THE KÜTNE READER

Silverton had its own moviehouse? Yes, indeed! Here is what I have been able to scrape together about it and the man who ran it.

The Western Federation of Miners had at least 22 locals in the Kootenay-Boundary, whose ribbons are highly coveted by collectors.

How is it that so many people were born in Vallican between 1923 and 1942? The answer is Nellie Innes.

Was a cabin at Retallack once a school? Or a hideout for armed robbers?

An envelope that sold on eBay for an eye-popping price has a connection to a man convicted of bank robbery and embezzlement.

I had the privilege of reading the guest book of a famous New Denver hotel from 1897 to 1899 that was rescued from a landfill.

When fire destroyed the Newmarket Hotel in October 1973, New Denver lost its greatest heritage building, constructed 80 years earlier.

Britain’s most celebrated bomber pilot planned to start a veterans commune at New Denver in 1947.

Concrete ruins adjacent to the Springer Creek campground in Slocan are from an unusual intersection of mining and Japanese-Canadian history.

Names scratched on bricks outside the Sandon museum are some of the few reminders of the town's days as a Japanese-Canadian internment camp.

The remarkable postcard seen below sold in 2020 on eBay for $168 Cdn. It’s a previously unknown image of the Patrick Lumber Camp No. 1...

One day I’d like to write a book or booklet about the lost bullion of Slocan Lake, one of our region’s most enduring treasure stories. On...

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

Sandon is an interesting place for many reasons. One remarkable but perhaps under-appreciated aspect is that it is (or ought to be) a...

Lot Willey had a lot of bad luck. And bad timing. He was a sort of anti-Forrest Gump, with an uncanny knack for arriving in a town just...

In 2019, I wrote here about some long-lost footage showing survivors of the Empress of Ireland disaster of May 29, 1914 that claimed more...

Despite being such an historic and picturesque site, little has been written about the history of New Denver’s cemetery — until now. This...

Of the 100 or so cemeteries in West Kootenay/Boundary, two dozen can no longer be visited because they were either flooded out, exhumed,...

A terrific cover from Silverton, postmarked July 28, 1894, sold for $192.50 Cdn yesterday on eBay. It was sent from Hunter & McKinnon,...

Twice this year I’ve learned secret details about someone that made me re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about them. The first case...