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.  ''

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1974: Shocked By Students With Problems

                  While a majority of the students in our one-room school were pretty normal kids, there were a few with deep emotional problems that caused me frustration.  

           Working in an isolated mill was often a job of last resort for many of the workers.  A lot of those mill workers had problems that kept them from getting jobs in Williams Lake, so they signed on to work at the isolated fly-in Silvacan Resources Mill on Takla Lake.   Some of them moved their families to the camp and their kids were my students.  

            Some of my students in my school had come from fragmented and alcoholic families, and they had experienced some rough turbulent times, which had a negative affect on their personalities.  I was sometimes shocked by their violent outburst and explosive tempers.

        Victor, was one of those who had such problems.  Despite his smallish size, he could be a bully, and sometimes seethed with hate.  Once when I assigned the kids to write a paper with the theme:  “A Wish”, I was horrified to read Victor’s paper and discover that “his wish” was to see Shawn (one of his fellow students) dead.  I have often wondered how some of those kids ended up when they became adults.

        While I was constantly trying to get my students to enjoy the nature that surrounded them, by giving them the wildlife magazines I had subscribed to, and in our science classes, I was a constantly frustrated at catching them doing things like throwing rocks at the swallows who where trying to build nests in the birdhouse I built.

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Gum Boot Jogging

     Getting exercise is important at all ages, but certainly in my old age, it is something that I need to do and force myself to do daily.  Every morning, I do laps around my pond.  I jog on the level areas of the dam, then through the wooded area on the opposite side of the pond, I walk rapidly.  The total distance of my four laps amounts to a more than one kilometer, not a great distance, but enough to increase my heart rate, and breathing.

    There is one aspect of my jog/walk regime that differs from most other people doing similar exercises .  The main difference is my footwear.   Instead of fancy, expensive running shoes, I do my jogging in gum boots (also known as “Wellingtons” or “rubber boots”).  Wearing gum boots are not that comfortable, but the path around the pond has high grass, and is generally very wet from heavy dew in the mornings, and I don’t like to get running shoes and socks all damp and wet.

    Of course, I also don’t wear any fancy jogging clothes for my exercise, just jeans, a jacket, and a hat, because it is starting to be cool in the mornings.

    I’m sure all this sounds rather strange to all of those urban joggers, but it works alright in the rural setting where I live.  The photo below, show part of the path where I do the walking.

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1974: Floating On Cheztainya Lake

         In June, my wife was able to make a rare trip out of camp to Williams Lake on the mill’s DC-3 with our dog Vincent in the dog crate, because we needed to restock our supplies.  Four days later when she and the mill crew returned, she surprised me with a small yellow, inflatable boat, that we could use to paddle around in, out on the Little Lake (Cheztainya Lake).  

        The inflatable boat allowed us to expand our explorations of the still pristine areas around the Silvacan Resources Mill.  On our floats we saw loons, bear, and a caribou.  My wife was really surprised on one of our hikes to the lake, to see a hummingbird.  I didn’t really expect to see one way up in the northern middle of BC, and my wife, who had grown up in big city Germany, had never before seen a humming bird, and thought they only lived in South America.

    Since Spring was traditionally the season for Track and Field, I spent one of my Sundays  digging and then filling with sand, a pit that my students could use for broad jump.  I also built a standard for high jumping and used the sand pit for that too.  In our physical education class we started doing races, and some of the field events.  The kids really enjoyed doing all the track events, something many of them had ever experienced.   Watching them try the events made me happy that I had taken the trouble to make the sand pit.

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More Robson Valley Fall Colors

     I am still enjoying the yellows of the aspen and cottonwood trees in the Robson Valley.  The photo above was taken from the Hinkelman Road/Holmes River Bridge.  Below is a shot from our deck. We have to enjoy the colors while we can, because we have the winter months ahead of us, whose color palette is mostly made up of grays and whites.

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David Milne Loved Our Valley

 David Milne was one of my closest friends.

    David Milne's talented and generous life came to an end on Sept. 28th, when he succumbed to a rapidly advancing disease.  David's many friends and acquaintances were shocked and saddened by his sudden passing.

    David was born in England, and dedicated his life to Art.  He played a banjo in a skiffle band, and taught art in a university (one of his students was Trevor Jones),  before David moved to New York City to further advance his career as an artist.  There he found some success, even painting some large pieces for well known buildings, but he  quickly tired of the New York “Art Scene.”  With the advent of computers, David slowly evolved into a business doing desktop publishing.

    In 1967, David took a break from his artistic endeavors to travel into the wilds of BC in order to do some climbing on Mt. Robson.  Upon his arrival, David was so taken by the pristine beauty of the Robson Valley, that he longed to have a home here and  bought a small humble farm property on Hinkelman Road, which he purchased for $6,000.

    He continued to spend his winters working in New York City, but regularly returned to the Robson Valley for his summers, to live a rural life on his property.  During those summers, he quickly established friends in the Blackwater Coop, a ragtag group of counter-culture Back-to-the-Landers, who were able to buy food and supplies from the Coop, and share their labor amongst the group, building their houses and developing their homesteads.

    During his winters in NYC, he studied architectural magazines, dreaming and planning of the home he hoped to sometimes build on his Robson Valley property.  

            Twenty-five years ago, David and his wife Lyuba were in the Valley on 9-11 when the terrorist crashed planes into the Trade Center Towers.  David and Lyuba extended their stay in the Valley for weeks, to avoid the chaos happening in NYC.  When they did return, they found the interior of their Manhattan loft, coated with ash from 9-11.

    They also discovered that, as a result of the uncertainly and confusion caused by 9-11, the many jobs their desktop publishing business depended on, dried up.  They soon decided that the time had arrived for them to sell their loft, immigrate to Canada, and build David's dream home and studio in the Robson Valley.

    David spent his retirement pursuing his intense interests in plants (roses and succulents) with the dedication of a scientist.  He designed his dream home, which he had built, and experimented and developed the beautiful chemical glazes for Lyuba’s ceramics.  All the while, maintaining his lifelong love of the Arts and Music.

    Dave’s abundant friendliness and generosity spread easily through our small community and his parting leaves a hole in many local lives.

    Certainly, much appreciation is given to all of the staff of the McBride Hospital for the compassionate concern and the warm, thoughtful, personal care that was given to David during his ordeal.

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1974: No Time Off For The One-Room School Teacher

         Because my wife and I lived in the isolated fly-in mill camp (which we couldn’t really leave except for Christmas, Spring Break, and Summer Vacation) and my students also lived in the camp, every time they saw us, they came over to see what we were up to.  I guess you really couldn’t blame them for there was not much for them to do in camp.  There was no TV reception, only rare radio reception some times at night, no playground, or sports activities, so my wife and I pretty much became their source of entertainment.

    On the Canada’s Victoria Day holiday (middle of May), I got the day off from teaching, so after our lunch, my wife and I were taking a nap.  There was a knock on our trailer door, so  I got up and went to see who it was, I was some of my students, had run out of things to do on their day off, so they came over to the teacherage and wanted to do stuff with us.  I told them that we were going to take a nap for an hour, and that they could come back then.  

          I was sort of hoping that after an hour, the kids would have found something else to do and forget about us, but that was not to be.  They spent the whole hour sitting on our door step, waiting.  Obvious they were determined to do something with us, so after our nap, we went outside, and we and the kids hiked the half a mile to the Little Lake.  

        I had ordered a small little 8 inch mitre saw, from the beautifully photographed Lee Valley Tool Catalogue (porn for woodworkers) and I had a few other basic tools, so often in my free time, I kept myself busy woodworking.  The mill allowed me to use the scrap wood which was laying around the camp everywhere, and so as the weather became nicer outside, I would sit on the front steps and started on some woodworking projects. 

         I made a laminated cutting board (which we still use 50 years later), a birdhouse, a ladder, some “flats” for growing plants, and a dog carrying crate for Vincent our Pomeranian, that we could use when we could catch a flight out of camp,

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca