Recollections of Rossland

he Rossland of my childhood had wooden sidewalks.
  It also had:

steam trains and a water tower snow from Halloween until Easter some paved but many dirt streets daily home milk delivery homes without insulation a store with a pneumatic message system very hot summers an elderly Chinese man who sold vegetables down the alleyways from baskets hanging from a pole across his shoulders snow shovels party-line telephones with numbers such as 123Y snow forts and snow balls separate hotel bars for men and women bagpipes frequent views of valley fog wood deliverd by the cord in the fall five-cent candy bars huckleberry patches on the hills a daily recital of the Lord’s prayer in elementary school very deep winter snow a light-opera company hand-powered lawn mowers double-hung windows with counterweights a telegraph in the railway station

the Canadian Red Ensign and the Union Jack old mine workings still in abundance on the hills wooden sidewalks a spittoon in the Post Office a skating rink good hiking an elementary school which offered cloakrooms, transoms, and liberal strappings thick ice on the inside of windows wooden trestles across ravines (left over from abandoned railway lines) a ski hill a movie theater hills too steep for cars in the winter but prized by children on sleighs wood stoves to be lit in the morning many corner grocery stores and hotels frozen cream rising an inch above the milk-bottle top medical doctors who made house calls     and, did I mention snow?

Essays on specific recollectioins will be added irregularly. They open in a satellite window.
      phones    schools     trains     bagpipes 

Souvenir spoon from Rossland, hallmarked 1902 From the earliest days, Rossland’s merchants have offered souvenirs. This silver spoon shows the Court House (built in 1901) and the informal arms of British Columbia chosen by the provincial government in 1897. When B.C. was officially granted arms in 1906, the Flag and Sun were reversed.