The History of Lumby - Planning the Town

Louis Morand came to the Okanagan in 1882 and no doubt made friends with the French-Canadian settlers in White Valley very soon. In 1892 Louis bought forty acres from Quinn Faulkner. Together the two men laid out a town site. This new town site ran from the south west corner at the water field, behind the Motel, in a northerly direction, along the alley between Park and Grandview Avenues to the Adams property, east along Mabel Lake Road and Maple Street to the gravel pit, south through the P. C. Inglis land and the weigh scale to Robatzek's, west between Bell Pole and Ohashi Brothers to Whitevale Road, north along Whitevale to the old Sigalet house, then west to the pin on the water field. The first time it was called Lumby was August 25th, 1892.

There are two versions of how the name "Lumby" was chosen. The family story is that when Louis became a partner in the hotel-under-construction with Faulkner, he applied for a liquor licence from the Government Agent in Vernon, promising to name the town after him if the permit was obtained.

Others felt both men admired Moses Lumby for his successful endeavour in bringing the S&O Railway into the Okanagan and that Louis had been a friend of Moses Lumby when he lived in Vernon.

In 1892, Quinn Faulkner received a permit to erect a two story building, forty by forty feet, with an attached kitchen. Barnes and Morand were the contractors. The name was to be the "Ram's Horn" after a temperance newspaper published in Chicago, to which Faulkner subscribed. We may assume that he was, therefore, a teetotaller. A short time later Morand had an interest in the hotel and supervised the construction. In 1894 the hotel was destroyed by a fire. A new hotel was started as soon as the site was cleaned up and was ready in the spring of 1895, this time with Morand as the sole owner.

Morand set aside a room that the visiting doctors could use as an office. Drs. Beckingsdale or Reinhard of Vernon made a weekly visit to look after patients.

In 1902 Louis sold his hotel to T.A. Norris. Almost immediately he commenced building a new temperance hotel, the "Morand" next to the Ram's Horn. It was more of a boarding house than a hotel. When the Dominion Government Telephone Company brought the telephone line from Vernon, a switchboard was installed in the Morand Hotel in 1912.

In June of 1895 Samuel McIlvanie, along with Louis Morand, Pierre Bessette and Charlie Levasseur proposed to built a cheese factory. There were about three hundred milk cows within a radius of three miles around Lumby. Just previous to this decision, Murdoch MacKay formed the White Valley Creamery and had shipped butter to the Hudson's Bay Company. The proposal looked good, but no sooner had they started on their plans when Manitoba shipped butter and cheese to the Okanagan which sold at a lower price than the locals could meet. It was not until 1904 that a creamery was built on Catt's land by Federal Government funds. It was an up and down local business for many years.

"Dure Meadows Road" just west of Lumby, was named for an early pre-emptor, Aneas Dewar (pronounced 'Dure').