Fintry Provincial Park and Protected Area, Provincial park on Okanagan Lake, British Columbia
Fintry Provincial Park is a protected area along Okanagan Lake in British Columbia featuring mountains, deep canyons, and waterfalls shaped by Shorts Creek. The landscape spans several hundred hectares with zones ranging from the lakeshore to higher elevations.
The Okanagan Valley was the hunting and settlement territory of the Westbank First Nation before European contact. From the 1880s Thomas D. Shorts ran a steamboat fleet on the lake and lived at Fintry around 1900; Shorts Creek bears his name. James Cameron Dun-Waters built The Manor House in 1909 and ran a dairy farm here until 1939, when he left the estate to the Fairbridge Farm Schools Society for one dollar.
The name Fintry comes from the Scottish estate of Captain James Cameron Dun-Waters, called the "Laird of Fintry". He introduced Ayrshire cattle to Western Canada and named his Okanagan farm after his Scottish home. The restored manor house and octagonal dairy barn are open for tours in summer.
Access is via a roughly 34 km approach road from Highway 97 south of the park near Kelowna, or a roughly 36 km approach from the north via Vernon and Armstrong. The campground, manor house information centre and a small lighthouse at Shorts Point all sit in the lakeside Provincial Park section, which the access road crosses north to south. The waterfall and the steeper terrain lie west of that road in the Protected Area, reached by a short, steep stair-climb.
The octagonal barn was built for Dun-Waters's Ayrshire herd, which he imported from Scotland with the Earl of Stair's help; cows bore names like Fintry Honeysuckle and Fintry Lucky Girl. Its radial plan put feed distribution at the centre and sped up waste removal, cutting labour while keeping the prized cattle clean.
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