S.S. Minto: Kootenay’s Lady of the Arrow Lakes

Named for then governor-general the Earl of Minto, S.S. Minto was the pride of the Arrow Lakes.

For half a century she faithfully plied the 134-mile “milk run” between Robson, at the southern end of Lower Arrow Lake, and Arrowhead, at the head of Upper Arrow Lake.

In 55 years she steamed 2.5 million miles and won the affection of all who boarded her.

Originally, the Columbia and Kootenay Steam Navigation Co. had operated six first-class steamers on the Arrow Lakes route between Revelstoke and Northport, Wash. But the eclipse of Kootenay mining, dwindling freight and passenger traffic meant the end for half of this romantic fleet and the CPR kept only its three newest steamers, the Minto, Rossland and Kootenay.

“The Minto,” wrote historian Edward L. Affleck, “having originally been designed for service on the Stikine River route to the Klondike, could not match her sister[s] for speed and appearance, but she could boast the more durable assets of a low fuel consumption, a very shallow draft (5′ 1″), and a steel constructed frame.”

Over the years, Minto completed two round trips a week except during winter when she confined herself to the run between Arrowhead, Nakusp and Carrols because of low water in Lower Arrow Lake. Fog and ice seldom bothered her and her shallow draft kept her from serious injury on sandbars.

“She could run in a heavy dew,” declared a former master.

S.S. Minto of the legendary cuisine—all you could eat for a dollar—was kept busy through the ‘40s, carrying 12,000 passengers in 1947 alone. With construction of the Lower Arrow Lake hydro development her duties increased as she carried men and materials to the project site. At the other end of the scale, she was her old self, as illustrated by part of one cargo item—a ball of knitting yarn.

Passenger Les Rimes described a typical voyage: “It was dusk; rain began to fall. A flashlight signal blinked from shore as we continued on our way. We altered course for the deep shadows of the beach. The ship’s searchlight picked the way as we slowly drifted in. The gang-plank went down, but nobody came aboard. A man wanted the skipper to mail a letter.”

Another time, he saw a man waving from a deserted beach. Dutifully nosing her into shore, Minto’s master fulfilled the man’s request—he wanted to know the time.

1954 brought the inevitable. On April 23^rd, 93 passengers from all over the continent who’d reserved cabins for the occasion, boarded the Minto for her last official voyage. She was too old, she no longer paid her way and, despite vehement public protest, the federal government refused a subsidy.

That afternoon, 200 persons crowded the little dock at Nakusp to wave fond farewell. At Arrowhead, John Nelson had erected two signs, one of which read, “Au revoir, Minto.”

At Edgewood, Charles Maynard also had a sign: “Goodbye, old girl—gone but not forgotten—though absent ever dear.”

Off lonely Blondin’s Point, Minto whistled salute to the grave of Mrs. Blondin who, until her death, had never missed waving to the ship from that rocky point.

For a time it appeared Minto would become a bowling alley-museum-community centre after the CPR donated her, for a dollar and five cents (provincial sales tax!) to the Nakusp Chamber of Commerce. But funds to restore her weren’t forthcoming and she was sold for scrap.

Her old friend, John Nelson of Galena Bay, who’d first seen her in 1904 and had watched in anguish the ill-fated attempt at preservation, bought her for $840 and had her towed to Galena Bay. Although the wreckers had ravaged her paddle, engines, funnel and brass, he set to work with hammer, saw and love and, from the bones of the old Bonnington, salvaged door and window frames and lovingly reproduced Minto’s nameplate, lost to the wreckers, in his shop.

“It’s a pleasure to do it,” the old man in the officer’s cap with S.S. Minto badge told a reporter, adding mournfully, “I’m the only one in the world to do it.”

He’d been blessed with a miracle in 1960 when floods floated Minto to the very field he had in mind and left his prospective museum high and dry. For years he invested his time and savings in repairing her rusted equipment, clearing away debris, drying her out. In winter, he shovelled snow from her weakening decks.

By 1966, John Nelson was 87 years old and battling another foe. The High Arrow Dam meant that Galena Bay would be flooded. MLA Randolph Harding urged the provincial government to save the Minto and appoint Nelson curator.

He was too late. John Nelson died and son Walter couldn’t interest the provincial and federal governments in saving the historic steamer. Although B.C. Hydro offered to move her to higher ground, the costs of restoration were too great.

In August 1968 hydro workers pumped her dry and towed her into midstream.

There, in the waters she’d known for more than half a century, for 2.5 million miles of faithful service, Walter Nelson set her ablaze. Minutes later, a plume of smoke rose 2,000 feet over the Columbia River. Then the old sternwheeler’s skeleton, hissing violently, sank beneath the blue waters.

As Capt. Bob Manning had said upon her retirement in 1954, “That’s the way an old ship should die—gloriously!”

You can learn more about the S.S. Minto and her illustrious sister sternwheelers from the Arrow Lakes Historical Society: https://alhs-archives.com/articles/the-story-of-the-s-s-minto/