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.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

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.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

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

1974: Some Aboriginal Troubles

             The Jacks, the Indigenous family that lived down on the shore of Takla Lake (photo) and whose kids made up about half of our one-room school’s population, were a constant source of both interesting stories and frustration.  Ralph, my third grader skipped school one afternoon, and was caught breaking into a nearby forest ranger cabin.

    The Jack girls developed impetigo, so I had to tell their mother not to send them to school until they had seen a doctor and were cured.  When I talked to their mother, her  face was all purple and bruised from being beaten up by her sister.  

            While the West family caused me some irritation, it was Hazel, a Native woman who lived in Camp with her husband and family, that caused me the most grief.  Hazel, who had a job cleaning up the bunk houses, was the camp gossip that really created  trouble on several fronts.  Her son Darwin was in my wife’s kindergarten class and he was a nice kid, but periodically, Darwin’s older brother Jackie, came to camp to live, then disappeared, then returned again.  

             Jackie was in my seventh grade when he was around, and he was a bully to the smaller children, causing me constant trouble.  His attendance was very irregular, and later he and Rene, Shawn’s older brother, who was high school age and not in our school, was double trouble when he and Jackie were together.  Eventually, the two were caught stealing from the bunkhouses, the cook sheds, and some Indian cabins, so they were asked to leave camp.

    One day Frank the Mill Boss, asked to talk to me, and informed me that it was going around camp that I was a convicted dope pusher.  This was, of course,  news to me, and Frank said he didn’t believe it for a minute, but thought I ought to know.

    I was pretty sure that it was Hazel who was probably the creative author of the rumor,  but I just let the whole thing slide.  It was discouraging though, any one that knew me, also knew how straight I was.  I didn’t even drink alcohol or coffee, let alone, take or sell drugs.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Silvacan Camp Water Problems

         Over the April 6th, Easter weekend, as the winter’s snow began to melt, the camp’s water, which was taken directly from a nearby creek, turned brown and began to smell.   So I sought out a new source for water.  I figured that we could get clean, fresh water from the still frozen-over, Little Lake.  My wife, our Pomeranian dog Vincent, and I planned an excursion to the pristine lake, taking with us a borrowed ax and a container for some water. 

        The lake was still covered with snow and ice, (photo below) and I thought I could just chop through the ice to get some water.  Chips of ice flew in all directions as I hacked away at the ice with the  ax.  It was hard work, I had to make the hole wider and wider as I chopped deeper and deeper into the ice. 

        I chopped down about twenty inches and never broke through the ice to water, so finally, with a new appreciation of the severity of Canadian winters, I accepted the fact that getting water by chopping through the Little Lake ice was a futile mission.  

        Luckily, we were able fill our containers down at Takla Lake, using the hole in the ice that the Jack family maintained throughout the winter for their water.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca