People uprooted from Salmo (5)

Salmo (previously Laprairie, Salmon City, Salmon) was established by non-Indigenous settlers as a mining town in the 1850s and 1860s. The town and the nearby river were named Salmo in 1896. Several sawmills opened in the late nineteenth century along with a post office in 1897. The Kootenay Shingle Company opened in 1903, and in 1905, the company hired Japanese Canadians during a workers strike.

Around 1910, Setsuzo Miyasaki arrived in Salmo and acted as a foreman and community leader. Despite consistent turnover of mill employees, Miyasaki’s family remained in Salmo into the mid-1920s.