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.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

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

The Long, Lonely, Drive To Prince George

     I had an appointment up in Prince George, so I had to drive the 220Kms (135 miles) from McBride to Prince George yesterday.  It is always a long ordeal to drive up there.  Yesterday was no exception.  In McBride it was raining when I started out, but by the time I had driven for an hour, the dramatic looking clouds had begun to break up, so I pulled over to take the photo above.  Once I got to Prince, the skies were clear.

    By 2:00 I had gotten everything done that I had to do, so I headed back home. There was still a bit of fall color on the thinning leaves of the cottonwood trees as I got back to the mountains around McBride, so I pulled over to take the photo below.

    I always find it interesting how much cooler it gets driving through those forested 135 miles between Prince George and McBride.  It was 11°C (52°F) in Prince George and I noted that the temperature had dropped to 7°C (45°F) as I drove the long curvy and hilly drive home.  When I got back home in McBride, I checked the outside temperature again, and found, like in Prince George, it was also 11°C.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: A New Teacherage And School Building

             Our first day back in camp was going to be a busy one, as we forced ourselves off of the shag-carpeted floor of the new mobile home that was to be our teacherage.  We were still groggy from a poor night’s attempt at sleep.  I borrowed a camp truck and towed our trailer full of our possessions, over to the new home and began to unload.          

            That afternoon, Shawn, Sharon, and Victor, three of my students who were in camp, came to peak into their new school and help me in the move all the new and old school supplies into our new brand new school building.  The new school, like the teacherage, had been moved to the camp and set up during our summer vacation and still didn’t have heat or power  hooked up.

    Without electricity, a lot of the excitement diminished as we unpacked  and arranged of our possessions in our new home.  My wife couldn’t cook, it was too dark to read, or listen to any of the music from on our record player or reel to real tape recorder that we had crossed the border with.  That evening our supper consisted of soup, which we heated on the fondue set that we had brought with us.

            The photo shows shows my wife at the door of our new teacherage.  Note all of the mud.  Our new school building was a doublewide trailer,  (I couldn’t find a photo of it).

My paintings can be seen at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Getting All Our Possessions Up To The Silvacan Resources Camp

              I have mentioned many times that the Silvacan Resources Mill, where our one-room school was located, was a fly-in camp with no road access.  There was however access by rail, but taking the BC Railroad was an extremely slow way to travel, taking about 10 hours from Fort St. James.  Not something that was very convenient.  

               The only way for us to get our utility trailer full of all our possessions was by that train.  I contacted BC Rail, and made arrangement for a flatbed train car to carry our utility trailer from Fort St. James up to the Silvacan Resources camp on Takla Lake.

            This being done, I drove over to the train yard, and had a flatbed rail car moved to the loading ramp, then carefully backed the trailer up onto the flatbed.  I then had the job of securing the trailer to the flatbed.  I did that using some metal cables which I had purchased.  I also blocked the wheels to prevent the utility trailer from rolling back and forth on its train ride.

            The train wasn’t scheduled to leave until the following day and we were paranoid about leaving all of our worldly possessions just sitting there unguarded, in the empty train yard overnight, so we decided that we would spend the night sleeping in the Scout, which I parked beside the flatbed train car holding  our trailer, to keep an eye on it.

                We spent a pretty miserable night trying to sleep in the car, while at the same time watching for nothing, and by the time the sun began to come up, we were both feeling horrible, but with the daylight, some railroad workers appeared, and so we felt we could safely drive into town for some breakfast and last minute preparations, before we returned to the railroad and climbed onto the BC Railroad passenger car on the train for our trip into camp.

                The train finally left at 1:00 in the afternoon.  We, and all of our possessions, gently and slowly rocked our way back and forth, as we spent time wondering what the new teacherage would be like, and thinking about all the school preparations that would need to be done for the upcoming school year.

               Traveling with us in the passenger car there were about 10 other people, mostly First Nation’s individuals who were making the trip, and after a bit of small talk, we settled in, lulled by the motion and click-clacking of the wheels on the track, nodded off and then suddenly jerking back to consciousness, for the next 10 hours, as forests, rivers, and lakes slowly slid passed the window.

            Upon arriving at camp in the dark at 11:00 at night, we hung around until we were sure that the flatbed carrying our trailer, was going to be transferred to the railroad siding, then we slowly headed to the camp office, where we got the keys to the new mobile home teacherage, we walked to it, and let ourselves in. 

                The mobile home had the water hooked up, but not the electricity or heat, and since our bed and bedding were still on our trailer, we just ended up sleeping on the green shag carpet on the living room floor, of our brand new home.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Killing Frost

     Regular readers know that the changing of the seasons and their significant signs are very important to me.  Last night we had one of those significant signs of fall;  a killing frost.  The overnight temperature dipped down to -4°C (25°F).   We have already had a few slightly below freezing temperatures, that didn’t really kill the tougher plants in the garden, but last night, put the nail in their coffins.  

    Knowing that the hard frost was coming, I repotted the geraniums that were growing in our window box, brought them inside, and put them on my bedroom window for the winter.  The tops of the potato plants are now dead, so I can dig up the remaining three rows of potatoes.

    The hosta plant by our front yard had started to turn orangish a week ago, but I thought they looked particularly interesting this morning, so I took the photo below. 

Take look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

David Milne: Extraordinary Gardener

     Today there will be a gathering to remember David Milne.  David was an extraordinary gardener.  I was always impressed at David’s love and dedication in nurturing and growing roses, alpines, and succulents.   He approached his love of plants like a scientist, keeping databases and doing research.  He had a large rose garden full of roses of various varieties and colors, that he tended with loving care.  

    David loved alpine plants and built a natural-looking, rock garden to be a home for the wide variety of alpines that he grew.  (photo below)

    David also loved succulents.   The conservatory he had in his house was full of hundreds of unusual and exotic plants, many of which David grew from seeds.  Last year, he had started so many plants, that he had a succulent sale for the community. (photo at the very bottom)

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Bringing All Our Possessions Across The Border

             We were dreading the border crossing into Canada, since we didn’t really know what expect, crossing with all of our possessions, but I handed my official immigrant forms to the Canada Custom Officer, and a list of all of the possessions we were bringing into Canada, and waited.  He gave a cursory look to the list, then peaked under the tarp on the trailer to see what was there.  He nodded his head and seemed okay with everything.   

                 I was secretly giving myself a sigh of relief, when the Canadian Custom Agent asked, “What about the trailer?”

                My heart sank, “The trailer, I forgot all about putting the trailer on the list.”  I explained about how my father gave it to me and answered all of the questions he had, and he said, “Okay” and then waved us on, across the border.

            We then gave a genuine sigh of relief as headed toward Fort St. James, BC, but we still had a few things to worry about.  Since we didn’t really have a home in Canada and had been living in a small camping trailer in the lumber mill camp where I was teaching, we had been depending upon the school district’s promised that a new full-sized mobile home would be there as a teacherage for the upcoming school year, but we hadn’t received any conformation that that had actually happened, and that there was a mobile home in camp waiting for us.   If it wasn’t, what were we going to do with all of the possessions we had just brought into Canada.  It included a lot of big items,  like furniture.  We would have no place to put it.

        I was relieved when I called the school district office and it was confirmed that the mobile home had been moved into camp, so all we had to do was to get all our possessions up to the camp, which had no road access into the place. 

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Moving All Of Our Possessions Up To Canada

 

            My father owned a 6’ by 8’ utility trailer with sides, which he gave to me so that we could move our worldly possessions.  It was in fairly rough condition and in-between our visiting with family and friends, I reconstructed it, replaced the floor and repainted the trailer.  

    I had accumulated a lot of furniture and household items while I was doing my alternative service as a Conscientious Objector working at the Goodwill in Indianapolis, but the trailer was fairly small and so we had to make a lot of difficult decisions as to what things we were going to take with us to Canada and what things we were going to sell.  Into the trailer went my decorative wooden antique bed, the oak bookcase with inlayed wood parrots, two big oak rocking chairs, a dresser, some small oriental and Navaho rugs, all my records, record player and my reel to reel tape player.

            Books, clothing, blankets, lamps, guitars, and cookware were all squeezed under, in, and on top of all the available space left in the trailer and what didn’t fit there found passage in the nooks and crannies of our our International Scout vehicle.  I went to a farm supply store and bought a heavy canvas tarp, which I tied down tight over the top of the trailer to protect all our possessions from the rain.

    When we finally said our goodbyes and headed back to Canada, I am sure we looked like “Okies” heading West during the Depression, with our Scout packed to the brim and with the tarp stretched over the trailer flapping in the wind as we drove across America.

           Above is a photo showing the old utility trailer that carried all of our possessions up to Canada, fifty years after it made the trip.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: The School Year Wraps UP, Summer Vacation Begins

      The year would been a long hard slog for me in a normal school, just because it was my first full year of teaching and I was in another country, but the fact that it was a one-room school, and we had to do without so many normal school supplies and equipment, let alone a school building, made job even more difficult.  It was also hard because EVERYTHING fell on my shoulders, and I was forced to deal with it alone, but finally the school year had ended, summer vacation was upon us, and there was a promise of better things to come, next year--a new mobile home for my wife and I to live in, more school equipment and materials, and an actual school building!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

    One would assume that summer vacation would be a leisurely time for a teacher, but our summer was very hectic because we had to get all of our worldly possessions in the US, moved up to the isolated mill site in Canada.  This meant we had to first drive down to Indiana to collect everything.  

Our summer vacation began with us hitching a ride on the Silvacan Resources’ DC-3 flying to Williams Lake, where we had left our car.       

            We loaded the Scout up and headed East, down the Trans-Canada Highway through Banff National Park, then south to Waterton National Park for a quick look, and an overnight campout.  Onward we drove, crossing the US border, then onward to Great Falls, Mount Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, across the prairies to Chicago, and then south to Evansville. 

            Traveling back to Evansville, was sort of like a quick vacation.  We watched a lot of interesting topology flash across our Scout’s windows as we drove across North America, but we couldn’t spend much time sight-seeing.  

             The photo below shows the Mill’s DC-3 loading up for a flight to Williams Lake.  The olive green truck was the vehicle I used as our “school bus”, to pick up the kids of the Jack family, who lived on the shore of Takla Lake.  ''

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: Shocked By Students With Problems

                  While a majority of the students in our one-room school were pretty normal kids, there were a few with deep emotional problems that caused me frustration.  

           Working in an isolated mill was often a job of last resort for many of the workers.  A lot of those mill workers had problems that kept them from getting jobs in Williams Lake, so they signed on to work at the isolated fly-in Silvacan Resources Mill on Takla Lake.   Some of them moved their families to the camp and their kids were my students.  

            Some of my students in my school had come from fragmented and alcoholic families, and they had experienced some rough turbulent times, which had a negative affect on their personalities.  I was sometimes shocked by their violent outburst and explosive tempers.

        Victor, was one of those who had such problems.  Despite his smallish size, he could be a bully, and sometimes seethed with hate.  Once when I assigned the kids to write a paper with the theme:  “A Wish”, I was horrified to read Victor’s paper and discover that “his wish” was to see Shawn (one of his fellow students) dead.  I have often wondered how some of those kids ended up when they became adults.

        While I was constantly trying to get my students to enjoy the nature that surrounded them, by giving them the wildlife magazines I had subscribed to, and in our science classes, I was a constantly frustrated at catching them doing things like throwing rocks at the swallows who where trying to build nests in the birdhouse I built.

View my paintings at:davidmarchant2.ca

Gum Boot Jogging

     Getting exercise is important at all ages, but certainly in my old age, it is something that I need to do and force myself to do daily.  Every morning, I do laps around my pond.  I jog on the level areas of the dam, then through the wooded area on the opposite side of the pond, I walk rapidly.  The total distance of my four laps amounts to a more than one kilometer, not a great distance, but enough to increase my heart rate, and breathing.

    There is one aspect of my jog/walk regime that differs from most other people doing similar exercises .  The main difference is my footwear.   Instead of fancy, expensive running shoes, I do my jogging in gum boots (also known as “Wellingtons” or “rubber boots”).  Wearing gum boots are not that comfortable, but the path around the pond has high grass, and is generally very wet from heavy dew in the mornings, and I don’t like to get running shoes and socks all damp and wet.

    Of course, I also don’t wear any fancy jogging clothes for my exercise, just jeans, a jacket, and a hat, because it is starting to be cool in the mornings.

    I’m sure all this sounds rather strange to all of those urban joggers, but it works alright in the rural setting where I live.  The photo below, show part of the path where I do the walking.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca