1974: Some Camp Changes After Spring Break

        Upon returning to the camp  after our Spring Break, I was once again overwhelmed and consumed with preparing worksheets, teaching, grading, and the many other school activities.  Before Spring Break the camp had begun constructing a store, which upon our return, had been completed, so we could then actually purchase some food items, unfortunately, so could my students, and they filled themselves with sugar fueled energy from candy and pop.

        The camp’s maintenance men did not have a stellar reputation for their work.  They had once "fixed" a leak in a sewage pipe by wrapping the pipe with duct tape--which of course didn't hold, causing  a flow of sewage across the floor in a bunkhouse.  

        One of the carpenters bragged to me about when he was putting plywood skirting around the base of a mobile home, he saved himself a lot of time by just putting in enough nails to hold the plywood to the two-by-four supports, then instead of driving in more nails to adequately secure the plywood to the supports,  he just drew little dots on the plywood with a pencil, that looked like the heads of additional nails.

        The camp maintenance crew did come through for us though, and got the small stove in the old travel trailer that was our home, functional.   Although we still ate our meals in the camp cook house, getting the teacherage stove fixed did enabled my wife, who was always a skilled cook, to renew her culinary skills. 

         However, the refrigerator in our kitchen still didn't work, but fortunately, we could now buy things "fresh" (not really an accurate word in describing the produce) from the newly completed camp store and we just stored left overs and items needing to be kept cool, in the snow on our roof.  This, naturally, provided a motivation to a few of my mischievous students, to scheme about to swiping our juice off of the roof.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Pack Rat: Captured And Relocated

      A couple of days ago, I blogged about suspecting that I had a Pack Rat trying to take up habitation  in the upstairs floor of my barn.  I saw the telltale pile fresh leaves that Pack Rats generally collect when they are planning to settle in.  Yesterday I cleaned out all of the leaves and then set a live trap, hoping to capture the beast.  I baited the trap with some fresh lettuce leaves, the heart of a red cabbage, and a scattering of sunflower seeds.  I don’t know which of those foodstuffs attracted the rodent, but when I checked the trap this morning, there the poor critter was, nervous, and wondering what it had gotten itself into.

    I put the live trap with the Pack Rat into the back of the car, then put Kona, who always enjoys a car ride, into the back seat.  Although I couldn’t smell any odor from the Pack Rat, which are known for having really smelly nests, Kona immediately smelled the critter and got all hyper, even though she couldn’t see it in the back of the car.

    The natural habitat for Pack Rat nests are spaces made by boulders and rocks, so I drove down the road where I found a place I thought might be suitable for the beast (photo below).  When I opened the trap, the Pack Rat made a beeline toward the big rock slab and slipped underneath it, hiding in the dark.  

    I was happy about being able to trap the Pack Rat so quickly, and finding what seemed a better home for it.

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Some Robson Valley Fall Colors

     I haven’t been in the upstairs level of my barn for a while, but the other day I went up there looking for something.  What I saw surprised me:  There was a big pile of cottonwood leaves scattered around.  I figured out pretty quickly how they got there--I must have a pack rat thinking to live up there.  This happened once before in 2011.  

    Pack Rats are cute and friendly looking rodents, with rounded ears and a fluffy tail.  They are often mistaken fro squirrels, because of their furry tail.  In fact, I saw what I thought was a squirrel several times climbing up the outside wall of the barn, but I now realize it was a Pack Rat.  

    Looking at them, you might think they would make a nice pet, but they have one manor disadvantage, their smell.  The Pack Rat themselves stay clean but they create a smelly mess wherever they live, so I plan to live trap the critter and take it somewhere else to live.

    Pack Rats eat foliage and I expect that is why this one has collected all of the leaves.  They are nocturnal and generally live in crevasses made by boulders, like what exists in the rock slide high on the slope across from our house.  They will of course, also take up residence in vacant buildings (like my barn).

    They get their name because they have an interesting habit of collecting bits shiny manmade objects like bits of glass, aluminum, coins, and bottle caps.

    The photo below shows a Pack Rat that I caught in a live trap and relocated in 2011.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Looks Like I Have A Pack Rat In The Barn

     I haven’t been in the upstairs level of my barn for a while, but the other day I went up there looking for something.  What I saw surprised me:  There was a big pile of cottonwood leaves scattered around.  I figured out pretty quickly how they got there--I must have a pack rat thinking to live up there.  This happened once before in 2011.  

    Pack Rats are cute and friendly looking rodents, with rounded ears and a fluffy tail.  They are often mistaken fro squirrels, because of their furry tail.  In fact, I saw what I thought was a squirrel several times climbing up the outside wall of the barn, but I now realize it was a Pack Rat.  

    Looking at them, you might think they would make a nice pet, but they have one manor disadvantage, their smell.  The Pack Rat themselves stay clean but they create a smelly mess wherever they live, so I plan to live trap the critter and take it somewhere else to live.

    Pack Rats eat foliage and I expect that is why this one has collected all of the leaves.  They are nocturnal and generally live in crevasses made by boulders, like what exists in the rock slide high on the slope across from our house.  They will of course, also take up residence in vacant buildings (like my barn).

    They get their name because they have an interesting habit of collecting bits shiny manmade objects like bits of glass, aluminum, coins, and bottle caps.

    The photo below shows a Pack Rat that I caught in a live trap and relocated in 2011.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Finally, S[ring Break (And A Dog)

         Of course, having led extremely austere lives for three months in the camp, we were very happy to finally be able to go on a shopping spree in Williams Lake, and stock up on the many things we needed for ourselves and our one-room school, because there were no stores of any kind, back in Camp.

         Having really enjoyed taking care of Chico, Shawn’s dog whenever his family left camp on long weekends, we really found ourselves thinking that it would be really nice to have a dog of our own. So during our Spring Break, we made looking around for a dog, one of our top priorities.  

            I don’t recall how we found out about it, but we heard that someone in a tiny place called Marguerite, BC, had Pomeranian pups for sale.  I had never heard of the Pomeranian breed, but we drove to Marguerite, found the house that were selling the pups, and bought ourselves a small, fluffy, white Pomeranian pup who we named Vincent, after Van Gogh.  It didn't take long for the tiny canine to become the alpha male in our family.

    Our family and friends back in the States, who knew about our move to the wilderness in BC, thought it was bizarre when they learned that we had gotten a small fluffy Pomeranian, instead of a Husky or German Shepherd, which seemed more appropriate living where we did.

            The photo below shows my wife in an old fashion-style sunbonnet she had bought, holding Vincent, while we are floating on the Little Lake, in an inflatable boat we had also purchased during our Spring Break.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Finally Spring Break and Leaving Camp

             Snow, cold, short days, and being bogged down at night planning and typing out for work with carbon paper, that would keep all the grades busy in my one-room school, was slowly wearing us down.  In the remote camp there was no TV reception, no phones, and only rarely at night, could we pick up a radio station (CBC), fortunately, the Silvacan Resources Mill Camp did show usually poor, second-rate movies in the Rec Hall twice a week.  Nevertheless, unable to leave camp for three months because of flight schedules (there were no roads out to civilization), my wife and I were beginning to suffer from “cabin fever” (being isolated and stuck in one place over a long period, usually winter).

            When March and our Spring break finally arrived, we were eager to leave camp and visit the outside world.  We took the “Sched” (the regular scheduled small plane that landed on the now frozen Takla Lake) to a Fort St. James, where we had left our truck in the fall at the Northern Thunderbird Airline’s parking area.

      We found the truck buried in snow, with a foot and a half of hard snow on its hood and much more snow engulfing the vehicle.  The good folks at Northern Thunderbird Air, loaned me a shovel to dig the truck out, which I finally managed to do, but in my enthusiasm to clear the snow from the hood of the truck, I accidentally snapped the radio antenna off with the shovel.

 Digging our Scout out of the snow was only the first of many problems we had to deal with before we could enjoy our Spring Break.  I couldn't get the truck started, and ended up having to get it towed to a garage where I had to buy a new battery.  

                Because we had driven up to Canada in the fall, parking the Scout in Fort St. James when we flew into Camp, then not returning there on our Christmas Break, the truck just sat there all winter.   On our Christmas Break we flew back to Indiana, and upon our return to Canada, we became Landed Immigrants, so we had a few legal thing to do during our spring break.

    I needed to register the vehicle in BC and get a British Columbia driver's license,  however, neither of those things could be done in the small village of Fort St. James, so nervously, I made an illegal drive of 100 miles to the big city of Prince George.  I was paranoid the whole way, afraid  that I would be stopped by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police).  It didn't help my paranoia that the Scout's muffler fell off along the way, but we made it to PG, got the government paper work completed, and finally began with more enjoyable pursuits.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Pets In The Mill Camp

         One of the things that led to continual stress for both my wife and I, was witnessing the constant mistreatment, cruelty, and neglect that were often given to the pets people had in Camp.  We could never understand why those people even had pets, if they didn't love them and treat them with kindness.  

        One time I got word that the Jack family was going to leave their log home beside Takla Lake and move down to Takla Landing, a First Nation’s Reserve located about 12 miles down the Lake.  That meant I was going to lose the family that contributed the greatest number of students to our school.  Then the next day I heard that in preparation to their move, they shot their dogs.  About a week later, the Jack family was back living in their cabin by the lake and the kids were back in the school.  

        Darwin was one of my first graders whose family lived in one of the few wood frame houses in camp.  After one of the four days off, when the family took the mill’s DC-3 to Williams Lake, Darwin’s parents came back with a puppy, then after a couple of months they forced the poor dog to spend most of its time, day and night, in a lidded box outside the house.  The dark windowless plywood box was about 48” long, 36” high, and 30” wide (1.2m X 90cm X  .75m.)   Darwin’s mother Hazel, liked to shock the other women in the camp by talking about killing kittens.

        Fortunately, a few mill families did treat their pets decently.  Shawn, a fifth grade student was good kid, whose family owned had a cute little dog called "Chico."  Shawn and Chico often accompanied my wife and I on our almost daily hikes to the Little Lake.  Whenever his whole family went out for one of the four- day weekends, they would bring Chico over to stay with my wife and I.  We, being real animal lovers, really enjoyed having Chico around and spoiled him, which caused problems when it was time for him to return to his real home, and the dog wanted to continue to stay with us.

        The photo above shows Shawn with his dog Chico on the left and another camp dog on the right.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca