86_Charles-Horel.mp3

otter.ai

20.01.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:01
Today is August 24 2019. Today I'm talking to Charlie Hall at his home on bitumen road near beaver points. My name is Sandwell

Unknown Speaker 0:12
and farming were the two main businesses on the island. In the early days this was what the early settlers depended on mostly farming. But in the late season when sawmill started opening and Vancouver Island they started logging on South River logging in the valley originally, my grandfather logged out of Fulford valley with oxen. And I understand it he logged on and again the Harvard two at one time was that was back in the 70s or 80s 1870s 1880s.

Unknown Speaker 0:49
But do you know where the log to where they thought?

Unknown Speaker 0:54
I don't I rather suspect it was the mills. First in Victoria and later, a chilliness. They were horse logging in those earlier days horse login and oxen login. And when I first recollect 1925 26 area when I was very small, I can remember the horses for horse teams and two horse teams yarding logs for our sawmill and most of the farmers around the island would rent out their teams in their in their spare time they would go out and contract with their teams all and log to the sawmill that was in the 20s

Unknown Speaker 1:46
with the farmers do,

Unknown Speaker 1:47
would they be you know what they weren't the horses themselves or would it be?

Unknown Speaker 1:52
They were usually their own Teamsters? Yeah, they wouldn't. A farmer wouldn't usually put out his team to hire without him being themselves. They were pretty tender of their horses. Take a fellow library on King live just down the way here. We are with an excellent Teamsters. But he treated his horses you know very gently and he spoke to them slowly you can hardly hear him. But they would pull better than almost any horses around. Two and four horse teams both and my father usually on King a lot for for a yard in logs into the sawmill around this end of the island and he was an excellent team so that there were others like Walter Dunbar down Ganges way who was That's all he did was team stirring. And most of the farmer on occasion with Google's login with their not just not into my father's nobody into anybody. So now we're down to they did a lot of logging down to Tidewater to dump the logs in and make up a little boom. Sometimes understand in the early days, they were just bag grooming and they took the bag brooms across to the mills on Vancouver Island. And most of this was done on timber lands that were draining farmlands even they belong to the farmers. So

Unknown Speaker 3:18
this was

Unknown Speaker 3:21
this was not really detrimental to the land they would log a little bit and then turn the sheep in, let the grass grow and turn the sheep in and you know went side by side with the with their farming they were doing a lot of that carried on down to the present day where you see acreage is like a Cummins have which are generally they have acquired them through logging but they they pass through them and use them for sheep while the timber is recovering so that they can keep some sort of economic justification for keeping that land and timber and keeping it operating over the years. In generally, the old landowners on the island here have been pretty good with the land. There was a lot of studying in the 1930s there was quite a bit of Heidi log and Randolph highly highly logging is where you read his poetry and you using donkey engine with cables to cables are generally want to pull a main cable out and heal and pull the rug in and they operate in about 1000 foot circle. And just about everything in the circle comes out. But there's always patches. You don't get that clear cut with the highway we live in are smaller, because there's always patches in the corner for receiving stuff. And they seem to recover fairly quick from that they Am I worked in the small logging camps before the war? I think long before that I I saw the first bulldozer on the island back in the 1920s about 1928 or 29 with a very small feat track down a cushion called Silver aneema Mooney from Vancouver had set up a countdown there were quite a number of different nationalities

Unknown Speaker 5:30
called mill closed.

Unknown Speaker 5:35
And Mooney was Chris and Chris Creek outlet actually, he had a hook campus Christian Creek outlet would log in on Goldman's property right up the creek. Presently, Trail Creek, they were yarding logs down there already and they use this little creek track would look much bigger than a great machine nowadays, but it worked. And they got locked in a lot and have beams away and they never got paid for the discussion and a couple of the other nationalities that were very critical. We call them the League of Nations got together went to Vancouver and Hetal Mooney put in sale finally. But that was only one of the most most of the small operators. You know, they were they were people trying to make selling alive and trying to keep their crews paid.

Unknown Speaker 6:32
A bit about your dad set timeout, that he he was one of the first people to bring in time they'll over to the island.

Unknown Speaker 6:39
I don't think he was the I don't think he was the first he he brought Hypno over in 1924. He chartered the I think it was called the island Princess then the old mortar princess with a CPR vessel and it shattered them a bride to some elder Saltspring. He had a steel mill on the Fraser River. And he sold them to buy this portable, that was going to be easy to keep in timber because he was having trouble getting timber for a steel mill. So he thought if he came back to SharpSpring, where he was born, he knew most everybody and he could buy timber quite friendly. When he got back here, and for two, three years, he was quite it was quite a profitable operation. He had a partner Peter perfect and perfect looked after the business end of things the selling guys and so forth. They were cutting and my father ran the mill

Unknown Speaker 7:40
where we did tell them to to tie

Unknown Speaker 7:44
to the export companies like HR Macmillan and others that were brokering ties. It seemed at that time that all the railroads in Asia and Africa and all countries were expanding their railroad lines, and India. And so there was a big market for Douglas fir ties overseas. And I think that was the main export. For DC at the time, it seemed to be there were scholars and scholars have ties taken off, work down corporate, it was always the time quite epic war eluded them with a little arrangement at the top where you could pull the tires off the truck into a sheet and a heat ran down onto the cow and a couple other guys moved the page around the ticker rooms like an axe with a pointed head and instead of a blade on it, it gave into the wooden polar polar tie around with it. So yeah, they need to they need a lot of time ties in real kinds of shopping in those days. Set up this summer to the diesel engine and he had a late plan and again three ships which I think was unusual at the time. Crater

Unknown Speaker 9:18
how to talk to the masses, affordable milk

Unknown Speaker 9:24
well, they put the milk the milk with the infection and then they can raise the skin and they could raise the skins up in here on on it can pull with points and donkeys and tried to tuck underneath it down and drag away. And our big diesel engine which was around two, two and a half. I had lunch there was only a single cylinder, but it was a huge thing with five foot flywheel and that was onshore on a separate service kits and that was loaded the same way it was raised up in the air and truck driven under development was driven a pull up a ramp onto the back of the truck. And the old model T trucks within Holley has moved around to the next thing

Unknown Speaker 10:19
we're doing to lease the land or how would

Unknown Speaker 10:25
it work? Well, my father made arrangements with the with the farmers or the landowner to go in and put the sawmill up on their property to cut down rocks and the roads were built and everything with their approval, and we built cabins on them at the same time, coming up with Kevin Spacey for years after we move the sawmill

Unknown Speaker 10:54
How long would you stay in a particular area

Unknown Speaker 10:57
of contract only a couple of months? wouldn't take very long to start a credit line. Lending to ship was one of the reasons why we moved so much from school to school around the island timber move again,

Unknown Speaker 11:14
how much of the radius around the sawmill would you do? Well,

Unknown Speaker 11:20
I think it would run probably around 1000 to 1500 feet. But quite often they had they would pull logs into a location with the horses further away from the sawmill and then they would run the donkey and talk about the donkey and return to the mill site with a donkey be a double A double pole to get robbed. But it was once they started doing that it was really cheaper to move the whole mill and sometimes they just hook the mill up on clip put it behind the donkey and read with the big deal and get a thumbnail and go through the bush with the donkey and when pulling the donkey itself and the wind behind that with a smaller set of edges and generator procession of sleds going through the bush sometimes not going to a new site.

Unknown Speaker 12:38
If you have to build a road first or they just

Unknown Speaker 12:42
have to fall to who was pretty it was very difficult to relatively easily go in, you know in between the trees it wouldn't build much of a road. A lot of the roads into the sawmill set were just plank ruins the wood plank of Elgin sometimes over marshy ground, cut a bunch of planks and laid out laid them down on logs and you had a Plank Road to clench way on each side and sometimes there would be a shear load on the side of Africa and I think roads were all right as long as you'd have to turn or anything and then in other places they were caught in solder which they had bought the solder mask and it always seemed to me to be kind of a poor way of building with solder but it would work in places in certain conditions solder would work together give tax and tax returns a foundation but increasingly on top of the foundation

Unknown Speaker 13:53
so you know we've had a very cutting back and forth with the horses every day going along

Unknown Speaker 14:13
with some sawmill which was crazy busy operation at that time when they were running it full time leaving the bottom gunk out and everything and they could mean a lot to some Elio. Just about ready to go bankrupt

Unknown Speaker 14:32
and the mother made an agreement to take over the whole operation inhumane and several deaths that were left and went to significant but for those times they were pretty onerous. And my father was logging

Unknown Speaker 14:55
and tie mail.

Unknown Speaker 14:58
App it was we had without upgrading them for a while to get enough money to set it up again and they had to cover whatever get perfect

Unknown Speaker 15:10
and their own mother went to work and telling them they fall in love with that well for us it was around 1927 I think it was and by by 1929 have crushed, even even lumbering were failing to move on the market. They really went to plot by 1929 but there was a credit crash in time market before that.

Unknown Speaker 15:49
Why was that?

Unknown Speaker 15:53
It was the international market when

Unknown Speaker 15:58
the boom following World War one that kind of a boom building.

Unknown Speaker 16:06
How many men would be working at your sawmill at that busy time?

Unknown Speaker 16:12
Well, I suppose they would be all killed in the woods in a sawmill they would be eight or nine or 10 men who maybe a couple of

Unknown Speaker 16:26
my mother cooks sometimes

Unknown Speaker 16:30
at one time I think it was when he after he bought

Unknown Speaker 16:40
the perfect sawmill my father had been working with Japanese steel mill over on Vancouver Creek river because he had had a lot of a lot of good work done with a gap and he's in McNair shingle cafe was one that he took someone along with email female and they were superb workers and my father swore that Japanese workers couldn't be beat so when you come to come on in here and you haven't

Unknown Speaker 17:21
got a crew and I'm over the place of vocal people using in the mail

Unknown Speaker 17:29
and he thought well, anything can keep the timing running in a condition that

Unknown Speaker 17:35
would be a Japanese crew but it didn't work they were here for I think a month they couldn't be done with it.

Unknown Speaker 17:44
What happened to do not want to work or they want

Unknown Speaker 17:48
to work it couldn't it couldn't get the orders to pay for the time

Unknown Speaker 17:55
they were cutting. Oh yeah,

Unknown Speaker 17:57
they're great workers the Japanese were really remember a very friendly smaller tough little guy, but I didn't I didn't know too much about them.

Unknown Speaker 18:15
But they will they will work and trust it across the room there from when

Unknown Speaker 18:24
we weren't comfortable with Jamaicans property but what

Unknown Speaker 18:36
was that app to date that was after the time market has come out. So what happened? What happened?

Unknown Speaker 18:43
Well, we started cutting my father last week with

Unknown Speaker 18:51
SEO tools.

Unknown Speaker 18:53
Piling piling we were in 1929 We bought that quarter section down Cushing Lake and another quarter section at the other end of the lake and we set the sawmill down there to cook local lumber for sale locally to people and we

Unknown Speaker 19:20
hey I suppose it was probably another meal or two around on the Amman but I think we cut more of the local lumber in those days.

Unknown Speaker 19:28
By local to me just felt the pain are gonna

Unknown Speaker 19:32
remain the chicken houses on top.

Unknown Speaker 19:36
And we delivered a lot of that cooking was awful. You

Unknown Speaker 19:41
know pranks are good. Isn't that really not enough to keep your head above water?

Unknown Speaker 19:51
So many were waiting for you back and in

Unknown Speaker 19:54
that time actually, I did a lot of work. You know I was about eight years old when I went to work in

Unknown Speaker 20:02
going 11

Unknown Speaker 20:05
We went to work in the sawmill and he didn't have any higher outs, he didn't have to pay them, you know, so

Unknown Speaker 20:13
we did the work. What would you do? Well, we were taking the slabs off the back from the sawmill, inflating them along the ruler, getting rid of them somehow getting the lumber off and period along the ruler, a ruler with a lumber comes off and take the lumber off of ruler and put it in pile. After you get a pile big enough why then father would come over and help us move it onto the back of the truck. And try it again and do the same thing. So yeah, it was hard. It was hard work but we could do quite a little bit on our own without without having anybody

Unknown Speaker 20:57
we went to school to Yeah, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 21:00
we did miss a lot of school.

Unknown Speaker 21:04
From the time I was about eight team we

Unknown Speaker 21:07
did my brother and I didn't get too much

Unknown Speaker 21:12
data we just asked you to stay either you'd have to stay home and get an order through and stuff like that.

Unknown Speaker 21:20
But you know, times are tough. A lot of a lot of people were doing pretty much the same thing. The girl and her boyfriend working for their father in the in the bush Have you ever said we haven't to an economy could really come with a bat get enough cedar poles. It wasn't anything unusual

Unknown Speaker 21:47
it was it was five living but we didn't really we never felt anything like that. Well, it must

Unknown Speaker 21:58
have been quite experienced from your family from you know from

Unknown Speaker 22:05
we had been very prosperous when we first came to shop. Quick, prosperous. My mother even had a lady come in and help with housework. You know, every day during the week grace, he just ran around.

Unknown Speaker 22:17
Where did he live?

Unknown Speaker 22:21
Called been very hard. With a gun right now is the government gravel pit between corporate and Ganges. They were the hosts on that, that we rented. And they say we were fairly prosperous at that time.

Unknown Speaker 22:39
Did you have Did you do any farming at all because you keep animals?

Unknown Speaker 22:44
No, my father was no farmer. He was a mechanic. You could be putting Anything With An Engine and machinery. Did your mom

Unknown Speaker 22:53
do things like gardening or anything at that time, a little

Unknown Speaker 22:56
bit of grandma. But she was away most that time she went to Victorian sound work. And she worked at various jobs in the hotel mostly done with a cafe and the hotel he was cooking. And

Unknown Speaker 23:22
another lady ran a laundry service

Unknown Speaker 23:27
here on the island.

Unknown Speaker 23:31
So we didn't get to see her that much between the time I was about eight and a time my mother was away she only home you know a weekend or so a month. And we were back in many ways we had we had a lot of fun you know I mean we were we were a little devil into some kind of mischief and we had all these equipment around to pray with that had hung over from my father. Wealthy days you might say well days anyway when he had a lot of equipment. We have big, huge gaps brought to it. I think it was a two gallon model we fill it up with gasoline and go around seven whiteness on fire with it. You could throw a flame about 50 feet with it if you pump it up real well. We deal with dynamite and capsule and globe. Put a half thick in one side of a stump and go around the other side and listen to the bang.

Unknown Speaker 24:41
This kind of enjoyment

Unknown Speaker 24:45
so we weren't we weren't depressed or anything

Unknown Speaker 24:53
I asked you a bit about school. We

Unknown Speaker 24:58
Well we went to school By Berlin Valley School. And Mr. Smith was a teacher at that thing. And I must have been one of the worst teachers in Western Canada. He would stand up at the front of the room. And I can remember very clearly he would stand at the front of the room and anybody that earned his displeasure, he would throw whatever he had in their hand after whether it was an eraser or a piece of chalk or a book or a dictionary or anything else he threw. And he ended up scrapping left and right. old socks. The big chap who was about 12 or 13, the same guy was he was in grade one. He used to get beat every day because he couldn't do the lessons. Sox was quite smart, but he couldn't read the ordinary way, you know, he, he could write in a mirror that when we were when we were playing with me, he could write in a mirror but he couldn't. He couldn't read the ordinary writing. But he was a fairly intelligent please to get a look in every day for not doing this work. And my brother would get a belting for writing with his left hand if he was caught using his left hand he was left handed but he was caught he got

Unknown Speaker 26:35
up grew up getting to get into trouble like that too.

Unknown Speaker 26:38
Oh, yeah. My My sister was accused of putting a bunch of nasty words on the board fence around the school. claim that was her writing. So he was going to give for assessing for this and my father came home from the logon capillaries and log in on the other side of the island at the time when Heather said it Musgrave mountain and he came over and pounded Paul Smith out on the steps cool really fun years during the school year was was a vintage here I guess 1920 26

Unknown Speaker 27:31
Did he stay did

Unknown Speaker 27:37
my Uncle Jim who was a pretty cool head came down and cooled my father Anthony got them to undertake to to help hold Paul Smith fall from trees behind the school at weekends so they would both be pulling on the fall between them. And they can work quite well. But there was no more talk about given my sister. Like only the next week, one of the bigger lads in school admitted that he'd done already writing anyway

Unknown Speaker 28:17
math I guess

Unknown Speaker 28:19
throughout the years, a little later Smith was gonna give a lab call to somebody like him and they used to close the cloakroom door and after all the kids were gone. He called the cook room door and take the victim into up to his desk and hammer him with his belt. He

Unknown Speaker 28:48
actually had a big sister who was in grade eight, probably should have been a big girl. I think her name was something like winning. We were all walking through the window to see how Smith made up building actually of course and the cloakroom dervish open and the system marched down the island grab the strap away from Paul Smith and I don't know how to handle it

Unknown Speaker 29:21
finished actually reading it didn't get any. So that was clear. That was quite a school. That year. I met with many years later here. 60 years later, he came to the opening of the fourth school. And he told me at the time that he had never again tried to teach school he set himself that he thought he was the villain

Unknown Speaker 29:55
that was the big school. I went to you Next to the Wharton School Miss Holt who was later this is Dan lag was teaching school she had things pretty well under control she was a pretty good disciplinarian but a couple of the kids

Unknown Speaker 30:18
too voice they were little tears they bullied the devil out of everybody

Unknown Speaker 30:28
anybody stated we came down here to the repoint went to be the point 30 minute relevance of the record he was a younger

Unknown Speaker 30:49
teaching school I think I would have managed to get into grade to retain saving only schools way ahead of myself in grade two and I fell in love with my family as far as I was concerned. I didn't know they had teachers like that and then

Unknown Speaker 31:17
how many kids were at the school and be replaceable

Unknown Speaker 31:20
be replaced school I suppose it was about a dozen maybe more at the time. Remember it was a very it was a wolf hated was there. He was the biggest boy I think very fine. Gavin Reynolds was going there and Gavin was a very decent chap

Unknown Speaker 31:41
it was a school of very very good good people Stuart McClellan was going there. Stuart nice to fade on the way to and from school but

Unknown Speaker 31:51
I mean that was still no there was no bullied at school I'm not sure what any of the records are there.

Unknown Speaker 32:01
I can't remember. I can't remember any other records being in that school Debian later I left before we went to Beaver point. We went to a private school.

Unknown Speaker 32:22
Looking back from the north end there were a little private school and forth where the one little little secondhand store is now on emphasises road up there. And some of the Reynolds went there. Vivian Reynolds with their writing clearly went there ever remember who the teacher was? I can't remember the teacher that little private school I don't I don't really know why they be children. What that it was a school of burglars who are the developers point in a school here beaver point so I can't really understand it now looking back right it was a friend of school and they're worth a

Unknown Speaker 33:19
look gonna say neither cake. Who ran neither to Cooper statically

Unknown Speaker 33:40
this gun

Unknown Speaker 33:46
the only one I can think of who might know who ran that school

Unknown Speaker 33:56
good and my family had been a secret store at the time where there was a little restaurant is now that was Cudmore postoffice. We spoke to hold the good side

Unknown Speaker 34:22
what year without it? I think

Unknown Speaker 34:39
how many kids went there to their own private school? Well, my recollection of it is maybe only 10 or 11 kids. It must have been a fairly small enrollment. Because it wasn't.

Unknown Speaker 34:55
It was really small building. Right? I can remember that. About the teacher or anything else except that we did go there

Unknown Speaker 35:03
just the way they just said that you went there we must

Unknown Speaker 35:07
have gone there only transferred up to Beaver point and be replaced

Unknown Speaker 35:18
Where did you live when you were going to be repoint school

Unknown Speaker 35:22
right in a cabin right across the road from Byron on the to Macomb play property. It was all property for next quarter and we have some then we moved the sawmill while we were going to be the points to remove the sawmill up to which property George Stewart had property next to it Road area. When we finished there we moved down onto our own quarter section and cushion creek that really set the sawmill up for final place

Unknown Speaker 36:08
and where did you what kind of building Did you live in there

Unknown Speaker 36:11
we had a little cabin beside beside the creek there to start with a little into cabin well a little cabin with a lien two on it. And there was a trail from from there across the to the forest to the trees and across the fields where the farm is now to the cushion Lake Road which was at the far entry of the farm. And the same year we moved down there the road crew came down and built the bridge across Christian Creek on Stewart road and carried the road out and connected it to that. I think it was probably the year after we moved down there I'm not sure but it was right around that time. I remember what the horses on the MD scrapers operating in quick opening and building the rules with horses and scrapers. When they come in. They built very short order they built a dandy wooden bridge across Cushing Creek

Unknown Speaker 37:26
was a few couple of teams of horses and a handful of men. A very good wooden bridge my father supplied the planks from the mill and very quickly in there I don't trust the government more than $300.

Unknown Speaker 37:49
To

Unknown Speaker 37:51
quickest way out in a date was to walk to Christian Lake corner for going to town and walk the cushion right corner and surely crossing the stage into Victoria. With

Unknown Speaker 38:08
Charlie crossing stage and having

Unknown Speaker 38:12
a cooking show the crafting stage for the husband house in a limousine with a seven passenger car with flipped back down seats from Harbor house to the Dominion hotel every day. If you wanted to go to Korea that was you went if you didn't go in your own car and you took sure he got

Unknown Speaker 38:38
and he had when we have a lot that he takes across

Unknown Speaker 38:41
no note by that time. By that time the ferry was running in 1930 Oh so the site was he didn't start operate until 930 so that that was a little later than I'm talking about. We moved from when we got down there to Christian Creek we kept going to be replaced School for the rest of them for the rest of that year and that was a long walk from from Christian Creek read through the beaver point every day. And the next year we transferred over to divide

Unknown Speaker 39:29
how many times they almost painted I think the the maximum number there was 12 or 14 When we first went when we first went there really a week rather and barely wait. And I think three of the Bennet girl and one of the male way to have the geometrically I think my wife and her sisters bunny will already school Alan knobs in the economy boys and Ollie Garner can't recollect all names but Mary Mary Kirby have we all pretty family I'm better thrilled with teaching Mary It was a beautiful blonde girl pretty good to see I fell in love with my teeth one thing about Mary was he would have to be too late to handle the kids it was weird

Unknown Speaker 41:03
to get one I think it was the year a second year we went again webcams were gone some of the others were gone and got down to about nine or 10 Pretty rough economy way better than I am done pretty pretty rough we would get out the window go smoking a cigarette in the afternoon we didn't know what to do with it so that was that was something else again

Unknown Speaker 41:50
to stay after school or did he just give up after school and we just left when he felt like it you know

Unknown Speaker 42:04
he would go to bad late Mary was too dumb to handle Blake like that after well my brother and Connie were expelled from school famous for that first thing after that, Marian Miller very very God later she married England so she admitted marry England she's probably contributed to the historical he was just a splendid teacher for anybody that was decent. But could have been

Unknown Speaker 43:00
different from the 2.0

Unknown Speaker 43:03
Yeah different

Unknown Speaker 43:15
company needs to be implemented into the middle of May and Milliken.

