Almstrom, Winfield Starks “Win”

Winfield Almstrom was born on September 22, 1901 in Grand Forks, BC.  He married Edelone P. Brady on September 25, 1922 in King County, Washington. After their marriage was dissolved, he married Dorothy Ballan of Grand Forks, BC, in July 1933. After she died in 1957, he married Helen (Peterson) Corrie in 1964. He died on February 28, 1977, in Penticton Regional Hospital. He is buried in Princeton Cemetery.

The Almstrom family moved to Princeton in October 1920 (and then to Allenby) after the Granby Phoenix Mine closed in mid-1919. 

Win Almstrom attended a Ladies’ Hospital Auxiliary fund-raising masquerade ball as a Happy Hooligan in January 1922. On October 20, 1922, the Princeton Star reported on the marriage of Win Almstead and Edelone Brady. This news was also carried in the The Ledge (Greenwood, BC), 1922. 

Adelone Brady was the sister of Mrs. Alex Broomfield of Princeton and Mrs. Hoppens of Nine Mile and she visited Princeton (from Seattle) in June 1923.

In September 1923, he was working at the Princeton Garage and was a member of the Knights of Pythias (1923). 

They were either visiting or living in Coalmont in February 1924, but in September 1924, they moved to Kelowna where Almstrom had taken a position with Alex J. Smith’s Garage Co. They moved back to the area in June 1925, when he accepted a position at Copper Mountain. Jimmy Waugh, moved Win and Edelone Almstrom’s household effects from Kelowna to Princeton. The Almstrom’s were living in Allenby in August 1925. 

He played hockey for Princeton (February 1922), for Allenby (1926) (1926), and the Princeton-Allenby team (1926). The Allenby team won the Similkameen League championship in February 1927 with Almstrom on the forward line. In 1928, he was “late to the game” and didn’t play his first game until February. 

The couple moved to Nelson, BC, at some point before 1931. Win Almstrom was on the inaugural committee of the Nelson Better Service Club (mechanics and allied industries) December 1931 – he was working for the Body and Fender Shop of Nelson Transfer Company, Ltd.in December 1931. He stayed in Nelson working for Nelson Transfer until at least 1942.

In 1957, they were living in Vancouver and had been there for fifteen years. At the time of his death in 1977, he was retired from working as an “auto repair man” and living in Princeton.