 |
|||||||||||||||||
From the pages ... |
|||||||||||||||||
Excerpts from Nelson, British Columbia in Photographs |
|||||||||||||||||
| Deep in the southeastern interior of British Columbia, in a shallow bowl formed by low, heavily wooded mountains and bisected by the western tip of a long, glacier-fed lake, is the city of Nelson, a garden of cultural and architectural treasures open to anyone who chooses to leave the beaten path ... | |||||||||||||||||
| ... Nelson's defining character, though, is not rooted in these qualities, for Nelson is, and always will be, what its physical shape makes it -- a heritage city built upon a mountain slope. The character of Nelson is formed by the hundred-year-old architecture, the slabs of timber and brick that, carved and fitted decades ago, have been covered up and then uncovered, rediscovered, and made into the centre-piece of a city that places a high value on its own story ... | ... Like many cities of the Canadian West, Nelson was founded on the promise of riches. Gold, found at nearby Forty-nine Creek in 1867, was an irresistible lure, and the next few years saw an unfolding drama of double dealings and even murder set against the backdrop of the Selkirk Mountains. Gold petered out, but the discovery of silver on Toad Mountain brought prospectors back in greater numbers, and by the fall of 1887, the town known unofficially as Salisbury had taken shape in tents and rough cabins housing ... | ||||||||||||||||
Excerpts from The West Kootenay in Photographs |
|||||||||||||||||
| First, there was the dip of the paddle and the smell of wood smoke in a sparsely-peopled mountain country. Pictographs near kootemik, or "places of hot water," indicate that the soothing hot springs of the West Kootenay were revered thousands of years ago by British Columbia's first people ... | |||||||||||||||||
| ... Rail and water were the highways of the time. The Kaslo & Slocan line covered treacherous terrain rising almost 600 metres (2,000 feet) to the famous Payne Bluff and its white-knuckle 330-metre drop. Kootenay and Arrow lakes' graceful sternwheelers, known as the "White Swans," carried ore from remote mining sites to railheads. Catastrophes were not uncommon. Kaslo, Rossland, and ... |
... There is tension, too, in concern about loss of life style. Opposition occasionally rears up against development. Battles are waged as environmentalists pit themselves against companies that cut and dig for resources. Natives, hunters, ranchers, and others struggle to make their voices heard as land-use decisions are hammered out. The area is evolving, physically, socially, and economically, and one can only hope the future is as generous ... | ||||||||||||||||
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||||||
