1973: I Become Silvacan Elementary School

 The photo shows the Camp’s Recreation Building (on the right), that also served as our school.

    Since all of the other public schools in BC had already begun classes two weeks earlier, I had to do some quick preparations and create a school and begin teaching immediately.  This was a big job because, I WAS the school, as I quickly learned.  Not only was I the only classroom teacher, I soon discovered that I was also the principal, the maintenance man, the janitor, the secretary, the health nurse, and the “school bus” driver.  

             There was no one there to help guide me in these tasks, or to tell me what to do.  I had to figure everything out for myself.  It certainly didn’t help that I had never even been in a Canadian school to witness the daily routines or the educational materials used, and since there had never been a school at the Silvacan mill, there were absolutely no educational supplies at all, since the school district hadn’t been sure that they would be able to find a teacher.

            During my four years of university, which gave me the training and education to earn my bachelor degree in elementary education, no one had ever even mentioned teaching in a one-room school, let alone explain how to manage one.  All of my practical, hands-on experience had been in large multi-teacher city and suburban schools.  What I found myself thrust into, was a totally new and unknown experience.

    Frank (the Silvacan Mill’s Camp Boss) told me that the school, (named Silvacan Elementary School) would be held in the camp's "Recreation Building".  I quickly planned for classes for the next day, although I hadn’t a clue as to how many students I might have, what grades they might be in, or what their abilities might be.  

            Since it hadn't been a certain that there was going to be a school at Silvacan, the mill workers didn’t yet moved their families to the camp.  There was however a First Nation's  family that lived in a cabin (photo below) down by the dock on Takla Lake, where our had plane landed, who had school-aged kids, and they turned out to be my only students when the school opened.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: Exploring The Mill Camp

   We looked into the recreation building which housed a pool table and coke machine and some tables and chairs.  We walked down the wide dusty “main” street of the camp. Past the metal Atco portable bunkhouses and a couple of small frame houses which lined the road until we saw the mill, which was just a big metal framed structure, with some open sides and a tin roof.

When it was time for us to eat, we made a delightful discovery; the cookhouse where we were to eat all of our meals was amazing.   Isolated mills make a point of feeding their workers well to keep them happy.  When we opened the door, took in the warm, delicious, and fragrant  aromas, then looked down the steaming counter at the wide variety of offerings, we knew that living in this remote corner of BC wasn't  going to be a year of total depravation.  There was so much good food available for the taking, and we could eat as much as we wanted—it was going to be a smorgasbord for every meal. Steaks, Chinese food, Yorkshire pudding, all kinds of fancy desserts.  Here is how replied to my parents who were curious about our eating arrangements:

       Meals? 

            We have no meal tickets, everybody knows everybody.  Up here we are trusted to pay $150 for the whole month for the two of us.   That gives us three meals at day.  We haven’t paid yet because we are waiting for the bank to send us an account number.

        Meals, who cooks:  

            Harold and Nuella, are our cooks.  They really are friendly people and very good cooks.  Tonight we had big, big steaks, peas, sauerkraut, wieners, potatoes, salad, fruit juices, and cake.  We are free to take all of the fruit and cookies we want.  It is a really good deal.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: Shown Our First Canadian Winter Home

     I have lately started blogging about my first job that allowed us to immigrate to Canada.  The job I took was starting a one-school and teaching in an isolated fly-in mill camp in the BC Interior.  Today’s blog tells of our first look at where we would be living during our first Canadian winter.

            Frank dropped us off in front of an early 1960’s model, small blue and white, travel trailer.  Attached to its side was an ugly box-like plywood addition, that featured a small square window and plain wooden door in front.  We were told that this dwelling was where we would be living, and  he explained that since the stove and fridge in the trailer did not work, we could eat at the cook shed before the workers came in for their meals.

    We dragged our luggage up the two wooden steps, opened the door to what was to be our abode for the winter.  The “mudroom”, which was the Canadian term given to the rectangular wooden addition, was just a big empty space that ran down the entire length of the 18 foot travel trailer.   This room had only one  item in it--an orange 16 inch metal cube, with a screened fan in the front and a one inch thick, heavy duty, insulated electrical cable snaking out of the  back and attached to the wall--it was an industrial-strength space heater.

            From the mudroom, we entered through the aluminum and louvered- glass door of the trailer into the tiny kitchen/dining room, complete with a small two by three foot formica topped table, sided by padded upholstered plastic booth-like seats on each side.  

    The tiny table jutted out from a window, which allowed us to admire the bleakly painted plywood back of the mill office as we dined.  Behind the left booth seat was the kitchen area, which included a tiny stovetop, oven, and refrigerator that Frank had told us didn’t work. 

    Along the “kitchen” wall were cabinets and the kitchen sink.  From the kitchen, a narrow passage/hallway led back to a bathroom and then the bedroom, which was basically just a bed with a cramped space that allowed one to walk along one side of its sides to the end of the bed.  There must have been a closet or chest of drawers somewhere also, but I can’t remember them.

    The tiny bathroom that was squeezed between the kitchen area and bedroom, featured a very small tub/shower, a sink, and an airplane-type toilet, featuring rubber flaps at the bottom of the toilet bowl.

        I don’t think we were too critical about our accommodations, it was small, but adequate, and besides it was all part of our northern adventure.  In fact, later when the camp bosses wanted to move us into a larger, but no more glamorous trailer, but we opted to stay where we were. As soon as we had stashed our luggage, we were out the door to explore our new world. 

My paintings can be seen at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: Arriving At The Isolated Mill Camp That Will Be Our Home

 What happened after our flight on the Beaver float Plane:

        On our side of the lake, within sight of the dock, half hidden among the trees, was a log cabin which was the home of the Wests, a First Nation family, partially represented on the pier by the two silent kids, who quietly watched our every move.

          The pilot opened the plane’s cargo door and removed our suitcases from the Beaver’s storage area on side of the plane, and laid them on the pier.  We picked them up then nervously waited, unsure of what we were supposed to do, or what was going to happen next.

    The Indian kids continued to stare at us, then the man in work gear and a jacket, introduced himself as "Frank," the camp boss.  He helped us with our luggage, as he directed us toward a dark muddy and battered pickup truck.  We put our luggage in the back of the pickup, then my wife and I opened the door of the cab, slid onto the seat, and Frank bounced us up the dirt road to the mill camp.  

    Frank snaked the truck up the slope and around the curves, weaving from one side of the road to the other to avoid the deep mud holes.  We were traveling through a canyon of trees, which totally obscured the view, except for the rutted bare dirt margins of the road.

    We could tell from the lack of weeds and bare earth along the sides of the dirt road that it was a fairly recent construction.  It had been sliced through a tall thick stand of mature timber, so all we could see in edge of the bare right-of-way, was a thick, living wall of gray tree trunks topped with the bushy green needles of their foliage, so thick that you couldn't see through it.   The naked dirt that lined each side of the road was accented with a chaos of  scattered junk logs, tree trunks, and root balls.

    After traveling the two miles up from Takla Lake, we entered a large flat dusty area which had been cleared out of the forest.  Around this clearing were clustered, in a seemingly random fashion, a hodgepodge of buildings--some wooden frame and the others portable aluminum ATCO buildings and trailers.  

          Beyond the small, one-story, wooden frame mill “office," stood scattered bunkhouses, cook sheds and kitchens and a large "portable," a double-wide trailer that served as the recreation center for the workers.  A couple of small frame houses and several regular mobile homes, housing for mill staff and a few families, lined the “thoroughfare” as it ran off in the distance giving a view of the mill.  It all looked raw, haphazard, and utilitarian, but this was to be our home for the next three years.

You can see my  paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Caution: Falling Objects (Spruce Cones)

     We have a very tall spruce tree standing less than a foot (30cm) from the edge of our roof.  We also have a metal roof.  Those two things together, result in a constant cacophony of noise each year at this time, when a squirrel, dangling high up in the tree, starts to harvest spruce cones for the winter.  The cones stream down from the tree and bang, as they bounce off our roof, throughout the day:  Bang...Bang...Bang.

    The banging started three days ago, and is still going strong.  There are plenty of cones yet on the tree to be harvested.

    The ground around that corner of the house and our shade deck are covered with cones, and the debris from cones as a result of the harvesting squirrel.  I will be happy when the critter has reached its cone quota. 

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Flight In A Beaver: Canada's Iconic Bush Plane

             In 1973, I had taken a job teaching in a one-room school located at an isolated mill in the middle of BC, that had no road access.  To get there, we booked a flight on a Beaver float plane.  The Beaver was the iconic plane of the Canadian North, that carried people and supplies between the towns in the South and the Northern Canadian wilderness.  Here is our experience on that first trip we made on a Beaver:

    We loaded our gear into the de Havilland Beaver bush plane, which was tied up at a dock on Stuart Lake.  Because it was a such a small plane, I sat right almost elbow to elbow, beside the pilot, while my wife settled into the backseat of the cramped little aircraft.  

            The plane was untied from the dock, the engine roared, and the Beaver slowly moved away from the pier.  Droplets of water streaked across the windshield, as the whirling propellor blurred in front of the pilot and I.  

    Once the plane was away from the dock and far enough out in the lake to take off, the pilot slowly began to accelerate, the thunder of the engine became louder and louder, and gradually the plane began to move forward at first slowly, then ever faster across the water, skimming along the surface of the lake, until we finally took to the air.

    Stuart Lake was soon behind us and we soared across miles of the unbroken horizon of trees, until ahead of us, the treed landscape was interrupted by Trembler Lake.  There were no towns or villages, I don't even recall seeing any cabins. sometimes I could catch a glimpse of a gash through the forests, made by the BC Rail line, as it wound along the low terrain at the edge of the lake or Middle River, extending itself northward.  

         Traveling above the canopy of the coniferous forest, the small plane was periodically nudged by the wind, but not to the extent that it caused any abdominal stress.

             The gray green carpet of trees stretched on and on ahead of us. Soon mountain slopes appeared on the distant horizon on my right, and then another mountain range appeared on the left, as  Takla Lake, BC’s fifth largest lake and one of its deepest, began to show itself, stretching out in front of us.  Takla Lake is 60 mile long, and easy to identify because it is long and skinny, and has a “Y’ shape. 

    I was sitting practically shoulder to shoulder beside the pilot in the tiny interior of the Beaver and I turned back to look at my wife who was snuggled in the rear seat between freight that the plane was also carrying.  

    We caught each other’s eyes and exchanged smiles then continued with our noses pressed against the side windows, scanning the wilderness below us. The pilot pointed out Takla Landing, a settlement along the lakes East  shore that was part of the Carrier Indian Reserve.

    The Silvacan Resources camp, which was where we were bound, was also located on the east shore, but 12 miles further north, nearer the top of the long arm of the lake, at a bay called Lovell Cove.  We could not see the mill or camp on the gentle slope above the lake because the plane was beginning its descent.

    After a flight of about 110 miles, the pilot began to slow the engine and the plane began to lower itself toward the rippled surface of the gray lake, as it prepared to land.  My wife and I had never flown in a small plane before, and certainly had never landed on water, so we didn’t really know what to expect as far as landing on a lake’s surface.  We were surprised at how smooth and uneventful the transition from air to water was, when it happened,.  As the plane skied across the lake's surface, to my right, I noticed a wooden dock jutting out from the shore.

    The pilot used the propeller to power the plane across the water toward the pier, where a man and couple of Indian kids were waiting to secure the plane to the wharf.  When the Beaver came to a stop and the propeller stopped spinning, we unbuckled our seat belts, opened the door and climbed out onto the dock.

    Once outside, we breathed in the clean air, looked down across the two miles of cold clear deep water of Takla Lake toward the far shore, and the distant mountains that rose above the lake.  We had arrived at the pristine wilderness country we had sought. 

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Jam Interrupted By A Sunset

    Last night the Jam was doing its usual Tuesday night playing on the porch of the McBride Train Station when one member of the audience walked over to the edge of the station and then drew everyone’s attention to the spectacular sunset that was going on behind the building.  At that point many of the audience, and a portion of the musicians, went over to see what was happening.  

    After half of our musicians absconded, I figured I might as well take a look to, so put down my mandolin, and joined the escapees at the edge of the building.  The sunset was striking and its colors intense.  Unfortunately I couldn’t capture all of the station and the sunset in one photo, but hopefully you will get an idea by the photo I did get.

    Once I got the group back to playing, we ended our session with a rousing version of “I’ll Fly Away”.

    Our summer days are noticeably shortening, and it won’t be long before the Jam will have to start playing in the Train Station lobby, because of the increasing darkness and cooler night temperatures outside. 

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca