Memories & Musings
June, 2023

The Georges

By David George

In 1981 Sonja and Siggy Witmoser opened Crawford Bay Building Supplies at the junction of Wadds Road and King Road opposite the school. David and Lea George bought the 10,000 square foot building in 1989 and soon provided space for other East Shore businesses and organizations including: The Kootenay Clothing Company, The Eastshore Library, The Kootenay Lake Environmental Education Centre, Guiding Hands Recreation Society, Harreson Tanner, RMT, and the Kootenay Lake Chamber of Commerce. The Georges purchase enlivened that part of Crawford Bay and as soon as they moved into a suite which was built in the former custom woodworking shop they officially became the Crawford Bay Hall's nearest neighbours!

"During that summer, I helped sand the floor of the community hall across the street, and that began a relationship Lea and I have had with the hall.

We served as hall board members before the hall and parks boards merged. I think Bill Hampson was board chair then. The hall had served as the school gym years ago, and when David Zaiss, Jim Donald and I sanded about a quarter inch off the fine fir floor, some of the old basketball court lines were still visible.

At about this time, the School Board asked us if we would like to go in with a purchase of a 95 percent efficient propane gas furnace at the same price they were paying for four to upgrade the school heat. We said yes, and I think it cost about $2,500. That was an upgrade from an oil furnace which was itself an upgrade from burning coal, with a hopper feeder Don Caxton used to fill when he was maintenance person for the school. The new gas furnace was installed, but we did not know that it produced so much water. We had to provide a bucket and sump pump, as the hall basement had no floor drain.

The propane furnace did not require a chimney, just two plastic pipes. One day in early spring, the old hall chimney collapsed from snow or ice sliding from the roof. This happened about 20 minutes after a school bus had left the spot the bricks fell onto. Lea and I later bought the bricks from the hall and used them as borders for some of the planters in our garden around the Castle. Also in the 1980's the Hall Board bought two identical stoves for the hall kitchen from Vance Home Furnishings in Creston

Lea and I soon became involved in a medieval re-enactment group called the Society for Creative Anachronism, hence the modified sign we put on the building now reading Crawford Bay Castle, Est. 1980. We made our own costumes, sometimes finding items in thrift stores or by sewing our own after purchasing good cheap wool ends from West Coast Woolen Mills in Vancouver.

Many medieval themed events were held in the Castle, and many also in the Crawford Bay Hall and on the hall grounds. Feasts were frequent, and at one such, we had more than 100 people in the space which is now the East Shore Library. Other feasts were held in the community hall. The main attraction of using the hall was that there was lots of room for cooking, seating at long tables and dancing all under one roof. At one of them, our former family physician Liz Barbour was belly dancing and met her present husband Michael.

There was an educational component built into many of the medieval events, some of which were specifically designed as mini university sessions and local residents were invited to take part. Participants from afar often stayed in the community for several days and this was a boon to many of the local businesses."