Coming Home to Christina Lake

I live at the cusp of the Kootenays where the meandering Kettle River veers suddenly south and Christina Lake spills north into the vast Monashee wilderness. It is a sanctuary in the summer to thousands of dusty road-weary travellers, and in the winter, to a few kokanee, whitetail, cougar and rugged year-round residents.  Both a

hamlet and a recreational area, it lies along the Crowsnest Highway and the Trans Canada Trail, just east of the grasslands that surround the historic city of Grand Forks.

Exploring Christina Lake

I love the many unexpected pleasures of living in B.C.’s ‘Boundary Country’: the heat in the summer, the rarity of rain and wind, the surety of snow in the winter. I find its elevation – about 1000′- an intoxidant, inspiring a vigour for home projects, working in the garden, exploring the endless hiking, biking, kayaking and skiing opportunities.

As a person who grew up on the ‘wet-coast’, I marvel at what the extra heat in the summer means: flourishing grapes, green peppers and cantaloupe, slugless lettuce, clothes on the line that dry in two hours, basements that never flood and things emerging moldfree after years in storage. And plans for hikes and ski tours can be just sketched out because new paths can be easily made through the low undergrowth of pine forest. And trips into the wilderness are almost always that – with elk and deer and bear more commonly encountered on the trail than other humans. Unspoiled, uncommercialized, still-to-be-discovered.

Historic Roots of Christina Lake and The Boundary

Perhaps I love it here because the history of this area fascinates. This is where, in conjunction with the gold rush on the coast and in the Cariboo, modern B.C began. Rich deposits of other minerals (silver, copper, lead and zine) and optimal growing conditions brought the British miners, the Italian stonemasons and the Russian exiles – the Doukhobors.

No one has truly lived, or experienced heaven on earth, until one has sat immersed in a hall of Doukhobor faithful, the room suspended in the beauty of the wall-to-wall harmony in

their sung psalms. Legacies of Grand Fork’s proud history are immediately evident to the visitor with the highway through town yielding to regal tree-lined streets and turn-of-the-century homes lovingly restored.

The people here next to the shores of “Little

Lazy” (the name given the Kettle River by a local song-writer) are stewards of a rich pioneer past, and a peaceful sunsoaked valley. Perhaps their warmth reflects the light of this valley; friendly, thoughtful, real. Small wonder that when I descend the hill into our little hamlet of Christina Lake, I am proud to call it home.