1974: A New Teacherage And School Building

             Our first day back in camp was going to be a busy one, as we forced ourselves off of the shag-carpeted floor of the new mobile home that was to be our teacherage.  We were still groggy from a poor night’s attempt at sleep.  I borrowed a camp truck and towed our trailer full of our possessions, over to the new home and began to unload.          

            That afternoon, Shawn, Sharon, and Victor, three of my students who were in camp, came to peak into their new school and help me in the move all the new and old school supplies into our new brand new school building.  The new school, like the teacherage, had been moved to the camp and set up during our summer vacation and still didn’t have heat or power  hooked up.

    Without electricity, a lot of the excitement diminished as we unpacked  and arranged of our possessions in our new home.  My wife couldn’t cook, it was too dark to read, or listen to any of the music from on our record player or reel to real tape recorder that we had crossed the border with.  That evening our supper consisted of soup, which we heated on the fondue set that we had brought with us.

            The photo shows shows my wife at the door of our new teacherage.  Note all of the mud.  Our new school building was a doublewide trailer,  (I couldn’t find a photo of it).

My paintings can be seen at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Getting All Our Possessions Up To The Silvacan Resources Camp

              I have mentioned many times that the Silvacan Resources Mill, where our one-room school was located, was a fly-in camp with no road access.  There was however access by rail, but taking the BC Railroad was an extremely slow way to travel, taking about 10 hours from Fort St. James.  Not something that was very convenient.  

               The only way for us to get our utility trailer full of all our possessions was by that train.  I contacted BC Rail, and made arrangement for a flatbed train car to carry our utility trailer from Fort St. James up to the Silvacan Resources camp on Takla Lake.

            This being done, I drove over to the train yard, and had a flatbed rail car moved to the loading ramp, then carefully backed the trailer up onto the flatbed.  I then had the job of securing the trailer to the flatbed.  I did that using some metal cables which I had purchased.  I also blocked the wheels to prevent the utility trailer from rolling back and forth on its train ride.

            The train wasn’t scheduled to leave until the following day and we were paranoid about leaving all of our worldly possessions just sitting there unguarded, in the empty train yard overnight, so we decided that we would spend the night sleeping in the Scout, which I parked beside the flatbed train car holding  our trailer, to keep an eye on it.

                We spent a pretty miserable night trying to sleep in the car, while at the same time watching for nothing, and by the time the sun began to come up, we were both feeling horrible, but with the daylight, some railroad workers appeared, and so we felt we could safely drive into town for some breakfast and last minute preparations, before we returned to the railroad and climbed onto the BC Railroad passenger car on the train for our trip into camp.

                The train finally left at 1:00 in the afternoon.  We, and all of our possessions, gently and slowly rocked our way back and forth, as we spent time wondering what the new teacherage would be like, and thinking about all the school preparations that would need to be done for the upcoming school year.

               Traveling with us in the passenger car there were about 10 other people, mostly First Nation’s individuals who were making the trip, and after a bit of small talk, we settled in, lulled by the motion and click-clacking of the wheels on the track, nodded off and then suddenly jerking back to consciousness, for the next 10 hours, as forests, rivers, and lakes slowly slid passed the window.

            Upon arriving at camp in the dark at 11:00 at night, we hung around until we were sure that the flatbed carrying our trailer, was going to be transferred to the railroad siding, then we slowly headed to the camp office, where we got the keys to the new mobile home teacherage, we walked to it, and let ourselves in. 

                The mobile home had the water hooked up, but not the electricity or heat, and since our bed and bedding were still on our trailer, we just ended up sleeping on the green shag carpet on the living room floor, of our brand new home.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Killing Frost

     Regular readers know that the changing of the seasons and their significant signs are very important to me.  Last night we had one of those significant signs of fall;  a killing frost.  The overnight temperature dipped down to -4°C (25°F).   We have already had a few slightly below freezing temperatures, that didn’t really kill the tougher plants in the garden, but last night, put the nail in their coffins.  

    Knowing that the hard frost was coming, I repotted the geraniums that were growing in our window box, brought them inside, and put them on my bedroom window for the winter.  The tops of the potato plants are now dead, so I can dig up the remaining three rows of potatoes.

    The hosta plant by our front yard had started to turn orangish a week ago, but I thought they looked particularly interesting this morning, so I took the photo below. 

Take look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

David Milne: Extraordinary Gardener

     Today there will be a gathering to remember David Milne.  David was an extraordinary gardener.  I was always impressed at David’s love and dedication in nurturing and growing roses, alpines, and succulents.   He approached his love of plants like a scientist, keeping databases and doing research.  He had a large rose garden full of roses of various varieties and colors, that he tended with loving care.  

