July 10, 1952 – Correspondent gets boost from reader
All Arrow Park, it seemed, turned out on Monday and Tuesday to take in the celebration at Nakusp. Not only was Dominion Day the best one ever staged in Nakusp, but the most memorable one, in more ways than one, because one meets so many old friends.
Sometimes when one writes for a paper, it gets so very discouraging. Some get their name in too often. Some get their name in not enough. And some say you have always done that on purpose. And you wonder is it all worth while? Then you meet someone who says: “I buy the Arrow Lakes News just to see what Arrow Park and Burton are doing,” and the kind remarks of Mr. Frank Rushton of Kelowna, who reads all the doings of the lakes, just to keep in touch with our simple little doings on a Saturday night, and you feel good again. It’s nice to know that someone far away in the bustle and hustle of city life, takes time to read and loves to know about us.
July 12, 1962 – Arrow Park phone cable replaced
Arrow Park, without telephone communication for four days, was restored on Tuesday morning. The Polyethelyne cable which crossed the river from East Arrow Park to West Arrow Park broke on Friday due to the swift high water. Emergency measures were taken immediately and on Sunday afternoon two six-foot rolls of armoured submarine cable arrived in Nakusp from Vancouver, B.C. Telephone, in co-operation with Celgar Ltd., fitted the cable on a barge and laid it across the river Monday afternoon. This cable, being armoured and much heavier than that already in place, is expected to be permanent.
July 14, 1982 – King blasts export of logs
NDP Forest Critic Bill King says the export of raw logs is a false and misleading approach to the problem of unemployment in the forest industry. King said the proposal by MacMillan Bloedel to sell 100,000 cubic metres of raw logs to China is the latest development in trend which began earlier this year.
In the first half of 1982 the cabinet approved the export of 445,841 cu. metres of raw logs. This compares to 42,800 in the second half of 1981.
King said that he can understand the desire of the industry to generate some cash during hard times, “but shipping out our best raw logs means we ship out jobs which we will never get back.”
“Selling unprocessed resources is always a suspect policy”, King added. “This is doubly true when we have so much idle capacity in the B.C. industry”.
July 11, 2002 – Drug exchange in Nakusp
After 12 years of helping Nakuspites keep healthy, Hetty Gabriel and her Beach Ave. Pharmacy are closing for good. Since July 1, 1990, Gabriel has been a pharmacist in Nakusp, providing medication and support first as an employee of Nakusp Drugs, then from her own store six days a week for the last eight years.
As of last Friday, Gabriel handed over her computer and the town’s pharmacy records to Wendy Letoria, who opened Bayview Pharmacy earlier this spring and will be taking over as the town’s pharmacist. Despite a previous deal to have Letoria and her husband Warren Ouderkirk take over the Beach Ave. outlet, a deal which subsequently fell through when Bayview Pharmacy opened just down the street, Gabriel says she’s selling now for a different reason.
“I have to close now for personal reasons,” says Gabriel, “because of my husband’s fragile health, I have to move to a larger centre with better health facilities.”
A lot of controversy surrounds the deal between Gabriel and Letoria. While Hetty says she introduced the young couple to the business of Nakusp, Ouderkirk flat-out denies it. When asked for his side of the story, Ouderkirk refused to comment.
Regardless of the hard feelings between the two stores, Nakusp’s new druggist should be up to the task. After meeting Hetty in her pharmacy on a family drive to Nakusp last year, Letoria has been interested in working here.
She’s already earned a degree in pharmacy and has worked in numerous pharmacies all over the West Kootenays.
But Gabriel, a mother of three girls, will surely be missed as a caring and concerned pharmacist. Plus, she is also known for her healing creams and lotions.
“I’m a compounding wizard,” laughs Gabriel, adding that she’ll be making her special lip balms, creams and cold sore lotions for the last time this week. Coming soon, Gabriel says new and old customers alike will be able to find her goods on the internet.
