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. 

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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.

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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.

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