Minto (I)

In 1954 this vessel made her last voyage from Robson to Arrowhead. Mark MacKenzie (British Columbia Nautical History Facebook Group 27/02/2019) states that "Nakusp kinda dropped the ball with the Minto, although to be fair, they were a pretty impoverished community by the late 1950s. After the Minto was retired, the city of Nakusp petitioned the CPR to let them buy her for a buck. The CPR agreed and Nakusp promptly sold the machinery to a Nelson BC scrap dealer for $500. A man name John Nelson bought her then and towed her up the lake to his property and tried to preserve her as a private museum.

He had a lot of heart, but few resources and when he passed away his son was unable to raise interest in preserving her. In the face of the flooding of the valley this vessel was towed out and burned. and this vessel refused to sink. Like her sister the Moyie, this vessel was a composite ship built for use on the Yukon river with steel sides, frames and Doug fir planked bottom with 18 watertight compartments. After being rammed repeatedly by the tug this vessel eventually slipped under. The Underwater Archaeology Society of BC has tried to find her with side-scan sonar searches, but this vessel remains hidden to this day. When the village of Kaslo tried to get the CPR to sell them the Moyie for a buck a couple of years after the Minto's retirement, the CPR demanded proof that they were serious this time - they didn't want to leave that scrap money on the table. A man named Noel Bacchus rowed around the communities and homesteads of upper Kootenay lake collecting money for the Kootenay Lake Historical Society to save the Moyie and they then petitioned the Provincial Government to match the funds. When the CPR saw they had done this they transferred over the Moyie. Interned Nikkei shipwright Tomio Baba, who had stayed on in Kaslo post-war (and built our house among other things) built a cradle out of old Kaslo & Slocan Railway bridge timbers and they winched her out of the water in early 1958. In the late 1980s local shipwright Dick Smith built a steel cradle to match Parks Canada engineering specs and the Moyie remains to this day."