We drove out of Vancouver on a bright and sunny day – heading for Osoyoos on the border to the US. Osoyoos is said to be the warmest place in Canada and one jokingly says that it is the top end of the Mexican desert. We had originally planned to go wine tasting in the Okanogan Valley and Osoyoos was to have been the entrance point. However, we changed our minds about the wine tasting in this most famous of the Canadian wine regions – and decided instead to go further east and drive up into the Kootenay area bordering on the Rocky Mountains.

We did stay one night in Osoyoos on our way to The West Kootenays – and we did also do one wine tasting at a very interesting vineyard. It is one of the only vineyards fully owned and managed by a First Nation people (and reportedly the first in North America) the Nk´Mip, and it is furthermore one of the best in the valley. The wines we tasted were excellent and we were impressed by the ingenuity and hard work having been put into this coop, The Nk´Mip Cellars, which produces almost a fourth of all the grapes grown in BC.

A view over the wine fields and the Okanogan river…

Horse grazing among the sage bushes…

But I have digressed, we were heading to the Kootenays, a region in the southeast corner of British Columbia, which derives its name from the Kutenai Nation who named the river after their tribe. This region is cut in half length-wise by the Durcell mountain range and we drove up into the west side – which is dotted with small mining towns set on the shores of glacier fed lakes and settled by miners and smelters mining silver, lead and zinc. We stayed for a couple of days and drove around in the region – for the benefit and patience of my readers I have chosen only two sights on which I will comment.

Sandon

Far into the mountains lie several ghost towns – old silver mining towns from the heyday of when silver was discovered in the Selkirk Mountains around 1890. Sandon is one of such towns and it was the unofficial capitol of the region in the booming days of the silver mines. At its peak in the 1890s it boasted a population of around 5-10,000 people with 24 hotels and as many saloons – and a train station. It was the first town in BC to be fully electrified by using power from the mountain streams. Sandon was almost totally destroyed by a flood in 1955.

We drove up into the valley of Slocan to see the town. Today it is but a ghost of its former glory. A few buildings still stand and are inhabited by only four people.

This lady was, as she said, a fourth of the population of Sandon….

….she and her partner, who was born in the town, have bought up the remaining houses and are trying, against all odds, to maintain the place for future generations.

Old busses brought up from around the region…

The owner has rejuvenated the old power station and it is running again supplying the nearby town of New Denver with some of its electricity…

The actual mines were situated higher up in the mountains and some are said to still be accessable. We tried to drive up, but the narrow road was too steep and full of rocks, so we had to turn back. I am sure that they can be reached by foot by any nimble visitor, should you pass here by chance one day.

Nikkei Internment Memorial Center

I guess that the display board in front of the center says it all. In these remote regions of BC thousands of Japanese were interned under WW2. They were thought to be a potential threat, even though many, many of them (75%) were Canadian citizens and had worked hard in the fishing industry and on the railways. About 22,000 were stripped of their civil rights and labeled as “enemy aliens”. They were forced from their coastal homes and interned in different areas in this region, in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. Some were sent to POW camps. Some were sent back to Japan.

In 1988 the government issued an official apology and token monetary compensation for property losses suffered at the time.

The Kyowakai ( “working together peacefully) Society first met in 1943 on this site in New Denver in the Kootenays. This is the only internment organization still in operation and it has restored and maintained this small center, which is situated on the original site of one of the camps.

Numbers…

The confiscated Japanese fishing fleet…

…and people waiting to be transported away from their homes…

Original buildings…

…inside one of the family houses..

The Peace Arch erected by internees in 1945 – the arch itself is a welcome and the fence linking it together symbolizes the links between all peoples…

The Japanese garden surrounding the buildings – Heiwa Teien ( peace garden) – was designed by Roy Tomomichi Sumi who was himself a former internee. It is designed in a Past, Present, Future theme and is meant to create a meditative mood in the visitor – which it does!

There are never words to describe what suffering humans bring upon each other. The story told here is as old as humanity itself and it still takes place in various parts of the world. Hate, envy, angst – all of these emotions drive us out of the garden and into a chaos of trying to eradicate the otherness of our fellow human beings – a Peace Garden is a small but necessary reminder, that it does not have to be this way – it is a choice.

The wayfarers