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A Shuswap Passion column for the Shuswap Market News
By Jim Cooperman
April, 2009

This month marks a milestone in my many years of passion for the Shuswap, and therefore this column, my one hundredth, breaks my rule for avoiding the first person narrative.  Forty years ago, I arrived here, an idealistic war-resister with a degree in psychology from the University of California in Berkeley and a rudimentary carpentry apprenticeship, to settle on 40 acres of logged over “bush” above Shuswap Lake.  To describe my first six years here as rustic would be an understatement, as during those years, we raised three children in a small log cabin without the “luxuries” of running water, telephone or electricity.

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A Passion for the Shuswap

March, 2005

Every two months a magazine entitled Okanagan Life arrives in Salmon Arm mailboxes for free.  I have long been concerned about the effort this magazine makes to include the Shuswap as part of the North Okanagan.  For example, in a recent edition, readers are asked to vote on their favourite restaurant and include Salmon Arm as part of the North Okanagan region.  On Daybreak CBC, I have heard the Shuswap mislabelled as part of the Okanagan.  Meanwhile in Kamloops, Shuswap Lake often gets referred to as part of the Thompson Region. Even our regional district’s name begins with Columbia, although this region makes up a very small percentage of the regional district area. Yet when does anyone comment on other regions’ attempts to incorporate the Shuswap?  Could it be that Shuswapians have somewhat of a geographical identity crisis?

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