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Category: orchards

A Fruit-Grower’s Pride

Posted on by Vernon Museum

For the months of June and July, we are thrilled to present a series of blog posts by Collections Intern Rebeka Beganova. Rebeka (she/her) is a post-secondary student with a passion for research, literature, and history. Having completed an Associate of Arts Degree at Okanagan College, she is glad to be joining the MAV team during her last summer in Vernon before heading off to UBC Vancouver. There is no better way to say goodbye to her hometown than to explore its local history!

A display of Vernon fruit at the Spokane Fruit Fair, 1909.

International Renown

With the summer in full swing, Vernon residents are once again reminded of the delicacy that is Okanagan-grown fruit. Fresh produce is a staple in seasonal menus, and it has been for over a century. Even in 1891, fruit production and export was projected as a leading industry in the Okanagan. Lists predicting the most profitable harvests were published in the Vernon News each year, along with detailed diagrams for fruit packing that included satisfying photographs of the desired results (such as the one included here). All the effort for quality and aesthetics was not wasted, as the fame of Okanagan fruit soon reached around the world. In 1905, the Royal Horticultural Society Exhibition in London awarded eight silver medals to produce submissions from the BC area – and five of those went to Okanagan growers.

A black-and-white image of a man wearing a cap and suspenders and standing next to a stack of apple boxes.
An unknown man pictured with stacks of fruit boxes, 1920. Behind the fame of Okanagan fruit was (and is) the labour of countless workers.

Swallow the apples, not the pride

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the glory of the fruit industry became a point of fierce pride for many. Innumerable newspaper articles either explicitly or implicitly compared Vernon produce to that of other places. In the late 1800s, a scheme by American companies was uncovered where they were apparently re-branding Canadian apples as the “best American apples” before shipping out to England. Their own products, along with lower-quality Canadian, were passed off as belonging solely to the latter. The indignation and disgust was clear in local reports of these events.

 A humourous example of how quickly pride could take hold is the time a prosperous peach tree sprung up at Trout Creek. An excited letter from the president of a mining company cropped up in the papers, in which he stated, “I am more convinced than ever that we are quite likely to become a good deal more than small potatoes in peach production.” Keep in mind, this comment came about after witnessing one promising tree. A reply was printed shortly after, where a Mr. Robinson (who, to his credit, at least tasted the peaches) “found them, if anything, larger and of better flavor than [those of] the Lambly ranch.” Simply put, Vernon and surrounding areas felt unbeatable in their industry.

Defending one’s Honour

Nothing raised the fruit growers’ hackles quite like public attacks from the competition. In 1892, the president of the Ontario Fruit-Growers’ Association, Mr. Boulter, reported to the Winnipeg Free Press that there was no Okanagan equal to Ontario produce. In response, a two-column long, front-page article appeared in the Vernon News, praising BC fruit and rebuffing the outspoken commentator. The colourful language included one memorable metaphor, where the passionate statements of a local grower were compared to “some of the Okanagan fruit, hurling at the devoted head of the indiscreet Mr. Boulter.” Similar gripes were displayed against Calgary spokesmen and innocent people remarking about fruit pests.

In the end, perhaps these moments of heated argumentation are to be excused; a reputation, if well-earned, deserves a strong defence. However, as we enjoy the beaches and fruit stands, recall that tempers can boil just as easily as delicious produce under the summer sun.

To explore more of Vernon’s history, check out our other blog posts!

Rebeka Beganova, Collections Intern

 

 

The History of Okanagan Cherries

Posted on by Vernon Museum

Five red cherries hanging between green leaves on brown stems.

International Cherry Pit Spitting Day

Since 1974, the first Saturday of each July has been celebrated as International Cherry Pit Spitting Day, after a pit spitting tournament was held as a joke at a picnic in Eau Claire, Michigan. Now, pit spitting events are held annually around the world, with the Canadian National Pit Spitting Championship being a feature of the Cherryfest in Blenheim, Ontario. The current world record for the greatest distance to spit a cherry stone is a whopping 93’6.5”, set by Brian “Young Gun” Krause in 2004.

Fruit in the OkanaganA bowl of cherries on a towel and picnic table. The bowl is white enamel on the inside and yellow on the outside. It is full of red cherries. The towel is wide with a red band on the right. In front of the bowl of cherries, also on the table, is five loose cherries. To the left of the bowl is a mason jar holding water and small white herb-like flowers on green stems.

Fruit has grown in the Okanagan since time immemorial, with Saskatoon berries, blueberries, strawberries, huckleberries, gooseberries, black berries, black currants, and raspberries making up part of the traditional syilx diet. Chokecherries also grow in abundance, a fact evidenced in the names Cherryville and Cherry Creek. But cherries as we now think of them—the dark, round juicy nuggets that grace the Valley during the summer months—are a cultivated species that was introduced by European settlers.

The first non-native fruit trees were planted by Catholic missionaries of the Oblate Order at their Mission of the Immaculate Conception on Okanagan Lake in 1862. The first seedlings were apples, and one of these trees actually continued to fruit until it was killed by cold weather in 1955. Cherries did not arrive until 1892, when 500 trees were planted by Lord and Lady Aberdeen at Vernon’s Coldstream Ranch.

Little Cherry Disease

The construction of the Grey Canal allowed water-loving plants like cherry trees to thrive in the sunny Okanagan Valley. However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing after the canal’s completion in 1914; in the 1930s, Little Cherry Disease struck cherry trees across BC, first in Nelson and then later spreading to devastate orchards across the Kootenays.

A blue helicopter flying over green cherry trees, In the background is a lake, and behind that a mountain with trees and several clear cuttings.
A helicopter flying low over an Oyama orchard to gently blow the water off of ripening cherries in 2012.

Quarantine measures were put in place in the hopes that the disease, which causes small, bitter, insipid fruit, would not make it to the Okanagan. Unfortunately, in 1969, an orchard in Penticton was found to be infected, and by 1977, 1,400 cherry trees throughout the Okanagan had to be removed. Little Cherry Disease continues to be monitored and managed by the provincial government.   

Due in part to a 2014 trade agreement which allowed BC cherries to be exported to China, the fruit has become a boom crop, with new orchards popping up all the time to satisfy an insatiable local and international demand.

 

To explore more of Vernon’s history, check out our other blog posts! 

Gwyneth Evans, Research and Communications Coordinator

 

 

“Tall-Tale” Postcards

Posted on by Vernon Museum

 

Early Photoshop

Among the photo collection of the Vernon Museum are several manipulated images like this exaggerated postcard from 1946.  

Prior to the invention of Photoshop in 1987, photo manipulation was a much more complicated task. Several techniques were used, including film and negative manipulation, darkroom manipulation, and chemical manipulation. 

A canadian company with an American Connection

This postcard was produced by the Canadian Post Card Co., which was active from 1911 to 1969, but the original artist behind the image’s manipulation was likely American photographer William H. Martin. Martin operated a studio in Kansas between 1908 and 1915, and launched the genre of “tall-tale” postcards which were popular up until the mid-20th century. 

Martin’s technique involved creating a collage of different images to achieve a skewed sense of perspective. The resulting piece was then re-photographed and sold. Martin had a particular fascination with agriculture, and often created scenes with outlandish elements like boulder-sized onions or wheat fields as tall as old-growth forests. 

Why the Vernon Museum?

This particular photo-postcard is housed at the Vernon Museum because it was allegedly taken in Vernon, but rumour has it that the Canadian Post Card Co. simply swapped out the city name on the postcards as needed depending on where they were being sold. While the Okanagan is an agricultural haven, we can’t get away with saying we have corn quite that big.

To explore more of Vernon’s history, check out our other blog posts! 

Gwyneth Evans, Research and Communications Coordinator

Orchards and Irrigation in the Okanagan

Posted on by Vernon Museum

Bringing water from the hills

April 16, 2021

Picture the Okanagan without its expansive fruit orchards. No juicy peaches and sweet cherries in the summer, and no crisp apples and tart grapes in the autumn?

It is almost painful to imagine!

But this was the reality of life in the Okanagan before the advent of irrigation.

an Idea Flowed…

At the turn of the 20th century, the valley was too hot and dry to support much agriculture.

The manager of the Coldstream Ranch, W.C. Ricardo, proposed  Aberdeen Lake on the highlands to the southeast of Vernon as a potential water source to irrigate thirsty crops.

Water flowing out of the lake via Jones (now Duteau) creek, he argued, could be diverted south by canal to supply orchard and fields in White Valley (now Lavington) and the Coldstream Ranch. 

A Coldstream orchard circa 1910

 

 

This water even had the potential to be directed north across the ranch to irrigate the BX and beyond.

bringing water down into the Valley

The White Valley Irrigation and Power Company beginning this momentous task in 1906 with the construction of the Grey Canal.

The introduction of water via the Grey Canal changed the industry of the valley from ranching and the cultivation of cereals to the production of fruits like apples, pears, and cherries. The advent of orchards across the Okanagan helped to greatly stimulate the economy, but these plants also came with higher water demands.

The Grey Canal was completed in 1914. At one time, it supplied water to the largest irrigation district in BC, and delivered more water than the system that supplied to the City of Vancouver. If you’d like to learn more about the Grey Canal, please check out Peter Tassie’s Water from the Hillspublished by the Okanagan Historical Society.

a more water-wise approach

The climate of the Valley hasn’t changed. We still live in a dry belt that, particularly during the summer, receives little water. And we certainly can’t go back to the way things were before the advent of the fruit industry. Our orchards are as much are part of our identity in the Okanagan as our emerald lakes and delicious wine.

Each of us can ensure that water is not being wasted and instead reserved for vital tasks. Indeed, the average Okanagan citizen uses 675 litres of water each day! This is more than twice as much water as the average Canadian.

To reduce water usage, citizens of the Okanagan can try xeriscaping, a style of gardening that utilizes plants with low water needs that thrive naturally in the Valley’s dry environment. Some great tips about how to xeriscape in the Okanagan can be found here.

It is also important to ensure that one’s water consumption is as low as possible, particularly during drought periods. Watering plants in the evening or early morning can help to reduce evaporation. A list of current water restrictions can be found online through Greater Vernon Water.

Visit the website Okanagan WaterWise for more tips, as well as the Okanagan Xeriscape Association’s plan list aunt other helpful lawn and garden care tips in the WaterWise Landscape Irrigation Handbook.

Gwyn Evans

Okanagan’s Legendary Lake Creature

Posted on by Vernon Museum

Legendary Lake creature from the depths

 

October 23. 2020

With Halloween just around the corner, it is officially the season of the unsettling, the surreal, the supernatural.

From the Scottish Highlands, to the northern forests of Nova Scotia, to the Slavic countryside, nearly every country has its own mythical monster whose tales frighten children and whose existence causes debate among even the most skeptical of adults.

The Okanagan’s resident “monster” is now most widely known as the Ogopogo, and year after year a new story of this slippery serpent emerges.

Legends of a lake creature named N’ha-a-itk had existed for generations among the Okanagan Syilx People. It was settlers who gave it a new name – and its infamy.

In August of 1926, while at a Rotary lunch held on the shores of Okanagan Lake, W. H. Brimblecombe broke out in song with a popular British Music Hall hit. He sang, “I’m looking for the Ogopogo, the bunny-hugging Ogopogo. His mother was an earwig, his father was a whale. I’m going to put a little bit of salt on his tail. I’m looking for the Ogopogo.”

By the time of this club luncheon, stories of a mysterious creature living in the depths of Okanagan Lake were already popular amongst settlers. But after this delightful lunchtime performance in 1926, the Okanagan’s resident monster would come to be known as the Ogopogo.

Along with a new name, settlers also gave the sea creature a new “image”, ranging from cute and comical, to monstrous and terrifying.

The first “modern” sighting of the Ogopogo occurred in 1873, when a woman named Susan Allison reported seeing a snake-like creature moving through the water near her home in West Kelowna. 

 

From a 1946 Christmas card (how festive!)

 

In 1926 Joseph Egbert Montague started his shipping company in Vernon, BC, under the name J.E. Montague Ltd. The company expanded in 1928 and became known as British Columbia Fruit Shippers. By that time, the moniker “Ogopogo” would have been in use.

