NELSON is one of British Columbia's best towns, and one of the few interior settlements you could happily spend two or three days in – longer if you use it as a base for touring the Kootenays by car. The town is home to more than its share of baby-boomers and refugees from the 1960s, a hangover that's nurtured a friendly, civilized and close-knit community, a healthy cultural scene and a liveliness – manifest in alternative cafés, nightlife and secondhand-clothes shops – that you'll be hard pushed to find elsewhere in the province outside Vancouver. There are, apparently, more … more »