St. Eugene Mission Golf Resort Casino

Your Town A Destination -

In this months feature from Your Town A Destination,Rule #2 Roger and Maury talk about the rule of relationships, and how they require more than one person. In this chapter, they also explain how building relationships between business, agency and government is such an important role in developing tourism strategies.

This month we would like to feature two key success stories about partnerships, both developed during the five year span of the Tourism Knowledge Cluster. The partnership between National Geographic and The Crown of the Continent, and the geotourism Mapguide that was created which covers South Eastern British Columbia into Alberta and down to Montana, and the partnerships developed through the Tourism Cluster .

Check out these business features and more in the April issue of Rockies Tourism Networker newsletter.

Previously featured - Rule #16, Rule #13, Rule#22, Rule #24

LEGENDS TOLD: St. Eugene Mission Golf Resort Casino

Legends Night at St. Eugene Mission Golf Resort Casino

Cultural tourism is the fastest growing sector of the tourism industry. Visitors want more than stunning locations, unique settings and fun activities. The baby boomers, the first of the ‘most educated’ generations, want to know more about the places they are visiting.

One of the best ways to achieve that end is to provide visitors with stories. And what better place is there to hear a story than beside a nice warm fire? How about by a nice arm fire inside a teepee, over a hot howl of bison stew and bannock, with the stories being shared by an esteemed First Nations tribal elder?

That is exactly what is being offered at St. Eugene Mission Golf Resort and Casino, located 11 km (seven miles) from the City of Cranbrook.

St. Eugene is offering Legends Night, including a detailed tour of the old residential/industrial school by a former student of the school. And the evening concludes with a delicious bison stew and bannock dinner inside a teepee, located adjacent to the hotel. With the orange glow of a small fire keeping the teepee warm, Ktunaxa elder Herman Alpine, seated on a bear skin rug, shares tales of his time at the school, adding to the gripping words shared by tour guide and St. Eugene employee Gord Sebastian and then visitors are treated to the telling of a few of the many Ktunaxa legends.

The Ktunaxa (pronounced ‘k-too-nah-ha’) have resided in the southeastern corner of British Columbia for more than 10,000 years, with traditional territory including parts of Alberta, Montana, Washington and Idaho. The arrival of white European settlers in the 1800s brought an end to their mostly nomadic lifestyle, which embraced the bounties of the land and teeming waters of the Columbia and Kootenay River valleys, among other locations.

Within a few decades of the most intensive white settlement, which followed the gold rush in the Wildhorse Creek area near present-day Fort Steele, reserves were established and today the Ktunaxa Nation is made up of six bands, including four in B.C. They are the Wood Land people of the St. Mary’s band, which is where St. Eugene Mission is located, the Two Lakes people (Akisqnuk) located at Windermere, the Rock is Standing people of the Lower Kootenay band and people of the Flying Head located at Tobacco Plains. A fifth band, the Shuswap Kinbasket people, from the Invermere area, left the Ktunaxa fold a couple of years ago to return to the Shuswap Nation. Two American bands, at Bonners Ferry, Id. and Elmo, Mont. round out the Ktunaxa Nation numbers.

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