The initial orchards of the West Kootenays were established in the 1890s. However, it wasn’t until more than a decade later that fruit ranching as an industry took off. Among the first to plant fruit trees in the area was Charles Wesley Busk, a civil engineer from England. In 1889, he preempted 200 acres at […]

After the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1885, the Canadian Government and CPR set out on a campaign to entice Europeans to immigrate to British Columbia. Promotional pamphlets from the CPR boasting of the province’s large fertile valleys and wealth of natural resources flooded Europe, and around the turn of the twentieth-century, […]

All the propaganda worked. Soon hundreds of optimistic European colonists were settling on the shores of Kootenay Lake. Most were “well educated and came largely from England. They represented most of the professions together with trade and industry, and also a fair sprinkling of retired army and navy men.” 9 Some settlers bought land sight […]

Reginald Dawson, in his memoir Hope and Forty Acres, recalls that “the years 1903 to 1907 were the peak years of the boom in real estate in the Nelson district and every CPR boat brought its quota of hopeful embryonic fruit growers.” 15 He, like hundreds of others, was a victim to “land sharks.” Unscrupulous […]

Fruit growing in the West Kootenays flourished from 1910 to 1930. Many successful orchards blossomed around the region, and Kootenay fruit won prizes at exhibitions around the world. 18 United by their shared objective to master the art of fruit growing and to ultimately survive, orcharding communities sprung up along the lake. A general sense […]

One of the difficulties Kootenay growers faced from early in the industry was a late growing season. Okanagan fruit went on the market three weeks earlier than Kootenay fruit, and fruit from Washington and Oregon went on the market three weeks earlier than the Okanagan. The late growing season became particularly problematic in years of […]

The declaration of World War I in August of 1914 shook the orcharding communities as men were forced to abandon their fruit trees in the name of patriotic duty. The call to arms often left women to run the orchards, and many did so successfully despite the shortage of workers. Nevertheless, they turned to the […]

While apples were the primary fruit grown in the Kootenays, cherry production ranked second by the mid-1920s. Cherries were a lucrative business. A producing orchard could provide a gross income of $1,050 per acre. 28 Kaslo, in particular, became renowned for its impeccable cherries and won first place “in London in 1909, at Wembley, England, […]

The implementation of a central selling system for all of B.C. fruit in the late 1930s was the final blow for many Kootenay orchardists. The marketing of fruit in B.C. had always been a challenge. While the implementation of a revised Natural Products Marketing Act in 1937 aimed to stabilize the market and served some, […]