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

1975: Both Good News And Bad News For Our One-Room School

             Next day, upon our arrival back in camp, we were disappointed to discover that we still had no power in either the teacherage or in our new school building, forcing us to have another fondue set soup meal.  Fortunately, we were able to store the meat we had purchased in Williams Lake, in a neighbor’s freezer. 

    Luckily, on the following day, the electrons did began to flow through the wiring leading to our teacherage, and I we relished in a life with electric lights, hot water (in both hot and cold taps) and most importantly to my wife (and me, being a beneficiary), a functional stove and oven, that enabled us to feast on fresh bread and a roast for supper. 

    The following few days were taken up preparing for the coming start of school.  Even though our new school building still had no power, my wife and I organized the school supplies, cleaned the chairs and desks, numbered the books, and sorted them out for grade levels.  Then of course, spending hours planning and creating work for the various grade levels.

    I happened to come across the oldest Jack boy who was hanging around  camp, and he told me that his younger siblings, (my students) would not be attending our school that year, but instead would be going to Lejac, an Indian residential school on Fraser Lake.  He then added, “Having them go to school here, is too hard on my mother.” 

    This was distressing news, since our small one-room school really depended upon the several kids in the Jack family, for a big chunk of our student population.  It was always a constant worry of mine that we would run out of students, and the school would be closed.

    On a totally different topic, while was wandering through camp, I came upon a small marijuana plant growing wild in front of the “Indian” bunkhouse.  I could only assume that someone dropped a seed, and amazingly the seed germinated in the bare ground and flourished over the summer.  I don’t think anyone “planted” it, because it was growing right in front of the steps of the bunkhouse.

            Above is a photo of three of the Jack family kids, and Shawn, son of one of the families that had moved to live at the Silvacan Mill.  The photo below shows the Lejac Indian Residential School.  Many of those Catholic-run  residential schools have now been accused of various forms of terrible  abuse on their students.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1975: A Break From Having No Power In The Teacherage

             After three days in camp living with no power in the teacherage , the adventure was pretty much over, and we decided to take the “Water Taxi” to Fort St. James.  The Water Taxi was a covered boat that made bi-weekly trips back and forth between Takla Lake and Fort St. James, by traversing through the various connecting lakes and rivers.  A distance of about 135 miles.  

            Takla was the most beautiful lake.  The river south of Trembler Lake was rough with rocks and rapids, forcing the pilot of the boat to swerve back and forth the river to stay in the channel.

Once back in “The Fort,” we fired up the old Scout again and drove over to the Stuart River Campsite for a night in the tent.  Vincent, our dog who had slept during most of our river trip, by evening, had a double dose of energy which took a lot of our effort to calm down.

    Next day our drive to Vanderhoof to attend a School District meeting, was accented by Vincent barking at all the cows and horses he spotted along the side of the road.  The principal’s meeting that I attended was pretty irrelevant to my situation, but I was able to get some more school supplies, and quickly drove on south to William’s Lake so we could pick up our mail at P & T, the corporate owner of the Silvacan Resources camp, and make arrangements to fly in on the DC-3 the next day.  

            Later, while grocery shopping in WIlliams lake, we heard some hubbub in the store and the grocer yelling.  When we investigated, we discovered that Vincent, our small Pomeranian dog, had somehow managed to jump out of the window of our parked car and then entered the grocery store in search of us.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Personalizing Our Fully-Finished Mobile Home Teacherage

     That second year when we arrived at the Silvacan Camp with all our possessions, we had a new, fully furnished mobile home waiting for us to live in.  Having a new mobile home was certainly a big step up from the small 1950’s travel trailer we had lived in over the winter.  However, while really nice, the furnishings in the trailer, did not really match our tastes.  It had a trendy shag carpet, terribly ugly patterned wall paper, tacky velvety-looking furniture, and wood paneling, all of which were not exactly our favorite style for an interior living space.

    We did have all of the other furniture and items that we had brought with us.   Most of those things were antiques, old Navaho rugs, and other items that had caught my eye and purchased with my very meager salary, over my two years working at the Goodwill, so the interior of our teacherage, became a real hodgepodge of styles, but it became our home for the following two years, while I was teaching in the one-room school at the Silvacan Resources Mill.

    See if you can pick out the things that came with the mobile home, and the things that we immigrated to Canada with.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

The Long, Lonely, Drive To Prince George

     I had an appointment up in Prince George, so I had to drive the 220Kms (135 miles) from McBride to Prince George yesterday.  It is always a long ordeal to drive up there.  Yesterday was no exception.  In McBride it was raining when I started out, but by the time I had driven for an hour, the dramatic looking clouds had begun to break up, so I pulled over to take the photo above.  Once I got to Prince, the skies were clear.

    By 2:00 I had gotten everything done that I had to do, so I headed back home. There was still a bit of fall color on the thinning leaves of the cottonwood trees as I got back to the mountains around McBride, so I pulled over to take the photo below.

    I always find it interesting how much cooler it gets driving through those forested 135 miles between Prince George and McBride.  It was 11°C (52°F) in Prince George and I noted that the temperature had dropped to 7°C (45°F) as I drove the long curvy and hilly drive home.  When I got back home in McBride, I checked the outside temperature again, and found, like in Prince George, it was also 11°C.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: A New Teacherage And School Building

             Our first day back in camp was going to be a busy one, as we forced ourselves off of the shag-carpeted floor of the new mobile home that was to be our teacherage.  We were still groggy from a poor night’s attempt at sleep.  I borrowed a camp truck and towed our trailer full of our possessions, over to the new home and began to unload.          

            That afternoon, Shawn, Sharon, and Victor, three of my students who were in camp, came to peak into their new school and help me in the move all the new and old school supplies into our new brand new school building.  The new school, like the teacherage, had been moved to the camp and set up during our summer vacation and still didn’t have heat or power  hooked up.

    Without electricity, a lot of the excitement diminished as we unpacked  and arranged of our possessions in our new home.  My wife couldn’t cook, it was too dark to read, or listen to any of the music from on our record player or reel to real tape recorder that we had crossed the border with.  That evening our supper consisted of soup, which we heated on the fondue set that we had brought with us.

            The photo shows shows my wife at the door of our new teacherage.  Note all of the mud.  Our new school building was a doublewide trailer,  (I couldn’t find a photo of it).

My paintings can be seen at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Getting All Our Possessions Up To The Silvacan Resources Camp

              I have mentioned many times that the Silvacan Resources Mill, where our one-room school was located, was a fly-in camp with no road access.  There was however access by rail, but taking the BC Railroad was an extremely slow way to travel, taking about 10 hours from Fort St. James.  Not something that was very convenient.  

               The only way for us to get our utility trailer full of all our possessions was by that train.  I contacted BC Rail, and made arrangement for a flatbed train car to carry our utility trailer from Fort St. James up to the Silvacan Resources camp on Takla Lake.

            This being done, I drove over to the train yard, and had a flatbed rail car moved to the loading ramp, then carefully backed the trailer up onto the flatbed.  I then had the job of securing the trailer to the flatbed.  I did that using some metal cables which I had purchased.  I also blocked the wheels to prevent the utility trailer from rolling back and forth on its train ride.

            The train wasn’t scheduled to leave until the following day and we were paranoid about leaving all of our worldly possessions just sitting there unguarded, in the empty train yard overnight, so we decided that we would spend the night sleeping in the Scout, which I parked beside the flatbed train car holding  our trailer, to keep an eye on it.

                We spent a pretty miserable night trying to sleep in the car, while at the same time watching for nothing, and by the time the sun began to come up, we were both feeling horrible, but with the daylight, some railroad workers appeared, and so we felt we could safely drive into town for some breakfast and last minute preparations, before we returned to the railroad and climbed onto the BC Railroad passenger car on the train for our trip into camp.

                The train finally left at 1:00 in the afternoon.  We, and all of our possessions, gently and slowly rocked our way back and forth, as we spent time wondering what the new teacherage would be like, and thinking about all the school preparations that would need to be done for the upcoming school year.

               Traveling with us in the passenger car there were about 10 other people, mostly First Nation’s individuals who were making the trip, and after a bit of small talk, we settled in, lulled by the motion and click-clacking of the wheels on the track, nodded off and then suddenly jerking back to consciousness, for the next 10 hours, as forests, rivers, and lakes slowly slid passed the window.

            Upon arriving at camp in the dark at 11:00 at night, we hung around until we were sure that the flatbed carrying our trailer, was going to be transferred to the railroad siding, then we slowly headed to the camp office, where we got the keys to the new mobile home teacherage, we walked to it, and let ourselves in. 

                The mobile home had the water hooked up, but not the electricity or heat, and since our bed and bedding were still on our trailer, we just ended up sleeping on the green shag carpet on the living room floor, of our brand new home.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca