The Future Was A Total Blank

     One’s future is always full of curve balls, and you never really know what’s going to happen.  All during my childhood, I had pretty broad-brush ideas about my future, although the specifics were never clear.  I would go to elementary school, I would go to high school, and I would go to university. 

    Once I was in university, I was supposed to have had some idea of what I wanted to do with my life, so I could choose a major in that field and learn about how to do it.  Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t really come up with a career that I wanted to spend my life doing, and I began to question what I was doing in college.  (The photo above shows me in “Marat Sade”, one of the dramas I was in during my university years.  That’s me as one of the lunatics in the asylum, standing in the very center-front.)

     The idea of dropping out of university was really not in the cards because of the Vietnam War that was going on at the time, and that war was something I was morally against.  I had followed the news religiously and knew the history of the conflict, despite what the political propaganda explanations were.   I had a bumper sticker on my car which said, “How many Vietnamese Fought in Our Civil War?” 

    If I dropped out of university, I would lose my Selective Service deferment and would be drafted into the military, a place I would not go.  I would go to prison first.  

    My mother suggested that I “major in education, you can always get a teaching job.”  I didn’t know what else to major in, so I took her advise and majored in education.   I figured I might like to become an elementary school teacher.   Looking back, education was a good choice, not because I had a career in teaching, but because it opened some doors to me, later allowing me to immigrate to Canada.

    Anyway, I didn’t particularly want to get a teaching job immediately after graduating, even though that would give me another draft deferment.  I wanted some kind of adventure in my life, not just settling down into a humdrum teaching job in the community I grew up in.  I wracked my brain trying to come up with a solution that offered both a military deferment, and at the same time, give me some kind of adventure.   

    The solution I came up with was joining the Peace Corps.  I sent in an application and filled out all of the forms, and in March of 1969, just months before I graduated, I was accepted into the Peace Corps.  I was assigned to a program in the Philippines, for elementary science teachers.  I was very excited to learn that our two and a half month Peace Corps Training, would take place in Hawaii.  It looked like I had an inkling of what the next few years of my life would be, but I didn’t see the curve ball.

More tomorrow.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

    

The Whole Basketball Team Dead

  One day in 1992, I was drawing maps at my draughting table at our Forestry office, listening to CBC radio when breaking news interrupted the regular program.  It said that in Evansville, Indiana, a plane crashed into a nearby motel during takeoff, killing 16.   That is the airport we always used when traveling to Evansville.  

The report instantly reminded me of a similar crash that happened in 1977 when a plane carrying members of the University of Evansville basketball team crashed after taking off at the Evansville Regional Airport.  The coach and all of the traveling basketball players on the team were killed. 

    Only one member of that basketball team remained alive, because he had not been on the plane.  His name was David Furr and he had not gone with the team because of an ankle injury.  In a bizarre  twist of fate, David was killed two weeks later in an automobile accident.

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Oh Jeez, Is That Kjell's Cat?

    The winter of 1991-92 was an unusually warm one.  It was so warm and had given us so little snow, that by February 27th, I was able to start riding my bike to work, much earlier than on other years.  One day as I was biking home from work, I noticed that just beyond our driveway there was what looked like,  the remains of a furry roadkill.  

    “Oh Jeez,” I thought, “I bet that was one of our neighbor Kjell’s cat.”  I biked on past our driveway so I could take the body of the poor cat off of the road and down to Kjell’s house.  

    When I got closer to the corpse, I discovered that it wasn’t Kjell’s cat, but a skunk.

    It didn’t smell much, so I carefully picked the body up and carried it over to the to the opposite side of the road and up the slope a bit, where I laid it down, so some other critter could eat it.   I turned the bike around and went home.  

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca
 

The Golden Spruce: I Met the Guy That Destroyed It

    Here is a blog that I posted in 2013, it concerns something I still think about today.

       I have a horrible memory when it comes to remembering people’s names.  Half a second after being introduced to someone, I am standing there trying to remember what their name is.  I find it very interesting therefore, that I remembered the name of a person who came into the forestry office in 1987 to get some maps.

        I was the guy who was in charge of maps.  Whenever someone wanted maps of the area around McBride, it was usually me they came to see.  I can’t remember what maps this 39 year old man wanted, I don’t really remember very much about the encounter.

        He was doing some kind of work for the local mill, probably logging road layout or timber cruising.  I must have talked to him for a while about other things too, and there must have been something I found interesting about that forgotten conversation, because even though I never met him again, 10 years after this brief meeting I still remembered his name:  It was Grant Hadwin.

        At that time, growing on the shore beside a big river on Haida Gwaii (formally known as Queen Charlotte Island) which is off the wild BC Pacific coastline, there grew a big Sitka spruce tree.  It was 300 years old and 50 meters tall.  That is not unusually huge for the area, but unlike other Sitka spruce trees, this one had golden colored needles.  Even though it had this mutation, which should have been fatal, it seemed to thrive.  Because it stood out, against the sea of green trees, it became something of great spiritual importance to the Haida people, it also became a mascot for the local town, and MacBlo, (a giant forest company), even created a bit of a reserve around it, as they clearcut most of the other forests around the area.

        Even though I was totally unaware of the “Golden Spruce” tree, I and most of the people in BC, were shocked on Jan, 22, 1997 to hear the news that someone had swam across the river in the middle of the night with a chainsaw and cut down the Golden Spruce.  I was even more disturbed later when I heard that the RCMP had charged someone named Grant Hadwin with the deed.

        I often wondered if it was the same Grant Hadwin I had met in our forestry office, but I wasn’t able to find out at the time.  Much later I was talking to Naomi, our librarian, and she mentioned that the McBride man who had been in charge of our local lumber mill had been interviewed by John Vailant, the author of the book, “The Golden Spruce.”  This of course, really spurred my curiosity and that night I downloaded the book from the library onto my iPad and began reading.

       Here is what I learned from reading the book:

         It was the same Grant Hadwin.  He had become very disillusioned with all of the logging that was eradicating BC of its old growth forests, especially on the coast of BC.  Hadwin had almost superman abilities when it came to his physical abilities, he was talented in doing layout work for forest companies, and possessed unusual toughness when it came to living out in the wilderness.

        He had taken a road layout job for the McBride lumber mill, and the mill was very pleased with his work.  

            He then took 10 days off, went up to camp out on a mountain near McBride, and when he came down he was changed.  On the mountain, he had some kind of mystic experience, his former ecological “sins” caused by working for the forest industry were forgiven, and he was “chosen” by the “creator of all life” to show humanity the error of their ways.

        When he returned to work, there was something spooky about his eyes, and when he told the mill manager that what they were doing was wrong; he was let go, and disappeared from the Robson Valley, but it seems that maybe something had been planted in his head while on the local mountain, that set him off in a direction that would forever link his name with infamy and mystery.

        One night in the darkness, Grant Hadwin swam across the river that separated the Golden Spruce from the nearby town, towing a chainsaw.  He cut down the Golden Spruce as a protest to the logging company.  It was a stupid and misguided thing to do because it made everyone hate him. He was arrested and charged.

    When his court case came up, he decided he was going to kayak the 100 kms across the strait to Haida Gwaii for his hearing, but he never arrived, and no one is quite sure if he is dead or alive.

        “The Golden Spruce” is a very interesting read, and is full of facts about BC’s coast and Grant’s unusual life.  I found its references to McBride of special interest, of course, but it was also full of facts  about BC’s history, biology, and its forest industry.

        I read through my 1987 diary to see if I had written down anything about Grant Hadwin, but  I found nothing.  I sure wish I could remember what we had talked about.  Like him, I held the same feelings about the greedy forest industry, and assume that it was that common ground which we discussed, but I don’t honestly remember.

    Cutting down the Golden Spruce was both sad and maddening.  He  alienated environmentalist, logging companies, natives, and most of BC by his act of needlessly destroying a unique part of the natural world, in his failed attempt to show the hypocrisy of the forest industry which saved one special tree for publicity, while wiping out whole mountainsides and valleys of others.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca
 

Meeting a Wild Timber Wolf

    One Sunday afternoon in the first week of January, 1992, I had a memorable wildlife encounter.  I had hiked up the mountain slope across the road from our house to the rock bluffs.  There was very little snow on the ground, so I didn’t need snowshoes.  As I climbed up the slope I happened upon three deer that scrambled away, so that seemed like my hike was already worthwhile, and I continued with my climb not expecting to see any more wildlife.

