Rika and I are researching for a book on just this topic. We've gone back to the sources (the papers themselves) and found a huge number of verses. Our area of the country is very strong in newspapers that lasted for only three years: some 195 published between here (Princeton, BC) and Fernie in the Rockies. The reason is that the whole area was a mining area, with many towns springing up on the site of a promising find. The first thing done was as often as not to publish a paper: first, to demonstrate that this is a town, with success ahead of it; second, to publish the legal notices required for mining and logging licences; and thirdly, to sell ads for land for speculation.

We've done an exhaustive search of our local press from 1900 to 1945 (two weeklies, 4pp each) and found some 200 songs and poems for inclusion in the book. Some of the material is on our latest CD, "Now It's Called Princeton: Songs & Poems of BC's Upper Similkameen".

We've also researched the press of the West Kootenays: some forty papers, published between 1890 and 1920 (only two survived the period). This generated a photostat pile some three feet high.

If 'catters are interested, I'll write later on what we've found.

Jon Bartlett

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I fixed the links you had trouble with, Jon. -Joe Offer, Forum Moderator-