The West Kootenay League, also referred to as the West Kootenay Hockey League (WKHL), is a defunct senior men's ice hockey league that operated in eastern British Columbia from 1922–1941, and also during the 1945-46 season.
In its 20 years of operation, the West Kootenay League won every British Columbia Senior Championship (Savage Cup) after its first season (1922–23) and teams from this league won the Allan Cup twice.
Many of the players resisted the idea of turning professional because, with the promise of high paying mining jobs, they had secure jobs for life and were making as much, if not more, than players in the NHL.
[1] In 1931 the Kimberley Dynamiters joined the West Kootenay League, and this began an immediate rivalry with the always strong Trail Smoke Eaters, a true powerhouse of senior British Columbia hockey.
[3] As of this edit, this article uses content from "West Kootenay League", which is licensed in a way that permits reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, but not under the GFDL.