1975: The Last Part Of Our Summer vacation

      During the last part of our summer vacation, my wife was at Tolfino, BC, where she spent  the week exploring Pacific Rim National Park, with its long beaches on the Pacific Ocean. 

            While she was there, I took the Greyhound bus and then hitchhiked to Strathcona Provincial Park, further up Vancouver Island, so I could take advantage of “Alpine to Ocean”, an outdoor education workshop for teachers, that included backpacking hikes up to an alpine area and then taking an inflatable boat from Nootka Sound to across to Escalante Point, an isolated section of beach on Vancouver Island’s Pacific Coast, where Captain Vancouver had explored. 

            I have previously blogged about my “Alpine to Ocean” adventures which you can read at: 

 https://davidmarchant.blogspot.com/2020/02/1976-alpine-to-ocean.html

After those adventures, I rejoined my wife and we headed back to Victoria for a short stay, before heading back to the Silvacan camp a couple of weeks before school started, so we could get organized before the school year began. 

         We flew into camp on the “Sched” and I got in trouble with Frank because I had told one of the families at the camp that when we flew in, there was a package for them.  I hadn’t realized that the “package” contained bottles of booze, which Frank had confiscated to prevent trouble in camp.   The  conflict arose when the family found out about how their booze disappeared.

            The photo on the top shows a beach at the Pacific Rim National Park and the photo below shows a sunset on the beach were I camped during my Alpine to Ocean workshop.

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

An Unusual Jam Night

     Tuesdays are our Jam Night at the McBride Train Station.   More than once, unexpected things have happened at, or before we start jamming.  That was the case last night.

    I picked up Ingrid to give her a lift to the jam.  As usual, we had an interesting conversation as I drove to the station.  Last night we discussed the horrific grizzly bear attack that had taken place in Bellacoola, BC. 

    When a local mother and her 12 year old daughter went on a hike near their house, they were killed in a grizzly bear attack    At first it was assumed that the killing was done by a single grizzly, but after four grizzlies were captured in bear traps and DNA samples where taken, it was discovered that all four bears were the culprits.  It was a family of grizzlies; a mother and four cubs.  Because they all took part  in the attack, they were all put down, because they couldn’t be trusted not to attack people in the future.

    As I drove down Main Street and got closer to the train station, it became evident that something unexpected was going on.  There in the parking lot, was a giant loader and several pickup trucks.   I noticed a hose coming out of the station’s front door, and a stream of water running down the parking lot.

    I went inside to see what was happening and was told there had been a sewage leak in the basement of the station, and a Village work crew were trying to deal with the situation.  It was pretty obvious that the Jam was not going to happen at the Train Station.

    As more of the Jam members arrived at the parking lot and the situation explained, our keyboard player, who lives in town a couple of blocks away, offered her house as the venue for the Jam.  Everyone left to go to her house, and I hung around at the station for fifteen minutes to direct any late jam arrivals of the change of location.

    When I finally figured I had waited long enough, I too, headed down Main Street to Eunice’s house.  Halfway down Main Street, I saw a some very bright and flashing lights in my lane.  As I approached I saw that the lights were from a big flatbed truck that had parked in front of a car, which was stopped in the middle of my lane.  The truck was there adding light to the front of a disabled car.  

    I slowly pulled over to the left lane to pass, and as I did, I saw what the car’s problem was.  The front wheel on the driver’s side, had come off.  I suspect that the driver had just gotten his winter tires put on, and the lug nuts holding the wheel to the axle had not been securely tightened, and as he drove down Main Street, his wheel came off.

    I proceeded to Eunice’s house, where everyone was setting up to play.  We had five musicians, and later added our fiddler, who found out where we were playing.  I suspect others of the usual crowd, arrived at the station after I had left, and didn’t know where we had gone.  At any rate, we had a good session, reworking some of the Christmas songs we had in our repertoire that we hadn’t played all year.

    Despite our rather unexpected start to the night, it all ended up enjoyable.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1975: Luckily, We Found My Family In Banff

          A few days later, Joan and I said goodbye to Vancouver Island and all of the relatives and adopted relatives, and re-boarded the BC Ferry back to the mainland.   We headed east to Banff National Park, where we had planned to rendezvous with my parents and siblings, who were driving up from Indiana.  

      I was surprised when we actually found them.  Our plans had been very vague and Banff National Park is huge.   I had planned to meet them at Banff’s East Gate, but after a long day’s futile wait, my wife and I decided we had better try to get a campsite for the night.  Upon arriving at the nearby campground, low and behold, who did we meet, but my family.

          Remember, this was a time long before mobile phones and communication between people in undisclosed places, so our hooking up with my family, was just a matter of chance.  It seemed remarkable that we were able to find each other in that huge park with so many campgrounds.   In the end however, we all decided to move to another campground, after spotting a black bear who meandered out of the bush, and then nonchalantly looked into my brothers’ tent.

        After five days of hiking, sightseeing, camping, wild animal encounters, all of the usual mountain park activities in Banff and Jasper National Parks, my wife and we said good-bye to my family and we headed back to Vancouver Island where we had a dental appointment.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1975: After A Sputtering Start, Our Summer Vacation Begins

            For most people, summer vacations normally include some sort of  travel, but because of our circumstances, travel was a necessity.  We had no home in Canada.   During the school year, we lived in a teacherage provided by the school district, and when summer vacation arrived, we were forced to vacate the teacherage, and become gypsies, with no home base.

    In 1975, our summer vacation began with us leaving camp on the Northern Thunderbird “Sched”, a regularly scheduled flight on a small plane that stopped at Lovell Cove on Takla Lake, where the Silvacan Resources mill was located.  After a bumpy flight to Fort St. James, and then a flight on a regular airline to Prince George, we caught a ride with Frank the camp boss, to Williams Lake, where he dropped us off at a field, where our International Scout truck had been parked since March.  

    The enthusiasm we had with actually starting our summer vacation, waned when we discovered that the Scout had a flat tire, but what was worse, someone had broken into it and stolen the tape deck, radio, and our tent.  We did get a little satisfaction upon discovering that the thieves had forgotten to take the tent poles and camp stove.  While they stole a crumby hatchet, they overlooked the tool box and truck battery.

            We had to spent the day getting the Scout operational again, before we could finally settle into a our motel room for the night.  Bright and early the next morning we drove the Scout down the highway  for seven hours, headed for the BC ferry that would take us to Victoria, where we could stay with my cousin, and visit with the her relatives.  Once there, we waited for the arrival of more relatives who were due to arrive the next day on the ferry from Seattle.

  The next day after a big reunion, we were eager to make up for all the shopping we had missed while we were stuck up in the logging camp.  We bought backpacks, a new tent, and I bought my wife a tea set for her birthday.   The evening was spent with more food, visiting, and guitar playing with my cousin, before retiring for the night in our new tent that we had set up in the yard.

    My cousin, his wife, and my wife, had planned a camping trip to Galiano Island (one of the small Gulf Islands nestled between big Vancouver Island and the mainland).  One of the real joys of being in British Columbia were the ferry rides and provincial parks.  We parked our car at the ferry terminal and walked onto the ferry.  

            After the leisurely ferry ride along the beautiful, dramatic and rugged  BC coastline, we disembarked and backpacked the short distance to Galiano Provincial park, where luckily, were able to secure the last campsite.  Once we got our tents set up, we headed out to explore the beaches, take a swim, then hike back to the campground where we cooked a meal.  In the evening, we ambled back down to the shore to marvel at the sun setting in the orange of the sky and water.  After a very satisfying day, we finally climbed into our sleeping bags in our cozy tent.

Up next morning we wiped the sleep from our eyes, ready for more of the West Coast experience.  We did more exploring on the beach, then returned to the campsite where we packed up our tents and sleeping bags.  After hiking back to the ferry terminal, we snacked at the ferry terminal, waiting for the ferry that would take us back.  It was a quick getaway, but it made me fall even more in love with British Columbia.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1975: Our School Year Fizzles Out

      A lot of the educational materials that I did receive from the School District, were not very well suited for Madelaine and Hannah my two First Nation’s girls, since they had spent most of their lives living in the bush.  I showed the first graders a photo of a man raking leaves and I asked the question, “What could this man do with the leaves, so they wouldn’t be wasted?”  I got the relies, “Put them back on the tree,” and “Save them for next year.” 

               When I pointed to the mast of a sailing ship sticking up in the background of an old historical photo and asked what the sail was.   I got a question back in reply, “Is it was a television antenna?”

               Our continually fluctuating school population plunged a couple of weeks before the end of the school year, because the Carrier Indians blockaded the railroad tracks that connected the mill to the rest of BC.  That blockade caused the mill to shutdown.  They laid off most of the employees and flew them back to Williams Lake, which left the camp without most of their families, and my students.

      My school was left with just 3 students; one whose family had remained in camp, and Madelaine and Hannah, my two Indigenous students, who lived down on the shore of Takla Lake.  Despite my decimated student population, I continued on with our school year until the official close at the end of June.

            When Madelaine found a dead sparrow on the ground, I did an impromptu science class.  After examining the bird, we buried it.  Madelaine said it would come back to life the next day, and so I told my three students we would dig it up on Monday, to see if that was true.  On Monday we did re-dig the grave, and discovered that the bird was still dead.

            On the last two days of school, I was down to just Leigh Anne in the class, because  Madelaine and Hannah failed to show up.  After Leigh Anne left on the final  day of school, my wife and I scrambled to clean up the school, taking down all of the pictures from the walls, packing up and storing all the educational supplies, and then closing up the school building for the summer.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1975: The Silvacan Resources Mill

             You might be wondering how the Silvacan Resources’ fly-in timber mill could exist so remotely, away from markets, without access to roads that connected them to the outside.  The mill was located on the BC Rail line, which at the time was pushing its way northward through BC.   The mill made its money manufacturing railroad ties for the BC Rail track expansion.

            The mill had difficult problems to overcome with its unstable workforce.  Many their employees would get fed-up with living in the remote camp and quit unexpectedly.  Working in an isolated camp was usually a last resort of people seeking employment.  It attracted a lot of disparate people that had troubled lives and difficulty with alcohol.   Even though the camp was officially a “Dry Camp,” booze often found its way into camp.

            Being fairly naive, I was continually shocked after being told stories by my students of the drunkenness and spousal abuse among people who lived at the camp.  Months after one couple, who had a reputation of alcohol-fueled violence moved out, I heard that the man had been charged with murdering his wife.  The situation of living in an isolated camp caused strain in these already troubled families, resulting in a lot of family instability, which filtered down to the students of the school.

    Families would get fed up with the camp situation, quit, pull their kids out of our school, and move out.  Then months later I would see those same kids back in our school again, after the family, in an effort to make another try, returned to live in the camp.

                The photo, which was what we saw out of the teacherage’s kitchen window, shows the Silvacan Mill.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

1975: How Am I Doing, In Our One-Room School?

                 Our one-room school was so isolated from the outside world in our fly-in camp, that I, as the teacher, didn’t really know how my students were faring, compared to those kids being educated in the BC schools that existed in “Civilization”.  

        However twice in 1975, I received new first grade students whose family had moved into the Silvacan Resources’ camp, later in the school year.  I was gratified to discover that the kids I had been teaching all year, were farther along in their reading, writing, and math skills, than the newly arrived first graders.

        One of those newly arrived first graders had been attending a school near Williams Lake, BC.  I was shocked to discover that this young girl couldn’t read at all.  When I asked her mother about it, she replied that in the previous school, the teacher’s attitude was that reading would start “when the child wanted it”.  

        I didn’t believe in that sort of “learn-when-ready” educational philosophy, and started teaching the girl to read right away.  The girl did well, and made a lot of progress, but unfortunately, the family didn’t like the “living-in-camp” situation and they moved back to civilization after a couple of months.  In fact both of the year’s new students ended up moving away before the school year closed.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca