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
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