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Icons and Idioms
SNOWSELL ON APPLES
» Thursday 18 February 2010 | 5 pm
» The Bohemian Café, 524 Bernard Avenue
An informal afternoon hour showcasing ideas
and people in the Okanagan creative economy. Join us as professor and writer Colin Snowsell explores the nature of political and social power in the Okanagan through the story of his family, and launches his chapbook On Apples.
» $2 at the door. Refreshments are available at a modest cost.
» Seating is limited, please reserve yours HERE
Writer Follows in Family Tradition of Outspoken Commentary
Who remembers that Kelowna's mayor from 1930 to 1939 was a furniture dealer named O.L. Jones? And that Kelowna voters sent Jones to Ottawa three times - in 1948, 1949 and 1953 - as the CCF candidate for the riding of Yale? Who remembers that his campaign manager was named Snowsell? The Snowsells once owned and operated over 100 acres of orchard land in the Glenmore Valley. This is not, except in the distance cast by history and forgetfulness, their most significant contribution. The Snowsells' greater influence on the Okanagan was in their socialism, in their activism, and in their support of the CCF and the NDP. If they pioneered anything, it was BC socialism.
The Snowsells would be horrified to know history had remembered them as landowners. Their life was spent in struggle against the propertied classes, and from the 1930s to the 1960s they were known for the courage and pigheaded tenacity with which they fought to keep the valley, the province, and the country out of the clutches of conservatives. It just so happened that their struggle was against the two most powerful politicians the province has known.
On Thursday, February 18th at 5 pm the ongoing weekly Okanagan Institute Express series at the Bohemian Café presents Icons and Idioms: Snowsell On Apples. Join us as professor and writer Colin Snowsell explores the nature of political and social power in the Okanagan through the story of his family, and launches his chapbook On Apples.
When you're driving down Snowsell Street - as the old portion of Glenmore Road will be named, as soon as the Glenmore Bypass is operational - you'll be driving down a street named after the one local family that came within a hair of upsetting the conservatives' rise to power. That's the message of On Apples, a chapbook by Colin Snowsell, a writer and professor of Communications at Okanagan College and the great grandson of Edwin and Felicia Snowsell, the pioneer Glenmore orchardists who arrived in the Okanagan in 1925.
"When the city announced it was renaming Glenmore Road, my students started asking me if I was one of THOSE Snowsells," said Snowsell. "What bothered me wasn't that they didn't know who the Snowsells were anymore - Kelowna's a pretty big city now and the name's not that common - but that the city didn't seem to know who the Snowsells were either. Did they own orchards? Yes. But so what? It's what the family did in the community, not so much what they owned, that should be remembered."
Both Felicia Snowsell and her son Frank, former head of the provincial NDP/CCF and one-time MLA for the now-defunct provincial riding of Saanich, opposed W.A.C. Bennett on the ballot in tightly contested races. In the essay - part lament, part revisionist history - Snowsell speculates how Kelowna, and the province, might have looked, had the contests gone a different way.
The novelist Caterina Edwards describes Snowsell, who is also a fiction writer whose novella, entitled The Frollett Homestead, is scheduled for release in March, as "more than a promising writer: he is a full-blown talent."
 Colin Snowsell holds a MA in Communications Studies from the University of Calgary. He is finishing a PhD through the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University.
Snowsell's essays have been published in This Magazine, Maisonneuve and PopMatters. Earlier versions of Snowsell have appeared on MuchMusic (in the role of Calgary alt-indie impresario), obtained a journalism diploma from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and worked in corporate communications at Greyhound Canada's head office in Calgary.
Prior to joining the Communications faculty at Okanagan College, Snowsell taught professional communication at the University of Saskatchewan.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER ONLINE CLICK HERE
Icons and Idioms: Snowsell On Apples takes place at the Bohemian Café. This marks the 126th event the Okanagan Institute has held since the Express series got underway in July 2007.
Express has played host to many Okanagan luminaries, including former deputy secretary general of Amnesty International Derek Evans, artists Lee Claremont and Gary Pearson, BC Book Award nominee Don Gayton, CBC Literary prize winner poet Harold Rhenisch, distinguished editor and author Jim Taylor, poet laureate and professor John Lent, animator and filmmaker Jim Cliffe, community activist Don Elzer, dancer David LaHay, architect Jim Meiklejohn, culinary artist and writer Heidi Noble, broadcaster Marion Barschel and many others from a wide range of creative fields.
The Okanagan Institute is a group of creative professionals that has gathered around the goal of providing events, publications and services of interest to enquiring minds in the Okanagan. We partner with individuals, organizations, institutions and businesses to achieve optimal creative and social impact.
Our mission is to ignite cultural transformation, catalyze collaborative action, build networks and foster sustainable creative enterprises. We invite the participation by all members of the creative community.
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