1976: Back To Our One-Room School, And The Weather Is Cold

             After our Christmas break when we returned to the isolated camp, our one-room school, and teacherage, winter was in full force.  The furnace in the teacherage was acting erratically, not the kind of thing you want to happen when the temperature outside was -35F Inside of the teachrage the temperature was also frigid making, it difficult for us to roll out of our warm bed.  Once I was dressed and my breakfast eaten, I crunched my way across the hard snow to the Camp Office to borrow the truck so I could pick up the two students that lived down on the lake shore, but the truck refused to start in the frigid temperature, so the two Jack girls stayed at home and missed school for the day.  

            During the day the camp electricity generator quit, leaving our school without heat or light, so I created an unscheduled physical education period.  The students and I bundled up, put on skates, and spent the afternoon outside skating, at the camp’s newly completed ice rink with the temperature at  -20° F.

            My wife and I had purchased an aquarium and some tropical fish during the Christmas break and since we had no radio or television reception in camp, we would spend a lot of time sitting in front of the aquarium, watching the fish swim back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

    I received word that Mr. Jack had gotten drunk and had taken an axe to the kitchen table, so Mrs. Jack was leaving, with Hannah and Madelaine.  I gathered up their school supplies and workbooks, so the two girls could take them along with them, but then as always, their plans changed and they were back.  It was somewhat gratifying as their teacher, to discover that the girls had actually worked ahead in their workbooks in their absence from school.

            My male students were continually busy doing the usual things to irritate their teacher.  Shawn sprayed me with rug cleaner, and so I punished him (and myself) by making him stay after school for detention.  Victor “borrowed” and lost the school snow shovel, so I had to then borrow one from the camp.

            Below, our aquarium room.  How about those trendy 1970‘s curtains!

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1975: Halloween And A Sad End To Our Christmas Trip

             As a teacher, I always enjoyed priming my students for upcoming holidays, especially things like Halloween which became the subject of many of our art classes. Halloween had never been a part of the First Nation Jack family’s traditions, but Madelaine and Hannah were quick to adopt it.   In our art class we drew spooky pictures, talked about costumes, masks, and trick or treating.  We had the camp fly in some pumpkins and we carved a jack-o-lantern in school.  

    We planned to have a Halloween party at school on Halloween night.  I made arrangements with the camp to borrow a pickup so I could drive down to the Jack family cabin to pick up Madelaine and Hannah, so they could trick or treat in camp.  When I got down to their cabin, I found that no one was at home.  I drove back to camp discouraged, only to discover that the two Jack girls were already in camp with their bags full of treats.

    The winter was soon upon us.  The camp put a crew to work building a lighted outdoor hockey rink.  This was a certainly a welcome site, since there wasn’t much of anything for the kids in camp to do during those cold dark winter nights.

    My wife and I were eagerly awaiting the Christmas vacation.  I had been in camp since school began in September, and was looking forward to getting out into the world again and flying to Indiana to visit family and friends.  The trip however turned sour for us when we went to visit relatives at their house.  While there, Vincent our Pomeranian dog rushed out of an opening door onto a busy street, and was hit by a car and killed.  It left us devastated.

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1975: Teacher Job; Bussing and Babysitting

          I didn’t really mind my new job as “school bus driver” because it gave me a chance to view Takla Lake in the changing seasons and light.  The job was not without its problems though.  One afternoon I drove Madelaine and Hannah back home after school, but when we got down to their cabin, we found that the rest of their family were gone, so I drove them back to camp to wait.  Although I let them off at the camp office, the two girls were soon knocking on our door and ended up over at our teacherage.  

        To help them pass time, I began to read to them some stories, but soon there were some more knocks on our door and most of my other students had come over to join Madelaine and Hannah in our living room.  It didn’t take me long to suggested we all go outside and play some games. 

        On one of my daily school day trips down to the Jack’s house to pick Madelaine and Hannah, the company truck blew out a tire, and the two first graders and I had to walk all the way back up to camp before I could start the school day.

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1975: The Jack Girls Back And We Need A Vet

             During the first week of October, I got word from Camp Boss Frank that Madelaine and Hannah Jack would be coming back to our school after all, but I would have to be the “school bus driver”, and start picking the two girls up before school, and take them home after school.  I was allowed to use one of the mill’s trucks to do it, since I had no vehicle in camp.  I was happy to have Madelaine and Hannah back in our school, even though it meant losing some of my free time.

    I found it interesting to see the difference in Madelaine and Hannah, my two new first graders.  Hannah was quiet, shy, and inattentive, while Madelaine was a ball of fire that couldn't be held back.

    One day we had an unexpected science class, when one of my students brought a moose brain to school to show the class.

      It didn’t take long after the school year began, before I again found myself getting very  bogged down with the my workload; daily creating the numerous work sheets I needed for the various grades, all of which I had to make from scratch, and then spending hours at night grading the work I had my students do.

    Life in camp was full of unexpected problems.  Because of the camp’s  isolation, dealing with many of what in normal places would be easy, became very problematic and complicated when there were no means of getting out to civilization.  

            One night we let our dog Vincent outside for a while and when he came in, we discovered that his eyelid was torn.  We needed a vet to deal with it, but since it was a weekend, and there were no flights in or out of camp, there was little we could do about it. 

    When Monday finally came, my wife and the dog (in the wooden carrying crate I had made) caught the mill’s DC-3 to Williams Lake, so she could take Vincent to the vet to deal with his eye wound.  

            With the eyelid stitched up, my wife planned to catch the DC-3 back to camp on Wednesday, but due to bad weather, the DC3 couldn’t make the flight.  The plane was able to return to camp on Thursday, but it carried only freight for the mill, so my wife and Vincent weren’t able to get on it.

    On Friday, I woke up to the worse fog I had ever seen in camp.  It worried me that if my wife couldn’t fly in that day, she wouldn’t be able to get another chance until Monday, but luckily, the fog burned away, and the DC-3 carrying my wife and Vincent, landed in the afternoon.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1975: A Playground For Our School

      On Sunday, I walked the two miles down to the Takla Lake shore to talk to the Jack family.   I needed to confirm that their kids had indeed gone to the Lejac Residential School.  To my surprise, when I arrived at their cabin, I found the children still there, and I told the the parents that the law said that the kids had to go to school somewhere.  They urged me to talk to Frank the Camp boss about giving the father a job in the Camp.  I told them I would  do what I could.

            That afternoon I borrowed Shawn’s father’s pickup truck and my wife and I drove it down to a sandy area on the Takla Lake shoreline to get some sand.  I needed the sand for the sandbox I had built the day before for the school playground.   I spent an hour shoveling the heavy sand into the box of the pickup with the shovel I had borrowed from the mill.

    School was soon sliding into its familiar routine, and so were the evenings, with all of the planning and coordinating to keep all of the various grades busy during the next day.  Frank had come through with the wood and pipe that I had requested for use in building playground equipment for our school. 

             I spent a good bit of my free time during the weekends, digging holes constructing monkey bar turning poles and a pipe for tetherball.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1975: Our One-Room School. Where is Everybody?

      I would always go to the school at 7:30 in order to do some planning and make the final preparations for the classwork for the different grades.  At the time the school had one first grader, several second graders, and two forth graders to prepare for.  I had to type out worksheets making carbon paper copies in those days before I got a mimeograph machine that would allow me to run off multiple copies from a stencil.   Once it was 8:00 and time to start school, I would open the door and let the kids in.

    On Monday of the second week of school, I was surprised when I opened the door to find I had only one student—Darwin, my first grader.  I found out that the rest of my students had all gone down to Takla Landing, the First Nations settlement, to see the visiting dentist.  It would have been nice if someone had let me know.

    Just having Darwin by himself really did do him a lot of good, because I was able to dedicate the whole day to working just with him.  The day was also memorable because the camp electricians, finally came and hooked up both the power and furnace for the school.

    I had three more dental defections on Wednesday of that week, and was told that on Friday, everyone except Darwin would again go down to Takla Landing to see the dentist.  Fortunately, I was diligent and planned work for the all the grades anyway.  It was a good thing I did, because on “Dentist Day” a dense fog formed over Takla Lake which prevented the kids from traveling to Takla Landing, so I had my whole contingent in school.

            Above is a photo of Darwin.  Below shows part of Takla Landing.

1975: Our One-Room School Opens With No Power

         Tuesday, September 3rd, was the first day of school and the first day of us using our new school building; it was somewhat less than auspicious.  The Silvacan Resources Mill had not yet hooked up electricity to the school building, so the only light we had in the interior of the school came from the small narrow windows which were only on one side of the room.  They didn’t provide much outside light to come in.               

        I had only 3 students, and my wife had only one kindergartner.  Frank the camp boss told me that more students would be coming to the camp by the end of the week, which would raise our total count of students to six.  Fortunately, that first day of school was only a few hours long.

        The additional students did show up on the following day, but unfortunately we had to operate for the rest of the week without power or heat in the building.  Because the few existing windows were all on one side of the building, everyone had to move their desks close to the windows, in an effort to receive enough light to enable them read and do their work.

          Toward the end of the week, the night temperatures dipped to a chilly 30 F (-1 C), so we found our new classroom pretty nippy in the mornings when we arrived for school.  

        There was no playground equipment in camp and so in my free time, I drew up some plans for a small playground behind the school building and then approached Frank, to see if the Mill could provide some materials so I could build some playground equipment.  He promised to get me the things I needed.

        I could find no photos of the front of our school building, but this shot shows the back of the school with the tetherball, monkey bars, and sandbox that I did build for the kids.

You can see my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca