Vanishing British Columbia

224 Pages·2005·310.913 MB·English

by  Kluckner, Michael

vanishing
BRITISH COLUMBIA

vanishing
BRITISH COLUMBIA
MICHAEL KLUCKNER
UBC PRESS / VANCOUVER AND TORONTO
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS / SEATTLE
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
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copying, a licence from ACCESS COPYRIGHT (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), www.accesscopyright.ca.
1514131211100908070605 54321
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Kluckner, Michael
Vanishing British Columbia / Michael Kluckner.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7748-1125-0
1. Historic buildings - British Columbia - Pictorial works.
2. British Columbia - History. I. Title.
FC3812.K582005 917.1104'5 C2004-904809-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kluckner, Michael.
Vanishing British Columbia / Michael Kluckner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-295-98493-7 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. Historic sites — British Columbia — Pictorial works. 2. Historic buildings — British Columbia — Pictorial works.
3. Cities and towns - British Columbia - Pictorial works. 4. Watercolor painting - British Columbia. 5. British Columbia -
History, Local - Pictorial works. 6. British Columbia - History, Local. I. Title.
F1087.8.K582005 971.1'04'0222-dc22 2004023543
UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for our publishing program of the Government of Canada through
the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and of the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British
Columbia Arts Council.
UBC Press University of Washington Press
The University of British Columbia PO Box 50096
2029 West Mall Seattle, WA 98145-5096, USA
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 www.washington.edu/uwpress
604-822-5959/Fax: [phone]
www.ubcpress.ca
HALF TITLE Beekeepers' cottage (page 86), a Doukhobor building near FACING PAGE The abandoned St. Nicholas Catholic Church, built about
Grand Forks. 1890 at Spahomin, the Indian village on the west side of Douglas Lake in
FRONTISPIECE The BC Packers complex on the Alert Bay waterfront, the the arid grasslands east ofMerritt. Missionary Father Jean-Marie Raphael
year before its demolition in the spring of'2003 (page 158). While negotiat- LeJeune, its designer, is more often remembered for the Kamloops Wawa, a
ing the abandonment of these buildings, BC Packers was also engaged in re- newsletter he published between 1891 and 1923 for his Native audience in
developing its lands on the Steveston waterfront at the mouth of the Fraser English, French, and a Chinook jargon he developed himself. LeJeune wrote
River, replacing its "Cannery Row" packing plants and wharves with about national and international events of Native concern, eventually circu-
condominums and interpretive plaques. lating about 2,000 copies to readers as far away as Quebec and France.

British Columbia Regions
Southwestern Mainland
Hope-Princeton & Tulameen
The Okanagan
Boundary Country
The Kootenays
Fraser-Thompson-Shuswap
Vancouver Island
The Cariboo & the Chilcotin
The North
British Columbia at
the turn of the
twentieth century,
showing the
Electoral and Land
districts that reflect
the development of
the province's
regions.
NEIL ROUGHLEY
CONTENTS
9 INTRODUCTION
13 THEMES & VARIATIONS
Shelter from the storm / Places of exile and Utopia / Corridors / Governments and other institutions / Company towns / Folk-
loric landscapes / The architecture of mobility
35 SOUTHWESTERN MAINLAND
The Lower Mainland / Wong's Market / Dewdney store / Howe Sound and Union Steamships / Hermit Island / Gower
Point / Powell River / Britannia Beach / Lund / Savary Island
53 HOPE-PRINCETON & TULAMEEN
The Dewdney Trail and Camp Defiance / The Great Northern Railway and the Kettle Valley Railway (Hedley, Coalmont
and Brookmere) / Thynne Lake Ranch and a Guichon ranch house
63 THE OKANAGAN
The J. M. Robinson towns (Summerland, Naramata and Peachland) / Kelowna orchards and Fintry I Coldstream and
Lavington I Beaverdell Hotel
73 BOUNDARY COUNTRY
Anarchist Mountain and Ingram Mountain ranches / Greenwood / Doukhobor villages (Grand Forks and the West Koote-
nays)
89 THE KOOTENAYS
The Silvery Slocan (Nelson, Salmo, Trail, Blaylock Estate, Ainsworth Hot Springs and Trout Lake City) / New Denver /
The Japanese-Canadian internment / Sandon / Creston, Canal Flats and Wynndel / Yahk / St. Eugene's Mission
113 FRASER-THOMPSON-SHUSWAP
Eraser Canyon, Yale and Spuzzum /Alexandra Lodge, auto camps, motels and Siska Lodge / North Bend / Spences Bridge,
Toketic, Pokhaist and Basque / Walhachin / The Calhounfarm near Tappen / Shuswap cabins / Tranquille
141 VANCOUVER ISLAND
The Esquimalt &f Nanaimo Railway / Victoria, Saanich and Nanaimo / Galiano, Saltspring and Mayne islands / Island
Motoring (Union Bay) / Qualicum Beach / Eaglecrest / Alert Bay and Sointula / Denman Island / Zeballos
169 THE CARIBOO & THE CHILCOTIN
Lillooet /Bralorne /Pavilion / Clinton, the Cariboo Road, madhouses at Cottonwood, 137 Mile and 183 Mile /
Williams Lake / Wells / Blue River store
185 THE NORTH
The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (Prince George, Dunster, McBride, Kitwanga, Prince Rupert, Evelyn and Quick) /
Hagwilget and Gitsegukla / Burns Lake / Stewart / Atlin / The Peace / The Queen Charlottes
213 THE FUTURE
Environmentalism, heritage preservation, government policies and individual attitudes toward modern British Columbia
216 BACK MATTER
Painting Notes 216 • Additional Notes & Acknowledgements 217 • Bibliography 219 • Index 221

Introduction
"My mother-in-law wishes to know why you have come to our village." Abandoned orchard near Spences
"I want to make some pictures of the totem poles." Bridge in the fall of 2002. The
"What do you want our totem poles for?" colossal rugged landscape along the
"Because they are beautiful. They are getting old now, and your people make very few Thompson River — the dryness,
new ones. The young people do not value the poles as the old ones did. By and by there remoteness, summer heat and
will be no more poles. I want to make pictures of them, so that your young people as winter cold — dwarfs and dooms
puny men's attempts at settlement.
well as the white people will see how fine your totem poles used to be."
-Emily Carr, Klee Wyck1
I
n the four or five decades that I've spent travelling in British Columbia, I've
developed a sort of mental map of it, including images of the province's
well-known natural splendours. But many dots on my map are landmarks
from earlier generations of human settlement — a kind of "roadside memory"
that helps make my province and my country my home.
In a casual way, on holidays a dozen years ago, I began to paint them in my 1 Kitwancool chapter (1971 edition, p. 101).
INTRODUCTION 9