It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

Last night a series of thunderstorms rolled through the area. Spectacular!

Rossland's Bank of Montreal

A couple of months ago, I posted about Rossland's historic Bank of Montreal building, which is currently for sale. I've come to love old buildings and old architecture, and today I had the opportunity to go inside this old beauty for the first time in nearly 15 years. I used to bank at this location until I left town, but that was before I learned to appreciate a historic building for what it was, and well before our digital camera era.

This weekend is Rossland's annual Spring Wing Ding, and the old bank is being used for an art exhibit featuring local artists. I am not the biggest art aficionado in the world, so I was trying to discretely take pictures of the interior detail the bank is so well-known for while trying to be interested in local artists. Some of the art was actually OK; some of it was God-awful.

Exterior of the building.

This is an example of some of the original plasterwork in the main part of the old bank. Also, note the arched windows, which are very cool.

This is the fireplace in the manager's office.

Someone remarked that this would make an awesome bar.

The foyer, looking out the front door.

More pictures here.

Images from Bear Country

These were taken two nights ago. The dumpster is located across the street from my brother's house. This is my first bear sighting of the season!

Conversions

The Reno Rage is upon us, we all know it. I've heard that the new houses being built nowadays are only meant to last 20 years - which doesn't surprise me because they seem to be made primarily out of plywood and glue. But what do you do with a building that was built a century or so ago, that may have outgrown its original purpose?

You get creative.

McLean School Annex. The original McLean School was a very cool old building that burnt down in 1980, when I was attending grade one there. Arson, but no one was ever charged. The school was K-7, so there were lots of displaced students. What wound up happening was that grades 1-4 were housed in the annex, and the district came in and built dividers to create four separate classrooms. I spent about a year and a half as a student in the basement of this building. The Annex is now a Francophone school with a flourishing student population.

Rossland's historic, copper-roofed Courthouse, a very famous building around here. Still used as a courthouse, but it's ancillary services have gradually been cut back over the years. I went to my dad's citizenship ceremony here. My parents' divorce trial was here...

...But the basement used to be a jail way back in the day. Then, many years later, the jail was converted into a public library. The entrance is just under the granite archway you can see at the bottom of this picture. I remember going here regularly to check out kids books - I loved Curious George best of all...

...Then the library outgrew the space in the basement of the courthouse, and a garage from the 1930s or 1940s on Columbia Avenue was converted into what remains to this day the Rossland Public Library.

Then we have this building. It was Mater Misericordiae Hospital. I had my appendix out here when I was seven. This was also the ambulance service's local HQ and a long-term care home before it gradually lost funding and all of its services were pulled (though there is an ambulance bay on the property, just out of view in this picture). The building went up for sale and about two years ago it was bought, and just very recently it's been converted into condos. I would not live here. I can't imagine living in a converted hospital...The energy must be very strange...

Three Cemeteries Hike

I intended to go for a one-hour walk and visit one cemetery, but I wound up going on a three-hour hike and visiting three cemeteries. Go figure. Story here.

1. Happy Valley.
2. Bear Aware sign at the trailhead.
3. The Old Mining School.
4. Cominco from the Old Mining School.
5. Old Trail Cemetery.

6. One of many baby and infant graves in the Old Trail Cemetery.
7. Older graves at the back of the Old Trail Cemetery.
8. I don't think anyone is actually buried under these upright stones. I believe these were moved here in the 1920s when Cominco needed the land they were originally on. As you can see, the stones are sinking into the earth.
9. Mountain View Cemetery, our "current" cemetery.
10. New-ish mausoleum at Mountain View, not full yet but whoever is there is of Italian descent.
11. Old Rossland Cemetery. This is just stone's throw from Mountain View, and at the bottom of Happy Valley. There is a Catholic cemetery in lower Rossland that is much older and much creepier than this one.

First Shots

1. Record Ridge & Mt. Roberts
2. Red Mountain - from my back yard!
3. Future site of my garden, when it warms up and thaws out.