The songs and verses written in and about British Columbia in the period 1890 to 1914 allow us a fascinating look into the culture of past times. This is particularly so for the region of BC known as the West Kootenay. This era saw the establishment of the region as a mining centre, and it has been a song prospector’s dream, with rich pickings. The BC collector par excellence was Philip J. Thomas (1921–2007). Between the years 1954 and 1975, he gathered from singers around the province a collection of some 500 songs and recitations, many of them based in the primary industries of fishing, mining, and logging, and much of what he found came from the West Kootenay.
Phil Thomas collected songs from people who had learned them in the years before radio came into the southern Interior. Most singers learn their songs before the age of 20 or so, which meant that Phil’s singers were born around the turn of the 19th century and are long since dead; it would be impossible now to find their like. But Thomas also sought other sources for songs, including the pages of local newspapers, and this suggested to us thatwe published in (Canadian Folk Workshop, 2011).
