OSOYOOS SNAPSHOT

The first step in getting to know this beautiful lakeside town is to learn how to pronounce its name. Osoyoos stems from the First Nations word sẁiẁs, which is pronounced ‘s-wee-yous’, meaning ‘narrowing of the waters’ in nsyilxcən, the language of the Syilx Okanagan Nation language.

During the period of European colonialism in what became Canada and the United States, thousands of miners looking for gold and farmers driving herds of livestock crossed the 49th parallel from 1858. This resulted in the building of a customs house in Osoyoos in 1861, with John Carmichael Haynes becoming the tax collector.

Osoyoos was incorporated as a Village on January 14, 1946 and became a Town on June 30, 1983 and now has a population of just over 5,000. Agriculture (fruit trees, vegetables and grapes for wine) along with tourism are the community’s largest economic drivers. Each summer the population more than doubles as tourists flock to the sun-kissed lake and numerous wineries in the area.

Because of its dry sunny climate in summer and mild winter the town is a retirement haven and also a magnet for ‘snow birds’ from the prairie provinces each winter. Seniors (age 65 and over) comprise 43 per cent of the town population with the average resident aged 55.4 years (2016) compared to 40.8 years for the rest of the population of British Columbia.

Although many people claim the town is located in a desert, Osoyoos actually gets 10 cm too much rain each year to be an actual desert and is described in scientific terms as a semi-arid shrubland – the only one in Canada.

In 1865 the Dewdney Trail – a 720 km trail connecting Fort Hope (now Hope) to Fort Steel in the East Kootenays – passed through the narrows where Osoyoos is now situated with this trail forming the basis for much of the Crowsnest Highway 3.

The area around Osoyoos has one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the entire country and is home to over 100 rare plants, and over 300 rare invertebrates.

And the most asked question of all: How did Anarchist Mountain get its unique name? No one is quite sure, but we’ll give you our favourite. Legend has it that an early settler, and ‘wild Irishman’, named Richard G. Sidley who was appointed Justice of the Peace and Customs Officer in 1891 and the first postmaster at Sidley in 1895, named the mountain after an eccentric prospector and purported cattle thief named John Haywood. Apparently, Haywood liked to carry a stick of dynamite in his boot and when asked why, he would say it was because he was an anarchist.