The Slocan Portrait of a Valley Author:Katherine Gordon The Slocan Valley, in the heart of the southern interior of British Columbia, is a slender blue-gold arc of water, pastures, and trees lying in the western shadow of the Selkirk Mountains. Although barely 120 years old in terms of European settlement, the valley has been the amphitheatre in which much of British Columbia's and Canada's most dram... more »atic history has played out. The Slocan was briefly the Paris of the West, with its fabulous silver strikes of the 1890s; it became the refuge of Doukhobors fleeing first Russia's tyranny, then Canada's; it was the prison for Canadian Japanese interned during the Second World War. It has attracted both the spiritual and the prosaic--hunters and gatherers, industrialists and loggers, artisans and back-country enthusiasts, farmers and gardeners. It was, and remains, a hippie nirvana of sorts. In recent years, the strong connections of aboriginal people to their history, place, and future in the valley have again become apparent. The Slocan: Portrait of a Valley links the region and its people to the broader history of B.C. and Canada, and paints an engaging, vivid portrait of the culture and lifestyles in the area today.« less