So here we are in 2026!
Happy New Year!
And how is it for you? Is ’26 any different than ’25?
Probably not, at least it isn’t in this space.
You can possibly guess that the biggest issue here is what to write about every week. It’s a problem, as you might guess. You don’t want to read about politics every single week. The Blue Jays didn’t win, so that’s kind of a sore spot. You’ve maybe waited for the paper this week, thinking I would likely help you with your New Year’s resolutions, and I was giving that some thought when, all of a sudden, today’s story dropped into my lap.
I was reading the CBC news website, and one of the lead stories was how some thieves had stolen the bell from St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Now that’s a pretty low thing to do, even for thieves who were just going to melt it down and sell it for scrap metal. And you might be wondering how anyone could steal a church bell, since they are always up on the church roof and are very heavy. Well, the story here is that this one was not up on the roof; it was simply hanging from a wooden arch in the front yard area of the church, so it was pretty easy to steal.
Now I’m not telling you this story to make light of it in any way, the bell will cost that congregation a large amount of money to replace it, probably thirty or forty times what the thieves will get out of it for scrap. I hope they are caught and charged, and made to pay restitution.
But while the subject of a church bell being stolen wouldn’t create any interest in almost every other town on this continent, there is one that would have some interest, just one. One where a church bell had been stolen before.
Which town would that be? Of course, it’s our town, Golden. If you had been asked, you would have thought Golden had lost its innocence with stories of bootlegging during the prohibition years, or maybe the time the CP engineer wasn’t paying attention to the steam in the train engine as it sat somewhere near the old station. He blew it to smithereens. He left town and never came back! I’m sure there are a few people still here in Golden today who heard the blast.
But no, it isn’t any of those things.
Just like Fredericton, early last week, there was a church and a church bell here in Golden in the 1800s. It was really a double theft where the church and bell were stolen in one heist, and then a second set of thieves stole the bell from the first bunch in a second caper. It’s a true story. You couldn’t make it up!
Just quickly, what happened was this, and I know all you old timers around here know this story, but there may be newcomers who haven’t heard it yet.
Railways, as you may know, run their trains between what are called ‘divisional points,’ where they have service facilities and where the engineers and other crew members usually live with their families, build homes and townsites are formed. When the line was put through our area in the 1880s, the divisional point was Donald, and it reached quite a population, like four or five thousand people. But after a few years, the railway moved the divisional point to Revelstoke, which meant moving all the railway facilities there, along with all the families and their homes.
But that wasn’t all.
There were some community buildings which needed to be moved as well. And everything would have been fine if everyone had moved to Revelstoke, but not everyone was a railway employee, so some moved elsewhere. Such as Celina Kimpton. Her husband, Rufus, was a merchant, and they moved south to Windermere, where, after a short time, Celina realized that in Windermere, they were without a church.
She also knew that their St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Donald had not yet been moved to Revelstoke, and her thoughts swiftly turned to plunder. Husband Rufus, being rather bright and a good husband, knew who was boss at home and quickly had his boots on. He, and presumably some helpers, made their way to Donald, tore the church down and loaded it on a train car and had it moved to Golden. It was then reloaded onto a waiting steamboat for the trip up the Columbia River to Windermere the next day.
The only thing Rufus didn’t think of was the security of his church during the night. And he possibly didn’t know, or had forgotten, that St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Golden didn’t yet have a bell!
The St. Paul’s congregation, however, hadn’t forgotten, and that night they knew where they could get one. So down to the river they went, and with Rufus and Captain Armstrong probably sleeping in preparation for the long trip the next day, they were alone. Not everything went well, however, since the bell weighed over five hundred and fifty-five pounds.
It was too heavy for them to manage there on a dark night, but also, like Rufus, they were reasonably bright and came up with a perfect plan. While they weren’t able to carry the bell away that night, they were perfectly capable of rolling it off the boat, which they did, and when Rufus and his men came the next morning, ready to head down to Windermere, the bell was safely lying at the bottom of the Columbia River, completely out of sight of the church thieves, and they had to leave without it. All the while, it was probably only eight or ten feet from the bottom of the boat.
So, where is the bell today?
Of course, the bell thieves won the round from the church thieves, and the bell still rings at St. Paul’s in Golden.
And what about Celina and Rufus?
They occupy a prominent place in the Windermere Cemetery, overlooking beautiful Lake Windermere, about half a mile from St. Peter’s Anglican Church, the Stolen Church, now, with a story unlike any other church, a popular tourist attraction in Windermere.
