HOW I WRITE A BOOK #4

                                            STOLEN CHURCH NOW IN WINDERMERE
As I approached the next leg of writing a book, based on the Columbia River book mostly, I was so amused at the tale of how this church was stolen, literally. I thought it important to tell you that photos and odd tales mixed in with the facts make a book steeped in history actually readable. I never was much on writing about what happened somewhere in terms only of who was the governor, what treaty was made, and such. Frankly, one needs to have such details but  as a fact on which to tell the story of the "real people," as I call them. I like to tie local lore into the book as a means of transporting the reader to the site I am describing.

In this case, the St. Stephens Church at the little town of Donald on the CPR (on the Rogers Pass segment from Golden to Revelstoke) was the site of the charming little church that served mostly the workers and families. CPR started to move its headquarters to Revelstoke, west of Donald, the opposite side of the pass, In the dark of night parishioners of St. Stephens loaded the entire church onto a flat car and took it to Windermere, where it still rests. The angry CPR managers were unable to persuade the locals to give it back. For book purposes I could have just said that the church was moved to Windermere, but the real cloak-and-dagger method makes the event memorable. This tale was common local knowledge, but sometimes one can find lively and little-known tidbits in the loose files of the local town libraries.

Similarly, the old highway around the north end of Lake Kinbasket (part of the Columbia River) was under water in early days of high water. It is more interesting to understand how pioneers dealt with misfortune when we add to the book that well-known settler Gordon Bell traveled that stretch of road. in 1960 by removing the fan belt and slogging through as much as two and one-half feet of water. He was hauling necessary equipment for the construction of the still-popular hotel Three Valley Gap. Such small things make the book reader a part of the struggle, not a detached collector of facts.

In my writing of this segment of Columbia River I set out at the broad meeting of the three rivers that join to turn southwesterly in a leaky little boat. The snow-covered Columbia Ice Field peaks loomed above my 10-foot craft, a precarious short ride. I had learned in the research files that this original narrow defile claimed the lives of many early explorers.  .. And here I was in that spot, albeit a much larger body of water, in a way too small boat.  Hmmmm.