Team Power Smart

Fall 2013

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O ur first full day starts at the Boundary Museum, housed in the Fructova school, constructed in 1929 by the Doukhobors, which means "spirit wrestlers" in russian. The Doukhobor movement started in russia in the 1700s by pacifist Christian peasants who objected to the excesses of the orthodox Church and were persecuted by Mother russia. With the help of leo Tolstoy and English and American Quakers, about 7,500 Doukhobors emigrated to Saskatchewan in the early 1900s. But after a homesteading rights dispute with the Canadian government, most migrated to B.C. starting in 1908 and built about 80 communal villages in the Kootenay-Boundary region. The Doukhobor community in the grand Forks area became the largest and remains so today. The museum closes in September, but tourists can call ahead to arrange visits. Archivist Sue Adrain shows us around the museum's collection of mining, rail, and trapping relics, Doukhobor artifacts, and a re-created classroom. Fructova means "fruitful" in russian, recognizing the region's agricultural productivity. All of the town's Doukhobor structures, including the school, were built from bricks made in their own factory. It sat below the school, near their highly productive cannery. The Doukhobors also built a flour mill that still operates today. The school closed in MON Phoenix Snowball (abandoned) Hardy Mtn. July C reek Gibbs Creek Eagle Mtn. Cr ee k TAINS E MOUN To Greenwood Granby Riv er ASHE • G L A D S TO N E P ROV I N C I A L PA R K To Castlegar k d Cree Sa n Observation Mtn. Mt. Wright Grand Forks 21 WAS HI N GTO N S TAT E Getting there Christina Lake Mt. Morrissey Morrissey Christina Creek Lake 3 Kettle River 0 N 4 8 km rob sTruThers Grand Forks is located at the confluence of the Granby and Kettle rivers about 520 kilometres east of Vancouver via Highway 1 and then 3 (the Crowsnest Highway). Info • Grand Forks visitor Centre, 524 Central Ave. (250-442-5835; hellobc.com/grandforks.aspx). Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association (250-860-5999; hellobc.com/thompsonokanagan.aspx). • 1949, reflecting the increasing assimilation of the Doukhobors with the greater community— and modern life. But their descendants still host Sunday prayer services and seasonal festivals. A few Doukhobor homesteads still dot the hillsides of Hardy Mountain. We drive up to the Hardy Mountain Doukhobor Village Historic Site, which contains the remains of the Makortoff Doukhobor Village. The main village house was built in 1912 and the property became a museum in the '70s. Currently owned by The land Conservancy of BC, tourists can arrange in advance for a guided tour of the property, but it's also fun just to peer through the windows of the stately house into the dusty rooms. In contrast, little remains of Phoenix, the region's most important mining town, our next tour stop. local mining history buff Boyd Hardwicke joins us to help paint a picture of the town, which began to thrive in 1900 when the CPr delivered the first load of ore 900 metres down Phoenix Mountain to the granby Smelter about 30 kilometres away. The smelter thrived, but when copper prices plummeted, the mine closed in 1919. Hardwicke worked for granby from 1964 to 1978. Nine of those years were spent at Phoenix, when the mountaintop had a sort of second life as an open-pit mine. "By the 1960s there was only an electrical substation and a cenotaph honouring the men who fought in the First World War left," recalls Hardwicke as we drive up a seldom-used gravel road that long ago shunted stage coaches up and down the mountain. Two competing railroads also chugged back and forth. Hardwicke has found a few relics from the town's golden age, including Phoenix brewery beer bottle labels and candleholders that underground miners stuck in their hats; his colleague found an antique light bulb from the early 1900s that still worked! The entire mountaintop resembles a meteor crater. It's amazing to think that a town once thrived here, with 16 hotels, four churches, a school, a hospital, and even an opera house and a thriving red-light district. A cemetery on the western slope is all that's left to bear witness and it makes the trip solemn, but worthwhile. • top: Set on a hillside east of Grand Forks, the high victorian Golden heights mansion was built around 1896 by dentist G.W. Averill. centre: local produce can be found year-round at the Rilkoff Store along highway 3 west of Grand Forks. bottom: Jeremy devries of Jerseyland Organics poses with one of his Jersey cows. The familyowned dairy produces cheese and yogurt. B r IT ISH C o lU M B IA M AgA Z IN E • FA l l 2 0 1 3 17

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