This panorama documents Carpenter Creek as it flows through Sandon, British Columbia—the waterway that bisects the ghost town where Japanese Canadians were imprisoned during World War II. The stream represents both the natural beauty of the Slocan Valley and the environmental challenges facing those forcibly relocated to this remote mountain location.

The work complements the Ghost Town documentation at the same site, together revealing how the natural environment framed the experience of incarceration. Carpenter Creek provided water for the imprisoned population but also contributed to the site’s difficulties: flooding threatened structures during spring runoff, and the creek’s proximity meant constant humidity affecting buildings never designed for the climate.

The stream’s presence in the ghost town landscape connects mining history to incarceration history. Placer and hard-rock mining had first brought settlers to Sandon, the creek’s watershed yielding silver that briefly made this a prosperous town. When mining collapsed and Japanese Canadians were imprisoned in the empty buildings, they inherited infrastructure built for extraction rather than habitation.

The photo collage technique fragments the flowing water and surrounding landscape, capturing the stream at multiple moments that the assembled composition unifies. The natural feature persists while the human dramas—mining boom, mining bust, wartime incarceration—have faded into historical record.

Carpenter Creek continues flowing through Sandon’s remains, the natural feature outlasting the human enterprises that briefly occupied its banks. This panorama documents the intersection of natural landscape and historical trauma in the Slocan Valley.