The Rainbow Ranche Collection

“The Rainbow Ranche Collection was donated to the Lake Country Museum and Archives in 2013 by the family of the late James Goldie. The Rainbow Ranche was one of the first independent fruit ranches in the Okanagan, owned by several partners and managed by onsite partner James Goldie.

The partners maintained a comprehensive correspondence and set of ledgers detailing the first plantings and orchard operations over twenty-seven years. Ledgers and payroll records show that the Rainbow’s orchards and packinghouse employed a crew of Japanese workers under a Japanese foreman and a crew of European immigrants with a second foreman. The two crews worked side by side and many of the workers lived in bunkhouses at the Rainbow. The correspondence also provides insight into work and life in the Okanagan in the early 1990s.”¹

¹ UBC OPEN COLLECTIONS, Rainbow Ranche

To view the collection click on the link above.