Bert Learmonth, a meticulous model builder who created astonishingly detailed replicas of Kootenay Lake sternwheelers and other lost forms of local transportation, has died at 85.
Combining his love of historic boats with his woodworking talents, he rebuilt the lake’s entire fleet in miniature, as well as scale versions of local ferries, buses, and streetcars.
The results were displayed at his home as well as in local museums, and in recent years complemented an exhibition of Alec Garner sternwheeler paintings at Touchstones Nelson.
“The level of detail and how real they look is incredible,” says retired Nelson archivist and museum curator Shawn Lamb. “Inside those sternwheelers was just as beautiful as outside.”
On one occasion, Learmonth photographed a patch of rug similar to one found in a lady’s salon aboard one of the boats, and pasted it on his model’s floor.
“And the staircases and bannisters and posts,” Lamb says. “Dishes on the table. Shelving with things in it. Flags. Everything meticulously researched and beautifully done. Just amazing.”
Learmonth worked from plans supplied by his friend Bill Curran, whose father ran the Nelson shipyard. If those were unavailable, he relied on photographs and his own knowledge.
“He had been on a lot of the boats himself and knew them well,” Lamb says. “He could judge whether it looked right.”
When another model builder created a replica SS Moyie, “Bert was very critical because he said it wasn’t right. He said you can’t just do it from a book. You have to have the right feel.”
In a 1998 interview, he recalled his fascination with the sternwheelers of his youth.
“The sound of the steam engines in the boats was one of a kind,” he said. “There was a little swish from the paddlewheel too. It’s special, something I’ll never forget.”
Learmonth was born at Willow Point in 1924, the eldest of three children of John and Alice Learmonth. His grandfather worked on the lake boats, while his father had a series of local bus lines, which he sold in 1929 to a company that later became Greyhound Canada.
(Unhappy with a book on Greyhound’s beginnings that gave this area short shrift, Bert wrote his own history of Kootenay bus transportation.)
Bert served in the navy during World War II, then worked as a heavy machinery contractor and carpenter before joining the local school district as a maintenance man and bus driver.
Woodwork was long his hobby — as a child he whittled boats out of bark — but it wasn’t until a few years before his retirement in 1987 that he built his first model using wood from a large weeping willow felled on his property. It had just the right combination of strength, weight, pliability, and texture. He supplemented it with all sorts of recycled and scavanged parts.
Over the ensuing years, Learmonth reproduced every major vessel on Kootenay Lake and also built models of his father’s bus fleet, a horse-drawn coal wagon, Nelson’s streetcars, and the Cottonwood Falls power plant, among others.
Although he received some commissions — including one of the SS Moyie that was presented to Nelson’s sister city of Shuzenji, Japan — the bulk of his prodigious output was done for no pay and was proudly exhibited in a private museum adjacent to his longtime Willow Point home.
“The guest book is just incredible,” his son Vic says. “I used to go to China a lot with the outfit I worked for, and lots of people from all over the world came here. There were tons of guys from China and Japan who were just fascinated with it.”
Some of the models had remote controlled motors, and Vic says his father enjoyed taking them down to the lake and sailing them.
Learmonth, who passed away Sunday, was also heavily involved with the Boy Scouts and played drums in the Nelson City Band.
In addition to Vic, he’s survived by Mary, his wife of over 60 years, who painted backdrops for his models, as well as children Bob and Suzanne, sisters Marge and Marion, and many grandchildren and great grandchildren.
A celebration of his life will be held tomorrow from 2 to 5 p.m. at 2652 Six Mile Lakes Road.