In 1910 the Nelson Daily News told its readers that “The Kootenay has seen the dawn of the apple growing industry in British Columbia – it will soon be acknowledged as once of the greatest fruit producing sections of the Anglo-Saxon world.”
Their confidence in the region’s burgeoning new industry was not misplaced; for over 30 years strawberries, peaches, pears, apples, apricots, plums, and cherries were grown in abundance in the West Kootenays and distributed across Canada, the United States and overseas.
“The growth of the Kootenay fruit industry depended on the arrival of new people,” wrote historian Joan Lang in her book Lost Orchards. “Misleading advertising lured many who had no choice to stay, clear the land, plant the orchards, and survive.”
Around 1907, early settlers to Queens Bay arrived by boat and climbed the steep lake bank to begin the back-breaking work of building their homes, planting their orchards and installing irrigation systems. These new settlers often had no farming experience and soon found that claims of plentiful water and easy living were not the reality. Years of hard work were required before fruit farms could be successful, by which time many farmers had given up and moved on.
Between 1908 and 1913, over 6,000 Doukhobors arrived in the Boundary and Kootenay regions attracted by the possibility of operating large-scale communal orchards. By 1912 the Doukhobor Community was the largest fruit-grower in the region, with over 80,000 trees planted on 1,100 acres, and everyone was involved in fruit production. Most of the produce was shipped fresh to the prairies or sent to a successful jam factory built by the Doukhobors at Brilliant.
Nelson also had its own thriving jam factory. In 1911, James McDonald (aptly nicknamed ‘Long Jim’, at six-foot-three) built his factory on Vernon Street. In the summer months, the McDonald Jam Factory often employed as many as 125 people. Some days sternwheelers such as the SS Moyie brought as much as 500 pounds of strawberries grown by fruit farms around Kootenay Lake. Two hundred pails of fruit could also arrive the same day by train from farms to the west. With no refrigeration options available at the time, all the fruit had to be made into jam the same day.
The Kootenays faced competition from fruit farms in the Okanagan and the United States; improvements in irrigation added to the natural advantage of a warmer climate in these areas. Okanagan fruit was on the market three weeks earlier than Kootenay fruit, and Washington and Oregon fruit three weeks before that. Unlike the Kootenays, these areas also had cold storage facilities that gave them the chance to hold back fruit for later distribution.
During the Great Depression local mines cut back on producing ore, resulting in less demand for transportation, including the daily boat services on Kootenay Lake. Without daily boat runs the fresh fruit markets of the prairies and elsewhere were lost. At the same time membership of the Doukhobor Community was in decline, and the effects of the Depression paired with financial mismanagement led to their declared bankruptcy in 1937 and the end of communal living the following year.
In 1933, a mysterious cherry disease was discovered on the Heddle ranch near Willow Point and gradually spread to as far as Creston by 1945. Contaminated cherries were small, pointed, and flavourless, and therefore not suitable for the fresh fruit trade.
The “Little Cherry Disease” annihilated most of the cherry trees across the region. Subsequent research by plant pathologists proved that Japanese ornamental flowering cherries were carrying the Little Cherry Disease in symptomless form. Suspicions were later raised that ornamental trees imported for a garden at the Lakewood estate of Cominco manager Selwyn Blaylock were the source of this disease in the area. Whatever the truth, in 1920, 65 per cent of B.C.’s sweet cherry trees were grown in the Kootenays, but by 1955 it was only two per cent.
The fruit farms are now long gone, although you don’t have to look too hard to find remnants of the orchards still standing as last reminders of this slice of our history.
Jean-Philippe Stienne is the archivist and collections manager at the Nelson Museum Archives and Gallery. History Buff runs monthly.
