FVC History Edition - Oct. 25, 2024 - Lytton's first, second, and third hospital

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Good morning!

Last weekend, I was driving through Lytton, and passed the village’s Chinese History Museum. In April, I reported that rebuilding had begun on the little museum. The operator, Lorna Fandrich, had hoped to finish it by this fall. Everything takes longer than expected, especially when it comes to building in Lytton, but the museum has bucked the odds and the building itself is 99% complete.

So I ducked my head in and chatted with Lorna. Inside, there are still a couple things she and her helpers still have to do. The artifacts still need descriptions and other elements are still coming together to make the site a complete museum. But as it stands, Lorna’s museum is a testament to hope. It’s also a great story about communities coming together.

Lorna isn’t Chinese. Operating a Chinese history museum could be a very dicey proposition. But the museum wouldn’t exist without her, and members of the Chinese and Chinese-Canadian community have embraced Lorna’s efforts, offering their time, advice, and objects and donations to support the museum.

The museum is not yet open, but visitors (like me) have still stopped by to take a peak inside. If you do so, you’ll see a small stand of objects recovered from the twisted remnants of the building’s predecessor. It’s a reminder of the history of the site. But Lorna didn’t want to make the museum about the fire. From the start, the point of the museum was to showcase the Chinese-Canadian community’s contributions to Lytton and the surrounding area. And that remains the goal, fire-be-damned.

– Tyler

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HISTORY

Love, play, war, and 100 years of living

By Grace Kennedy

The first thing I notice about Vic and Jean Arnold’s home are the chairs. Two living room chairs: one soft pink and low-backed, close to the ground for easy access; the other deep brown and plush, with an electric mechanism to raise and lower the seat.

I’ve never seen them before, but the chairs feel familiar. They, and the bowl of Werther’s Originals on the table, are a sign that I will get exactly what I have come here for: stories of “the olden days” from two people who were there to see them.

Vic turns off the television—a news station covering the American election—and slowly gets out of the brown chair to greet me. Shoulders hunched, he shuffles across the room to shake my hand. Jean emerges from the bedroom a moment later, pausing to pepper her comparatively young friend Dave Dayton with pleasant inquiries.

In August, Dave—a friendly bridge competitor of the Arnolds—had emailed a picture of the couple to The Current. Jean had just turned 100 years old. Her husband had recently celebrated his 101st birthday. And together, the couple will celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary next summer.

I knew I needed to meet them.

With Dave’s help, we arranged a time to meet and chat about the events and changes they, and Abbotsford, have seen over a century of living.

• Today, join me in listening to Vic and Jean Arnold’s memories of Abbotsford, from the 1920s to the present.

Related

📍 Oct. 8, 1866: Petitioners wanted the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island to merge, and their new capital to be placed in Lytton [British Columbia Tribune]

🎣 Oct. 14, 1893: Residents had good sturgeon fishing on the Stave River, and lots of salmon were coming up the river, although only a few coho [Mission City News]

🥔 Oct. 5, 1911: The provincial government aimed to send a potato exhibition to New York; the farmer providing the best collection of tubers would receive a $1,000 reward [Chilliwack Free Press]

🥚 Oct. 31, 1923: George F. Henley of Agassiz won fourth place in an International egg-laying contest out of Victoria [Agassiz Record]

🌱 Oct. 16, 1957: Some horticulturalists were worried that nuclear fallout had caused a rise in the number of ‘freak plants’ being grown [Aldergrove Herald]

🍓 Oct. 15, 1986: The Berryland fruit canning plant in Haney was set to close and amalgamate with a Sardis processing plant; workers in Sardis feared for their jobs [Chilliwack Progress]

New in history

👉 The Heritage Abbotsford Society is seeking new board members [Abbotsford News]

🎃 The Alexandra Lodge is hosting a haunted market this weekend / The event is a fundraiser to raise money to finish the interior [Facebook]

⚾ Kaye Kaminishi, a former player for the Vancouver Asahi, has died / Kaminishi was a supporter of the Tashme Museum in the Sunshine Valley [Tashme Museum/Facebook]

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Lytton’s third hospital opened in 1937

St. Bartholomew’s Hospital opened in Lytton in 1937, but it was hardly the first medical facility to sit above the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson rivers.

Lytton’s first hospital had been built more than four decades earlier, in 1893. And even as the local historical society celebrated the new facility in 1937, it published an article noting that the first hospital was erected “perhaps with greater pride than that of present builders.”

By the late 1800s, locals had been dreaming of their own hospital for three decades, the historical society wrote. That first building was a four-room hospital.

“It was a strange little building, little more than a shelter but a place where an inspiring service was rendered,” the historical society reported (again, writing in 1937). That first hospital wasn’t long for the world, however. It burned down in 1904 and was replaced by a larger “more modern” building with 12 beds. It may have been more technologically advanced, but apparently it was still under-resourced. A secretary who first visited the facility in 1928 noted that “in place of the customary operating table there stood a coffin cover.” You can find the 1937 article within this newsletter from the Lytton Museum and Archives.

The new hospital built in 1937 would serve the village for seven decades until it was replaced by a new medical facility in 2008. The $6.3 million health centre had an emergency department, medical services, and lab and X-ray services. It burned with the rest of the village in 2021. Interior Health has promised to build a new medical facility, and has opened a temporary clinic in the meantime. But it could be years until a new medical centre is opened. Last year, officials suggested a potential opening date of 2028, though little progress seems to have been made since.

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The "Raytomic" geiger counter

After the Second World War, a national ban on private uranium prospecting was lifted and the search for the valuable metal became popular. Canadian uranium production peaked in 1959 when more than 12,000 tonnes of uranium was produced, but by the 1960s the craze was waning. Local surveyor, Ray Bonn, purchased this geiger counter in 1951 when prospecting for uranium was "all the rage." He took it along on his jobs, hopeful he’d find a valuable deposit. He didn't find any.

This artifact was provided courtesy of The Reach Gallery Museum.

FVC reader Debra Kassel sent us this sketch of Stevenson House in Sardis, the home where she grew up.

“Unfortunately my father demolished it,” she wrote. “It was designed by the architect Mr. Tut (the Tut family lived on Stevenson Road for years). Upon his passing, his great-granddaughter offered us his sketch of the house I was later to grow up in, at 45530 Stevenson Road, Sardis.”

Kassel also said she found a portion of Clarinda Stevenson’s diary in the walls of the attic, when Kassel was around 10 years old. She no longer has the diary, but said it included a description of a ball Clarinda had attended at the home of the Higginsons, who lived just across Vedder Road.

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