Tiny McBride is the Largest Place We've Lived, in Canada

    When we tell city folk that we live in the Village of McBride, they often wonder how we survive in such a tiny place.  I then surprise them by saying that McBride is actually the biggest place we have lived in, since immigrating to Canada.  

    We were able to immigrate in 1973, because I had taken a job teaching in a one-room school located in the wilderness of Central British Columbia.  The school was in a lumber mill and there were no roads into the camp, it was only accessible by plane, a very slow train, or the “water taxi”.   There were just a few families that lived in the camp, most of the workers flew in and out on a DC3 plane that the mill owned.

    The Silvacan Camp was the first place we lived in Canada. The photo above shows the Silvacan Camp in the lower right.  We lived there for 3 years.  There was no television reception, and only rare radio reception on some nights.  For the first year and a half, there was no store in the camp.  Because of the school schedule, we were only able to leave the camp at Christmas, Spring Break, and Summer Vacation (other than medical emergencies).  

    That first year I had no school building and had to I teach in the camp’s recreation building with it’s pool table and coke machine.  That yellowish building in the photo below was our new school building, which was moved in during my second year.

    The photo at the bottom shows the camp during our second year.  The plywood building on the right is the camp “store” that enabled us to buy some groceries.  During our first year we ate at the camp’s dining trailer.

    Tomorrow, I will show you the second place where we lived in Canada

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca