Eating At The Cookhouse

         In 1973, when we were young and adventurous, I took a job setting up and teaching in a one-room school that was being established in a isolated fly-in lumber mill camp at Takla Lake, which is in the center of British Columbia.  Because there had never been a school at the camp, it had no school building, or a designated place for a teacher to live.   Upon our arriving, we were given a small camping trailer to live in over our first winter in British Columbian (Photo above)

        While the small trailer had a tiny kitchen, its stove and fridge had never been hooked up because everyone in the camp ate at the camp cookhouse, so that is where we also ate. We quickly learned that  Isolated mills make a point of feeding their workers really well to keep them happy. 

        When we first ate at the cookhouse we opened the cookhouse door, and immediately took in the warm, delicious, and fragrant aroma of food.  We happily looked down the steaming counter to see a wide variety of offerings we could choose from.   We quickly learned that living in this remote corner of BC wasn't  going to be a year of total depravation.  There was so much delicious food available for the taking, and we could eat as much as we wanted—it was going to be a smorgasbord for every meal. Steaks, Chinese food, Yorkshire pudding, all kinds of fancy desserts.  It was wonderful.

        Over the years, I had forgotten many of the details of our eating arrangement at the Silvacan Camp, but recently I relearned some of them when I received some old letters I had written at the time, that my mother had saved.  My parents had asked us some questions in a letter they sent, and here is what I wrote in reply:

        Meals? 

            We have no meal tickets, everybody knows everybody.  Up here we are trusted to pay $150 for the whole month for the two of us.   That gives us three meals at day.  We haven’t paid yet because we are waiting for the bank to send us an account number.

        Meals, who cooks:  

            Harold and Nuella, (photo below) are our cooks.  They really are friendly people and very good cooks.  Tonight we had big, big steaks, peas, sauerkraut, wieners, potatoes, salad, fruit juices, and cake.  We are free to take all of the fruit and cookies we want.  It is a really good deal.

            The photo at the very bottom shows the Silvacan Camp where we lived for three years.  The cookhouse is the white building on the right, with the row of windows.

            

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca