Canal Flats is a village municipality in the East Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia.

[2] On a bluff just to the south, remnants of shelter pits evidence a former Ktunaxa salmon fishing camp.

According to one account, he organized a great assembly at the south end of Columbia Lake in 1845, where he baptized hundreds of tribal members.

[12][13] An 1898 reference that lists Grohman as separate from Canal Flats may suggest that the southern portion had a distinct identity for a period.

Giving away 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) of good land to create a virtually impassable ditch[21] was a notable fiasco of the era.

[22] To make the waterways navigable would have required extensive dredging of the two rivers for many miles and a complete rebuild of the 2.4-kilometre (1.5 mi) canal.

[25] In summertime, the Golden–Fort Steele passenger service, which served the locality, encompassed riverboat, tramway and stage modes.

[34] In 1911, the relevant listed stopping places were Windermere (82), Fairmont Springs (93), Sante's (106), Wolf Creek/Hanson's (151), and Fort Steele (160).

[34] The local post offices were called Grohman 1888–1889,[46] Thunder Hill 1893–1913,[47] and Canal Flats 1913 onward.

[51] Eneas (Enie) H. Small, who became the proprietor of Columbia House,[52] made considerable enlargements to the hotel in 1897[53] but months later sold the business to John Bullman.

[55] Bullman, who also operated a ranch on Thunder Hill and a freight business, found the Kootenay Valley Lands Co (the hotel landlord) obstructive.

[61] The next year, Enie Small repaired his Canal Flat summer resort hotel for operation.

Reeves was the manager,[64] and Lord Hindlip purchased property to build a summer house[65] and develop the Thunder Hill Ranch.

In 1929, a new school opened,[75] and a provincial police post was established, indicating that the arrival of the large Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) mill had brought a permanence to the community.

[76] In 1930, an offender charged with trapping without a licence fatally shot the game warden in front of the general store.

[79] In 1931, over 200 men successfully fought a forest fire that threatened the CP sawmill, station, and section house.

[81] In 1967, a radio repeater antenna was relocated to Windermere [82] The Canal Flats Airstrip, which existed from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, was decommissioned when the paved more modern Fairmont Hot Springs Airport opened.

[86] In 2021, a southbound freight train struck the rear trailer of a fully loaded logging truck at the Thunderhill Road railway crossing.

Procter, took out 1,200,000 metres (4,000,000 ft) of logs for transportation to the Crow's Nest Pass Lumber Co mill.

The logging railway advanced farther up Findlay Creek, and the Crow's Nest Lumber Co also laid tracks toward Canal Flats along the main road from the south.

A range of boutique small businesses set up on the site, which was also the venue for a local weekend vendors market.

[114] The next year, the village adopted a bylaw to waive the municipal portion of property taxes for new commercial developments.

The program include parades, pancake breakfast, beer garden, food vendors, competitive events, and live music.