Coldstream: The Ranch Where It All Began

Coldstream Ranch, on the outskirts of the Okanagan city of Vernon, wasn't always crowded in the 'burbs. One of the oldest continually operating ranches in Canada, it was on the far edge of the far West when Charles Houghton founded it to provision the Cariboo Gold Rush in 1863. It's been operating so long Vernon is actually named after its second owners, the Vernon brothers. For decades it was owned by a succession of British bluebloods, including the quixotic Lord Aberdeen, who resigned his appointment as Governor General after he and his profligate brother-in-law Coutts squandered a fortune on grandiose schemes at Coldstream. Nevertheless, they proved drybelt soil could be turned into fine farmland with the aid of irrigation and pioneered the region's world-renowned orchard industry.

Author Donna Wuest vividly evokes the lives of the apple pickers, packers and pruners, piggery hands, potato processors and cowhands who worked on the Ranch. It is a story rich in characters like the gruff old manager "Fluffy" Wollaston, who is buried on the Ranch, and Nez Perce Indians, who arrived to pick hops replete with teepees, papooses and colourful headdresses. Coldstream is an affectionately written, well-researched chronicle of a historic institution. The Coldstream story is the story of the orchard and cattle industries in BC, and in many ways the story of the BC Interior.

Donna (Yoshitake) Wuest was born and raised on the Coldstream Ranch during the years when much of the land was orchard. During one of her return visits to the Ranch as an adult, she was inspired to write its history. She works as a freelance journalist and writer in Vancouver, BC.