History: Motion Picture Machine Lost

Here is a story that many oldtime families of Fish Lake have heard repeated. It happened in July 1924.

Motion Picture Machine Lost

C.P.R. Publicity Photographer Drops $4,000 Camera Into Water of Fish Lake

Mr. J.M. Alexander, official photographer of the C.P.R. publicity department, met with an expensive accident while taking moving and still life pictures of Fish Lake last Monday. Alone in a boat on the lake, Mr. Alexander had lashed his camera, valued at $4,000, in the bow. A squall sprang up and the rolling of his craft broke loose the lashings and let the valuable machine down into twenty feet of water and an unknown depth of Fish Lake mud. The spot was marked and divers from Kamloops sent for but they had no success in locating the lost machine. An expert diver from the coast was then sent for but he met no better luck, finding that when bottom was reached so much mud was stirred up that sight was impossible. Effort after effort proved wasted and now Mr. Alexander is offering $300 to the person who can bring his lost moving picture camera from the depths of the lake.

(Reprint from the Kamloops Sentinel - Friday - July 25, 1924 - page 1)

(Newspapers read at Thompson Rivers University or Kamloops Museum & Archives)

Submitted by Neil Burton