The Arrow Lakes Historical Society has an extensive amount of information in their archives which includes:
About 50.5 meters of original items such as ledgers of old businesses of the area, minute books, school records, club and mining information and so on. These are stored in a cool room on metal shelves in acid free boxes.
The 18 meters of copied material mainly features the Arrow Lakes Newspapers from 1923 - 1970. Pertinent items were photocopied, cut up and pasted into looseleafs by category for easy retrieval by researchers. We are at present photocopying the 1970s and 1980s papers. This section is named after Bob Swigart, the man who worked so hard to create and produce it.
We have almost 2000 slides, which include the priceless ones taken by former bank manager, Allan. He captured on film the sternwheelers, Minto and Bonnington, the old Nakusp Hot Springs, and the Big Bend mill to mention a few in the 1940s. We now also have Jean Spicer's wonderful slides taken on trips up the mountains to old mine sites and other areas, many taken in the 50s and 60s.
We have almost 3250 photos from many sources. These are photocopied, given an accession number and a finding aid number. The photocopies are put into looseleafs by category for perusal by the public. The originals are placed into acid free sleeves and then into a metal filing cabinet for added safety. We also have the use of photographs that are in Milton Parent's personal collection for our history books that were written by him. We also have approximately 8000 copied photos that Milton has from doing interviews.
On file are about 700 maps - many from BC Hydro featuring the lake before flooding, aerial photographs from the same time and Bert Herridge's map collection from his time in parliament during dam discussions. There are more than 100 of these.
Milton Parent, author/historian, taped 472 pioneers when writing and researching for the six history books that have been published by the society. People wanting copies of their family members on tape can purchase them with a copy of the transcription as well. Click here to see the index of taped interviews.
We also have about 25 videos - for example: the last train from Nakusp, the taking up of the rails and so on. We also have copies of the BC Moments TV presentation of Kootenay Hot Springs that we helped with. Five hot springs were featured including Nakusp Hot Springs and Halcyon Hot Springs.
We only have 13 microfilms of the Arrow Lakes News but have no microfilm reader so rather insignificant.
We have bound copies of the Arrow Lakes News from 1923-2001 - some issues are missing but this resource is very usable. Our unbound newspapers are from 2002-2009.
The Della Parent Research Library contains history books and magazines of other areas of which we have a sizeable collection.
The Edna Daney Special Collection features rare older books.
Please see below for contact information.
