Skookum1

Revision as of 02:06, 17 April 2007

Revision as of 02:08, 17 April 2007

Line 189:

I'll have to go get that book, because I do recognize the reference to Birmingham now, it's mentioned in Rev Runnals, History of Prince George. Fort Salmon still exists as a farming community of Salmon Valley and Willow City is a couple of trailers and two or three houses. I certainly envy that era their optimism. I remember reading that the GTP said that Prince Rupert was going to be much bigger and more important than Victoria because its Oriental shipping lines are 500 miles closer and all that. They commissioned Francis Rattenbury to build a hotel for there that would be bigger and better than the Empress and also wanted him to build Chateau Mount Robson, Chateau Miette and the Jasper Mountain Inn. A person has to wonder what this part of the province would've been like if any of those would've been built.[[User:CindyBo|CindyBo]] 01:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

:Direct answer: the downturn caused by World War I, from which BC never recovered, not really, is at fault. Likewise the grand days of settlement in the Thompson, Kootenay and Okanagan, as with the whole gilded age worldwide but here with a special wild-country charm like, of course, nowhere else, plus a self-conscious Britishness in some places like Walhachin and the genteel orcharding society in the Okanagan and spa-and-steamer society life on the lakes. Northern BC might have swung up more if Prince Rupert had turned into a real city (as if it had room, but neither does Vancouver; Terrace is more likely for a North Coast metropolis just because of available valley-floor real estate....provided it's more than 60m above current sea level I guess); consider if there'd been actual industrial/commercial development throughout BC, instead of just resource ''exports'' - all the spin-off industries and what comes out of that, which is greater metropolitanization and urbanization; could have easily happened, and of course has begun to in PG, Kelowna, Kamloops; but that whole Omineca-Prince George area, with all its space, looks ominously Los Angeles-izable in the long run, given current population/immigration trends. Lots of room for freeways ;-) Just kidding. But yeah, a lot of the dreamers and visionaries in pre-Great War BC had amazing dreams; if not for the War, many of them would have continued coming true...what a grand place this would have been...(instead of a fleeting memory of one).[[User:Skookum1|Skookum1]] 01:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

:::Have you seen the little mini-chateaux built of timber; e.g. the [http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_70/a_08541.gif North Bend Hotel], the *[[http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_80/f_04078.gif Balfour, British Columbia|Balfour Hotel]], the [http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_104/b_02927.gif Sicamous Hotel]; thinkpr [http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_81/f_08377.gif Mount Stephen House in Field]; I linked those on the CPR[[Canadian ChateauPacific styleHotels]] article, whatever it's called, and on the Balfour and Sicamous pages maybe; don't think there's a North Bend page yet nor one for Field. Similarly all the CPR railway stations are highly photogenic, even the prefab/generic models. They don't build 'em like that anymore....the Prince of Wales is the largest of the style - timber-chateau I call it - but some of the others looked pretty neat/ the PoW actually looks a lot like the GN ones in MT come to think of it; Balfour and Sicamous were a lot smaller. I suppose [[Railway hotels in British Columbia]] might be a worthy topic, or another glorified table-list.[[User:Skookum1|Skookum1]] 01:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)