Walhachin, on the north bank of the Thompson River, was the site of a colony of English gentry, most of them bachelors, which flourished from about 1900 up to the outbreak of the Great War. An extensive irrigation infrastructure was established and the settlers farmed as best they could without letting the farming interfere with such leisure activities as lawn tennis, cricket, hunting, shooting, card parties, amateur theatricals, and the like. I am interested in the topic because my grandparents participated in a similar lifestyle a hundred-odd miles farther south in the Okanagan Valley. Family legend has it that Grandfather promised Granny that if she married him he would put in a proper tennis court at his ranch.

The Walhachin idyll came to an end with the outbreak of the war. According to an historical sign at the site of the now-vanished settlement, all the bachelors made simultaneous plans to return to the mother country in her hour of need. On the morning of the exodus each man packed his saddle-bags, mounted a horse, and rode to his neighbour's spread, where he set fire to the shanty and shot the remaining horses--shot them to prevent them from being ill-treated by the Indians, who were believed to have rather more pragmatic attitudes with respect to livestock than did the horse-loving colonists.

I have a collection of Granny's dance programmes from balls held in rural Gloucestershire in the years 1903 to 1908. I will compile a list of the tunes played at those dances and post them here.