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.

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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

1975: No Water in our One-Room School for Four Months

             The three years I spent teaching in a one-room school in a remote lumber mill camp in the Interior of BC, were difficult and trying.  However, my wife and I were young and accepted the hardships as part of the adventure we had committed to.  

            Above is a photo of the indoor/outdoor thermometer that hung in the kitchen of the teacherage where we lived.  Not only is the outdoor temperature extremely cold  (-45°F), the temperature inside the teacherage was also pretty intolerable (36°F).  Below I continue  telling of one of the ordeals we experience while living in the mill camp.

    A few days later in the cold spell, a broken water main was discovered that was causing flooding behind a couple of the houses in camp.  Once that was repaired, we got the school’s water back, and I was told to just let the water slowly run continually from the tap inside the school to prevent further freezing, and this I did.  However, I made a grim discovery the next morning upon arriving at the school when I found that I couldn’t open the door.

    During the night the water that I had been told to keep gently flowing, had backed up in the drainpipe, which I assume was still frozen, and as a result, the school floor had been flooded.  The flooded water had run across the floor to the school’s front door and when it had tried to seep under the door, the freezing temperatures outside , caused it to freeze.  It was the ice that had formed under the door that had prevented me from opening the door.  I didn’t record in my diary how I finally got the door open, but eventually I did.  

    That first freezing water episode was only a precursor of what was to come.  On February 26th the school water again ceased to flow because of freezing and it would be months before we got it back.  It’s interesting how quickly I accepted that reality.  In my diary I don’t even mention the frozen water at school again until March 3rd, and then the next time was on April 17th, when I report that “..the water is still frozen at school.”

           The ice in the water pipes didn’t thaw until June 8th.  It seems like that would be a tremendous event, but on that day, all my diary entry said was:  “School water finally thawed out and dribbled out of the drinking fountain unto the floor.”

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1975: Frank, Silvacan Resources' Camp Boss

                On February 13th of 1975 the temperatures plummeted, reaching -40° (the same in both Celsius and Fahrenheit). 

                In the morning when I walked over for my day of teaching, I discovered that the school’s water had frozen up.  I notified Frank, the camp boss, and then after the end of our school day without any water, I spent a few hours under the school with Frank as he tried unsuccessfully to unthaw it.  I soon came to conclusion that the waterline was likely frozen under the dirt road that ran in front of the school, since the temperature in the crawlspace under the school still felt reasonably toasty.

                Frank, the camp boss was a revelation to me.  He was a wiry man, of average height, and often unshaven.  Thinking back, Frank seemed larger to me.  Not only was he in charge of the entire operation of the Silvacan mill and camp, but he was also one of its owners.  

        My socialist viewpoints made me generally look warily at capitalist’s owners; I stereotyped them as men in suits, sitting around some large table in some lavish board room, smoking cigars, and making decisions, or being driven around in some long black car.

                Frank was one of those rural pioneer capitalists.   I always had a hard time picturing him sitting around in a boardroom, since his preferential mode of transportation seemed to be a beat up, muddy old pickup truck.  Whenever I saw him, he was wearing rough, often dirty and well-used worker’s clothes.   Had he been lined up with the other workers at the mill, you would not have been able to pick him out as an owner.

               Frank was not afraid to get down in the grim and get his hands dirty.  Whenever there was a breakdown or some other problem in the camp, Frank was not standing around in a white hard hat, he was down in the middle of the problem. 

                I had once watched Frank down in the dark and grimy crawlspace under our trailer, laying in the mud and cussing while trying to fix a frozen water main.  He was sometimes gruff, but because he had “money in the game,” he wanted everything in his big operation to work, and he was always there to do what had to be done.  If Frank had a family somewhere, he didn’t see much of them, because he was always away in the Camp.

                The camp did have maintenance men who fixed things in the mill, but it seemed that whenever I had a problem, it was Frank who came to deal with it.  The school’s frozen water problem was more than Frank by himself could fix, and so the work was assigned to the camp maintenance men who worked several days in a row trying to unthaw the waterline.

        They used a welding machine attached at two different spots along the copper water pipes to try to thaw any ice in between, but they too were unsuccessful in their attempts, and as a result, I had to carry buckets of water to the school every day for the kids to use.  Fortunately if they had to go to the bathroom, they were allowed to walk across the road and use the facilities in the camp’s bunkhouse.

            An unrelated note:  Thank you to all of those citizens of the US who voted to turf out the many  sycophant Republican toadies who for years and years, kowtowed to Trump’s every ridiculous and tragic wish.  Your vote has given me hope for the future.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Prince George Trip

     After reading yesterday’s blog about my ice skating accident in 1975, and then reading this blog, you might come to the conclusion that I am accident prone.  I don’t really think that is the case, but like everyone else on this planet, I have certainly had a few in my life.  Today I am writing about an accident that I had last week while I was staying in a motel with our dog Kona, while my wife was in the hospital getting a hip replacement.

    Kona, who weighs about 60 pounds (27kgs), can’t really walk, she mostly scoots herself when she tries to go anywhere.  I mostly have to pick her up and carry her from place to place.  While in the motel, every time she began acting antsy, I figured she must want to go outside to pee, so I would pick her up and carry her to the narrow gravel and bushes strip that ran along the far side of the motel parking lot.  When I am carrying Kona, she is pressed against my chest, and being a fairly big dog, carrying her this way, prevents me from seeing my feet as I walk.

    So I was starting to carry Kona across the parking lot, and missed seeing the low parking barrier that was in front of me.  When my foot hit the barrier, I tripped and began to fall forward with Kona in my arms.  I managed to take a couple of steps trying to regain my balance, but I was too far gone.

    Before I hit the ground I threw out my arms letting Kona fly from them, and then I held my arms out in front of me to try to cushion my fall, as I hit the pavement.

    Amazingly, Kona, though puzzled as to what just happened, seem to survive the fall better than I did.  I ended up with abrasions on my left hip and elbow through my clothing, and bleeding punctures for small gravel on each of my hands.  I was surprised that my nylon windbreaker jacket hadn’t been torn my the gravel on the parking lot.  

    When I finally managed to get myself upright again, I picked up Kona, and we headed back to the motel room to wash the wounds on my bleeding hands.

    Obviously, I learned my lesson about those low parking barriers, and paid particular attention to them for the next few days with Kona, while staying in the motel.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

1975: My Accident on the Camp's Outdoor Ice Skating Rink

      A few nights after our day of feasting on junk food, my wife and I decided to walk over to the skating rink and get some exercise on our ice skates.  It was a very windy night, with strong gusts and after a half an hour of normal skating I decided to get creative. 

            One of the popular winter toys for my students, at the time, was a “Crazy Carpet.” It was sort of a flexible sled, which just consisted of a heavy plastic sheet with hand grips on the front.   Like the name suggests, the kids would sit on top of it and pull up the grips so the Crazy Carpet curved up in front of their legs like a toboggan, then fly down the hill.  

            I noticed that there was a Crazy Carpet laying on the side of the rink so I grabbed it and tried to use it like a sail, letting the wind propel me across the ice.  At some point in my ice-sailing, I slipped and fell slamming my cheek against the ice.   I don’t know what happened next.

            I assume my wife took me home to the teacherage, because I have no memory of the event, but I woke up on our couch, and and kept asking her what had happened, and my wife would repeatedly tell me that I fell on the ice and hit my head.  I then would doze off, wake up again, and ask her the same question.  I kept doing that over and over.

        Needless to say, she was getting pretty concerned.  There were no doctors in the camp, or within 120 miles of the camp, and no roads out to drive to a doctor.   The only way out of camp would was to fly.   

             The next morning I taught school for a half a day, and then was able to get a seat and fly out on the company’s DC-3 which traveled the 370 miles back and forth to Williams Lake, twice a week.  Once in Williams Lake, I went to the hospital and got an X-ray.  The doctor told me just to take it easy for a few days.  We spent the weekend in Williams Lake then flew back to camp in -30°F temperatures on Monday morning.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

The First Snowfall of the Season--Beautiful

     First let me apologize for the lack of blogs over the last few days.  I have a good excuse;  I had to take my wife up to Prince George for a hip replacement.  

    When I woke up last Wednesday, looked outside and saw all of the snow that had fallen overnight, I was full of apprehension, because we had to drive the 135 miles through curvy, hilly, terrain to get up to Prince George, and snow, unexpected animals, and big trucks on the highway can really make the trip dangerous.   

    Fortunately, what snow had fallen on the highway had melted or had been cleared, so the first three quarters of the drive was not a problem.  However, once we got closer to Prince George, the highway was covered with hard-packed snow, very much like ice, but we arrived in the city safely.  Prince George did not get the 6 inches of snow that McBride got, and up there, the ground was bare.

    As you can see, the snowfall we got in McBride was beautiful and made our mountainous landscape, magical to behold.

    

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca