LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
- February 10, 2009
Dear Editor:
I thought your readers might be interested in our latest research project, and what we found in a treasure trove of old newspapers.
Rika Ruebsaat and I are just back from ten days at Selkirk College in Castlegar. The Princeton Traditional Music Society had just received a very generous grant from BC 150 to continue the research we had begun in Princeton, the result of which was the CD, “Now It’s Called Princeton: Songs and Poems from BC’s Upper Similkameen.”
The material on that CD is mostly drawn from Princeton newspapers from 1900 to 1930. Our hopes were to find much the same sort of songs and poems we found in Princeton, and we weren’t disappointed. The fact that we spent over $550.00 on photocopies indicates the amount of material we found.
In the early years of the last century, Princeton had just the one paper. At the College we found over forty from the West Kootenays, at least eight of them from what are now ghost towns (Trout Lake, Brooklyn, Ferguson, Lardeau, Sandon, Anaconda, Camborne and Poplar). Of these newspapers, over half were dead in just three years, and only three survived more than ten years (the Trail News which ran to 1925, the Kaslo Kootenaian which ran to 1932 and the Rossland Miner which survived to 1973).
Most were four to eight-page weeklies, with six or seven columns devoted to editorials, mining information (either technical or legal), jokes, poems and songs, serialized stories and lots of local advertisements. Most of the material was locally generated, with occasional national and international stories. The war poems were the most immediately interesting - they covered the Spanish-American War in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and the Philippines, the Boer War in South Africa and the First World War. We even found an editorial complaining of American ‘waterboarding’ of Filipino soldiers, the torture technique recently used again by the US. The papers were, most of the time, a pleasure to read - except when the microfilms were poorly done, and then they were a royal pain!
Ahead of us is the monumental task of indexing, cataloging, databasing and transcribing these photocopied pages. When we’ve got a better sense of the material, I’ll write again.
- Jon Bartlett, Princeton
Hon. Jim Prentice, P. C., M. P.
Minister of the Environment
Room 401 Confederation Bldg.
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
Dear Mr. Prentice,
As you are aware the Okanagan County Public Utility District in Washington State has undertaken a feasibility study to build a hydroelectric dam at Shanker’s Bend on the Similkameen River south of Osoyoos, BC.
Part of the study includes an 80- metre dam which, if built, would flood about 7,200 hectares on the Canadian side of the border. The study has been expanded to involve the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with a two-year timeline. According to an article in the January 21st edition of the Osoyoos Times, many are concerned that the utility district’s application to FERC is focusing on the high-dam concept.
Feasibility studies are expensive. The fact that millions of dollars are being spent means that the Americans are serious.
At the board meeting on January 8, 2009, the Board of Directors for Regional District of Okanagan- Similkameen passed as resolution supporting the notice of intervention submitted by the Okanagan Alliance of First Nations and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness BC. Under FERC rules, these are the organizations that will have to present the Canadian argument against the project through the FERC regulatory process.
Minister, on behalf of all those who oppose this project, I strongly urge you to:
1) Notify your US Government counterpart and all those concerned that Canada unequivocally opposes this project.
2) Contact the Hon. Barry Penner, BC Environment Minister to urge the Province of BC to take a definite stand against this project.
3) Commit to supporting both the Okanagan Alliance of First Nations and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society in their intervention against this project with the FERC.
Just as with your predecessor, the Hon. John Baird, I look forward to working very closely on this file with you.
Please rest assured that you have my ultimate cooperation.
Sincerely,
Alex Atamanenko, MP
BC Southern Interior