    David loved alpine plants and built a natural-looking, rock garden to be a home for the wide variety of alpines that he grew.  (photo below)

    David also loved succulents.   The conservatory he had in his house was full of hundreds of unusual and exotic plants, many of which David grew from seeds.  Last year, he had started so many plants, that he had a succulent sale for the community. (photo at the very bottom)

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Bringing All Our Possessions Across The Border

             We were dreading the border crossing into Canada, since we didn’t really know what expect, crossing with all of our possessions, but I handed my official immigrant forms to the Canada Custom Officer, and a list of all of the possessions we were bringing into Canada, and waited.  He gave a cursory look to the list, then peaked under the tarp on the trailer to see what was there.  He nodded his head and seemed okay with everything.   

                 I was secretly giving myself a sigh of relief, when the Canadian Custom Agent asked, “What about the trailer?”

                My heart sank, “The trailer, I forgot all about putting the trailer on the list.”  I explained about how my father gave it to me and answered all of the questions he had, and he said, “Okay” and then waved us on, across the border.

            We then gave a genuine sigh of relief as headed toward Fort St. James, BC, but we still had a few things to worry about.  Since we didn’t really have a home in Canada and had been living in a small camping trailer in the lumber mill camp where I was teaching, we had been depending upon the school district’s promised that a new full-sized mobile home would be there as a teacherage for the upcoming school year, but we hadn’t received any conformation that that had actually happened, and that there was a mobile home in camp waiting for us.   If it wasn’t, what were we going to do with all of the possessions we had just brought into Canada.  It included a lot of big items,  like furniture.  We would have no place to put it.

        I was relieved when I called the school district office and it was confirmed that the mobile home had been moved into camp, so all we had to do was to get all our possessions up to the camp, which had no road access into the place. 

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Moving All Of Our Possessions Up To Canada

 

            My father owned a 6’ by 8’ utility trailer with sides, which he gave to me so that we could move our worldly possessions.  It was in fairly rough condition and in-between our visiting with family and friends, I reconstructed it, replaced the floor and repainted the trailer.  

    I had accumulated a lot of furniture and household items while I was doing my alternative service as a Conscientious Objector working at the Goodwill in Indianapolis, but the trailer was fairly small and so we had to make a lot of difficult decisions as to what things we were going to take with us to Canada and what things we were going to sell.  Into the trailer went my decorative wooden antique bed, the oak bookcase with inlayed wood parrots, two big oak rocking chairs, a dresser, some small oriental and Navaho rugs, all my records, record player and my reel to reel tape player.

            Books, clothing, blankets, lamps, guitars, and cookware were all squeezed under, in, and on top of all the available space left in the trailer and what didn’t fit there found passage in the nooks and crannies of our our International Scout vehicle.  I went to a farm supply store and bought a heavy canvas tarp, which I tied down tight over the top of the trailer to protect all our possessions from the rain.

    When we finally said our goodbyes and headed back to Canada, I am sure we looked like “Okies” heading West during the Depression, with our Scout packed to the brim and with the tarp stretched over the trailer flapping in the wind as we drove across America.

           Above is a photo showing the old utility trailer that carried all of our possessions up to Canada, fifty years after it made the trip.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: The School Year Wraps UP, Summer Vacation Begins

      The year would been a long hard slog for me in a normal school, just because it was my first full year of teaching and I was in another country, but the fact that it was a one-room school, and we had to do without so many normal school supplies and equipment, let alone a school building, made job even more difficult.  It was also hard because EVERYTHING fell on my shoulders, and I was forced to deal with it alone, but finally the school year had ended, summer vacation was upon us, and there was a promise of better things to come, next year--a new mobile home for my wife and I to live in, more school equipment and materials, and an actual school building!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

    One would assume that summer vacation would be a leisurely time for a teacher, but our summer was very hectic because we had to get all of our worldly possessions in the US, moved up to the isolated mill site in Canada.  This meant we had to first drive down to Indiana to collect everything.  

Our summer vacation began with us hitching a ride on the Silvacan Resources’ DC-3 flying to Williams Lake, where we had left our car.       

            We loaded the Scout up and headed East, down the Trans-Canada Highway through Banff National Park, then south to Waterton National Park for a quick look, and an overnight campout.  Onward we drove, crossing the US border, then onward to Great Falls, Mount Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, across the prairies to Chicago, and then south to Evansville. 

            Traveling back to Evansville, was sort of like a quick vacation.  We watched a lot of interesting topology flash across our Scout’s windows as we drove across North America, but we couldn’t spend much time sight-seeing.  

             The photo below shows the Mill’s DC-3 loading up for a flight to Williams Lake.  The olive green truck was the vehicle I used as our “school bus”, to pick up the kids of the Jack family, who lived on the shore of Takla Lake.  ''

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca