Museum Without Walls is one of K's favorites. Must be flash backs from years ago when he worked as an apple picker and later planted trees and installed a new irrigation system. I remember well the first day I was picking apples; I fell off the box I used to stand on and broke my leg. Lucky me, no more apple picking for that season.
Commercial production of tree fruit, which included apples, began in the Okanagan Valley in the 1890s. In 1893 the Kelowna Shippers’ Union began marketing and selling fruit in the mining districts of British Columbia.
By 1913 there were four co-ops in the Okanagan: Okanagan Fruit Union, the Vernon Fruit Co-op, the Salmon Arm Farmers Exchange, and the Kelowna Growers Exchange. These co-ops provided fruit growers an outlet for their annual production and the necessary revenue to continue production.
The apple pickers shown in the mural were harvesting apples, most likely, for the Vernon Fruit Co-op.
Just at the end of WWI, the Laurel Packinghouse was built in Kelowna. The bricks used for its construction was from the clay from nearby Knox Mountain. The packinghouse continued working until the 1970s.
The Laurel Packinghouse is the oldest and largest standing packinghouse of its kind in British Columbia and is designated a heritage site and is home to the British Columbia Orchard Industry Museum.
All the murals are well done paying tribute to the artist's talent and creativity for any passersby to enjoy.
The murals are numbered and we will showcase
#21 – Museum Without Walls
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