Revisiting turn-of-the-century Kamloops

Martin Starret was a storyteller.

He was the kind of guy who knew everybody and everything.

Born in the late 1800s near Hope, he worked as a fur trader throughout B.C.

And his work put him in contact with the many faces who helped settle this vast province, including one of the most infamous characters of that time — Bill Miner, the legendary train robber.

Miner was the only successful train robber in Canada, until he got caught in 1906 after a heist just east of Kamloops, near Monte Creek.

Starret brilliantly recalls how close Miner and his posse, who were posing as prospectors, were to getting away with robbery, until his partner, Shorty Dunn, “got panicky and ran for the guns” when questioned by police.

It’s just one of a couple of dozen of stories gathered for a new book, Voices of British Columbia: Stories from Our Frontier.

It’s a collection of tales from the pioneers and the first generation of people who lived and settled in B.C.

The book is based on 2,700 hours of audio recordings by CBC Radio journalist Imbert Orchard, who travelled the province from 1959 to 1966 interviewing 998 pioneers, including Starret.

The book is accompanied by the audio recordings from the original interviews.

The book’s author, Robert Budd, said these are the stories of the fishermen, the road builders, the ranchers and miners.

“We get an unbelievable picture of what life was like for the people who were the first generation of British Columbians,” he told KTW.

Budd’s journey through the oral history of the province began 10 years ago, when he was asked by the CBC to digitize its huge B.C. archives.

At the time, he had no idea among those archives was one of the largest oral-history collections in the world — the Orchard collection.

Budd said he was inspired by the recordings to write a master’s thesis at the University of Victoria on the merits of oral history, which would eventually become the basis for the book.

Preserving these stories has now become a passion for the author.

Budd believes oral stories, like the ones collected by Orchard, are easier to retain than reading them out of a traditional history book.

“So many facts are embedded in the narrative of a story,” he said.

And, unlike many history books, the Orchard collection takes into account the experiences of everyday people.

“Finally, B.C. history is going to have some character,” Budd said.

He has painstakingly listened to all 2,700 hours of recordings and noted there are about 30 or 40 stories in the archive of people who lived in Kamloops.

Budd said the amount of material left behind by Orchard could produce 50 books.