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This page last updated February 3, 2024

© Michael Kluckner

Written/painted in 2001: St. Ann's is the pretty little Roman Catholic church, built around 1910-11, at Chuchuwayha, the Indian village just east of Hedley on Highway 3. That stretch of highway, which follows the old Great Northern Railway line for much of its length, has much of historic interest, including the "standing rock" along the road to Keremeos.

Update, June 2021: St. Ann's was destroyed in an arson fire, one of several of small Roman Catholic churches on Indian reserves in BC (and elsewhere in Canada) in the wake of evidence that  hundreds of Indigenous children (likely victims of tuberculosis triggered by malnutrition) appear to have been buried on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School (& at the school site in Marieval, Saskatchewan. Here is a typical news story. 

From Darcie N. Nieboer, 2024: The church is being rebuilt and by the looks of the structure they are trying to replicate the original.

The best printed source of information on these little churches is Early Indian Village Churches, by John Veillette and Gary White (UBC Press, 1977).



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Artwork and text ©Michael Kluckner, 2001