My posts on the Okanagan are usually upbeat, talking about great people and places and things to do here in the valley. This post is also about great people, heroic people, but I write with sadness because our community has lost, continues to lose, precious natural spaces and individuals suffer personal tragedy. (See photos)
As I write, more than 11,000 people have been evacuated (and many more are waiting tensely on evacuation notice) in the face of two forest fires - Glenrosa and Rose Valley - both of which started on Saturday, July 18.
At least three homes have been destroyed by the Glenrosa Fire. I saw one of them burn and ached for the people whose family memories were being consumed by the flames. I've also watched the unbelievable skill and heroism of the helicopter and airplane pilots who are working feverishly to save hundreds more homes.
Continue reading "West Kelowna - Glenrosa Fire - 2009" »
Mention the Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) Trail, and the Myra Canyon Trestles above Kelowna jump to mind. But there's another section of
the old rail line that involves even more spectacular Okanagan scenery, a
genuine character, lunch at a Naramata Bench winery, a mind-bogglingly
knowledgeable tour guide, and one border collie.
“It’s all downhill,” Ed Kruger assures us as he packs people into, and
mountain bikes on top of, his Monashee Adventure Tours bus. Comforting
words for a couple of semi-out-of-shape middle agers joining a group of
30-something Vancouver lawyers on a 36-kilometre cycle trek
team-builder.
Ed calls this tour Rock Ovens to Valley Vistas.
Continue reading "Easy-ridin' the KVR Trail: Chute Lake to Naramata" »
Why did the biologist paint the rattler’s tail yellow? Who cares – I
hate snakes – well, more like love/hate. The fact is, I actually wanted
to see a rattler, but they’re getting so scarce in BC’s southern
Okanagan Valley that my best chance for a sighting was the Nk’Mip
Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos.
Continue reading "Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre" »
Here's a book title for you - Where the Grass is Always Browner on the Other Side of the Fence: A History of the Okanagan Commonage...
It may sound a little tongue-in-cheek and it's certainly a tongue-twister, but this book by retired veterinarian turned historian and author, D. John Price, should be in the library of every Okanagan history buff.
I met Dr. Price one sunny summer day and we sat on the deck of his stunning log home overlooking Kalamalka Lake, with the brown grasslands of the Commonage all around us. Behind the house, several horses loafed around in corrals next to the bright red barn that centres the cover of his book. A big black dog, lounged at our feet.
Here's a bit of what he had to say.
Continue reading "The Commonage" »
Since my first-year university Classics course (Ancient Egypt, Greek pots ...) I've wanted to visit a dig. Notice I didn't say I wanted to take part in one - all that meticulous sifting and dust-brushing, not so much - but I really have wanted to see the process in action. I never suspected that my chance would come right here in the Okanagan.
OK, so the 12 UBC Okanagan students working under the direction of associate professor and archaeologist Rick Garvin aren't going to stumble on a Tutankamen's tomb - but they are turning up the detritus of the humble working men who laboured in the 1910s to build the Myra Canyon section of the Kettle Valley Railway (now the popular KVR Trail).
Continue reading "Kettle Valley Railway - History/Archaeology Tour" »
You've likely gathered that I'm quite a history buff and I don't much mind the shape my history lessons come in: museums, castles, interpreters, roadside plaques, recreated villages, even the History Channel. But I know that lots of you would rather eat raw eggs; shave your legs with an emery board; listen to a thumbnail scraping a blackboard - well, maybe not that. But you're really not into the history thing.
Jack Godwin understands. This retired history teacher learned in the classroom that “the
way to get students involved is to hook them emotionally with a
question or a story.”
In his second career as chief engineer of the
folksy, bluegrass Kettle Valley Brakemen, he uses the same technique,
drawing audiences into the performance with tales from the railway
days, stories about how he came to write the songs and lots of humour.
Every concert is a rollicking history lesson with special emphasis on
the Kettle Valley line.
Continue reading "Toe-tappin’, Train Talkin' Troubadour – Jack Godwin" »
Water is a defining, constraining feature of life in the Okanagan. From
the beginning of European settlement, the imperative to transfer it
from where it’s plentiful to where it’s needed has produced some
impressive feats of engineering.
Early bench land homesteaders, with no viable means of tapping into the
big sources like Okanagan and Kalamalka Lakes, turned the laws of
nature to their advantage. They built gravity fed irrigation systems,
bringing diverted water, first through simple ditches and later through
flumes, from upland creeks and man-made lakes to their fields. Remnants
survive, but they may soon be lost — victims of vandalism, natural
degradation and development.
Continue reading "Dobbin Flume" »