1973: Our First Canadian Winter

          The yellow leaves of the Trembling Aspen were soon on the ground, and the organic damp smell of the decomposing cottonwood leaves soon filled our nostrils, as the chill of autumn filled the ever shortened days.  The “snowfall/mud” cycle was soon replaced with the “snowfall/more snowfall” cycle and the temperatures began to drop lower and lower.  On Halloween of 1973 the temperature dipped below freezing and didn’t climb back to above freezing until spring.

         Soon we were experiencing our first Canadian winter wearing Indiana winter clothes--it was not a good combination.  We were able to keep our upper bodies warm by wearing sweaters beneath our winter coats, but our extremities were always cold, due to our lack of long underwear, warm gloves, and especially adequate winter footwear.  

    On our feet, all we had to wear in the snow were the uninsulated rubber boots (in Canada called "Wellingtons" or "gum boots") that we had brought with us from Indiana.  Throughout my life I had always suffered with cold feet during the winter, but in that first Canadian winter, I really learned what cold feet felt like.

         Even though we were ill-prepared for that first winter, we were pleased to discover that there was a huge difference between -12°C (10°F in Indiana) and that same temperature in the BC Interior.  Indiana had a moist, damp cold, which quickly went right through to your bones, whereas, in BC we were experiencing a "dry" cold, which didn't really go through you like the high moisture cold of Indiana.  It took a lot longer to feel the cold with the dry air.  Another benefit was that when the temperatures got down to say,  -30°C (-22°F), it was calm and still outside; there was no wind, which also lessened the cold that one felt. 

         I must confess it was fun to write home, telling of all the snow, and the ever increasingly cold temperatures that we were daily facing.  Our bed was right up against the bedroom wall of our little trailer, and one morning I woke up to discover that my breath had condensed and froze on the wall.  The cold temperature in our bedroom had also caused my breathe to condense and freeze the blanket to the wall.   Seeing all of the icicles in the photo below, shows just how uninsulated the travel trailer that we lived in, was.  

        We enjoyed writing about our first Canadian winter, living in the remote little community that was our  home.   The life we were living, amazed our family and friends back in the States.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: Exploring The Environment Around the Silvacan Camp

           We were, of course, very curious about the new natural environment that we found ourselves in, and during the weekends, when I wasn't preparing for school, my wife and I loved to hike down the muddy/dusty logging roads exploring and acquainting ourselves with the environment of north central British Columbia.  One of the most rewarding discoveries that we made was that there was a “little” lake (compared to the size of Takla Lake Which we began to refer to as the “Big Lake”).  The Little Lake was was located a mile from Camp.

         This pristine jewel was surrounded by untouched forests, and low rolling hills.  Hiking to "Little Lake," as we called it, (officially named, "Cheztainya Lake, we later discovered) quickly became the activity we did every time we had free time.  We visited it almost every day.

         The yellow leaves of the trembling aspen were soon on the ground, and the organic damp smell of the decomposing cottonwood leaves soon filled our nostrils as the chill of autumn filled the ever shortened days.  The “snowfall/mud” cycle was soon replaced with the “snowfall/more snowfall” cycle and the temperatures began to drop lower and lower.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: Silvacan Camp Rec Hall / Elementary School

 The photo shows the Rec Hall / one-room school.

    Having our school in the camp’s recreation building was not the best facility for education.  Every two or three evenings a week, the camp would show older, full-length movies to the workers.  My wife and I often attended the films, since this was the only form of outside entertainment available to us.  There was no television reception in camp, and no radio, except sometimes on a rare night.  So we looked forward to going to the movies, no matter how bad they were.

    On "Movie Night," as the mill workers filtered into the Rec hall, the room would quickly fill with cigarette smoke, the pop machine would continually roll out its cans, the level of blur of conversation would rise, and the pool game would continue until the lights were darkened and movie projector begin to click.

              We saw lots of movies, mostly action films, the favorite choice of the workers.  Everyone in the camp was so starved for entertainment, that the parent's didn't seem to put any restrictions upon what movies their children were allowed to watch.  I was often  embarrassed to see my young students there, glued to the screen during the bloodfests and steamy sex scenes that were the mainstay of most of the films.  The movie rating system did not accompany the reels of film shown on movie night, and as a result, my students received a far broader education in that Rec. Hall on movie night, than I could provide in that same Rec Hall hall during school the day.

    The next morning, when the Rec. Hall became a school again, I would enter the building to find that it was filled with stale cigarette smoke, scattered empty pop cans, which had been discarded on the floor or used as ash trays, and all the chairs and tables, we used in class, left in chaotic  disarray.  As winter approached, I was often forced to open the windows to the frigid winter air, in order to vent the Rec Hall, as I rearranged the furniture back into the way we used it for our classes.

take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973 Silvacan Elementary: Teaching in a One-Room School

 I continue my memories in establishing and teaching in the isolated one-room school in a mill camp on Takla Lake:

    Because we were so isolated from the Stikine School District headquarters in Fort Nelson, and it was impossible for me to even communicate with them, (the only “phone” in the mill site was a radio phone in the mill office) which really wasn’t there for me to use.  Besides it was unavailable to me, except for an emergency, and the fact that it was a radio phone, meant that there were privacy concerns, as the radio conversations were not secure.  They could be listened to, by the camp office manager and others with radio scanners.

    Unlike in “regular” schools, I had no fellow teachers to talk to, or to share ideas with and with whom I could borrow prepared work.  

    While I enjoyed being around kids and working with them in school, we soon discovered that there was never any respite from them.  In the camp there was no radio, or TV reception.  There was no playground, and the parents of the children worked longer than the normal 8 hours a day, so it was not surprising for my students to always come to our little trailer to visit during the evenings and after-school hours.

    If they spotted my wife or me outside doing something, the kids were always quick to join us so that we often felt burdened with providing entertainment for them.

    While I was struggling trying to stay on top of my workload, my wife had her own challenges.  She had agreed to run a kindergarten class, which was held each the morning in the mudroom of our tiny travel trailer teacherage.  It was something she had never in her life considered, since she had spent her university days getting her degree in Art History.  Our quickly established school had not yet received any kindergarten supplies for her young and often mentally under-developed students, so she also had to do a lot of improvising.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973 Silvacan Elementary School: So Much Work For The Teacher

 The photo was taken a couple of years later, when the school actually had our own school building , and the teacher (me) actually had a desk.  It does show me busy at night preparing work for the next day.

Despite the small number of students I had, I quickly discovered it was almost an overwhelming job to teach in a one-room school.  Since I could only spend time with one grade at a time, I had to create work for all the other grades; something that they could work on independently, and could finish without a lot of help from me, and I had to supply enough work for all the different grades to do to keep them occupied for 5 hours every day.

I didn’t have any workbooks, or even a mimeograph machine (an old technology that allowed one to crank out (literally) duplicate copies of worksheets from a typed-up or drawn stencil).  Before photocopiers, mimeograph machines were the workhorse for most teachers at the time.

Most teachers also had access to already prepared worksheets that they could use, unfortunately, but because of the remoteness and isolation of the school, no such timesavers were available to me, I had to create my own from scratch.  I had no teacher's guides to help me digest topics, give me directions on what points to stress, or to provide me with additional problems for the students to solve. 

  In all of the schools I had ever been in, all of the answers to the problems would have been there in a Teacher’s Manual, but unfortunately, since I hadn’t been supplied with any Teachers Manuals, when it came time for me to check the work that the class had done, I had to first, calculate all of the answers myself,  before I could spend the time checking their papers.

Everything was left up to me.  I had to read all of the material, and think up all of the work exercises for the various grade levels, because I had no teachers guide to help me.   Once I figured out what I would do, I had to make the worksheet by typing it out, if I needed more than one copy, I had to type layers of carbon paper (another old technology)and correct all the layers manually, if I made a mistake.   I typed all the worksheets sheets out on the portable typewriter I had fortunately brought with me from Indiana.

     I found myself busily preparing late into the night, striving to come up with enough appropriate activities for all the different age groups.  I quickly discovered that if I wasn’t really well prepared and supplied with a lot of work, things quickly turned to chaos in our school, because the students got done and then started messing around.  

While quick learning is generally considered a positive thing in the classroom, I was always dismayed to discover just how quickly my students were able to complete the worksheets and assignments that had taken me so many long hours to create the night before.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: The First Week Of Silvacan Elementary School

 The photo shows some of my students headed for the Camp Recreation Hall, which doubled as Silvacan Elementary School.

    Since there were no real school supplies available, because the school district had not been able to find a teacher, and hadn't totally committed to supplying anything in the remote community until they were sure of one, for the rest of the week, our school activities depended almost entirely consisted upon what could be done on blank sheets of paper, and the things that my wife and I had brought with us, ie, some magazines, and my guitar.

    The following week, various sized boxes started appearing from the Stikine School District office.  I excitedly open them to discover some text books, art supplies, and a chalk board on stands.  Getting a chalkboard was not only a real boon to my job, and made the camp recreation hall which was filled with a pool table and a Coke vending machine, seem a bit more like a classroom.  It allowed me to write and demonstrate things to my group of students, instead of having to show them things individually on a piece of paper.

           The arrival of some text books, while another big step in creating a school, also caused me some problems.  I was flying blind, none of the school books had any of grade designation, and I didn’t have any kind of information to tell me what subjects were supposed to be taught in the various grades.  I didn’t know what books were meant for what ages, but at least I had some things to work from.  I found it also frustrating that none of the books had any kind of teacher’s manual to help me, but I plowed through, the best I could.

    After a few weeks had passed, a few of the mill workers moved their  families to live at the camp, and our school enrollment increased.  Silvacan’s Elementary’s student population reached a staggering 12 students.  It was a K-7 school, but I didn’t have kids in every grade. Enrollment was something like 5 students in 1st grade, 3 in third grade, 2 in fourth grade, 1 in fifth, and 1 in 6th.  The school population was in continual flux, as families moved into the camp and others returned back to civilization, but through it all, the First Nation's Jack family made up the bulk of the students in our school.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: The Very First Day of Silvacan Elementary School

             The day I opened Silvacan Elementary School was certainly unlike opening day of any other school in BC.  First off, because the Silvacan Elementary was in the enormous Stikine School District, which encompassed the entirety of the whole northern half of BC, and the school district wasn’t sure they would be opening a school at the mill site, because they hadn’t been able to find a teacher (until I took the job) there were absolutely no school supplies at the mill. 

            There were no books, no desks, no chalkboard, and no necessary school supplies, like paper or pencils.  There was nothing, just the mill’s recreation hall, complete with its pool table, Coke machine, and stale cigarette-smelling air.

            Another unique aspect of Silvacan Elementary’s opening, was that it took place late, two weeks after all of BC’s other schools had opened, because of delays in my wife and I being issued our Canadian Immigration papers.  That problem was resolved when a custom official who knew of our urgency because the BC schools had already started, just secretly told me to just say I was on vacation when I crossed the border.

    That first day of school was certainly not one where a lot of academics were taught.  Frank had driven down to the Jack family that morning and returned with 5 of the Jack kids, (with ages ranging from about seven to 12) which he dropped off at the “school”.  I had moved one of the Rec Hall tables, and some chairs into a corner.

            I had a lot of experience working with kids, both in my education training, and working at the Evansville Boys Club, for several years running  recreation programs.  I thought I was ready for anything that rambunctious children could throw my way, but I wasn’t ready for these extremely shy aboriginal kids.

        I had no experience being around First Nation children.  They meekly entered the room which was in the logging camp’s Recreation Hall and I welcomed them and motioned them over to sit around the  table which I had set up.  Once I had them seated, I began to talk to them in an attempt to find out their names and ages, so that I could get a sense of where they were academically. 

        To my dismay, despite my gentle questioning, all I got in reply were bowed heads and silence.  I couldn’t get them to even look at me, let alone speak.  It was a horrible feeling of inadequacy that overtook me.  (I learned later that First Nations people consider it rude to look people straight in the eye, so they probably had negative opinions of me from that first introduction.)

Luckily, after a time, I gained the confidence of Ralph (photo) who I determined was at about at the third grade level.  Ralph began to open up a bit.  Soon, the others began to timidly join the conversation.

      I got another surprise, when I urged Ralph to recite the alphabet for me. 

He confidently began:

“A,B,C,D,E,F,G…”

“That’s great, Ralph, go on.”

“H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,

I was beaming.  “Keep going Ralph”

“Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,”

“Great, finish up,” I encouraged, and nodding my head to indicate that he was doing great.

“X, Y, ZED.”

“ZED?”, My head jerked back in surprise, I had never heard of “ZED”,  “What’s ‘ZED?, I asked, Do you mean “ZEE”.  

“No,” Ralph replied confidently, and all his siblings confirmed and chimed in, “ZED!!!”

This first lesson in the school was a lesson for me.  I had just discovered that Canadian English and American English were not the same.  Canadians didn’t have a “ZEE” at the end of their alphabet, they, like Ralph said, had “ZED”. 

        The rest of that first school day was spent having the kids drawing some pictures, after I scrambled around and found some paper, some pencils, and crayons, which my wife and I had fortunately brought with us when we crossed the border.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

We Now Have Fiber Optic Cable To Our House

     Surprisingly, in our very small (800 people max), rural and isolated community, (100 miles in either direction to a larger urban center) we are now getting fiber optic connections to our houses.  A crew came out yesterday to put the cable into our house.

    It was a complicated chore, involving digging a tench and burying the cable across our driveway and lawn, then tunneling under our sidewalk, before actually getting to our house.  

    I was busy playing music at our jam, as they finished doing there work, and it was dark when I came home, but this morning when I took a look at what they did, I was impressed.  The cable is now buried, and the crew did a really nice job of cleaning us after themselves.  They had raked and smoothed out the gravel in our driveway back into place, and sewed some grass seed on the trench that crossed our lawn.  All of the work didn’t cost us anything.

    I don’t know if we will be taking advantage of the fast internet that the fiber optic cable can provide, since I already have Starlink satellite internet, so don’t really need the fiber optic service.  I would have preferred that the phone company would have upgraded their cell phone tower to go from G-3 to G-5.  Oh well, maybe someday.  

     The photo below shows the fiber optic connection box on our house.  The crew found a beat up statue of a dog amongst the flowers along our sidewalk and in a joke, placed it at the foot of the cable.  The white object on the left is the water hose that goes to our forest fire sprayer on our roof.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: I Become Silvacan Elementary School

 The photo shows the Camp’s Recreation Building (on the right), that also served as our school.

    Since all of the other public schools in BC had already begun classes two weeks earlier, I had to do some quick preparations and create a school and begin teaching immediately.  This was a big job because, I WAS the school, as I quickly learned.  Not only was I the only classroom teacher, I soon discovered that I was also the principal, the maintenance man, the janitor, the secretary, the health nurse, and the “school bus” driver.  

             There was no one there to help guide me in these tasks, or to tell me what to do.  I had to figure everything out for myself.  It certainly didn’t help that I had never even been in a Canadian school to witness the daily routines or the educational materials used, and since there had never been a school at the Silvacan mill, there were absolutely no educational supplies at all, since the school district hadn’t been sure that they would be able to find a teacher.

            During my four years of university, which gave me the training and education to earn my bachelor degree in elementary education, no one had ever even mentioned teaching in a one-room school, let alone explain how to manage one.  All of my practical, hands-on experience had been in large multi-teacher city and suburban schools.  What I found myself thrust into, was a totally new and unknown experience.

    Frank (the Silvacan Mill’s Camp Boss) told me that the school, (named Silvacan Elementary School) would be held in the camp's "Recreation Building".  I quickly planned for classes for the next day, although I hadn’t a clue as to how many students I might have, what grades they might be in, or what their abilities might be.  

            Since it hadn't been a certain that there was going to be a school at Silvacan, the mill workers didn’t yet moved their families to the camp.  There was however a First Nation's  family that lived in a cabin (photo below) down by the dock on Takla Lake, where our had plane landed, who had school-aged kids, and they turned out to be my only students when the school opened.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: Exploring The Mill Camp

   We looked into the recreation building which housed a pool table and coke machine and some tables and chairs.  We walked down the wide dusty “main” street of the camp. Past the metal Atco portable bunkhouses and a couple of small frame houses which lined the road until we saw the mill, which was just a big metal framed structure, with some open sides and a tin roof.

When it was time for us to eat, we made a delightful discovery; the cookhouse where we were to eat all of our meals was amazing.   Isolated mills make a point of feeding their workers well to keep them happy.  When we opened the door, took in the warm, delicious, and fragrant  aromas, then looked down the steaming counter at the wide variety of offerings, we knew that living in this remote corner of BC wasn't  going to be a year of total depravation.  There was so much good 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.  Here is how replied to my parents who were curious about our eating arrangements:

       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, 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.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: Shown Our First Canadian Winter Home

     I have lately started blogging about my first job that allowed us to immigrate to Canada.  The job I took was starting a one-school and teaching in an isolated fly-in mill camp in the BC Interior.  Today’s blog tells of our first look at where we would be living during our first Canadian winter.

            Frank dropped us off in front of an early 1960’s model, small blue and white, travel trailer.  Attached to its side was an ugly box-like plywood addition, that featured a small square window and plain wooden door in front.  We were told that this dwelling was where we would be living, and  he explained that since the stove and fridge in the trailer did not work, we could eat at the cook shed before the workers came in for their meals.

    We dragged our luggage up the two wooden steps, opened the door to what was to be our abode for the winter.  The “mudroom”, which was the Canadian term given to the rectangular wooden addition, was just a big empty space that ran down the entire length of the 18 foot travel trailer.   This room had only one  item in it--an orange 16 inch metal cube, with a screened fan in the front and a one inch thick, heavy duty, insulated electrical cable snaking out of the  back and attached to the wall--it was an industrial-strength space heater.

            From the mudroom, we entered through the aluminum and louvered- glass door of the trailer into the tiny kitchen/dining room, complete with a small two by three foot formica topped table, sided by padded upholstered plastic booth-like seats on each side.  

    The tiny table jutted out from a window, which allowed us to admire the bleakly painted plywood back of the mill office as we dined.  Behind the left booth seat was the kitchen area, which included a tiny stovetop, oven, and refrigerator that Frank had told us didn’t work. 

    Along the “kitchen” wall were cabinets and the kitchen sink.  From the kitchen, a narrow passage/hallway led back to a bathroom and then the bedroom, which was basically just a bed with a cramped space that allowed one to walk along one side of its sides to the end of the bed.  There must have been a closet or chest of drawers somewhere also, but I can’t remember them.

    The tiny bathroom that was squeezed between the kitchen area and bedroom, featured a very small tub/shower, a sink, and an airplane-type toilet, featuring rubber flaps at the bottom of the toilet bowl.

        I don’t think we were too critical about our accommodations, it was small, but adequate, and besides it was all part of our northern adventure.  In fact, later when the camp bosses wanted to move us into a larger, but no more glamorous trailer, but we opted to stay where we were. As soon as we had stashed our luggage, we were out the door to explore our new world. 

My paintings can be seen at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1973: Arriving At The Isolated Mill Camp That Will Be Our Home

 What happened after our flight on the Beaver float Plane:

        On our side of the lake, within sight of the dock, half hidden among the trees, was a log cabin which was the home of the Wests, a First Nation family, partially represented on the pier by the two silent kids, who quietly watched our every move.

          The pilot opened the plane’s cargo door and removed our suitcases from the Beaver’s storage area on side of the plane, and laid them on the pier.  We picked them up then nervously waited, unsure of what we were supposed to do, or what was going to happen next.

    The Indian kids continued to stare at us, then the man in work gear and a jacket, introduced himself as "Frank," the camp boss.  He helped us with our luggage, as he directed us toward a dark muddy and battered pickup truck.  We put our luggage in the back of the pickup, then my wife and I opened the door of the cab, slid onto the seat, and Frank bounced us up the dirt road to the mill camp.  

    Frank snaked the truck up the slope and around the curves, weaving from one side of the road to the other to avoid the deep mud holes.  We were traveling through a canyon of trees, which totally obscured the view, except for the rutted bare dirt margins of the road.

    We could tell from the lack of weeds and bare earth along the sides of the dirt road that it was a fairly recent construction.  It had been sliced through a tall thick stand of mature timber, so all we could see in edge of the bare right-of-way, was a thick, living wall of gray tree trunks topped with the bushy green needles of their foliage, so thick that you couldn't see through it.   The naked dirt that lined each side of the road was accented with a chaos of  scattered junk logs, tree trunks, and root balls.

    After traveling the two miles up from Takla Lake, we entered a large flat dusty area which had been cleared out of the forest.  Around this clearing were clustered, in a seemingly random fashion, a hodgepodge of buildings--some wooden frame and the others portable aluminum ATCO buildings and trailers.  

          Beyond the small, one-story, wooden frame mill “office," stood scattered bunkhouses, cook sheds and kitchens and a large "portable," a double-wide trailer that served as the recreation center for the workers.  A couple of small frame houses and several regular mobile homes, housing for mill staff and a few families, lined the “thoroughfare” as it ran off in the distance giving a view of the mill.  It all looked raw, haphazard, and utilitarian, but this was to be our home for the next three years.

You can see my  paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Caution: Falling Objects (Spruce Cones)

     We have a very tall spruce tree standing less than a foot (30cm) from the edge of our roof.  We also have a metal roof.  Those two things together, result in a constant cacophony of noise each year at this time, when a squirrel, dangling high up in the tree, starts to harvest spruce cones for the winter.  The cones stream down from the tree and bang, as they bounce off our roof, throughout the day:  Bang...Bang...Bang.

    The banging started three days ago, and is still going strong.  There are plenty of cones yet on the tree to be harvested.

    The ground around that corner of the house and our shade deck are covered with cones, and the debris from cones as a result of the harvesting squirrel.  I will be happy when the critter has reached its cone quota. 

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Flight In A Beaver: Canada's Iconic Bush Plane

             In 1973, I had taken a job teaching in a one-room school located at an isolated mill in the middle of BC, that had no road access.  To get there, we booked a flight on a Beaver float plane.  The Beaver was the iconic plane of the Canadian North, that carried people and supplies between the towns in the South and the Northern Canadian wilderness.  Here is our experience on that first trip we made on a Beaver:

    We loaded our gear into the de Havilland Beaver bush plane, which was tied up at a dock on Stuart Lake.  Because it was a such a small plane, I sat right almost elbow to elbow, beside the pilot, while my wife settled into the backseat of the cramped little aircraft.  

            The plane was untied from the dock, the engine roared, and the Beaver slowly moved away from the pier.  Droplets of water streaked across the windshield, as the whirling propellor blurred in front of the pilot and I.  

    Once the plane was away from the dock and far enough out in the lake to take off, the pilot slowly began to accelerate, the thunder of the engine became louder and louder, and gradually the plane began to move forward at first slowly, then ever faster across the water, skimming along the surface of the lake, until we finally took to the air.

    Stuart Lake was soon behind us and we soared across miles of the unbroken horizon of trees, until ahead of us, the treed landscape was interrupted by Trembler Lake.  There were no towns or villages, I don't even recall seeing any cabins. sometimes I could catch a glimpse of a gash through the forests, made by the BC Rail line, as it wound along the low terrain at the edge of the lake or Middle River, extending itself northward.  

         Traveling above the canopy of the coniferous forest, the small plane was periodically nudged by the wind, but not to the extent that it caused any abdominal stress.

             The gray green carpet of trees stretched on and on ahead of us. Soon mountain slopes appeared on the distant horizon on my right, and then another mountain range appeared on the left, as  Takla Lake, BC’s fifth largest lake and one of its deepest, began to show itself, stretching out in front of us.  Takla Lake is 60 mile long, and easy to identify because it is long and skinny, and has a “Y’ shape. 

    I was sitting practically shoulder to shoulder beside the pilot in the tiny interior of the Beaver and I turned back to look at my wife who was snuggled in the rear seat between freight that the plane was also carrying.  

    We caught each other’s eyes and exchanged smiles then continued with our noses pressed against the side windows, scanning the wilderness below us. The pilot pointed out Takla Landing, a settlement along the lakes East  shore that was part of the Carrier Indian Reserve.

    The Silvacan Resources camp, which was where we were bound, was also located on the east shore, but 12 miles further north, nearer the top of the long arm of the lake, at a bay called Lovell Cove.  We could not see the mill or camp on the gentle slope above the lake because the plane was beginning its descent.

    After a flight of about 110 miles, the pilot began to slow the engine and the plane began to lower itself toward the rippled surface of the gray lake, as it prepared to land.  My wife and I had never flown in a small plane before, and certainly had never landed on water, so we didn’t really know what to expect as far as landing on a lake’s surface.  We were surprised at how smooth and uneventful the transition from air to water was, when it happened,.  As the plane skied across the lake's surface, to my right, I noticed a wooden dock jutting out from the shore.

    The pilot used the propeller to power the plane across the water toward the pier, where a man and couple of Indian kids were waiting to secure the plane to the wharf.  When the Beaver came to a stop and the propeller stopped spinning, we unbuckled our seat belts, opened the door and climbed out onto the dock.

    Once outside, we breathed in the clean air, looked down across the two miles of cold clear deep water of Takla Lake toward the far shore, and the distant mountains that rose above the lake.  We had arrived at the pristine wilderness country we had sought. 

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Jam Interrupted By A Sunset

    Last night the Jam was doing its usual Tuesday night playing on the porch of the McBride Train Station when one member of the audience walked over to the edge of the station and then drew everyone’s attention to the spectacular sunset that was going on behind the building.  At that point many of the audience, and a portion of the musicians, went over to see what was happening.  

    After half of our musicians absconded, I figured I might as well take a look to, so put down my mandolin, and joined the escapees at the edge of the building.  The sunset was striking and its colors intense.  Unfortunately I couldn’t capture all of the station and the sunset in one photo, but hopefully you will get an idea by the photo I did get.

    Once I got the group back to playing, we ended our session with a rousing version of “I’ll Fly Away”.

    Our summer days are noticeably shortening, and it won’t be long before the Jam will have to start playing in the Train Station lobby, because of the increasing darkness and cooler night temperatures outside. 

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca