The Japanese-Canadian internment camp in "The Orchard" on the other side of Carpenter Creek from New Denver village is included in the Slocan page. Please read the Wong's Market page if you're unfamiliar with this part of British Columbia history. See also New Denver, Kaslo, Mayne Island, Shuswap and Spuzzum pages for further evidence of this saga.

New Denver, probably the prettiest spot on Slocan Lake, was the staging area in the 1890s for the Silvery Slocan mines.

The Angrignon house at 702 Bellevue in New Denver, with two old commercial buildings in the distance across some vacant fields. To my mind, New Denver is the most evocative old town in the BC Interior: laid out as if it would become huge, it never did, and although many old buildings have doubtless been demolished since the boom years of a century ago, there hasn't been any poor quality modern infill. The vacant lots and old established street trees just add to the character. This house, with its boxy, vertical shape, tall windows, narrow eaves and hipped roof if a classic 19th-century "Georgian"--a style more typical of an Ontario or Nova Scotia town. (Information from Randy Angrignon; thanks to New Denver mayor Gary Wright for the contact information)

Note from Gene Angrignon, Port Alberni: I was very surprised to find your pages on the net, including as they do so many very familiar memories to me. My father was born and raised in that wonderful old home, I spent many summers there with my grandmother while my father completed his Bachelor degree in education at UBC via summer school. I also spent some of those early summers in Slocan and the lower valley with my mothers' family. Of course, some of my friends in both of these towns were children of the internees. My mother was a native of Slocan and in fact she returned from a business life in Vancouver and spent most of her retirement years in a small log cabin built on the very land you have pictured at Lemon Creek, on the site of the old internment camp. My Uncle bought that land in the late '40s (Donald Hird was his name, his widow and many of his children and further generations still reside in Slocan) and through a lot of lean years managed to keep the taxes up until subdividing it in the late '60s and early '70s + or - a few years. Funny thing, my mother moved from there to the "Orchard" in New Denver, where my brother fixed up a small home for her and watched over her until her passing a few years back. He was a real estate person at the time and I purchased a 1+ acre of property in Slocan through him which was on the old site of the Slocan internment camp and I had some beautiful old fruit trees which came from that era. This is now called Hatch subdivision, not sure what they called the camp. My father is now 92, a retired school principal in Langley. I spent Easter weekend visiting him and brought up your site on his computer, needless to say he was very interested. I even got a lot more history on the maples depicted in your picture (his father tried tapping them, I believe unsuccessfully, as they had in Quebec when he was a boy) and the old hotel and store on the other side of the field where he worked as a teenager.