Kamloops This Week SPECIAL EDITION Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Est. 1988
FREE
EXTRA! EXTRA! This community is 200 years old CENTENNIAL CELEBRATIONS OF DAYS GONE BY TIED KAMLOOPS TO THE CALGARY STAMPEDE, GONE WITH THE WIND — AND NAZI GERMANY What is this thing you’re holding?
A view of downtown Kamloops during the community’s 100th anniversary celebration in 1912. KAMLOOPS MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES PHOTO
QUIRKY HISTORY EVEN IN HISTORICAL CELEBRATIONS By Forrest Pass
Preparations for Kamloops’ bicentennial celebrations offer a chance to revisit some of the celebrations of days gone by. In 1912 and 1937, Kamloops marked two signiÀcant anniversaries. Both celebrations presented the city’s history in ways that reÁected the values and worries of their times. The 1912 Kamloops Centennial was celebrated in grand style. The city had grown considerably since the completion of the Canadian PaciÀc Railway (CPR) about 30 years earlier and the promise of a second railway — the Canadian Northern PaciÀc — led many residents to predict a rosy future for their city. The city’s politicians and business leaders saw Kamloops as the capital of a vast economic “empire,” including most of the B.C. Interior. The centennial suited this optimistic vision of a city moving forward. The main event, on Sept. 17, 1912, was a historical parade, featuring members of the Secwepemc Nation, fur traders, Cariboo gold miners and even a group of Wild West riders advertising the Àrst Calgary Stampede, held the same summer. Then came Áoats representing different local industries, as well as decorated automobiles, still an uncommon sight on Kamloops streets. To the parade organizers, history was a sign of economic prosperity to come.
The celebrations honoured Kamloops’ place in Canada and the British Empire. The gleaming white arches along Victoria Street were inspired by similar arches at the 300th anniversary of Quebec City in 1908, the largest-ever commemoration in Canada at that time. Kamloops also welcomed a royal guest of honour, the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, Governor General of Canada and uncle of King George V. The Duke opened a new building for the Royal Inland Hospital and dropped the faceoff ball for a centennial lacrosse game. The climax of the three-day party was a Àreworks display depicting a Àctional attack on Fort Kamloops. The show was the work of the Hitt Fireworks Company of Seattle. The Kamloops event was an early example of Hitt’s famous dramatizations of battles scenes. Hitt’s most famous work came almost 30 years later, in 1939, when the company provided the special effects for the burning of Atlanta scene in the Àlm Gone with the Wind. The late 1930s saw a second Kamloops celebration, this one quite different from the 1912 centennial. The Kamloops 125th anniversary celebration in 1937 was an economicstimulus package. Its organizers wanted to market Kamloops as a tourist destination and help
residents recover from the Great Depression. They were inspired by Vancouver’s Golden Jubilee celebration in 1936, which had attracted thousands of visitors. With little money available from government, organizers relied on press coverage and corporate sponsors to spread the word about Kamloops and its attractions. The Hudson’s Bay Company and the CPR, both companies with deep roots in the Kamloops community, advertised the anniversary widely. CBC Radio, created in 1936, also covered the festivities, as did newspapers across Canada. The strangest publicity the 125th anniversary received was from the Deutches Kurzwellensender (KWS), the government shortwave radio station in Nazi Germany. The station prepared a short program about Kamloops’ history and tourist attractions, which it broadcast in English for listeners in North America. On June 7, 1937, loudspeakers were set up on the roof of the Plaza Hotel on Victoria Street so the public could listen in. Sound quality was poor, but G.D. Brown, secretary of the anniversary committee, wrote to the KWS in Berlin to thank them for the publicity. Brown believed the broadcast helped to “weld Canada and Germany together in goodwill throughout the world.” In hindsight, this hope was misplaced:
two years later, the two countries were at war. Radio was an exciting new technology in the 1930s and the anniversary radio broadcasts were a source of pride. However, some people in Kamloops were uncertain about the modern age. Pioneer gold miner James Buie Leighton, interviewed on CBC Radio, was nostalgic for a time when nobody needed government relief payments, which were common during the Depression. Even the editor of the Kamloops Sentinel believed modern technology had not made Canada a stronger country and believed B.C. was ignored by the federal government. Anniversary celebrations are fascinating to historians because they reveal how people think about the past and its relationship to the present. Kamloops’ 1912 centennial celebrated the optimism of a growing city while the city’s 125th anniversary celebration reÁected Depression-era worries. What will the bicentennial celebrations say about Kamloops in 2012 to historians a hundred years from now?
Forrest Pass is a historian with an interest in commemorative celebrations. In 2008, he was a lecturer in Canadian history at Thompson Rivers University. He is currently based in Ottawa.
Glad you asked. This is a special edition of Kamloops This Week, put together to mark the 200th anniversary of the founding of our community. If you’ve lived here any length of time, you likely know Kamloops has an interesting history. And, if you’re new to town or just visiting, this special edition will attempt to explain some of it to you. Kamloops’ geographical position has meant it’s always been a hub for travel — beginning with the conÁuence of the North and South Thompson rivers, then the railways and now highways and even Kamloops Airport. Back in the early days of Kamloops, the community’s status as a common waypoint meant a lot of interesting characters passed through town. Some stayed, some didn’t. But, our local history is dotted with their stories and the impact of the early settlers is still evident today. In this publication, we tried to cover as much of Kamloops’ local history as possible — from the fur trade to orchards to amalgamation, and lots in between.
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INSIDE: Fruitlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . Floods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Amalgamation . . . . . . . . . . Camels . . . . . . . . . . . . Polo . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kama-a-loo-la-pa . . . . . . . . .
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AND MORE!
— KTW would like to thank the Kamloops Museum and Archives for their help in putting together this special edition.