Place:Kamloops, Thompson-Nicola, British Columbia, Canada

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Kamloops is a small city in south-central British Columbia, Canada, at the confluence of the two branches of the Thompson River and east of Kamloops Lake. It is located in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, whose district offices are based here. The surrounding region is more commonly referred to as the Thompson Country.

With a 2021 population of 97,902, it is the twelfth largest municipality in the province.^[1] The Kamloops census agglomeration is ranked 36th among census metropolitan areas and agglomerations in Canada with a 2021 population of 114,142.^[2]

Kamloops is known as the Tournament Capital of Canada. It hosts more than 100 tournaments each year at world-class sports facilities such as the Tournament Capital Centre, Kamloops Bike Ranch, and Tournament Capital Ranch. Health care, tourism, and education are major contributing industries to the regional economy and have grown in recent years.

In 2016, Kamloops was the first city in British Columbia to be designated as a bee city. Numerous organizations in the community are protecting and creating bumble bee habitats in the city.

History

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The first European explorers arrived in 1811. David Stuart, a trader sent from Fort Astoria, then still a Pacific Fur Company post, spent a winter with the Secwépemc people. In May of the following year, trader Alexander Ross established a post, which was known as "Fort Cumcloups".

The rival North West Company established Fort Shuswap nearby in the same year. The two businesses merged in 1813 when the North West Company bought the operations of the Pacific Fur Company. In 1821, the Hudson's Bay Company took over the North West Company, and the post became known commonly as Thompson's River Post, or Fort Thompson. Later it was known as Fort Kamloops. The post's Chief Traders kept journals, which document a series of inter-Indian wars and personalities for the period, in addition to the daily business of the fur companies and their personnel along the entire Pacific Slope.

Soon after the forts were founded, Kwa'lila, chief of the main local village of the Secwépemc, moved his people closer to the trading post, so they could control access and gain in prestige and security. After Kwa'lila died, his nephew and foster son Nicola became chief. He later led an alliance of Syilx (Okanagan) and Nlaka'pamux peoples in the plateau country to the south around Stump, Nicola and Douglas lakes.

Relations between Nicola and the fur traders were often tense, but Chief Nicola was recognized for his aid to whites during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858. He did try to control those who had been in parties waging violence and looting on the Okanagan Trail, which led from American territory to the Fraser goldfields.^[3] Throughout, Kamloops was an important way station on the route of the Hudson's Bay Brigade Trail, which connected Fort Astoria with Fort Alexandria and the other forts in New Caledonia to the north (today's Omineca Country, roughly). It was integral during the onset of the Cariboo Gold Rush as the main route to the new goldfields around what was to become Barkerville.

The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic swept through the Kamloops area during the summer of that year, decimating the Secwepemc, Nlaka'pamux, and other indigenous peoples. They had no acquired immunity. The epidemic had started in Victoria and quickly spread throughout British Columbia, especially among First Nations. In June 1862, indigenous people went to Fort Kamloops seeking smallpox vaccine, William Manson, chief clerk at the fort, vaccinated numerous persons, but fatalities were extremely high. In late September he reported "smallpox still raging amongst the Indians".

In October a newspaper in Victoria reported an eyewitness account from Fort Kamloops, saying

"The Indians have been nearly exterminated at [Kamloops]: only sixteen have escaped out of a large settlement. Their bodies are strewing the ground in all directions."

The gold rush of the 1860s and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which reached Kamloops from the West in 1885, brought further growth. The City of Kamloops was incorporated in 1893 with a population of about 500.

The logging industry of the 1970s attracted many Indo-Canadian workers to the Kamloops area. They had come mostly from the Punjab region of India. In 1973, Kamloops annexed Barnhartvale and other nearby communities.

In May 2021, an anthropologist announced she had used ground-penetrating radar to find "probable" graves containing the remains of 215 children found at a former Kamloops Indian residential school, part of the Canadian Indian residential school system. The story was reported around the world, and five Catholic churches in Western Canada were burned down in the weeks following since the school was operated by a Catholic order. However, this story cannot be completely confirmed until bodies are exhumed.

Etymology

"Kamloops" is the anglicized version of the Shuswap word "Tk'əmlúps", meaning "meeting of the waters". Shuswap is still spoken in the area by members of the Tk'emlúps Indian Band.

An alternate origin sometimes given for the name may have come from the native name's accidental similarity to the French "Camp des loups", meaning "Camp of Wolves"; many early fur traders were ethnic French.^[4] There are folk stories about an attack on a traders' camp by a pack of wolves. Other legendary versions recount a huge white wolf, or a pack of wolves and other animals, that were moving overland from the Nicola Country and were repelled by a single shot by John Tod, then Chief Trader. This prevented the wolves from attacking the fort and earned Tod a great degree of respect locally.

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