Merritt BC incorporation Photo KDG

Merritt BC incorporation
Photo KDG

On the corner of Garcia and Quilchena Avenue in Merritt BC Canada is one of the land marks of the 700 souls that made the City of Merritt at the top of the Victorian/ Edwardian age. In the side walk out side and across the street proudly displayed is a plug that tells the date of the cities incorporation in 1911. April first of that year saw a council in place that and a local doctor starting to take on his own, a 1908 graduate of Magill University and a medical Doctor John Joseph Gilles.
Invited by a CPR director to the wealth of coal, agriculture and timber and a microcosm of Victorian prosperity and with new world hope, the little city sported a couple blocks of enterprise anchored by the Adelphia and the Coldwater Hotel. The council found a life in this valley.
With only serious European contact from the mid 19th century a place of relative respite from long grudges of the past, Merritt developed and prospered with 2 diversions of old world strife drawing her resources and strength.
DR. Gillis had his practice in the Coldwater hotel and raised 8 children in a house on Garcia (a couple of blocks down from the Adelphia) street now a BB run by the Gillespie family.
At this writing the progenitry of JJ are planning a get together in early September. We applaud the effort to remember this families effort for our past and future. You may want to take an interest in the website.
http://www.gillisfamilyreunion2015.com/#!events/c1cb2
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On this Day August 4th 70 CE On this Day August 4th 70 CE

Rome destroys Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem.

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