Greg Nesteroff
West Kootenay Advertiser
Seventy-second in an alphabetical series on West Kootenay/Boundary place names.
Glendevon was a community on the west side of Upper Arrow Lake south of Nakusp, between Birds Landing and West Demars, originally known as Forest Glen.
According to Kate Johnson’s Pioneer Days of Nakusp and Arrow Lakes, its name was inspired by pioneer Robert Glendenning (1847-1907). Another theory has it that Agnes Menzies (1878-1942) named Forest Glen after a place in Scotland about 1923-24.
Forest Glen school opened in 1929, but when the post office moved there from West Demars, it used the name Glendevon because there was already a Forest Glen post office in Nova Scotia.
The Arrow Lakes News of March 12, 1931 announced: “A new post office will be opened up at Forest Glen … under the name of Glendevon … With the opening … he name Forest Glen will be a thing of the past.” The post office closed in 1942, along with the school, which was still named Forest Glen.
GRAHAM LANDING
This settlement in the Columbia River Narrows opposite and a little north of Burton was named for Alexander James Graham (1867-1943), who had a farm and small sawmill there.
According to Milton Parent in Port of Nakusp, Graham moved there with his wife Margaret and daughter Lillian late in 1903. Graham Creek was also named after them.
Lillian is absent from the 1911 census, but by that time another daughter, Beatrice, had been born. Graham Landing then boasted a population of 42.
The post office opened on June 1 that year with Graham as postmaster. He held the job until 1943, when Beatrice took over. The office closed in 1949.
What remained of the community by the 1960s was a casualty of the Keenleyside dam.