THE KÜTNE READER

Was a respected chief engineer on an Arrow Lakes sternwheeler also an opium smuggler?

Lighthouses on the Arrow Lakes? Yes, they existed! But nothing has been written about them until now. This post illuminates the subject.

While James W. Troup was renowned for building sternwheelers in the West Kootenay, Michael Cone recounts three steam launches he owned.

Wherein I try to figure out more about a woman depicted on a postcard — and reveal some puzzling findings about a murdered brothel keeper.

Long before Photoshop, postcard publishers were using airbrushes and other tools to alter images.

Several envelopes that sold at auction have intriguing connections to West Kootenay Japanese-Canadian, Chinese Canadian, and mining history.

During West Kootenay’s mining boom of the 1890s, newspapers popped up like Starbucks franchises. But lugging a printing press into a...

I’m not sure who the first woman to work for a West Kootenay/Boundary newspaper was, but it may have been Harriet Haire Smith, a daughter...

Six West Kootenay/Boundary residents and one former resident were among the 1,200 passengers and crew who perished when a German U-boat...

One of most poignant epitaphs I’ve ever seen appears on twin gravemarkers in West Kootenay’s most remote cemetery. The Hamel siblings,...

Is Trail missing a manhole cover? If so, public works might want to call their counterparts in Nelson, because there’s one in Railtown...

One of the most venerable and unique made-in-BC business names ceased to exist on March 22, 2018 after 103 years. The last Overwaitea...

The photo below is probably the second most-reproduced image ever taken in West Kootenay (next to R.H. Trueman’s vertigo-inducing shot of...

On Oct. 26, 1892, the sternwheeler Columbia was on the Arrow Lakes, en route from Little Dalles, Wash. to Revelstoke, when a passenger...