    When I got to the edge of the forest, at the foot of the rock slide which is scattered beneath the bluffs, I was astounded to see, calmly laying upon the snow-covered moss on the top of a kitchen table-sized boulder, a black timber wolf.  It looked like a black German Shepherd dog.  It was about 25 meters away.  I stood there amazed, frozen, and stunned at seeing the wild predator.  It got up from its prone resting position, and stretched, while never taking its yellow eyes off of me.

    Neither of us panicked, we just stood frozen, staring at each other for probably five minutes.  Then, not wanting to engage or appear threatening to the wolf, I slowly began to back away from it.  I did finally turn my back on the wolf and began slowly hiking back down the hill, but not without periodically taking a cautionary glance behind me.

    It was an unforgettable first encounter I had with a timber wolf, an animal I had never seen before in the wild, although I knew they were around.  I was thrilled at my unexpected meeting of one of the legendary northern wild predators on the slope just across the road from our house.

        Timber wolves are rarely seen, and sadly I didn’t have my camera along when I met the timber wolf.  I took the photo above decades later, when I saw this wolf in the snow, down by the river.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

How the Sinking of the Titanic Effected the Robson Valley

    When one hears about the sinking of the Titanic, their thoughts mostly concern the horrific loss of life and the trauma of those that were lucky enough to be rescued, but with something as monumental as the Titanic’s sinking, there can be ripples of effects that can reach some unexpected places.  After the sinking, one of those ripples reached the Robson Valley.

    At the time, in 1912, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was constructing a rail line across Canada.  One of the ways railways made their money was by constructing big fancy hotels in beautiful places, to entice people to buy railway tickets to travel to those exotic hotels.  Examples of those exquisite hotels in Western Canada include The Banff Springs Hotel in Banff National Park and the Jasper Park Lodge in Jasper National Park.  

    The Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad, as it constructed its way across Western Canada, also planned to build a big fancy tourist hotel at the foot of Mt. Robson, the spectacular, highest mountain peak in the Canadian Rockies.  Such a destination hotel would have totally changed the future economic base of the Robson Valley and put it on the tourist map, however the Hotel Mount Robson was never built.

    The President of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was a man named Charles Melville Hays.  Unfortunately, Mr. Hays booked a ticket on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, and went down with the ship.  His loss threw a wrench into the Grand Trunk Pacific’s plans.  The company managed to finish the railway from Eastern Canada, passing through the Robson Valley all the way to Prince Rupert, BC on the Pacific Coast, however monetary problems caused them to scrap the building of Hotel Mount Robson.  

    Places like Banff and Jasper (before this summer’s fire) became very popular tourist destinations, but Mt. Robson, while extraordinarily beautiful, pretty much stayed off of the tourist radar.  One can only imagine how the future of the Robson Valley might have changed, if it hadn’t been for an iceberg floating out in the faraway Atlantic Ocean.

You can take a look at my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

It's Beginning to Feel Like Autumn

     It’s been very hot (and dry) all summer.  Usually by the time September rolls around we have started to feel a bit of a nip in the air, and last night it began.  This morning when we woke up our thermometer read 1°C (34°F) and when walking Kona, I noticed there was frost on a few plants.  

    After months and months of higher than normal heat, this dip in temperature felt like a shock, but our normal nighttime low for this date is -3°C (27°F), so in reality, even last night’s drop in temperature was still warmer than what is normal.  What we really need is rain, and hopefully the showers forecast for this weekend will actually materialize and lessen our moisture deficit.  My pond is about a foot (30cm) lower than it should be.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Swordplay in the Park

    Yesterday was the Robson Valley Art & Culture Council’s “Maker Faire” at  the Koeneman Park.  I was expecting to see many of the craft demonstrations that I had seen before, like knitting, spinning, quilting, and instrument making, but I was surprised when I came upon a couple of tables displaying swords and armor.   I knew Randy Packer from our library’s writing group (he has written some novels), but I had no clue he was into all of the medieval armor, swords, and related paraphernalia.  

    It seems he has been studying it for years.  He has learned to construct many of the objects in his collection.  I had noticed an area in the park that was ribboned off, but didn’t know why until Randy and his kilted friend, walked the group over to it, to demonstrate a sword fight.  Before the slashing sabers began demonstrating a duel, he cautioned the onlookers giving us warnings about the dangers and warned everyone to stand back.

