Don’t know if you can see the bald eagle perched on the branch of a fir tree in the middle of that picture. He watches the flats below. As soon as the winter rain starts, the water begins to accumulate down there and the birds arrive- trumpeter swans, seagulls, ducks, Canada geese. The eagles hunt the seagulls. I see them chasing around above the flats. When that happens all the seagulls rise and circle around each other, maybe to threaten or confuse the eagle. Sometimes it works.
I’ve almost finished Lies He Told, Book Four. I don’t have a title yet. This is Randy Bonnar’s story and it was fun to write. Will post the cover when I get it.
Well, we survived the weather bomb, the deepest low-pressure system on record for Pacific Northwest that was coming at us last weekend. We barely noticed it, although when I went for a walk, the wind in the tall firs sounded like a car coming up behind me.
All the leaves fell off the trees.The fir needles fell so heavily it looked like it was snowing
So, now Hallowe’en is upon us. Hope the ghosts don’t scare you, but just keep an ear out for the little voices calling “trick or treat” at your front door. They are so cute, tons of witches, goblins, fire fighters, warriors, Paw Patrol characters. Have fun!
When we arrived in the north, I had two outfits to wear to school. One was a pink fuzzy sweater with short sleeves, which I wore with a grey box-pleated skirt that was obviously an adult size, as the hem reached my ankles and the button on the waistband had been moved over several inches to fit my waist.
The second was a red corduroy jumper that I was very fond of. It had ruffles over the shoulders and I wore it with a white blouse. These clothes had come out of the donation box at our home church. By the end of our first year there, I had grown and could no longer wear the jumper and blouse, to my complete despair.
There was a real technique to dressing for the northern climate. In winter we dressed for warmth. Believe me when I say, you don’t forget the feeling of frostbite on your fingers. And once you experience it, you never want to go there again.
Here is how we dressed. Put on a pair of underpants, then a long underwear top. Then pull on long underwear bottoms and tuck the top into them. Then put on the first pair of socks, tucking the underwear bottoms into the top of the socks. Then put on a sweater, then put on pants and tuck the sweater into the pants. Then put on a second pair of socks and tuck the bottom of the pant legs into the top of the socks.
When ready to leave the house, pull on your boots with the felt insoles positioned in the bottom. Put on a scarf wrapped around your neck and crossed over your chest. Then put on a first pair of mittens with the sleeves of your sweater tucked into them, then put on the parka. Zip the parka, put on a toque. Pull up the hood and tie a second scarf to cover your face, knotted behind the hood. If it was a day of heavy wind, a third scarf might be needed to cover your forehead. Put on a second pair of mittens, tucked into the parka sleeves if possible.
When we first arrived up north, my parents still had money from the sale of our house in Duncan. We all got parkas, boots, insoles, as needed. But during the next couple of years, the money had been spent and I had a growth spurt so my original parka and boots didn’t fit any more. There were times when I wore Mum’s parka and her boots for the walk to school, and she was left at home with two little kids and no warm coat or footwear if she had to go out. It was worrisome.
In the summer, things were different. During the first months of spring there were huge clouds of mosquitoes and during the next two months there were biting flies, horseflies. So, although it was much warmer, it wasn’t advisable to venture out without covering our skin, especially in the early morning or late afternoon. We were also short of shoes. Nell and I often went barefoot. We didn’t have footwear other than a pair of shoes used for best, and it was just easier to go about the homestead without.
WATER – Water was always an issue on the homestead. In the spring, my sister, Nell, and I took buckets and walked to the slough which was about a half mile away. We filled the buckets and carried them back to the house. We would do that several times a day, or as often as it took to take care of our home. If Mom was doing laundry, it was pretty laborious. If it was just a regular day, we filled the barrel, the wash tub, the reservoir in the cook stove and brought extra buckets for washing dishes.
