The Promoters: selling the idea of a heaven on earth

Thomas Shaughnessy’s Summerland Development Company set up offices with such equipment as a paper ink blotter press. The job of real estate and promotion fell on the shoulders of John Moore Robinson. He hailed from Manitoba and upon arriving in the Okanagan, he figured that he had discovered the California of Canada! J.M. became the first Reeve when the town was incorporated in 1906.

Although Robinson was mainly trying to encourage folks from Manitoba to the sunny Okanagan, other land promoters sent their message to eastern Canada, to England and even to India: "Come in out of the cold. Make your fortune in the Okanagan. Grow fruit and grow rich!" The CPR added its own endorsement advertising the excellent train and luxurious steamboat services here. “The Okanagan district has been appropriately named the garden of the province for in no portion of British Columbia is cultivation more general and successful. [The] Southern Okanagan with the Similkameen country is destined to become the peach and grape producing section of British Columbia.” The BC Agent in London also claimed: “All you had to do was come out and buy your land and just have enough money to take you along for eight to ten years ’til your fruit trees were bearing, then you were in clover the rest of your life!”

The townsite grew on the lakeshore where the sternwheelers and other boats docked delivering people and supplies to the blossoming community and exporting various fruits to market. But it wasn’t long before the lakeside town ran out of growing room and homes and businesses began appearing “up on the flat.”

The boat delivered another young Manitoban to the Valley. In 1903, Ontario born James Campbell Ritchie and wife Margaret set up house at the foot of Giant’s Head Mountain, in the former Barclay Ranch House. Ritchie pre-empted acreage around that holding, which took in part of the mountain and he purchased property in Garnett Valley. He first established the Garnett Valley Lumber Company and each day as he walked from his lumber company in Garnett Valley to his home, he had to cross the Siwash Flat, also known as Indian Reserve Number Three, which was inhabited and farmed by the Pierre family. Ritchie acquired this Indian Reservation by an exchange of properties, the Pierres moving to range land along Shingle Creek Road. That was 1904 and two years later, Ritchie and his Garnett Valley Land Company subdivided the land, and a new town centre developed on this flat known as “West Summerland”.

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