FILE PHOTO - Father Pandosy's grave in Kelowna.

(ADAM PROSKIW / iNFOnews.ca)

With a pandemic Christmas in the 21st Century, residents may learn from Father Pandosy’s first Okanagan  Christmas.

Pandosy was a Catholic priest from France and has been credited with establishing the first non-Indigenous permanent settlement in the Okanagan, where Kelowna’s Mission is now located.

But that first winter, when Pandosy and his group of roughly seven arrived in the Okanagan in October of 1859, was unusually cold and bleak.

It was likely with the help of his neighbours, the Parsons brothers that lived at the south end of Duck Lake (Ellison Lake), that they survived at all, said Kelowna historian Bob Hayes.

Pandosy along with Father Pierre Richard and Brother Surel, who were tasked with spreading the Catholic religion to local Indigenous peoples, spent that winter in a shack next to their neighbours.

Father Pandosy

Image Credit: Kelowna Public Archives: KPA 1234

To this day, Hayes still doesn’t know why they were sent to the Okanagan in October.

“They wouldn’t have had time to build any type of shelter and would have spent Christmas at the south end of Duck Lake. It must have been difficult for them since Father Pandosy was from a wealthy French family," he said. “They had nothing, just what they brought with them.”

The celebration, if any, would have been a simple religious one as the group was light on resources for any kind of gifts.

“It was a long, cold winter. It was worst than most and they ended up having to eat a couple of their horses,” Hayes said. “It might have been truly a horrific introduction to life at that point in the Interior. Christmas would have been like any other day.”

Pandosy was also arthritic. In their humble shelter, “they would just have been trying to survive,” Hayes said. 

Kelowna’s first chapel was built the following year, a simple log structure with room for a six-person service or baptism, Hayes said.

“The second Christmas they would have been a little more settled, so I think the second Christmas might have been quite a relief to them… to have proper Catholic services,” he said.

A trading post was not established until 1861, so there was no place to purchase gifts.

“It does show the strength of the human spirit," Hayes said.

“We need to remind ourselves how little we need to survive."

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