by lakecountry | Jan 30, 2015 | Bloggers, History of Lake Country, Thomson, Carol
Before the coming of the white man, the fertile bottom land of Winfield was dense forest, with occasional oases of small natural meadows, while the present orchard benchlands were covered with pine trees, etc. Large herds of deer roamed the ranges and bunch grass was...
by lakecountry | Jan 23, 2015 | Bloggers, History of Lake Country, Thomson, Carol
‘Tis hard to believe that it’s been twenty years since the District of Lake Country was incorporated. In 1995 the four communities of Carr’s Landing, Okanagan Centre, Oyama and Winfield incorporated to form the municipality of Lake Country. It is...
by lakecountry | Jan 16, 2015 | Bloggers, History of Lake Country, Thomson, Carol
In early days it took dedicated community members to provide recreational facilities in the Lake Country area. The following except is from the manuscript, The Autobiography of Harold David Butterworth of Oyama,1 where Butterworth documents the making of an outdoor...
by lakecountry | Dec 26, 2014 | Bloggers, History of Lake Country, Thomson, Carol
The first mail service in the Winfield area was that offered by Charles Lawson who used to carry the mail on horseback from Swan Lake to Okanagan Mission around 1872. Apparently he used to shout at the top of his voice as he passed ranches to announce the mail, and...
by lakecountry | Dec 19, 2014 | Bloggers, Jim Taylor
Our Christmas decor has evolved over the years. We used to go out and cut our own tree. That meant every Christmas tree was different. Some trees were short and fat, some tall and skinny. Each tree required its own unique arrangement of decorations. We also created...
by lakecountry | Dec 12, 2014 | Bloggers, Guest Bloggers, History of Lake Country, Thomson, Carol
Do you need a recipe for some wartime Christmas Cheer? How about trying a “George and Frank Cocktail” or a “Marpole Slug”? Recently, Museum volunteer, Elaine Pybus, discovered this cocktail recipe in a letter written in 1945 and found in the...
by lakecountry | Nov 28, 2014 | Bloggers, History of Lake Country, Thomson, Carol, Thomson, Duane
Fourteen years ago (2000) Ken Ellison published a book, Irrigation is King: A Century of Water in Oyama, BC. 1892-2000. This work exhaustively examined and interpreted the land, water and irrigation records of Oyama, BC. Now, a complementary video, Flume. The story of...
by lakecountry | Nov 21, 2014 | Bloggers, History of Lake Country, Thomson, Carol
Father Charles Pandosy arrived in 1859 with the Lawrence brothers and William Pion. They spent that hard winter in a crude shelter on the shores of Duck Lake before moving camp to Mission Creek and founding their church. The early 1870s saw the arrival in...
by lakecountry | Nov 14, 2014 | Bloggers, History of Lake Country, Thomson, Duane
During the early years of the fur trade, hundreds of young men moved to Rupert’s Land and the Columbia to work for the North West Company or, after 1821, the amalgamated firm, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). No white women accompanied these men and if the men stayed...
by lakecountry | Nov 7, 2014 | Bloggers, Jim Taylor
On November 3, 1917, a young man “somewhere in France,” serving in the Canadian Army as a battery commander’s assistant, sat down to write a letter to his wife back home in New Brunswick. She was due to give birth to their first child. “I have been gazing into the...
by lakecountry | Oct 17, 2014 | Bloggers, Hayes, Bob, History of Lake Country
Recently, I wrote a short article about our family cabin on Clement Road, at the south end of Wood Lake. In this article I made reference to the adjacent campground and cabins known as “Sam’s”. This facility, also known as Wood Lake Resort, was a popular tourist...
by lakecountry | Oct 3, 2014 | Bloggers, History of Lake Country, Thomson, Carol
“Colonel” John Brixton, an English man, lived across the lake before moving to [Okanagan] Centre where Dick Ash now lives. He took care of the lighthouse on the island in Carr’s Landing. Although a veteran of both the Boer and World War I he was not...