 

A few years later, during the 1880s, the infamous Captain Shorts discovered a large vertebrae bone in the shallows of Okanagan Lake, which would be determined to be from a whale. How a whale bone came to lie in Okanagan Lake remains a mystery. Could it perhaps be a bone belonging to Ogopogo’s whale father?

While fishing one morning in August of 1925, a man named J. Mitchell Boyd allegedly saw a strange creature with the head of a sheep moving languidly through the water (this is apparently quite the trustworthy account; as reported in the Vernon News a few days after the sighting, “Mr. Boyd stated, for the benefit of those who may have doubted his statement, that he had not partaken of cheese the night before, nor anything else which might have caused an optical delusion”). Nearly thirty years later, in 1959, the Miller and Marten Families also described a close encounter with a large, snake-like creature while out for a day of boating.

In 1978, while driving across the Okanagan Lake Floating Bridge, Bill Steciuk and twenty other onlookers witnessed a dark head and three black humps protruding out of the water. The year 2000 would bring about another sighting, when marathon swimmer Daryl Ellis was accompanied by two large creatures during his swim passed Rattlesnake Point (perhaps Nessie was down for a visit?)

In 2004, John Casorso recorded the first alleged video of Ogopogo; from a vantage point on his family’s house point, Casorso was able to capture grainy footage of a dark creature, about 15 metres long, emerging from the still waters of Okanagan Lake. And less than two weeks ago, a Calgary resident celebrating Thanksgiving in the Okanagan recorded a video of a strange formation of waves that some viewers thought could have been another sighting of the Okanagan’s most elusive resident.

Whether you believe in the sea serpent or not, one thing is for certain; the Ogopogo is a lot of fun to talk about.

Gwyn Evans

Vernon Japanese Cultural Centre

Posted on by Vernon Museum

celebrating japanese culture

 

September 25, 2020

In 1934, a Japanese Cultural Centre opened at 1895 Bella Vista Road. Although its opening did not draw much interest from the general population of Vernon, this was a major milestone for the local Japanese community. The centre would serve as as stronghold of Japanese culture over the next few years, a period when many Japenese immigrants faced significant social and political opposition.  

Japanese citizens began immigrating to the Okanagan Valley at the turn of the 20th century. The first to arrive was Eijiro Kojama, who settled in Coldstream in 1903 and was naturalized at the Vernon Courthouse in 1908. Kojama served as foreman at the Coldstream Ranch, hiring other Japanese immigrants to work as labourers. By 1911, 314 Japanese were living in the Greater Vernon Area.  

 

 

Members of the Vernon Japanese community gathered for a celebration at the Japanese Community Hall located on Bella Vista Road, circa 1935.

In 1908, the Canadian Government negotiated an agreement with Japan that restricted the number of new male Japanese immigrants to Canada to only 400 a year. A 1916 Vernon News article descripes “orientals” as “undesirable immigrants,” and states that the “proportion of orientals to the white population of British Columbia is far too great to admit any [further immigrants] without grave danger.” Despite these social and institutional barricades, the Okanagan Valley Land Company opened a Japanese work camp, where both men and women were employed in the fields and packing houses. Japanese churches, community centres, and associations began cropping up across the Okanagan Valley.

World War Two was a tumultuous time in Canada for Japanese immigrants. After the bombing of Pearl Harbour, the Okanagan Security Committee began pushing for the use of interned Japanese as involuntary orchard labourers. At the end of August 1942, around 250 Japanese men were accompanied by police from the Greenwood internment camp to orchards in Vernon. Labourers made less than 4$ a day, and were stripped of their civil rights. They were not permitted to shop on Saturdays, nor visit Vernon Cafes at night. In September of 1942, around 70 Japanese workers at the Coldstream Ranch were re-interned after petitioning for higher wages.

In 1967, the Canadian Government introduced a new points-based immigration policy that no longer considered race a factor for exclusion, introducing a new generation of Japanese immigrants to Canada and the Okanagan Valley. Today, the Vernon Japanese Culture Centre still stands, and its society, as well as associated organizations like the Vernon Judo Club and the Vernon Japanese Women’s Auxilary, proudly promote a culture that has withstood generations of suppression.

Gwyn Evans

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