Celebrating the courthouse

Dozens of people gathered last week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Kamloops Law Courts.

The imposing five-storey structure at 455 Columbia St. officially opened on Oct. 16, 1984. It was built at a cost of $28 million to replace the previous courthouse, which still stands on Seymour Street at First Avenue.

Heather Shea, a justice of the peace and court clerk who works in the building, organized a birthday party. It saw about 30 people assemble last Wednesday — 40 years to the day since the grand opening — in the courthouse library.

Shea made sure there was balloons and cake, as well as a display of photos taken immediately following construction and provided by the builder.

“I love the architecture and the design of the building,” she said. “I love that it’s a testament to 1984, the year it opened, and I basically wanted to celebrate that.”

The construction of the Kamloops Law Courts was anything but smooth.

The project was delayed before it began due to a disagreement between the province and the City of Kamloops over location. The city insisted it be built downtown while the province wanted to explore other options.

When work finally started, crews digging the foundation unearthed an unmarked graveyard of three bodies, later determined to be men who were hanged decades earlier when the site was home to the Kamloops Provincial Gaol.

In 1983, a dispute over whether workers on the project would be unionized caused further construction delays.

The Kamloops Law Courts is the fourth courthouse to serve the community. The first one was a single-storey log building erected in 1874 at the extreme west end of Main Street, now West Victoria Street, near where the south end of the Overlanders Bridge is today.

The second courthouse was a two-storey wood-frame building that went up at the corner of First Avenue and Victoria Street, the present-day site of city hall. That courthouse, which also served as a church and meeting hall, opened in 1885. An adjoining jail was added the following year.

The city’s third courthouse was the Old Courthouse, still standing at First and Seymour. The ornate Edwardian structure was built in 1909, designed by the same architects who built the Empress Hotel in Victoria.

Shea said the Kamloops Law Courts is her favourite building — and she feels lucky to get to go there every day for work.

“How many people get to do that? I don’t think that many,” she said. “It’s pretty special. It makes me feel a certain way. I love it here."