The Columbia River Island that "never was"

About 1912 about 5,000 Russian religious dissenters were living in British Columbia, their story quite a saga in itself. Many of the people -- Doukhobours -- centered eventually around the towns of Castlegar and Grand Forks, not far north of the border with the USA. They set up permanent settlements and started businesses.

But this blog is about the charming cabin pictured here. A non-Doukhobour Russian fleeing from the Bolshevik Revolution came to teach the Russian language to children at the Dooukhobour schools in the mid-1900s. He liked to hike around the area and visited a small island in the Columbia River near Castlegar often. He adored his wife and wanted to build a home for her on that island. When he checked with authorities about purchasing all or at least part of it, they told Zuckerberg there was no such island.

He convinced the government that such a piece of land truly existed and bought it. As funds permitted, he built a lovely, Russian-style, country home pictured here, and hacked out paths through the forested island. Soon he and his wife had lush gardens irrigated by installing a water wheel to lift water from the Columbia. Zuckerberg added outdoor statues, adding one to honor his wife after she died in 1960.

Today the island is a park, given to everyone to enjoy by Zuckerberg. Aiding in the funding has been the Rotary Club. Visitors reach the island "that never was" over a suspension foot bridge.

A bit of explanation, too, about the river. At its birth in the Columbia Lake of BC. only a small ridge of land separates the Columbia from the Kootenay River, another major waterway that, at that point, comes from its more northerly birthplace and flows south even as the Columbia begins to flow northwest. The Kootenay wanders down into the USA's Montana and eventually turns back north and empties into the Columbia River near Castlegar after both rivers have racked up hundreds of divergent miles. At one time, some "wise guy" proposed digging a channel through the earth barrier between the two rivers near Columbia Lake. Fortunately, a wiser guy pointed out that this would be an environmental and economic disaster to join the two at that site, and it was not done.