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…