Columbia Valley Guide
History & Heritage
Conrad Kain interpretive sign
The Conrad Kain Centennial Society has planted another interpretive sign in the valley celebrating Canada’s premiere historic mountain guide. This time, mountaineer Conrad Kain, who was based in Wilmer until his death in 1934, shares the stage with a Catholic nun.
Sister Ethelbert (nee Marie-Madeleine Newlen) was a member of the Order of the Sisters of Providence who visited the upper Columbia in 1894 on behalf of the Saint Mary’s Hospital in New Westminster. Her mission, as with many previous in other parts of B.C., was to raise money for the support of the hospital. She travelled up the ...Full story
Burgess Shale — Yoho’s ‘sea floor’ high in the Rockies
Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan and the Royal Ontario Museum have discovered the footprints of a 500-million-year-old arthropod on the ‘sea floor’ above the tree line near Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park. (Photos by Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation)
New discovery of 500-million-year-old arthropod.
On November 9, 2011, just over a century after Charles Doolittle Walcott made his first fossil discovery in the Burgess Shale, researchers from the University of Saskatchewan and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) announced the first discovery of tracks –- the footprints of a Tegopelte ...Full story
Fairmont Indian baths
On a little knoll about a minute’s hike up from the Fairmont Hot Springs parking lot, lies a real treasure. Sitting on a plateau of tufa rock coloured orange, brown, green and blue by the streams of spring water that leap out of the rocks above, is a very old stone bathhouse.
Fairmont Indian baths are natural hot spring pools that were popular among early settlers of the valley. It is not known why they were called ‘Indian’ baths. At the time that explorer David Thompson described them in his journal, there was no building.
“There is much petrified wood. From many places a white siliceous ...Full story
Kootenae House National Historic Site
Kootenae House National Historic Site. (CVGuide photos)
The visitor to Kootenae House National Historic Site stands in a seemingly empty field, surrounded by majestic mountains which overlook the peaceful Columbia Valley. Not a sound can be heard in the still mountain air and yet, the quiet seems to contain the voices of a time long ago.
In 1806 the Columbia Basin remained one of the largest unexplored areas of North America west of the Rocky Mountains, so the North West Company sent David Thompson to explore and map the basin and to establish trade in the region. He and his party, desperately ...Full story
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History & Heritage
