fairview | Spade & the Grave

Hi readers, it’s time for a quick update about my PhD and recent travels to British Columbia. As of right now, April 27th, 2024, my brain has turned to mush after completing all the dissertation edits from my two supervisors! I’m currently waiting for a few more comments back from my external supervisor, and once I do those my dissertation will be off to examination! If all goes well, I should be defending sometime this summer, hopefully sooner than later. I can’t believe how quickly my PhD program has flown by!

After completing the majority of the edits, I headed out to BC to visit my parents, Grandpa, and best friend Kelsey! A much needed visit to the Okanagan, and a huge different in weather and abundance of flowers from Newfoundland. Because I flew out early in the morning, it was daylight flying over the rockies, and I spent that last part of the flight with the flight map up so I could identify lakes in the Kootenays as we flew over.

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This is a particularly special site I’d like to discuss with you today: The Fairview Cemetery, near Oliver, BC. Fairview was a gold mining town in the South Okanagan-Similkameen, born out of the gold rush in the area in the late 1880s. Legend has it that gold was first discovered by a one-armed man in the 1860s, but no Europeans arrived to exploit the areas for gold until the 1880s. It was located just west of the modern-day town of Oliver, and some older homes in Oliver are said to have been built out of wood salvaged from the would-be ghost town.