Cathy English Interview – Coming to the Valley, 2019

An interview with Cathy English, curator of Revelstoke Museum and Archives, in which she discusses the settlement of the valley.

Title Screen: Circular logo on a black backdrop. Logo is an image of four waves turning into wheat on the left end. The title “Stories Beneath the Surface” is circled around the image in capital letters.

Interview with Cathy English. Cathy English is a white woman with short grey hair, wearing a blue zip-up sweater. She is standing on a dirt path. There is green grass, a mountain, and grey sky behind her.

Revelstoke Museum and Archives logo in the bottom right hand corner.

Transcript of Narration:

There was so much life and settlement in this valley. [moves both hands in talking motion, continues throughout video]

The Sinixt were unfortunately displaced from their land very early and European settlement took its place.

But there was a lot, there were people living all through here. [extends right arm in a sweeping motion]

Right where we’re standing was the part of a Ukrainian community known as Mount Cartier because it’s at the base of Mount Cartier. [uses left hand to gesture up towards the corner]

There were probably at one point two or three hundred people living in the settlement of Mount Cartier. They all had large acreages.

They had-had farms. They had their own church down here. They had their own school. They had the cemetery.

They-they had a vibrant lifestyle. They celebrated their Ukrainian heritage with their music and, uh, through their culture.

There were other communities farther south where the-the ferry crossed the river at Twelve mile.

There were families living on both sides of the-the river.

There-there was a smaller community north of here called Greenslide. There was one farther south called Wigwam. There was Sidmouth and Hall’s Landing.

Hall’s Landing was named after a family that had settled there in the 1890s and they had a huge farm operation at a cattle farm and were just really well known throughout the-the valley for their uh for their-their farming for their cattle.

People were told they had to leave because of the Hugh Keenleyside Dam.

Uh, all of these farmers had to leave their way of life.

They had to leave their animals behind.

How painful that would have been for people to have to sell off their cattle, get rid of their horses, get rid of their chickens.

And not-not being able to live the same lifestyle, not being able to farm, not being able to have their farm animals.

People can get really emotional when they think about the loss of-of animals because we all have such a strong connection to the animals in our lives.

[Video fades to black]