This photo was taken around 1949, probably from close to the present location of AG Foods. In the background is the newly built 13-room school that is now the Sonora Community Centre. (Courtesy Barbara Bryan)

This week’s photo was probably taken in 1949 and it shows in the distance the new 13-room school that is now the Sonora Community Centre.

The photo was submitted to us by reader Barbara Bryan, along with several other photos of Osoyoos in the 1940s.

This photo has been rescanned from a previous scan, which results in some loss of detail, but this one is not in the collection of Osoyoos and District Museum and Archives.

The photo was probably taken from roughly the present location of AG Foods.

The school was built to support a growing population as the village outgrew the previous school located at what is now the town hall.

The previous school started as a one-room schoolhouse in 1932, but expanded until it became a six-room school by the mid-1940s.

Few details are available about this photo. What is striking is the amount of open space between the new school and the road, presumably Main Street, in the foreground.

Are the cabins in the lower left accommodations for farmworkers? Perhaps a reader can shed light on some of the details in the photo?

Your memories

Last week The Way We Were featured the Sunland Theatre, which brought movies to Main Street in 1947.

Ruth Schiller phoned to point out that there were a couple of movie options before the Sunland opened.

Movies were shown regularly at the community hall, which in those days was located at Gyro Park.

But Schiller, who came to Osoyoos from Germany prior to the Second World War, remembers how many people travelled to Oroville, Washington on Saturdays, taking in a movie down there.

The Osoyoos Theater opened in Oroville in 1936 and one account called it “the largest and finest theatre building and best equipment between Wenatchee and Penticton.”

Schiller said families would get dressed up on Saturdays and travel to Oroville. Kids often enjoyed a movie while mothers shopped, she said.

Another attraction with Oroville was that the pubs in those days stayed open to 11 p.m., Schiller said.

Oroville has had other cinemas over the years. The Orada Theater – whose name combined “Oroville” and “Canada” – was another fixture. And later, the Pow-Wow Drive-In opened in 1955 with capacity for about 500 cars.

Osoyoos also had a drive-in theatre. As readers discussed on our Facebook page, that theatre was called the Silver Sage. Kara Burton, executive director of the Osoyoos and District Museum and Archives, said the museum has a set of drive-in speakers from that theatre.

To share your memories of Osoyoos history, please comment on OsoyoosTimes.com or contact Editor Richard McGuire by email at [email protected] or by phone at 250-495-7225.

RICHARD McGUIRE

Osoyoos Times