Anyone else from BC?
Kootenays?
Slocan Valley?
Not quite 😉 ......... at least you won't be the only Canadian here!
Many are fooled by my West Yorkshire accent and its attendant abuse of every vowel sound known in the English Language but I am a Canadian! ........ well sort of being born in Ottawa in 1960's before being whisked into exile to East Leeds [my parents went out there as newly weds when my father got a job with the Canadian Geological Survey, though before that my mother had lived and worked on reservations at Friendly Cove on Nootka and Opitsaht on Meares Island off Vancover Island]
Over the years I have travelled extensively through the Kootenays in winter on long road trips sampling as many ski centres as possible (Fernie, Red Mountain, Kimberley, Kicking Horse, Panorama, Whitewater not mention over the border in Northern Montana and Idaho) mixed with the occasional day off or passing visits to mining sites.
I have been to Red Mountain on at least three different occasions, but always avoided the tourist trap of Rossland as I really enjoyed staying in a real working town, Trail, which with its big Teck Cominco Lead/Zinc smelter has the comforting feel of a proper mining town. I was singularly underwhelmed by Kimberley despite the lovely people I have met there and it's rich mining heritage.
The place I most enjoyed visting from a mining perspective was Fernie (not the town .......... the skiing is awesome though) but I have spent a good few happy evenings exploring the coal mining districts of Crowsnest Pass. Here I felt at home (although the mountains and forest are more spectular it did have the feel of the Nith, Ayr and Doon Valleys of East Ayrshire, Scotland where I spent a good ten years coal mining).
Getting too old for skiing but will be heading back to the Kootenays in the next few years armed with a fly rod for the trout and a camera for the mining heritage 😉