Unknown Speaker 43:30
I think he gave everybody mathematics to be making games and I don't think it'd be very much

Unknown Speaker 43:48
that I'd Hepburn very

Unknown Speaker 44:04
good by Florence girl who was banned the teacher and a disciplinarian. Everybody knew when when Forrest Gump you know, just ask how high he was very limited platinum gone. He could show me the following and he was also an excellent teacher. He laid out he laid out the work that was done and got people really enjoyed learning

Unknown Speaker 44:54
to talk to remember to talk,

Unknown Speaker 44:58
but he was teaching the whole already great wondering cuz he was teaching every time I get into high school i i took one grade when I was I took a great

Unknown Speaker 45:24
I couldn't agree and adequate provincial exam Why did you go over the atmosphere my parents separated well he separated some time before that but that was a year when they finally decided to divide things up and then they caught him off thing and went up the west coast and my mother was finishing up and down because he didn't want to come back to shop for him and be absolutely no place for me to stay taking custody of me and my father was taking custody of my brother Phil What about you and

Unknown Speaker 46:13
I was

Unknown Speaker 46:18
16

Unknown Speaker 46:25
but he was five years old and she's still here she's still on

Unknown Speaker 46:38
it was a failure and I second marriages still together she still married to have an old free lager a splendid old and then now bad condition he has to take care of you he had to take care of like a nurse full time and everything he has had a diabetic coma and blind and most of them

Unknown Speaker 47:42
again back to

Unknown Speaker 47:44
how did you do How did you find a school today compared

Unknown Speaker 47:47
to

Unknown Speaker 47:48
in finance?

Unknown Speaker 48:19
Anyway

Unknown Speaker 48:27
I went back and finished

Unknown Speaker 48:36
and I go to high school and maintain pretty pretty pretty good high school in again probably didn't start high school, public school until they were $5 a month for me to go to high school. And I didn't have my cooking in the migrant camp and I was working full time

Unknown Speaker 49:19
after

Unknown Speaker 49:29
school and who later married, Hepburn became Florence Hepburn. Everybody knows and he taught me a few months of high school and then going to be a more scoop what to say would be a good thing. Let me do janitor return for my $5 a month and go to the high school and again. So I go down there early in the morning and clean school 10 questions and I hadn't the GOV together. We swept out the school and cleaned the Blackboard and gotten Woody in. The fire was ready to go for the day in school and in high school and Gabby was in what was called bendy because it had been built for an exhibit. Agricultural

Unknown Speaker 50:48
Where did you live where you were going?

Unknown Speaker 50:52
About 1933 My father had built a house on the side of the road on the way out two bedrooms from between Christian Creek and Benefiel and it's still there. We have a caller and we moved in and I think

Unknown Speaker 51:28
there was no such thing as running hot I like to think golden. But when my mother set up logon she had no luck not doing hardly none. She made her married.

Unknown Speaker 51:45
But at the time she had children log in on the property. And another mind you was doing most of the bossing

Unknown Speaker 51:55
where we're right, and the Christian Christian

Unknown Speaker 52:01
Lake. Well, they will live in all around Christian Lake. July Lawton and then Logan Cruz. They started at the north end of Christian lake on my mother's property above the lake. And the mountain weather had been a big blow down blogs in 1933 or 34. There's been a hurricane come through soft spring and most of the timber down from the mountains and so that's where he started not long after that

Unknown Speaker 52:49
can I just back up a little bit because I'd like to ask you about your your mom and peers Island. See? When did you start to go to work?

Unknown Speaker 53:00
I think it was around 1931 of my children working in Victoria, quite menial work, you know, in the in the restaurants cooking in the hotels and restaurants cooking and doing laundry

Unknown Speaker 53:24
to make a few bucks to pay off the debts he had undertaken. And he was a very hardworking woman. And she was moved people who could work about 15 or 16 hours a day and still fell in love energy left.

Unknown Speaker 53:49
And so one of the first wardens hired women Horton hired when it didn't work. And so they both got the place. completely ready to receive prisoner when she was over there working as a warden. I don't know what that was. It seems to me it was either 31 or 32.

Unknown Speaker 54:18
And what did the Duke boys done to be rounded up like that?

Unknown Speaker 54:24
I think what they had done was mainly the most of the women there had simply taken part in these nude parades. Some of them had actually taken part in arson burning down the halls of schools. And then they would hold a little nude parade around the around the fire afterwards, you know.

Unknown Speaker 54:45
And the police were there out and rounded them up. I think the basic of it actually was the arson charges. Burning public property, which should remember to cleanse their their lives and make them all live more and morally without these material possessions around.

Unknown Speaker 55:13
But encrypted, we're getting in the way of the laws and government property or taxpayer property and everything else we're doing.

Unknown Speaker 55:22
We're the only women on Pierce Island.

Unknown Speaker 55:26
Do I think it was men section there too? Yes. But I don't, I never heard anything about it because my mother didn't work there.

Unknown Speaker 55:34
We did children here do.

Unknown Speaker 55:37
You know, I don't know where the children went during that time. They must be taken into custody somewhere, put out with family somewhere else and the problems probably abroad Castlebar now from where they came from.

Unknown Speaker 55:58
They built the prison, especially for the bigger boys

Unknown Speaker 56:05
and put them on the island. And actually, it doesn't sound like a very nice solution to a problem. When they went back, after they were released from Pierce Island, there was very, very little trouble from the same people. There were other outbreaks up there carried on for some years until Boehner was attorney general back in the 50s. But the real majority of who had been through the improvement on piers Island didn't bother again.

Unknown Speaker 56:49
So then your mother came back difficult compared to running the login back when

Unknown Speaker 56:58
she was when she ran a cookout, Joe logon and she ran the logging camp on the side as well.

Unknown Speaker 57:09
While she was hired, she would hire a lot of recruiters. She told Joe who to hire and to get rid of and everything else. But he was nomina he was running the operation in many ways still with with a pretty good operator and very thorough, very thorough math. And but he didn't know anything about logging. He was he'd been a pull a tie cutter when they up in the interior when they was a good market when there was a good market for having been tied. He had taken a crew cut ties, ties for delivering this is some of the hardest words in the Western world and hearing time the Greek Big Brother everywhere he has done very well that and he had also set up here on something before he went to London with my mother's equipment.

Unknown Speaker 58:21
So your mom was that see reflected the equipment here on

Unknown Speaker 58:27
the sawmill and everything was my father left. So this would affect this is all my mother's equipment was still was running. That was after he had been running for two or three years he bought his own equipment.

Unknown Speaker 58:48
But initially it was my mother's equipment. And a lot of these people he had some of the people who had working for him

Unknown Speaker 59:00
knew nothing about logging either they were they were followers. They would cut piling and pools and that sort of thing, which he'd been doing but they didn't know how to splice cable

Unknown Speaker 59:19
with a local man

Unknown Speaker 59:20
nobody These are mostly foreigners that Joe had working for him they were and he had with in German and the odd somebody some local waiter converted Paul Poland, Poland, Qatar which we could be tough on them.

Unknown Speaker 59:58
How do you feel about that? about people who are living on the island, you know, there seemed to be quite a few off islanders coming in and taking what's the second the third and someone who

Unknown Speaker 1:00:10
didn't hear any nonsense about that and anybody whether a guy could come in and do

Unknown Speaker 1:00:31
that there wasn't any nastiness I saw in respect to the actual employment conditions in those days. There was a lot more antagonism perhaps towards foreign nationalities, but it wasn't expressed in the way that he's got my job I feel well, we can do it well, it was simply expressed more or less verbally really, you know? Like people you wouldn't gotten a coffee from that sort of thing I

Unknown Speaker 1:01:08
kind of felt Colombian going across Google didn't didn't have that. It didn't go out at all at

Unknown Speaker 1:01:31
all but I moved into the bunkhouse after I came back from St. Anthony

Unknown Speaker 1:01:52
was Google who was at twit and the Google turned out could do just about anything he was a great big wide lad not very tough not be why a horse and one of those parties who you could turn leaving would have been voted in the road and come back at noon and it would be out of shape because we did a whole day that he couldn't do very very

Unknown Speaker 1:02:28
very

Unknown Speaker 1:02:30
when you couldn't get a higher they get to cut the back off the tree a quick video on how to log in

Unknown Speaker 1:02:42
one time it couldn't get hired me to do that job. Someone else took the opportunity to come down. Give me dispersed and contraband you're never been at one before where you wind up

Unknown Speaker 1:03:05
with the tree and after that he didn't know that. But he would try he would try anything. He wasn't he wasn't mechanically good. But we could do things well enough to get them done. Yeah. Remember

Unknown Speaker 1:03:35
there was a big tweet from Auburn walborn Who was driving donkey for joy at one time and he was very thankful and humbled Denman Island came to a grinding dark culture an interesting writing type of young man you know quite a strong he taught me how to go to Qatar to have to work and he

Unknown Speaker 1:04:27
eventually moved to Glencoe over here moved over here welcome to chillin donkey and then with the following crew who go and go and England a lot of falling with him falling in those days with a cut cut.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:56
And they will work in big timber you know for for I put through one of those two pretty short order cutting remember cutting a massive tree and a lot of work and put a cut in the bottom and you had to come up on top of a lot of woods that could have been justice much as the backup and everything had to be really new but then there was Albert Albert Becker later

Unknown Speaker 1:05:46
and go home and these are all very interesting Johnny the waiters on Mary Mary Mary pretty good teacher at the divide and still they're pretty pretty good

Unknown Speaker 1:06:15
was elated by

Unknown Speaker 1:06:21
Yeah, he he's gonna be so good. Yeah, I lived in a bunkhouse there with them for quite a long while. And

Unknown Speaker 1:06:38
when I found out as well,

Unknown Speaker 1:06:41
we've worked in one camp on the weekends and and after school, I was

Unknown Speaker 1:06:54
I was pumped. I got a pretty easy when I came back from Siena, 14. And Joe told me now think that I owe you anything, I'm gonna see that you don't go hungry or anything, but don't think I owe you anything. You'll have to go to work and make some money to pay for your bogus things, everybody else. And so I think it would only come to about $15 a month born, my mother had a cooperative cookhouse going where everybody paid the cost their share of the cost of groceries and paid her $5 A month

Unknown Speaker 1:07:44
the precedent with money

Unknown Speaker 1:07:48
and so

Unknown Speaker 1:07:55
anybody else? And all right. And so I think it was only come to over $15 A month born My mother had a cooperative cookhouse going where she everybody paid the cost their share of the cost of groceries and then they paid her $5 A month much but in the depression it was Yeah, money and so I paid my share of the board and I think it would be some range from around 13 or $14 a month but I didn't have to pay or $5 a month like the other every every month I would have this doctor my pay and sometimes they didn't have any pay cutting in the wintertime when I was going to school and this be carried forward until I was making some money again in the summer but

Unknown Speaker 1:09:00
I have I had saved quite a lot of money by the time I got to.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:09
to graduate from high school just working moving logs like that. I got to do quite a lot of the blooming but you know speaking in general logging at that time in the 30s there was a fair amount of logging camps a fair number of migrant camps on salt spring in the same same sizes job.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:46
Logging in general as much as I can recall the earlier form. I remember the first tractor who was that little creek track that on Christian Creek, then my father brought a little truck forward in a fortune donkey with a fortune tractor with trucks. And it didn't work with a damn trench just spun on any branches or anything. And he finally ended up bolting out of the trap to make it grab better but it was a failure. It was too late and too high geared to do much work. Later on, there were other builders come along pretty good machines. The first steam donkey I can recollect was the one I think a guy by the name of Fletcher brought in on the Stewart road

Unknown Speaker 1:10:59
above the old George Stewart homestead he was in there one year with the donkey logging back to a place they call mini swamp which is way at the property. And then,

Unknown Speaker 1:11:20
so I'm interested to hear that in the Depression, there was quite a bit of quite a bit of logging.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:25
People need an extra buck, how they made a buck?

Unknown Speaker 1:11:29
Where do they sell the loss

Unknown Speaker 1:11:34
of health. Most of the logs were brokered out through GJ boy down and again. There were other buyers to other people buying but TJ boy was head of what store he was in a wheelchair and around our marvelous old champ. He knew everybody on shelf bring everybody in there Hildur kids as well. And he brokered the logs, as well as a multitude of other things he brokered logs, he would sell the logs, you put the logs in the water, and he would see that he got paid for the water. And then the he arranged for the tow tow boat to come over and pick them up from total told them away and everything else once you get to loves in the water. And in the meantime, you'll be running a deficit and more store buying groceries and that would all come out of your log scale before you get any check out of it. But it was a good system because it provided people with a living.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:45
They could get credit while they were working and have a chance of paying off what they own. So for those days, it worked really well.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:58
What else was small, it's involved in

Unknown Speaker 1:13:00
everything, everything everything. GJ was headed. They they did everything. They sold insurance, they sold automobiles. They have the CPR ship, of course called up the warfare alongside of them when they looked after the Express. The post office was in the store. GJ was a notary public. So if you wanted to buy land, you bought it through GJ from his wheelchair, he did a lot of this but he also had people working for him who did trade a lot of his errands, you know. So it was a he ran a quite a busy little place that there hadn't been anything quite like that since TJ died, where so much of every sort of aspect of the island funneled through the ones commercial property.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:00
Did they did he buy, you know projects from people to

Unknown Speaker 1:14:05
they had an egg shorting plant there they bought all the farmers produce, shipped it over to Vancouver they have their own their own butcher shop. And they would buy and sell lambs and meat and vegetables and boxed apples there was always quite often a huge Apple being waiting on the worst for the steamer to take them away. And that would all be going through most of it would be going to notice and that would be them too long to correct. There was there was some people who dealt directly with dealers and Vancouver and other people who dealt with, say the service end of the hour and they would deal with Patterson store. The bigger point here though is a little store then he moved the store CPR ferry stopped going to be replaced store in Fulford also the extended credit van the same sort of operation but on a very modest scale compared to

Unknown Speaker 1:15:21
you mentioned about banking that there was no bank on the island

Unknown Speaker 1:15:25
practically anything like that was taken care of by mortgage if you had money coming in you could leave it on leave enough credit with them or they will give you a check for an anytime you wanted that sort of thing write that into that one rod business only out here with some of the old timers don't leave money in a trust fund and let it sit there and you wonder what's going on try to get rid of it and they don't want it

Unknown Speaker 1:16:01
they think they're going to operate in the same manner that just treat you like a bank it did it with more follows us

Unknown Speaker 1:16:13
that yeah, it was a very good thing for the island that they had an operator like PJ more during the Depression there

Unknown Speaker 1:16:27
could be carry a lot of families

Unknown Speaker 1:16:29
Oh yes. They carried a lot of families yeah. Oh yeah. He wouldn't let anybody go hungry though.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:38
Whether they deserved it or not Yeah. It was it was a sort of a close little community in its own way.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:55
Just about as self contained as you can get. The authentic thing you wanted you could get right on the island. Blacksmith three pairs.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:11
Tell me about the blacksmith a little bit where we construct

Unknown Speaker 1:17:14
a blacksmith shop was just about under the pumps of central 10 now yeah, just about under the pumps and all the McAfee build McAfee was the building. Not sure the first day. It was McAfee anyway. And he operated as long as I can remember all during the 20s and 30s. McAfee will McAfee ran the blacksmith shop there you know he did a lot of things. Any kind of metalworking he did. He even had laid on the premises but he didn't use that much. Toynbee did claim be who tom tom digs father. He had a garage on the site just above where the bank Bank of Commerce Building is a one of those Listen, style of buildings in a shop and he did all that kind of machine learning is very good at it. So McAfee handled only more or less blacksmithing I still have a couple of tools. He made a farmer's friend I call it a long pipe with an axe head on the end of it which you can move anything and a big priority made out of out of a truck Excellent. You can tear off the wall anywhere with very heavy duty stuff. But he built he made shackles for the loggers. shackles and plates and all that kind of thing you have to have for your logging equipment he used to make them all in the wire that made them

Unknown Speaker 1:19:25
so messed up that a lot of day you have quite a bit of work to do with the horses.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:31
Oh yeah. It didn't seem to matter what business you got into you ended up dealing with McAfee or something you know, and he was made a credit good business of it. From what I understand. When the old guy died. He left a very good estate but he never married and he lived the relatively modest life he used to play chess every once in a while. with DJ Modi was one of the chaps who go over in the evening and play check with DJ. The funny thing about that was the manager of the opposition store was supposed to be in fierce opposition. Stand wag was manager trading company which was supposed to be a fierce competition with more than ladies to go over about once a week and play chess with DJ in the evening. So a lot of these things were not what they seemed

Unknown Speaker 1:20:35
what was the trading company like compared with most?

Unknown Speaker 1:20:39
Well, a printing company was smaller store of course, they didn't do the brokerage or any of the general do the printing say it was a regular grocery store more than yes, it was the second biggest grocery store and a general store had a lot of things besides groceries but it didn't get into the numerous services that mullets had

Unknown Speaker 1:21:08
their gas station

Unknown Speaker 1:21:11
I think they did have you mean north? Yeah, they had a gas station to they later they took the pumper that used to be well inside the store. They had a gas station across the street a service station built I think first of all, Elliot ran it for a while and various other people ran their gas station for a while they had a station for the longest time on their property there. There was other gas stations in town across

Unknown Speaker 1:21:49
the besides we said once it was always it was always Altimas services available.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:59
In the 33 people mostly using cars by them

Unknown Speaker 1:22:03
pretty generator using cars. We used to fairly often walking along a horse and wagon go the same way do on the tailgate, you know right along for several months, sometimes coming home from a dance, you know, somebody would take a horse and wagon to the dance and everybody would claim in the wagon and go home the easy way and just drop off as they get past their rules. I can't remember who who took the horse and wagon to the den somebody used to occasionally from the cranberry way take a horse and wagon to the forefront but it was mostly trucks, trucks and cars

Unknown Speaker 1:23:05
when a prime and another car on the road of that time, they will stay or they always had to stop and have a chat. It wasn't

Unknown Speaker 1:23:14
like today

Unknown Speaker 1:23:18
it was not it wasn't quite like that. But it was almost that. And I see my mother had an accident was there any college was her car. And they ran into one another on a corner and I don't know whose fault it was just a narrow corner on a narrow road. And they backed off and early his car and got a big hammer and came over and hammered my mother's fender out so it stopped scraping against the wheel and back and hammered his own fender and said well I think they'll run to the All right and they said goodbye to you again and that was your accident loaded to

