…

This story was taken from the Golden Era, July 19, 1901. A valid and fascinating account of life in the 1890s here in the East Kootenay: One bright July afternoon, in the summer of 1892, three prospectors might have been seen with saddle horses and pack animals, crossing the Kootenay River Ferry at Bummers’ flat,…

By Derryll White  You had to know Verdun Casselman to enjoy the full depth of this book, although any discerning reader will see large parts of this man and form a positive picture of his life and devotion to the region’s history.  Rancher, poet, historian – Verd did it all very well and lived life…

A glimpse into the hubris of the early gold rush in the Kootenays – an excerpt taken from the Victoria Daily Colonist June 18, 1864. THE KOOTENAIS MINES. – Their Richness Confirmed. –  We have received from the most undoubted authority the fullest confirmation of the account published a few days since by us of…

Cominco and Trail are almost synonymous. It is nearly impossible to talk of one and not the other. Indeed, the City of Trail’s motto is “Gold must be tried by fire”, referencing the smelter. However, Cominco is linked to development throughout the Kootenays and beyond. The Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company was formed in 1905…

For the latest edition of ‘The Basin Record’, the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History’s official newsletter and a glimpse at ‘The Coal Creek Mining Disaster’, ‘The Legacy of Learning Project’, and Asian Heritage Month’ read further: Double click the image below and scroll down to enjoy The Basin Record:

The Triangle Women’s Institute (TWI) in the East Kootenay Hamlet of Grasmere, B.C., has faced the unknown, kept an adventurous spirit, and thrown caution to the sidelines during a pandemic to carry on with an expansive history project. The project will transform the heart of the community, or as it’s better known to locals Pioneer…

The memory of landscape is incredible. Long after fires extinguish and floods subside, storms pass, and summers sleep, the land remembers. Have you ever looked at the Douglas firs and western larches in the valley bottoms? Five scars hug the bark of trees that survived the heat of summer spark. Many trees have multiple blemishes,…

Earth Day Canada 2021 has commenced, and Canadians are taking action across the country and with citizens worldwide to promote environmental conservatism and stewardship of the planet. Mount Baker Secondary School students are no strangers to environmental activism, having embarked on a group clean-up back in April 1990 to celebrate an Earth Day of old….

As golfers around the Kootenays eagerly await the opening of their favourite golf courses, here is something from the past that may bring a smile. On May 10th, 1904, a group of men gathered at the busy offices of Beale & Elwell on Baker Street to form a club. They decided to name it ‘The…

School District No. 5 and the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History partnered six years ago to create ‘The Legacy of Learning Project’. The project has given the community opportunity to enjoy a collection of yearbooks documenting the history of Columbia Basin graduates. The collection continues to grow, and we have a display of selections…

June 1965. To nine-year-old Keith Huscroft, the school days seemed endless. This summer was going to be the most exciting ever! In a few days, he would be joining his father Bill, Uncle Bob, Uncle Waddie, and their sons on the annual cattle drive with his very own horse. Everyone was working long hours on…

One of Cranbrook’s first residents passed away 145 years ago on March 27, 1876. Henry Edward Seelye was born at St. George, New Brunswick, 1819, to a family of United Empire Loyalists. He took those political commitments forward into the actions of his life. Henry married Lucretia Dawes Howe in 1843. Both families were politically…

Some local history volumes continue to excite and interest the reader long after they are published. A 1998 volume edited by Wayne Norton and Naomi Miller is such a book. The Forgotten Side of the Border – British Columbia’s Elk Valley and Crowsnest Pass is more than a local history volume. It is a gathering from…

Do you think that Cranbrook has destroyed most of its early architectural history? Well, think again! Yes, some wonderful buildings have disappeared, but several are hiding in plain view under vinyl siding. For those that have gone, such as the Bucket of Blood or Commercial Hotel, the stories linger. A Guide to Cranbrook’s History Walking…

Founded on March 29, 1844, under the direction of Mother Emilie Gameli, the Sisters of Providence are a Roman Catholic organization that operated the St. Eugene Hospital in Cranbrook for 70 years (May 1, 1898-September 14, 1968), and the St. Eugene School of Nursing (1911-1950). Their first mission in Western Canada was to establish St….

#2215.0635 ca. 1900: Dynelectron Machine Model F – Image courtesy of the Columbia Basin Institute What is this puzzling machine, you ask? No, it isn’t an old turntable system; this is a Dynelectron Machine. The device is part of the Columbia Basin Institute’s F.W. Green Clinic collection, and Dr. Green used it in his practice….

First Nations people of the area, the Sinixt, and the Ktunaxa knew of the hot springs’ restorative powers before the Europeans explored the Arrow Lakes regions. Captain Robert Sanderson, a mechanical engineer, was a steamboat builder and operator. He was a partner in the Columbia Transportation Company, which ran freight on the Columbia River with…

Argenta was founded in the silver boom in West Kootenay in the 1890s. It was named after the Argenta Mining Company, in which it derived its name from the Latin word for silver, Argentum. The elusive mother lode was never located. At the turn of the 20th century, the area was marketed for fruit ranching….

Shortly after 7:30 pm on May 22, 1902, an explosion ripped through the No. 2 and No. 3 mines at the Coal Creek mines near Fernie. The ground shook. A cloud of coal dust and flame blew 1,000 meters in the air at the mine’s shared portal. Roughly 20 men escaped, and the rest of…

After a deadly accident in August 1896 on Mount Lefroy, the American Appalachian Mountain Club hired its first Swiss guide Peter Sarback, in 1897 to work in the Canadian Rockies. He would guide them on the first ascent of Mount Victoria. In 1899, the first Swiss guides hired by the CPR were Christian Haesler Sr….

Conrad Kain was born in Nasswald, Austria, on August 10, 1883. Following his father’s death in 1892, things for his family were difficult, and Conrad left school at age 14, finding work as a goat herder and quarryman. He soon developed a love for the mountains and became a guide and a porter. Conrad earned…

As Women’s Institutes formed across the country in the early 1900s, one such member, Mary Stewart, wrote a prayer called the Collect Club for Women in 1904 to inspire a new generation of women to aspire to greatness as a collective whole.  Stewart felt that the new movement of women working together for a collective…

Muriel Lillian Baxter was an outstanding public figure, serving as a teacher, principal, and elementary school supervisor in Cranbrook for 41 years. Ms. Baxter was born on October 13th, 1902, in Saint Johns, N.B., to Isaac and Idella Baxter. They relocated to Cranbrook in 1903. She was the oldest of five children. She received her…

An interesting letter was found in the archives at Fort Steele detailing the early adventures of East Kootenay. It was written in September 1899, and posted from Kimberley to a friend in Fernie. At that time, both were fledgling communities attempting to secure their place in the economic development of East Kootenay. The anonymous letter…

Nils Hanson was known as “Hanson the Hospitable” or “mine host” or later, simply “the Guv’nor.” Famous for his generosity and gracious entertaining from the mid-1880s until his death in 1917, Hanson drew people from all over East Kootenay to his lake and garden oasis at Wasa. Born at Skole in the southern part of…

The Triangle Women’s Institute in Grasmere and the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History embarked on a journey in 2020 to preserve the unique history of their 4-H Club in a museum-style panel that will be part of a 20 part series to be displayed at the Grasmere Pioneer Community Hall. The four H’s represent…

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…

The Industries 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. “Industries” depicts the community’s early foundations and the industries contributing to its growth and sustainment. The…

David H. Brown spent 35 years in the funeral business. Brown wondered what he could do with all the embalming fluid bottles? In 1952, he began building a house overlooking Kootenay Lake near Boswell (along Highway 3A); construction materials, the rectangular embalming fluid bottles. The Wishing Well #2040.0003 – Image courtesy of SD#5 and CBIRH…

Peter Vasilevich “Lordly” Verigin acquired property in the West Kootenay and Boundary region for the Christian Community of University Brotherhood (CCUB) in 1908. The first land purchase was 2000 acres near the confluence of the Kootenay River and the Columbia River. He named the community Brilliant. As well, the land was purchased on the other…

Cranbrook’s limited theatre work began on the new Star Theatre building in 1921. The Star was located in the middle of the block on Norbury Avenue, across from City Hall. It quickly became a landmark of the downtown area, with many businesses proud to describe their location near the Star. “Hemstitching and picot edging, Singer…

When Cranbrook eclipsed Fort Steele as the business and financial centre of East Kootenay, the pressure to relocate the Provincial Government offices to Cranbrook was significant. The result was to move the offices to Cranbrook after the official announcement on May 5th, 1904. Cranbrook had won the long inter-city feud. The result was the construction…

When I was Small is a personal look at how one East Kootenay family survived the Great Depression. The Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History published this title by Alta and Fee Hellmen in 2006 and would like to invite patrons to revisit an early Kootenay legacy. Ranging from Roosville, through Ta Ta Creek to Invermere, Alta…

Mrs. Isabella (Williamson) Lafleur, universally known as “Bessie,” immigrated from Saintfield County, Northern Ireland, in 1915, during the height of World War I. She was a determined and positive young woman who, undeterred by torpedoes and death at sea, proceeded to cross the Atlantic and travel to Cranbrook, B.C. Her older sister, Mrs. R.W. Edmondson,…

The question is always, “what can we learn from history?” And more often than not, “nothing” is the reply. At the Columbia Basin Institute, we would argue that history gives us time and distance. Time lets us reflect on what others have done, and whether we want to continue those acts and attitudes. Space allows…

Captain Armstrong, the brother of the early gold commissioner and government agent J.F. Armstrong, was born in Sorel, Quebec, in 1861. He was an immigrant to East Kootenay, moving to Winnipeg in 1881, and then west with F.W. Aylmer to survey a western route for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Quoted in the 1913 Cranbrook Courier,…

An excerpt from the Cranbrook Herald of 100 years ago Jan. 17, 1907, supports the continuing national debate on the health of the family, “the glass ceiling,” and the general valuation of women’s labour in contemporary society. As we often say, by looking back, we move forward. “It is a gross injustice that women’s service,…

The fur industry was booming in the early 1920s, and by 1923 the market in British Columbia was worth an estimated $5,000,000. B.C. was climatically ideal for raising foxes, more so than any other area of Canada, and 200 pairs were in the province by 1924. Willard W. Warren, a man with years of experience…

In 1900 a women’s hockey team was created as a “novelty” for Rossland’s 3rd Winter Carnival. All Rossland women were invited to join for a fee of 50 cents each, a considerable price for the time. Interest increased, and two teams, the Crescents, and the Stars resulted. The best players were chosen for the Winter…

You know Waldo, of course, hiding in the crowd as a comic character, unseen but there. A whole cult of searchers, kids, and adults, have formed around him. But what about the other Waldo (B.C.), also hiding in plain view? Situated on the Kootenay River, just upriver from where the Elk River flows into the…