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Take me out to the old ball game - and so much more!

The list of sporting activities in Nakusp is long
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The Brouse baseball team was formed in 1922 and played on a makeshift diamond set up on the Baird ranch. They are: · Front row, left to right: Henry Aalten, Gordon Baird, Fred Goniak . Back, left to right: Edward Anthony, George Aalten, Emil Newbrand, James Baird, William Henke. Photographer unknown

ANGUS SCHROFF

Special to the News

It’s a common refrain among youth in Nakusp—”there’s nothing to do around here!” While there’s much in the way of natural wonders, and plenty to do if you wish to hike or fish or hunt, our town isn’t known for its cosmopolitan life. Still, as the years have rolled on we’ve received bits and pieces of comforts and luxuries, and with online shopping delivering almost anything within a week or two, country life isn’t truly that far behind city life.

Things were significantly different in the past—and I don’t just mean the fairly recent past before cell phones enabled anyone to annoy anyone else at any time. Close your eyes for a moment—unless you’re driving, in which case stop reading this, genius—and imagine you’re in the early 1900’s. Don’t panic, you’re not stuck here. The time machine is perfectly reliable. But if you were a citizen of Nakusp, you may find some fun with the early days of the Marching Band. Indeed, parades and seasonal events were more common then than now, being the few times in hard working years when residents could cut loose and celebrate.

Other more regular activities began as well, the foundation of a tradition Nakuspians are strongly involved with to this day—sports! Nakusp maintained baseball teams from the early 1900s; in our header photo you can see the Brouse team. They were formed in 1922 and played on a makeshift diamond set up on the Baird ranch. Baseball would prove to be a popular sport in the Kootenays, igniting many regional rivalries much the same way as today. When the air grew cold and snow generously covered the ground, it was even more important to keep moving, lest you turn into a human popsicle. The ice over galena bay provided the grounds for what was possibly the first game of curling in western Canada, played in 1903 with homemade wooden rocks. Kids, that’s what your elders mean when they say “build your own fun!”

And of course, the biggest use of anyone’s time then, as now, was work. Hardly a child or elder was spared when it came to toil; such was life in a frontier community. Be it farming, logging, helping to run one of the many sternwheelers that plied the Columbia river, or the trains that came later, Nakuspians weren’t given to sitting idly by. That, at the very least, hasn’t changed; though the flooding of the basin changed the face of the valley forever, Nakusp is still an old-fashioned logging town, a town in which many people work all day and sleep all night—just like the settlers who made this jewel of the Columbia a reality. So let’s give thanks to hard workers old and new, and the next time you’re really smarting for something to do on a day off… come down to the museum and see all the above firsthand. We’re well-stocked with photographs and artifacts from the first years of the community to the sad end of the S.S. Minto, and we’d be glad to show you around!