Early Memories of Hills, British Columbia
In 1929-1934, eight Independent Doukhobor families from Saskatchewan established a farming hamlet at Hill Siding in the Slocan Valley of British Columbia. Other families of different backgrounds followed, and it soon became a busy lumber village.
Hills originally consisted of only a C.P.R. siding to which two brothers by the name of Hill lent their name. ... the brothers came to the area sometime in the late twenties to conduct a sawmill operation at the head of Slocan Lake and used that siding from which to transport the finished product of their mill.
There was yet no road into that area, and belongings necessary to start a farmstead, complete with stock, had to be transported first by rail, then by Sternwheeler (S.S. Rosebery) down Slocan Lake and again by rail to the Siding from which stemmed a future community.
The first school was opened in a log cabin on the property of Marc DuMont, with his daughter, Rosalee, as teacher. The class consisted of about 12 pupils, including the children of the C.P.R. Section foreman at that time. A one-room school house was built soon after and averaged 20 pupils throughout the year.
From Doukhobor Dot Org