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.

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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

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