    Even though I have often said it before, I will say it again:  I am always surprised at the amazing, unusual, and varied talent we have in our little isolated community.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Every Breath You Take

    So here we go again.

    I stepped outside this morning and smelled the smoke.  Our mountains had disappeared from view, somewhere behind the hazy blanket of forest fire smoke that filled the air.  Fortunately for us, the smoke emanates not from a forest fire close to us, but from a distant one probably hundreds of miles away, but we still get to breathe the smoke, and our bodies will continue to be degraded for breathing in its tiny harmful particles.

    The forests of British Columbia continue to burn, luckily, not in the three hundreds as earlier in the summer, but there are still forest fires out there, and people are still having to evacuate their homes because of them.   It has now become something that happens every summer, but it is not something that is easy to get used to.

    Big Oil and their already wealthy investors, still talk the “Green” talk, while increasing production and quietly investing in messages “pooh-poohing” their effects on climate change.  Most people continue to live their lives ignoring science, as the environment becomes worse and worse.  It is horrifying to realize that all of the increasing environmental problems that are occurring today, won’t disappear, but will become increasingly worse every year of the future.

    Sorry, I’ll get off of my soapbox, but I am fearing and hating what is happening to Mother Earth.

 Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Phone Numbers

    One of the most important bits of information tied to our lives is our phone number.  As a young child, it was the most vital thing you needed to know, next to knowing your name. 

    Young people today, probably wonder why letters appear with the numbers on the phone.  Back when I was a kid, letters were part of our phone number.  At that time, my home phone number was something like “PL-75555”, then later, the phone company eliminated the letters, and just used the number associated with the letters, then divided the digits into a 3-4 format, and our phone number became “757-5555”.

    In 1977, when we moved to McBride, it was the smallest “Village” in BC.  Because it was so small, if you wanted to make a local telephone call, you only needed to dial 4 numbers.  Even though most of North America had “push-button” phones at the time, residents of McBride were still using the old technology and could only use rotary dial phones.  It sometimes became a problem when you made a call to civilization and got a recorded message telling you to “press ‘1’ for this” and “press ‘2’ for that”.  Our phones wouldn’t allow us to “press” any number because they didn’t use a tone.

    Despite all the wear and tear on the old index finger caused by using the rotary dial, it was much easier to make a call back then.  Later, civilization came to McBride and the phone company made us dial 7 digits to make a local call.

    Time passed and even though McBride didn’t get any bigger, (in fact, it’s population had shrunk) the telephone company made our lives even more complex.  They changed the system so every time we wanted to make a local call, we are forced to also use the area code.  That meant we end up having to dial 9 digits:  (555) 555-5555, just to call someone next door.  Making phone a call had become a real pain.  Of course, now with cell phones, you can just tell Siri to “dial” the number for you.

    While I am on the subject of phone numbers, I thought I would mention some trivia about area codes.  Way back when they were being developed, everyone had rotary dial phones.  The designers of area codes, tried to create area codes using number found at the beginning of the dial, because that used up less dialing time, than using numbers toward the end of the dial, and if you consider how many phones there were in North America and the total amount of time it would take for all that dialing, it probably made a lot of sense.  Of course, now with buttons that make tones, it doesn’t really matter what numbers are used in area codes since all punching any number uses up the same amount of time.

    As I touched on earlier, here in North America we use a 3-4 number format.  That is because it was found that the 3-4 format phone numbers were easier for North Americans to remember.  It is easier for us to remember a group of 3 numbers, followed by a group of 4 numbers, than it is to remember a sequence of 7 numbers all in a row. 

     If someone asks you for your phone number, and you want to mess with their heads, you can always give them your number in a 4-3 format or a 5-2 format.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Disappearing Sunlight

     Now that it is September, it is really starting to be apparent that the days are getting shorter.  The photo shows the sun dipping behind the mountains at 7:15 yesterday.  Usually if the weather is nice our jam plays outside on the Train Station porch, but on Tuesday, the weather was very nice, but we played inside in the Station Lobby because with our shortening days, if we played outside, we would have to cut our playing time short, because of darkness.  A couple of months ago, I could watch the sunset when I drove home from the Jam, now it is dark.

    It is only during this time of year and during a period in the spring, that from our house, we can see the sun setting behind the mountains.  In peak summer, the sun sets way to the right of this photo, and not behind the mountains, but at the end of the valley.  During the winter, the sun stays low on the eastern horizon and for us, and the sunset is totally obscured by trees.

    Living where we do in the “North,” we become very attuned to the changes in the seasons.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

That Root Cellar Wasn't A Prize

    Back in 1977, we had saved a lot of money from teaching in remote one, and two-room schools, but we didn’t have a home of our own in Canada.  After quitting that last teaching job, we decided to look around for a place to buy, settle into a community we liked, hoping that I could find a job there and that things would work out for us.

    We were in to the whole “Back to the Land” movement, and bought a five acre “hobby farm” in McBride.  The property gave us a house, a barn, a garage, a wonderful garden, a greenhouse, and a root cellar.  We were quite happy that our new property included a root cellar; a place where we could store the carrots, potatoes, and other produce that we would grow in our garden.

    Unfortunately, the enthusiasm we had for possessing a root cellar, was premature.  It wasn’t the prize we had thought.  Most root cellars are dug under the insulating ground, where the soil kept the produce cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  Unfortunately, ours was built above ground which made it pretty ugly looking, like a giant weed-covered loaf of bread, and it was not as well insulated as those built underground. 

    It had other problems too.  Here is a story I gleaned from my November, 1991 diary entries:

        I went into our root cellar to get get some potatoes.  I had always liked the fact that we had a root cellar but over time, I saw that it wasn’t much of a benefit.  Shaped like a big loaf of bread covered with soil and weeds that were difficult to cut, it was ugly.  The door was always difficult to open, and during the winter it became even more difficult because blowing snow drifts built up in front of the door, so every time I needed to get any of our produce out of the root cellar,  I had to first, shovel away the pile of snow.  

    On this particular day, seeking some potatoes, I discovered that the dirt floor of the root cellar was flooded.  The burlap bags of our potatoes, were sitting there like islands, in a foot (30cm) of water.   I was flummoxed about what to do with the potatoes, since we had nowhere else to store them, so I just left their bags in the water after I had gotten enough potatoes to keep us for a few weeks.  

    About a month later, when I once again went into the root cellar to restock our supply of potatoes for in the house, the bags of potatoes were still sitting in a foot of water, and I knew I had better do something before the potatoes began to rot, so after I managed to lug the two wet bags of potatoes out of the root cellar, I stored them in the crawlspace under the house.  The crawl space didn’t stay as cool as the root cellar, but it at least, kept the potatoes from freezing (and flooding).

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

A White-Knuckle November Drive From Banff

      In 1991, we decided to spend the Remembrance Day long weekend visiting Jim and Abbie in Banff.  On Monday, November 11th, we needed to drive back to McBride to be ready for work on Tuesday.  It was lightly snowing in Banff when we headed out, but the snowfall got progressively worse as we traveled north up the Icefields Parkway.  By the time we got to the Columbia Icefield, the driving conditions were horrendous and very slippery, with the highway covered with snow, on top of ice.   

    When we got to the very steep grade at Nigel Creek, we were confronted with three cars sitting sideways on the highway, because they couldn’t climb the hill.  I had to get out and help manually pushing them so they could get turned around to head back down slope.  Continuing with our drive, as we got closer to the Athabaska Glacier, we were facing whiteout conditions.  We proceeded very slowly and once passed the Glacier and headed downslope, the snow let up somewhat, which made the visibility much better.

    We began to notice that there was no longer any traffic on the highway, and we concluded that Parks Canada must had closed the highway.  We were the last car to get through.   Once we got to the Jasper townsite, we made a much needed stop in order to wind down after the white-knuckle drive.  We went to L & W and ordered a pizza, sat down and relaxed, before heading west to McBride.  On our home stretch home, we faced not snow, but a torrents of rain.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

View of this Year's Summer Fire

     Last night as we traveled to visit friends, the sun was in the right position to really highlight part of the area that was burned this year by a forest fire.  This was the second summer in a row that we have experienced a forest fire within an 8 mile (12 km) radius of the McBride townsite.  Having these fires so close is something new, and it is scary.

    I took the photo below as the fire was just taking off.  At the time of the photo, it was only burning the slope on the other side of the ridge and hadn’t spread over the top, to the slope that you see in the photo above.  The photo below was not taken in exactly the same spot as the one above.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca