The church a galena claim built

The St. Eugene Church still stands near the resort. The resort's history page tells the story of how it was paid for, and that story connects the mission to the mining history of the Kootenays.

The ore

In 1893, the resort writes, a Ktunaxa man named Pierre found a rich body of ore and brought a sample of galena, a lead ore, to Father Coccola, the mission's priest and the principal of its school. The two staked claims above the town of Moyie. Father Coccola sold the claim for $12,000.

The church

With that money the priest built the St. Eugene Church in 1897. The resort says it was prefabricated in Italy and that it "graces the Mission area today". The resort's news page carries a 2026 item on the church, made up mostly of photographs.

The mine

Within ten years, the resort's history says, the St. Eugene Mine had produced more than $10 million and given the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company its start. That company later became Cominco and is known today as Teck Resources. The money that built the church stood at the start of the company now called Teck Resources.

The hospital and the mill

The mission grew with the capital. In the late 1890s the Canadian Pacific Railway asked Father Coccola to develop a hospital at the mission. By the time the railway was finished it was serving the whole region, and it moved to Cranbrook in 1901. The mission milled its own grain in the region's first flour mill.

What the story leaves out

The resort tells the galena story in the same history that calls the school "a dark chapter" and quotes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's phrase "cultural genocide". The wealth that built the church and the mission did not change what the school was for. Both stories happened in the same place, and the resort's history puts them side by side.