Sweet Dreams

The best local Bed & Breakfast. Amazing breakfasts. Dinner by request. A lovely old building, facing out onto the lakefront.

Picnic stop

This picnic area was originally conceived as part of a commemorative installation to make reparations for the government's 1950's policy of placing Doukhobor kids in reform school. Scores of kids who were living in a communal Doubkhobor community 100 km south of here, being educated within their community rather than within public schools, were apprehended for truancy and brought to New Denver to be forced into residential schooling. Their parents were allowed to see them on Sundays through a chain-link fence. The journey up the valley was often gruelling and could take many hours. It was forced cultural assimilation. There was resistance, at times violent.

The fractured picnic table is symbolic of the fracturing of families that occurred. The picnic area is lovely and well-tended. Unfortunately the reparations process broke down and this gesture left many survivors feeling unsatisfied and insulted. So there's no plaque, no explanation. Only an unusual pair of picnic tables.

Carpenter Creek Mouth

Looking the other direction along Carpenter Creek towards where it empties into Slocan Lake. The gradually vanishing New Denver Glacier can be seen between the two peaks in the background.

Lupine colour

Peak colour at the Secret Lupine Garden.

The Secret Lupine Garden

Along the foreshore at the south end of the village are the hospital, the heli-pad, the meadow, a scrubby area, the Kohan Reflection Garden and then Centennial Park and its campground. Tucked into the scrubby area behind the wall of wild rose bushes, where no one ever goes, is the most amazing secret wildflower garden. Lupines bloom at this time of year on roadsides all over our area, but the Secret Lupine Garden is exceptional for the density of flowers, the lakefront location and the sheer range of colours. No one knows whether they were sown by a local Miss Rumphius or not. Old-timers say they've been growing for fifty years at least.

Carpenter Creek This Week

Rock in the centre now completely submerged. Huge standing waves on the outside of the curve at the upper left.