Remember when: Long-gone Okanagan places or things we used to love
Gone too soon: the end of an ERA
As Joni Mitchell famously wrote, “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.”
Progress is inevitable, and it’s often a good thing, but it sometimes comes at the expense of history and nostalgia.
For many of us, great places we loved growing up were either destroyed by an act of nature, or in most cases, a wrecker’s ball.
Today, we look back at simpler times with a list of 10 places or things from the Okanagan Valley that many of us miss.
THE 1937 POST OFFICE Kelowna
When long-time Kelowna residents identify a local building which should have been preserved, the answer is almost inevitably “the 1937 post office.” Photographs of Bernard Avenue — dating from the late 1930s to the late 1960s — show this distinctive post office, located at the northwest corner of Bernard Avenue and Ellis Street. It was a beloved Kelowna landmark. This classic art deco building served the citizens of Kelowna for more than 30 years; it symbolized the growth of Kelowna, in the late 1930s, from a small town into a vibrant city. Numerous postcards and photographs have captured the simple beauty of this architectural gem but, sadly, it fell victim to the wrecker’s ball in the early 1970s.
FORTY-FOOT FRED Kelowna
Forty-foot Fred had only been gone for a few years by the summer of 2003, but already this newspaper was lamenting his disappearance.
“Remember Forty-Foot Fred? Children of a certain age across Western Canada will remember the television advertisements for Flintstones Village.
“Those ads gave us our first inkling that there was a place called the Okanagan, and it looked like the perfect place for kids to bring their parents for a visit,” this paper’s editorial writer opined.
The big depiction of Fred Flintstone stood outside an amusement park near the corner of Highway 97 North and McCurdy Road for decades. It may have been a beacon on the landscape but the park itself, with its fairly rustic attractions, was never going to be confused with Disneyland.
Big Fred and the rest of the park was dismantled in the late 90s, to make way for the McCurdy Corner shopping mall.
In February 2016, posters to the Old Kelowna Facebook page revealed Fred’s remains had been found in a field near the airport.
CHINATOWN Kelowna
Chinatown was a part of Kelowna’s history for more than 70 years.
Located along Leon Avenue, between Abbott and Water streets, it boasted several hundred residents. Its population worked in local businesses and homes, and provided valuable agricultural labour in outlying districts.
In 1911, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the future first president of the Republic of China, visited Kelowna’s Chinatown. His visit was all but ignored by much of Kelowna’s population.
Although all physical vestiges of this historical part of Kelowna disappeared, efforts continue to be made to acknowledge the existence of Chinatown and recognize the important roles played by its residents. Chinatown may be gone, but it is not forgotten.
THE DRIVE-IN Penticton/Kelowna
On the top of many lists is the Twilight Drive-In in Penticton and Boyd’s Drive-In in Kelowna. One of our contributors recalls owning a sweet ‘76 Corolla, two-door and he and his friends would zoom in early and meet up with “the gang.”
Then as the sun went down, the guys would pop into other cars and try to make out with girls they didn’t know. It didn’t really matter what movie was on, it was always about the boys and girls. And who could forget the dancing hotdog commercial or, at dusk when impatient movie lovers would start honking their horns to cue to projectionist? On the nights when animated films would show, you’d often see children in their pajamas.
Although The Starlight Drive-In still operates in Enderby (one of the last remaining ones in Canada), for those of us in Kelowna and Penticton, closing the drive-in marked the end of an era.
GIANT FM Penticton
Penticton’s locally-owned radio station became a corporate cog in 2012, but for most of its 30-year existence it was always live.
Country music that wasn’t written by committee, current time and temperature, up-to-the-minute news, road closures, local musicians, a 24-hour request line and announcers you knew of a first-name basis when you bumped into them on the street.
All of it during a time when “buy the book” was an industry slight for stations that owed their ratings to non-radio advertising. It was where people with dreams started on the over-night shift (at minimum wage) and worked their way to daylight.
The medium survives in it’s now rarelylive form, but The Giant is gone.
HOME DELIVERY Kelowna
Imagine the luxury of having items delivered directly to your door on a regular basis. For many years, Kelowna residents enjoyed this luxury, with precious food and household items delivered to their homes: bread, eggs, milk, and other dairy items, and even groceries. While not on a daily basis, other important wares were brought directly to the consumers by the Watkins, Rawleigh or Fuller Brush man. Even Electrolux vacuum cleaners and encyclopedias could be purchased at your front door.
Of course, the milk man was the most well-known of these door-to-door purveyors and the early morning sound of his milk truck and the clinking of glass bottles heralded another day in the beautiful Okanagan Valley. Home delivery is slowly making a comeback, thanks to online shopping, but it’s not the same.
KELOWNA AQUATIC
Kelowna Aquatic was situated in City Park. The first building was erected in 1907. It expanded to include a dance hall and balconies, for people to enjoy tea and watch activities in the water. There were change rooms and storage rooms for the rowing and war canoe clubs. Piers were later built to enclose the swimming pool area. Seats were installed to accommodate the everincreasing crowds. A high-diving tower was later built and named after Kelowna’s Olympic diver, Dr. George Athans.
Swimming lessons and synchronized swimming were offered. Lifeguards were on duty all day. Kelowna Aquatic, an important part of our sporting and social history, was destroyed by fire in 1969. It was not rebuilt.
KELOWNA FERRIES
Kelowna ferries carried passengers and vehicles from the Kelowna’s downtown dock to the west side of the lake, where they unloaded on to the road leading to Westbank. Initially, there were two ferries, the “Pendozi” and the “Lloyd-Jones.” Several years later, the “Lequime” came into service. Tickets for vehicles cost $1.50 for 10 trips. Foot passengers paid 50 cents for 20 trips. Ferries departed every 40 minutes. When there were only two ferries, the last trip from the Westside to Kelowna was at roughly 1 a.m. People sometimes spent the night sleeping in their vehicles until the first ferry arrived the next morning.When the bridge across Okanagan Lake opened in May 1958, ferry trips ceased.
THE OLD KVR Penticton
The KVR was a pretty neat place, before they removed the tracks. A bunch of rail fans would get together every weekend and roll the most outrageous vehicles onto the rails. One man in the group had a Toyota Landcruiser that fit exactly onto the rails. It really sailed. The young people even got CHBC and CBC to film them. A local, Ernest Edy, restored several Velosopedes (jiggers) that you pumped to propel forward. They were most fun going downhill as the speed without effort was breathtaking. Those were happy times that saddened as the rails were removed.
PEN-HI AUDITORIUM Penticton
What a shame. Penticton’s venerable Penticton Secondary School (Pen-Hi) auditorium fell to the wrecking ball in 2008. For years the location of many plays, performances and meetings, the auditorium was larger than the Cleland Theatre and having been updated in the late 1980s offered superior acoustics.
Vocalist Aidan Mayes once said the best performance she ever gave was at Pen-Hi due to its amazing acoustics. Bill Henderson of the rock band Chilliwack played one of the final concert there and was so in awe of the facility, he wrote a letter to the editor of The Herald. (Ironically, Chilliwack’s biggest hit was “Gone Gone Gone.”)
The City leadership in 2004 was able to shame the school board into saving the iconic Shatford building on the Main Street site but before the auditorium could be brought into the picture, the newly-elected council headed by Jake Kimberley showed no interest in adding the much-needed auditorium to the complex.
While the leadership of the school board and the city dithered, a perfectly useful venue for theatre productions, concerts and public gatherings was reduced to rubble.
To this day Penticton thespians mourn its loss.