This all piqued my curiosity about how it came to be in the hotel. To have a cherry pitter in a hotel in a climate that does not support cherry trees is a testament to the reach of the railways: cherries must have been plentiful enough to justify a pitter to process the glut of fruit pouring in from the Okanagan. Cherries are hardy to -20’C. Too much rain makes the cherries split — the hot summers and cool winters of the Okanagan suit cherries and a great number of other orchard fruits — apricots, peaches and plums. Cherries have been part of the British Columbia commercial fruit-growing sector since the 1890s with the first cherry orchards in the valley of Coldstream Creek, about two kilometres southeast of Vernon. The first settler in the valley, Captain Charles F Houghton, acquired his land through a military grant in 1863. Houghton’s Coldstream Ranch was transferred to Forbes and Charles Vernon and in 1891 was purchased by John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, the 6th Earl of Aberdeen, Canada’s Governor General from 1893-98. The Coldstream was intended to produce profits in cattle, fruit orchards and the sale of land to gentlemen emigrants. The Aberdeens planted large acreages of fruit trees and hops and a jam factory was built in Vernon. While Lord Aberdeen wasn’t a businessman and the properties were sold at great loss early in the twentieth century, he is still considered a pioneer of the Okanagan fruit-growing industry. The development of this industry leads to another question. Where and how was this fruit distributed? The transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway reached Vancouver in 1884 and was the main deliverer of goods across Canada. An extension to Edmonton was built in 1891 and in 1902 an extension line from the main CPR line was constructed south from Sicamous to Vernon, thus fruit shipments were able to make their way east or west on the transcontinental line. Settlers and ranchers from Edmonton to southern Alberta would have access to BC fruit in season.
David Harvey Goodell . The Goodell Company, founded in 1875, made knives and various cutting devices including apple peelers, at several mills in Great Brook New Hampshire.
Library and Archives Canada / PA-025810 and Library and Archives Canada/C-22760)
In 1890 the Aberdeens and their four children arrived in Canada, crossing the country on the Canadian Pacific Railway, visiting settlers, recent Scottish immigrants and indigenous communities. On a return journey in 1891 they visited the ranch near Kelowna that they had bought unseen the previous year (Guisachan named after Lady Aberdeen’s Highland home), and bought a second, much larger property, Coldstream, near Vernon. Coutts Marjoribanks, unsuccessful as a cattle rancher in North Dakota and Lady Aberdeen’s brother, managed both. Western Canada is indisputably connected by place names to Scotland; these British Empire connections sit alongside a north-south axis pointing south to San Francisco, a less-told story, but uncovered in so much of the detritus found in the Pendennis Hotel.
1903 map provided to prospective settlers showing the western Canada route of the CPR. It too was found in the retrieved artifacts of the Pendennis Hotel.
David Murray
on site review 39: Tools 44
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