Castlegar Community Album: People From the Past

Kinnaird just kind of crept into being. Like so many small communities lumbering and transportation were the sparks for its existence. The flats between the burgeoning town of Castlegar and Merry Creek were gradually logged off. Marc Dumont bought property on the other side of the river from Waterloo in 1904. Called West Waterloo, it eventually became part of Kinnaird.

Mills came and went. Joe Deschamps established one near where the Castleaird Plaza is today, at a railroad siding called Stewartsville. The Genelle brothers harvested for their sawmill at Genelle. Eventually the land was opened enough that fruit farming was investigated. The Killoughs moved in from the prairies in 1913 and purchased 800 acres. They planted fruit trees and other commercial crops and contributed children to a public school that opened in Kinnaird in 1918.

Perhaps most important, the road to Trail was improved and developed, running right through Kinnaird. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. In the early 1940s a group of businessmen put a water system into Kinnaird and subdivided one hundred and twenty-five lots of one acre each, with each having frontage on the Castlegar-Trail highway. It was a success and by 1948 Kinnaird was incorporated as a village. The Castleaird Plaza was opened in 1960, an exciting new shopping venture at that time, and it in turn spawned Woodland Park, a high density subdivision initially for Celgar employees. On January 1st, 1974, Kinnaird was amalgamated into the City of Castlegar and all services were merged at that time.

The area that was once Kinnaird continues to be a quiet and delightful place to live. The lots are almost uniformly well treed and the pace of life is relatively slow and pleasing to the lucky people living there.