Snow, cold, short days, and being bogged down at night planning and typing out for work with carbon paper, that would keep all the grades busy in my one-room school, was slowly wearing us down. In the remote camp there was no TV reception, no phones, and only rarely at night, could we pick up a radio station (CBC), fortunately, the Silvacan Resources Mill Camp did show usually poor, second-rate movies in the Rec Hall twice a week. Nevertheless, unable to leave camp for three months because of flight schedules (there were no roads out to civilization), my wife and I were beginning to suffer from “cabin fever” (being isolated and stuck in one place over a long period, usually winter).
When March and our Spring break finally arrived, we were eager to leave camp and visit the outside world. We took the “Sched” (the regular scheduled small plane that landed on the now frozen Takla Lake) to a Fort St. James, where we had left our truck in the fall at the Northern Thunderbird Airline’s parking area.
We found the truck buried in snow, with a foot and a half of hard snow on its hood and much more snow engulfing the vehicle. The good folks at Northern Thunderbird Air, loaned me a shovel to dig the truck out, which I finally managed to do, but in my enthusiasm to clear the snow from the hood of the truck, I accidentally snapped the radio antenna off with the shovel.
Digging our Scout out of the snow was only the first of many problems we had to deal with before we could enjoy our Spring Break. I couldn't get the truck started, and ended up having to get it towed to a garage where I had to buy a new battery.
Because we had driven up to Canada in the fall, parking the Scout in Fort St. James when we flew into Camp, then not returning there on our Christmas Break, the truck just sat there all winter. On our Christmas Break we flew back to Indiana, and upon our return to Canada, we became Landed Immigrants, so we had a few legal thing to do during our spring break.
I needed to register the vehicle in BC and get a British Columbia driver's license, however, neither of those things could be done in the small village of Fort St. James, so nervously, I made an illegal drive of 100 miles to the big city of Prince George. I was paranoid the whole way, afraid that I would be stopped by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). It didn't help my paranoia that the Scout's muffler fell off along the way, but we made it to PG, got the government paper work completed, and finally began with more enjoyable pursuits.
View my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca