Minto and her sister Moyie (which ran on Kootenay Lake) were the last sternwheelers to run in regularly scheduled passenger service in the Pacific Northwest.

Minto was one of three steamboats built of steel and wood that were intended for service on the Stikine River during the Klondike gold rush.

The construction program for the Stikine River service, and the eventually assembly of Minto and her sisters, was supervised by the veteran steamboat captain James W. Troup, the superintendent of C.P.R.

The assembly crew then moved over to Nakusp on upper Arrow Lake and on and then on July 26, 1898, began work on the Minto.

Similar work was done the year before on the Rossland and the Kootenay and images of all vessels can be roughly dated by comparison of the length of the Texas on each boat.

[2] Business on the Arrow Lakes fell off as a result of the Great War and the economic dislocations and labor shortages it caused.

The Saturday Evening Post published an article about Minto and the National Film Board made a motion picture about her.

In 1947, summing up their later careers, Professor Mills wrote of Minto and Moyie: That pair still survive, graying as they approach the half-century, but still doing their work, Moyie running from Proctor to Kaslo every Saturday, touching all the way landings informally, and bringing to little isolated lake settlements their mail, groceries, and visitors, stopping briefly to chat while the cargo is transferred, and going casually on.

At noon everyone finds a place on deck, breaks out a lunch basket, and sets to, since the Moyie no longer has the refinement of a dining room.

But Minto still has one and needs one, for her run is longer, the length of Arrow Lakes and a strip of the Columbia down to Robson, a trip lasting about two days.

[6]By 1954, of all the steamboats that had run in British Columbia, and all of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, only two remained in regular passenger service, Moyie and Minto.

was losing $100,000 every year on its Arrow Lakes service, and the docks at Nakusp and Robson needed upgrading, which would have cost an additional $16,000.

That morning Minto left the dock at West Robson, BC on lower Arrow Lake, with flags and bunting flying, Captain Bob Manning in command and 150 passengers on board.

At Edgewood a crowd sang Auld Lang Syne while across the lake at Fullmore Point Jock Ford played a mournful song on the bagpipes.

At Arrowhead, farmer John Nelson had posted an enormous sign that read "Let us honor the brave pioneers of navigation on the scenic Arrow Lakes by making it possible to continue the very efficient services of the S.S. Minto.

John Nelson, who had not much money, still wanted to do what he could to save Minto, so he bought what was left of her for $800 and had her towed to his farm up on the lake by Galena Bay.

John Nelson's son Walter didn't have the money and Minto's deteriorated condition after over ten years out of service did not seem to warrant any further effort to preserve her.

Walter Nelson, son of her last owner, lit the match to set fire to the boat, and in a few minutes, the vessel's upper works were consumed in the flames.

The shape of these small boats was supposedly inspired by a lifeboat carried on board the steamer Minto, and to memorialize this, the class symbol shown on the sail is a sternwheel steamboat.