Trips to the slough were required every day. The water was actually quite clean until about mid-summer. By then it would begin to taste slimy. The number of frogs would have markedly increased and the mosquitoes would be popping out of the water in clouds. On top of fetching buckets of water, we would walk the cow and calf to the slough to water them. Often we were walking barefoot as shoes were sometimes hard to come by. Once I remember, as we reached the slough, the cow stepped forward to take a drink and landed her hoof on Nell’s bare foot. Luckily she was standing on the edge of the slough where the mud was soft. Her foot sank into the water under the pressure and she stood still, waiting in pain until the cow finished drinking before we were able to make it step back.
By late summer the water in the slough was no longer palatable. Our neighbour, Olaf, had a well which he kindly allowed us to use when needed. Dad would hitch the horse to the stoneboat with a few barrels on it, drag it down the dirt road a couple of miles to Olaf’s well, and handpump the barrels full. None of us appreciated it very much. The water was heavily sulphered and bitter to drink. But of course we couldn’t have stayed there without access to water.
Then it would snow. We had a 45 gallon drum standing upright beside the barrel heater in the living area of the house. At the first heavy snowfall, we would fill the barrel with snow several times a day over a week or more until the barrel was full of water. This water was used for drinking, dishes, washing and laundry. After the barrel was full, we only had to fetch snow in buckets a few time a day to keep it topped up.
Once a neighbour lady had come to visit Mum. As she walked around the small living space during her visit, she removed her false teeth and casually rinsed them in the barrel. Nell and I watched in horror. As expected, Mum had us empty the barrel and begin the process over again until the barrel was full of clean water.
After we had lived on the homestead for a few years, Dad hired a guy with a back hoe to come and clear some trees for planting a crop. In addition, he had him scoop a dugout, which filled up with water in the spring. This worked well to provide water for the garden and the animals throughout the summer. We also swam in it a few times. But the water was full of leeches and when we emerged from our swim we would find the blood suckers burrowed into our skin. Removing them was painful.
SCHOOL – The local school had two rooms. One room was for grades one to four. The second room was for grades five to eight. When we arrived in Cecil Lake, Nell and I were both in the second room. To our surprise there were a lot of boys in that class who were fifteen and sixteen years old. Most of them had missed a lot of schooling because of staying home to help out on their family farms. They would leave the school year early, in April or May when the ploughing and planting of the land began. And they would arrive in class later than the other students in the fall, usually in October when the harvest was finished. As a result it would take them a few years to complete each grade.
There was no bathroom in the school, but a couple of outhouses were provided, one for boys, one for girls. A third building was attached to the schoolrooms, a teacherage which had a boardwalk leading to the classrooms. The year my sister and I started school in Cecil Lake, there were two young women living in the teacherage, both having just graduated from University of British Columbia with their teacher’s degrees and about to begin their first year of teaching. The substitute teacher for when one or the other was sick or off on a course was the mother of one of my friends. This woman had taught at the school in years past and kept her hand in for when she might be needed.
The children in each classroom were lined up in rows of desks by grade, so one row per grade, or two if needed. When we had spelling tests, the teacher would walk across the front of the room, call a word to the first row, shuffle the spelling books in her hand, call a word to the second row, repeat. After reaching the last row, she would walk back to the first row and begin again with the second spelling word.
The back wall of the room held a giant row of coat hooks. A line of parkas and scarves hung there, a shelf above holding toques and mittens, with an unruly row of snow boots along the wall beneath.
After we had been attending school for a couple of months, the other students seemed to get their nerve up. Nell and I were suddenly surrounded at lunchtime by a group of girls who were all asking where we were from. As always, we said we were from Duncan, on Vancouver Island. “No,” they said, “you’re from England.” I guess Mum’s proper pronunciation had rubbed off on her daughters. That was not the only time I was asked that question.
One day, in the first year we were there, Dad was escorting us to the bus stop, but we were late. We missed the bus, and watched it drive away before we reached the end of our road. Dad didn’t give up. He kept us going. We walked another mile to the main road, then two more miles to the Co-op store and gas station, then another mile to the school. The kids at recess surrounded us, wanting to know how we got to school, because they knew we didn’t have a vehicle. Some of them had also seen us approaching from up the road, when the bus stopped and then took off without waiting.
When we said we’d walked, no one believed us. No one walked that far. We did. (more to come)
