A massive discovery of old films, photos and cameras has unearthed rare footage of the S.S. Sicamous sailing down Okanagan Lake in its heyday.
The Okanagan Archive Trust Society was called out to a property on Kootenay Lake recently, to an old hand-built house that was stocked with historical works.
Brian Wilson, archivist and executive director of the Okanagan Archive Trust Society, said he and a friend filled two vehicles up with artifacts.
“They had the remnants of this family's history that no one wanted. So we stepped up and we've got it. So now we're processing it,” he said.
“[It came] from the estate of a gentleman who was over in the Kootenays. He donated to our society over 300 films, including 35-millimetre, 16-millimetre and eight-millimetre movie films. They are an amazing chronicle of life in the dirty ‘30s and even into the ‘50s.”
The films are remnants were of Louis and Rudolph Pop’s work, who were taxidermists and furriers in Vancouver in the early twentieth century, according to Wilson. The two had come over to Canada from Bucharest before the First World War.
“The brothers opened a taxidermy shop on 4th and Main in Vancouver, in about 1918. …In their travels to find more beasts to stuff, they came through the Okanagan, and really, really liked it, and they actually settled in Keremeos for a while.”
The brothers built the cabin over by Cathedral Lakes, which the family still had up until recent years, and had gone to every summer.
“The Pop brothers were great friends of Lord Dun-Waters at Fintry estate. So they travelled on the S.S. Sicamous a lot of times, and it was just very, very fortunate in the winter of 1932 that Louis decided to take this 16-millimetre movie,” Wilson said.
The film shows the S.S. Sicamous sternwheeler making a daily trip down Okanagan Lake into Penticton in 1932.
The society had the film scanned and digitized and decided to share it with Castanet to get out to the public in the Okanagan.
"[The film is] an example of how you got around in the dirty ‘30s. You came down either on the train from, say, Edmonton or Calgary, you got off in Sicamous, you came down the train to Okanagan Landing, which is outside of Vernon. You got onto the Okanagan or the Sicamous and you came down to Penticton that way.”
The sternwheeler was a high-end vessel that was used to transport passengers and cargo to remote communities along the shores of Okanagan Lake.
The trip in its time took a full day to get down south. At the time when it was filmed in the winter, the boat would have likely done fewer stops.
“Actually getting on at Fintry, you would have to fly a flag or flash a light or something at the boat to get it to come over,” Wilson said.
“The north end of the lake to the south with all the stops going on, it would stop in Kelowna, probably for a couple of hours. And then over to West Bank, Peachland, Summerland’s wharf for picking up and delivering. So it would start out in the morning at Okanagan Landing, and end up here about suppertime in Penticton.”
It was a journey of luxury, with a full meal included.
“This film in itself shows the Sicamous prior to being cut down in 1934 when the deck was taken off it, and it shows it in its full power coming from Fintry estates into Okanagan landing. It's a gem.”
The society also got a hold of the original camera the film was shot with.
“Finding this film means so much because there isn't any. There's one short film in the Penticton museum that's 13 seconds long and doesn't show the boat at all,” Wilson said, adding that there might be others like it out there.
“It's very, very important that this ship be recognized for what it is. It's the only ship of its type in all of Canada and it needs to be preserved overall. I have to commend the restoration society for the work that they've done. The boat is beautiful and it will last a while longer, I'm sure.”
What's exciting for the society is that this video of the S.S. Sicamous sailing isn’t the only gem.
“Every day we look and there's more really interesting stuff. Boats, trains, planes, and people. There's a film of the opening of the very first Vancouver powerplant. There's the film of the King's coronation in 1939 coming down Vancouver Street.”
The Okanagan Archive Trust Society will continue combing the films and sharing exciting upcoming features. They hope to see new faces come to join their work.
“Our archives society has fallen on poor times, of course, because of COVID and that we're all seniors, mind you,” Wilson added.
“We are now trying to re-evaluate, reinstitute and reinvent the archive society, so that other societies like the Sicamous society can get more benefit from the work that we do. We used to have about 300-and-some members in our society, and quite a few patrons, one of the few historical societies in the Okanagan that has money in the bank.”
For more BC history, check out the archives society’s work online here.
