Answer Man — what building is that?

Dear Answer Man,

Re: Into the Fray, in one of the pictures is a large building. What was it and is it still around?

BLAINE

Dear Blaine,

Thanks for the question with respect to one of the photos by Daniela Ginta of the Into the Fray exhibit that opened Thursday at the Kamloops Museum and Archives.

The photo is of the Kamloops Agricultural Association Hall, built in 1913 at the east end of Riverside Park.

The association had been operating for several years but had fallen on hard times. It decided a big new show hall would solve its problems, but instead it was plunged deeper into debt. During the Great War the building was used as a barracks and training facility for the Rocky Mountain Rangers. A Kamloops Museum and Archives article says it housed 400 men at the height of activity.

The City bought the building and the Kamloops Junior Brotherhood renovated it as an indoor recreation building including a library, and it was used for basketball, gymnastics and theatre. The Sentinel wrote that it was “the scene of the greatest basketball in B.C.”

Sadly, the building burned to the ground in 1927.

ANSWER MAN

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