This lifeboat was once attached to a tugboat that carted materials around the Interior.

Image Credit: FACEBOOK/Okanagan Landing Stationhouse Museum

A lifeboat surviving for nearly 100 years is preserving a piece of Okanagan history.

Last month, the North Okanagan Sailing Club and Okanagan Landing and District Community Association transported the lifeboat, that once was a part of a tugboat in the Interior, from its home in Okanagan Landing in Vernon to the SS Sicamous Heritage Park in Penticton using Highway 97.

There it will be restored to its former glory and displayed next year, said SS Sicamous Marine Heritage Society president Matt Verboeket.

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“It was built in 1927 but what vessel it came from, we don’t quite know,” he said, adding the 18-foot lifeboat must have come off a tugboat in the area.

“The closest one I found was on Arrow Lakes in 1928 but it’s hard to pinpoint it,” he said.

Verboeket will repair and refurbish the raft. A furniture maker and a person who worked in the same shipyard in Ontario where the SS Sicamous was built, Verboeket will be spearheading the project to replace the rotten parts.

“It’s a nice addition. We are a marine heritage park so anything that ties in with us we like to give people more to see,” he said.

The boat was already restored once before but it’s been sitting around for years since then, he said.

What is now Paddlewheel Park in Okanagan Landing was once a hub of industrial activity as a CPR railyard, sternwheeler and tugboat construction site, according to the Okanagan Landing Stationhouse Museum’s Facebook post.

Tugboats pushed and pulled barges loaded with railcars of fruit, mail and other cargo up and down the lake to a railway station to be shipped away.

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The SS Naramata, assembled at Okanagan Landing and launched in 1914, is the last surviving steam tug in B.C.’s Interior. In addition to fruit shipment and transportation services, the Naramata acted an ice breaker to allow the sternwheelers to continue operating in winter, according to the Facebook page.

The boat was retired from service in 1967 and can be found at the SS Sicamous Heritage Park.

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This lifeboat is nearly 100 years old.

Image Credit: FACEBOOK/Okanagan Landing Stationhouse Museum

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