Epoxy
Okanagan Lake
British Columbia, Canada
Also known as Vernon, Kelowna, Okanagan Valley
The being in this lake has two names. One is thousands of years old. The other came from a novelty song, first heard in Vernon in 1924.
The Syilx name is nx̌ax̌aitkʷ, pronounced roughly n-ha-ha-it-koo. Chief Byron Louis of the Okanagan Indian Band gives it as something in the water. It is a spirit of the lake rather than a monster, owed respect and an offering before anyone crossed.
Then a British music hall number about an imaginary animal called the Ogo-Pogo arrived in town. A Vancouver newspaperman wrote a parody attaching the name to the lake, the papers took it up, and within a few years a sacred being had been renamed after a foxtrot. Syilx elders have been asking people to go back to nx̌ax̌aitkʷ.
The lake underneath all of it is one of five connected fjord lakes filling a glacial trench, a hundred and twenty seven kilometres long and two hundred and thirty two metres deep.
Details
- Feature
- Lake
- Build
- Epoxy
- Material
- Solid Walnut
- Colour
- Ocean Blue
- Size
- 10-1/2" x 16"
- Completed
- January 2025
How this one was made
Three colours here: blue for the water, black for the border, white for the lettering, each dammed and poured on its own. The border runs close to all four edges, so the perimeter is dammed before anything else happens. The white text needs the board sealed thoroughly first, since any engraving soot left loose in the grain will turn white epoxy a dirty yellow brown. The lake is the easy part, one long clean shape with almost nothing narrow in it.
Marked on this piece
- Okanagan Lake
- Vernon
Waypoints close by
Beaver LakeBritish Columbia, Canada
Knouff LakeKamloops, British Columbia, Canada
Crawfish LakeRiverside, Washington, USA
Kamloops LakeBritish Columbia, CanadaAlso from our workshop
Howl
From 
Kodiak
From 
Nomad
From 
Summit
From Where this is
49.8467, -119.53867