Photo: Kelowna Daily Courier

Oct. 16, 1918 edition of the Kelowna Daily Courier and Okanagan Orchardist

You can now take a dive into Kelowna’s history from the comfort of your home

B.C. Regional Digitized History is now hosting a collection of 45 years of Kelowna Daily Courier editions, spanning 1904 to 1949. More than 2,000 searchable issues of the paper are available for browsing online.

The papers provide a window into the past, and may be able to put our current “unprecedented times” into perspective, especially as Remembrance Day nears.

On the front page of the Oct. 16, 1918 edition of the Kelowna Daily Courier and Okanagan Orchardist, news about the final months of WWI dominates. 

“As elsewhere in the Empire, Kelowna mothers are being called upon to pay their dreadful sacrifice of giving their sons to the cause of war, and nobley they have borne the burden of sorrow which have been thrust mercilessly upon them,” reads a story announcing the death of Lieut. Cyril Moubray, the second of two local brothers to die in four months. 

The story is below one on the declaration of Hungary’s independence from the Central Powers and Austria. 

Deeper in the edition are stories that provide a peek into what it was like to live in B.C. during the Great War, such as Britain commandeering all of Canada’s butter with exception of B.C., or a headline on “After war prospects good for B.C. lumber.”

In the Rutland-Ellison news section, the comings and goings of community members are announced, “Mr. and Mrs. Monford spent the weekend in Enderby.” 

The digitization project was completed with the help of the Kelowna Daily Courier, the UBCO Library and ARCA.

The collection can be viewed here.