Unknown Speaker 1:24:08
what do you do after you? When did you leave school? When did you finish it? The app began in school. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:19
I think it was 1930 37.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:33
Would have been 3038. I started there in 35. I finished in 38 there was four or five of us that

Unknown Speaker 1:24:45
Johnny foolish to the teacher there. He would like to put through an accelerated course you see it

Unknown Speaker 1:24:58
was George Friday. published more Lily Heffernan, Bob loose Malaysia. At Bella Bella Coola lives up there now. You retired school teacher. Really Heffernan, this doctor still practicing I think living on the north end the Saltspring know that are most of the time. Eunice Roberts, I don't know where you went to. And Dorothy Duffy more

Unknown Speaker 1:25:32
gammon horse, foster daughter. And he took the five of us and put us through

Unknown Speaker 1:25:41
course, to take the four year course in three years. So we got a year early. And I went down to I went down to Bellingham went to the Western Washington College down there at Bellingham for a year. What did you study? I took General, I took the Jim course down there, I was going to go into journalism at that time. And I had a family real meat of that prospect down there. One of the one of the newspapers in in Seattle was encouraging two or three of us, you know, to go on down to Seattle to get our degrees in journalism and work for the paper. And it will ship sounded very good. But when I came back up in 39, I belong to the militia. And in 39, when I came back up to work in the logging camp, for the summer, ever declared war, so they call them our platoon here on the island. Everybody in the high school has belonged to that.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:01
We try what

Unknown Speaker 1:27:03
13 Canadian Scottish machine gun. And so that was the pre war software that I remember

Unknown Speaker 1:27:26
you got any more questions? Or?

Unknown Speaker 1:27:34
Just one more question. And it's, it's a general one about what what did when you were growing up when you were a child and as you got older, what did people do for for time for recreation when they weren't working?

Unknown Speaker 1:27:47
Oh, there were all kinds of social activities on soft bring in those days, everything was there. Every every school acted as a community hall besides the President's community. So there was a speaker point helpful for Central Hall and they were all operating in some way all year round, as well as in the OFF time when the schools weren't in session. A lot of schools were operated as community centers. So there was parties and socials and going, I think, most of the weekends of the winter. There was some dances or something taken place.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:34
And teenagers would go to those two teenagers would go everybody

Unknown Speaker 1:28:38
everybody would go to the dances where everybody would go to the little debate school people brought their babies and left them in the cloakroom. And they'd have a squared x, it was a small school, they would have a little square that's going in there and there was local violinists I think Leon King was one of the violinists and colors who called square that have that sort of thing. And they would have wrote a tune on a violin, accordion or someone's places had the pianos and yeah, there was a lot of entertainers of that nature. And of course, these things like cake sales were all the ladies to cake and the men bid on the cake, the lady into dinner, whose cake they bought this sort of thing.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:44
And all the trouble of people went to the fool the other people say taking a slab of lumber and decorating it beautifully.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:00
But 10 or 12 bucks

Unknown Speaker 1:30:05
What about it as children? What were you doing when you

Unknown Speaker 1:30:12
were pretty generally working my brother and I literally went into Ellery? We were we were isolated Christian Creek there from most other kids. So we entertained ourselves you know, fishing, spearing fish in the creek mostly or dynamiting and then going down to the salt water and big and clams, catching crabs and most of the things we did really go one way or another we used to cruise over the mudflats down there and spear fishing in at Christian Creek outlet and spirit I'm in the creek.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:59
Did you go boating together boat?

Unknown Speaker 1:31:01
We had an old boat. I think it was the outfit I mentioned we were logging there Mooney left some equipment including an old boat down there. We used to take it out. Use it I don't know what belong to actually but we used it. And on the cushion rake leaves this room around the shores and fish off the shore you can get some logs on the shore cushion like there was two of the places. Fishing them are different to the hook on the worm you can catch 5060 more efficient and afternoon. What kind of fish would you catch? Or they'd be cutthroat rainbow trout. They would be anywhere from eight inches.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:02
The average would be about nine inches, which I think is legal. We kept the eight inches when we threw them back if they were under eight.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:12
I think that's illegal but I'm not sure at that time. And we would catch a whopping number of fish almost have to carry them home in a pack but there was plenty to do we build a my brother and I build a little lake plant in the creek running off the creek for power to give us electric light in the cabin. Oh really? Yeah, he was quite my brother was very mechanical. Just about anything that needed put them together with machinery you could put it together

Unknown Speaker 1:32:59
and he was older than you

Unknown Speaker 1:33:01
Yeah, he was two two and a half years old

Unknown Speaker 1:33:11
did you go off Island very much. No, I didn't go off Island till what went off occasionally. I suppose once or twice after I came back here when I was a little kid I must have left a couple of times while my mother was for the first year I think we went to order feeder and relevance a number of times but what I can remember of it I stayed on Saltspring mostly until I went up the west coast in 1934. My sister had married the lighthouse keepers assistant. And I went up there and spent the summer there. And that was I thought that was a really a dandy time. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:03
How old were you then?

Unknown Speaker 1:34:05
I was 13 Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:34:08
it's been quite an adventure.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:10
It was it was great. We had a great time I went up on audio mokwena Oh yeah, for sure. steamship service and Kirsten I came back down and Laura but it took it took three days to go to look at that time right they must have spent a lot of time just docking and undocking and do laying up at night or something. I can't remember why it took so long but I'm pretty sure it took us three days to get to Dhaka from Victoria. There was only folk camps to service there's no rules going out there in those days. The login pamphlet floats and lighthouse at friendly Cove was had a trail down to the a filtered cannery at noon they were counting pilchard there and it was a big filter to run on the west coast at the time Academy was owned by a Seattle company and the through the the filters through some sort of processor and put the remains of kind of an oil from it into the ocean there and all around us for three miles away from from the plant. You put a rope in the water come out and have this crappy colored slime mold. You couldn't put anything in the water without getting a crappy sled

Unknown Speaker 1:36:05
but it was it was a good summer