Life North of the 54th

Transcript

• 00:00 - Introductions
• 25:02 - Generations of Tires
• 34:33 - Features and Quirks of the Peace Country
• 45:38 - Some Additional Stories

00:00 - Introductions

Opening Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff]

Garett:
Welcome to life north of the 54th. It's good to have you back. I'm Garett Brown.

Preston:
And I'm Preston Brown. And here with us we have Jim and Pam Brown. We'd like to have them introduce themselves for us.

Jim:
I'll let Pam introduce herself first.

Pam:
[laughs] I haven't been here as long as Jim's been here. I came up when I was 20 and that was a long time ago. [laughs] I was born in the States. My last known address was like Seattle and I just loved it here. I love it here. This is my kind of country.

Jim:
I'm Jim Brown. I moved up here 1969 with my parents, so I didn't have much choice but to come. And we moved from Moses Lake, Washington. And my dad was a farmer and he came up here to farm and he brought his family of eight children with him. And I'm the oldest of actually ten kids. And it's been a life up here.

Garett:
Yeah. Pam, did you come up with your parents as well?

Pam:
No. No. I married Jim and he sold me on this country, this area, and he just really wanted to stay here. So I thought, well, I'm not really tied to the West Coast. [chuckles] I think we'll try it. And it was definitely eye opening and different.

Jim:
I went to Rick's College, BYU-Idaho, now to get my Mr. Degree.

Garett:
[chuckles]

Jim:
There's just not very many single eligible young adult girls up in this country, members of the Church. And so I had the opportunity to go down to school. There were some other people in Dawson Creek that were going and so when I come back home off my mission, I went down there and I was actively pursuing for the first term to get married. And that didn't happen. So I decided to come back the second term. And I said, this is enough. I'm just going to have fun. And within three weeks we were engaged. [laughs] and the story continues from there.

Garett:
Were you also then going to Rick's at the time Pam?

Pam:
Yes, I was. And that was the start of something wonderful.

Preston:
You know Uncle Jim, I would like to hear your perspective on moving to the Fort St. John area when you were a young man with your parents. Would you be able to kind of tell that story? I don't know it very well.

Jim:
Okay. Yes, I can tell you. My dad always loved to farm, he farmed even when we lived in Moses Lake. I remember even as a little kid, really small, three or four years old, he didn't have a farm then, but he always worked on farms. And I remember driving tractor for him. And I worked on a farm all my life up until we moved, even in Moses Lake. So one time my mom and dad come and found somebody to watch us kids in Moses Lake, and they went for a trip to Canada and oh, wow, I don't care. So we were sitting there and they come back. They were gone for just about a week, four or five days, almost a week, and come back. And then somehow I heard a rumbling of we're moving to Canada, to British Columbia. Well, I didn't even know where Canada was. Moses Lake is not that far from the Canadian border, but I had to go find an encyclopedia map and look at Fort St. John. And it was way, way, it was almost in Alaska it seemed like. That was fine. Life rolled on, but my first trip up here was with my father. He had bought a combine, a newer combine, and had been doing custom combining around the Moses Lake area. And as I found out later, there was farming possibilities up here. There was land that could be purchased or homesteaded almost where you clear off so much land and the government sells it to you really cheap. And he was looking at that. So he knew there was custom combining. So we loaded his combine on a little old truck, and it wasn't very big. And the combine, I guess you have to look it up. It was a 510 Massey Ferguson combine, compared to the combined today it looks like a little tinker toy or whatever. It was not very big. But in that day, it was a big combine. And we loaded it on a truck, and it was an older truck. And it took the whole truck to put it on. It was sitting up on a flat deck. And he made a trailer for the back end to put the header on to haul down. And so he had me come with him to help him. And we took off. And it took us about three days of driving to get to Fort St. John. And we had some adventures along the way. I remember driving up and going through the country. Moses Lake is kind of a desert, sagebrush country, but you move up into the Southern BC and it's not much different. And I thought, okay. And then finally we kept climbing north and came through Williams Lake area. Now all of a sudden, we see trees. And I remember the windy road through lots of trees. And now we're getting almost like forest, and it just keeps going that way. And we continued to pull into Prince George. And it was a pretty steep drop in the Prince George. And I remember my dad kind of seemed worried. [imitates being worried] With a stop stop. We got down to the bottom of the hill, this really steep Hill with a combined and header on. And he rolled to a stop and he got out, put it in gear and shut it off and said, we have no brakes. We come down a hill halfway with hardly any brakes. So he got his toolbox out and rebuilt the master cylinder for the brakes. And then we loaded up and kept going on our way. I remember he was going up and there's weigh scales along the way, and he pulled in. And then they send him on his way and he was all the way to Dawson Creek, just in Dawson Creek weigh scale. And they said, no, you don't have this permit. You need to pay $20. And I hadn't seen him ticked off very often, but he was ticked off with these guys. Come on now. I drive through at least a dozen weigh scales and they never said I need to just permit. Why do I need it? Well, I don't know. You need to pay $20. So he finally paid his $20. And then we continued on up and to Fort St. John. I remember the details are a little fuzzy, but I remember driving around Fort St. John a bit with him and he must have had another vehicle or something or borrowed somebody's vehicle. He was looking for land and there was this guy. All I remember is Nick. I don't know whether that was his first name or his last name, but he had a plane and I think he was a realtor guy selling property or stuff. So I remember getting up in a plane and I would have been like about 14 years old. We were flying around the country and up in there, it's hard to see it, but it just seemed like it went forever and ever, the country. Trees and trees and more trees. You could see a little farmland around Fort St. John. And then as we come back and landed, I learned that my dad had already bought property. And it was an acre out here, past Charlie Lake, near what they call a mile 54 on the Alaska Highway. And he had that there and had started clearing and was going to build a house. So we went out there and then we were with other people. Larry Peterson, Eric Callahan and some Callahan boys were there and we pitched a tent here on this acre lot. It was just like all the other land around us. It was trees everywhere and kind of underbush. Well, these guys, especially Larry and Everett, my dad kept telling us guys that, hey, you can sleep wherever you want, but watch careful for the bears. Watch out for wildlife. Beware of the bears. So we did. We had to watch. We went there. And as we were walking up from the bottom of the property a little bit, all of a sudden we heard some rustling, some movement in the bush. Now we were worried. So we ran back to where the trailer was and our tents weren't up there yet and said, hey, there's something down there. We need to borrow a gun because there's a couple of rifles around. They said, no, you're not getting any guns from us. So we went and got some hatchets and knives and sharpened some big long sticks and we were going to go. There was about four of us. We were going to go see what was down there. So we started going down there and we were marching like a bunch of soldiers. We were going to take care of it if it was a bear, even. We got just about 100ft or 150ft. And Larry Peterson stood up and said, no, guys, it's just me. And he had a black coat. He was trying to scare us.

All:
[laugh]

Jim:
So he said that I seen you guys coming. And I knew I better let you know before you got charging or I might have been dead. You wouldn't have stopped. You got me. So that was the main thing I remember. It was just covered with, there was hardly any, there were only about one other house on this whole area on the frontage road that we live on, maybe two houses on that whole stretch. The highway was a narrow highway. It wasn't even paid at this time, but I don't ever remember going to Hudson's Hope at that time. But later on when we moved up here, we ended up in Hudson's Hope. But I went back down to Moses Lake with Everett Callahan. He had a pickup with a camper on the back. And we rode down with him. He dropped me off and I went back to school and went to school for about a month and a half. And then all of a sudden it was, we're moving. So we loaded everything, my mom and kids, he loaded everything up in the vehicle. And my dad had brought the truck back down and we headed back to Canada and we drove from there. It went up. I can't remember how many days it took us. At least two days for sure, but ended up in Hudson's Hope is where we first settled for a month and a half.

Garett:
Pam, were you engaged to Jim before you went north in saw the Peace Country?

Pam:
We were married.

Garett:
Oh, you were married?

Pam:
We were married and I was pregnant with Sonia.

Garett:
Do you want to share what your first experience was like coming north?

Pam:
As we're driving along, it's a long road driving past Calgary and you could see all of the skid marks on the road. You knew that they were all accidents because of all the skid marks. And it was like, okay, well, you need to pay attention when you drive around Canada, because I guess the speed limit was higher before they pulled it down to like 55 miles an hour. And it was in miles an hour when I first moved here. They didn't change it to kilometers, I don't think, until later.

Garett:
Yeah, I think so.

Pam:
And so, Jim, he's doing really good. We left at like two in the morning and we got Fort St. John like eleven at night with a couple of hours at the consulate so I could take out my landed immigrant. And Jim drove all the way to the BC border. And then he said, okay, now it's your turn. And I started driving, and it's dark. I'm a little nervous because I know that there can be things like wildlife and things on the road so I drive past this place and it's called the police coupe. And I'm thinking, oh, there must be a lot of police here if they've got a police coup here. That only lasted for about half an hour. And then Jim told me no, that it was Pouce Coupe and that the "li" is actually a "u".

All:
[chuckle]

Pam:
And there was lots of trees and beautiful land. But the closer we got to Fort St. John, the skinnier the trees got. And I'm thinking, are those trees or is it just bush. I wasn't too sure. [chuckles] Yeah. You could actually take and push over trees they were so skinny. I've never seen that kind of popular before. I grew up in the West Coast where there were big trees.

Garett:
Yeah.

Pam:
Not so big here.

Garett:
Did you have to drive down the Peace Valley?

Pam:
No. Jim woke up before then and he pulled me off to the side of the road and he goes, there's something they want you to see. And so he pulled over and he says, can you see the steamship? [chuckles] I'm thinking, the what? [chuckles] But if you looked at it just right, Taylor looked just like the steamship. So he was the one that actually drove in through Taylor and up to Fort St. John through Taylor because we came out to Charlie Lake to where his parents were. And they were excited to see us. And it was late at night, and I think everybody was awake. [chuckles]

Garett:
Yeah. They've changed the roads now, but that drive into Taylor and out, it's always pretty scary in the dark, it's a pretty steep hill.

Jim:
Even the one through Kiskatinaw, that curved bridge down, winded down to the curved bridge and then winding back out.

Garett:
Yeah.

Jim:
I always remember that the curved bridge was really nice and neat, but it was quite a narrow, bumpy, rough road.

Garett:
When you moved together back to Fort St. John, when you were married, how did you make a living? Did you go through different jobs or did you sort of have a goal in mind?

Jim:
Well, I'd gone to college to learn how to weld. So when I come back, I wanted to go. It took me a month or two to get into welding school so that I could get my Canadian welding certificate so I could weld. And for a while there, I went out in the farm, Solinger's Farm, out by Cecil Lake, and I worked out there. We worked out there for a couple of months. They had a little tiny house trailer that you could sit on the toilet, wash your hands and have a shower all at the same time almost.

All:
[laugh]

Pam:
And the bedroom was wall to wall bed.

Jim:
But it was ours, [laughs] not ours to keep, but that was our place to stay. And it was summer, so it was nice. So I worked out there for a couple of months.

Pam:
[chuckles] The biggest mosquitoes you've ever seen, though they were like three quarters of an inch long. [chuckles]

Jim:
The mosquitoes have mutated. They are not as thick and big now as they used to be. But they were big back then. Yes, but then I got my welding certificate and then I went to work welding at McCoy Brothers and I was welding for a few months. And then Gordon Strategy over at Leaches Tire said, hey, I got a business thing. A corner service station, that owner had been there for years and years, closing it down. He says, hey, you want to come be partners with me and we'll run this half pappy's corner and we called it Highway Service. And so we pumped gas and had a mechanic and we run a steamer. It was a big, old steamer that we tried to keep going and trucks would come. We had a big ramp out back. They pull up on the ramp and they'd stick the steamer in their tanker and just let it run for ten or 15, 20 hours. So after a year of that, though, I said, hey, there's no money in this. We didn't lose money, but I saw no future, no way of pumping gas and it was kind of a rough building. Mechanics wouldn't want to work there. And I said, no, we should just close her down and just walk away with just about what we put into it. We walk away with what we put into it, but at least we won't lose anything. And so we did that. Then what happened is that an opening came up to buy the tire shop in Dawson Creek.

Pam:
So, we moved down there for a couple of years and it was fun. It was definitely a different part of the Peace Country and still beautiful and still wonderful. I think what sold me on this country more than anything was the people.

Garett:
For sure.

Pam:
They were just absolutely wonderful. I remember Jim's mom saying one day that she walked down to Charlie Lake to do something at the school, maybe pick a kid up or something. And she didn't get very far before somebody picked her up. And then they gave her a ride back home later on. So that's the people in this country just totally awesome and caring and I guess everybody is in the same situation and we support one another.

Jim:
And I find that there's an old legend that it said they started from the Beaver First Nation in Northern Alberta and it says, "Once you drink the water of the Peace River, you'll come back to it." And we haven't even left it to come back yet.

All:
[laugh]

Jim:
But being here and it was coming up here like when we first moved here, my family, when I was a kid, we went to Hudson's Hope and my dad was farming and he moved us all into a little cabin over in Hudson's Hope near Hudson's Hope. There were three other families living there in house trailers, and they are all members of the Church. That corner became known as Mormon's Corner [chuckles] because of the Mormons that lived there. But we lived there. My mom and dad had a little room for themselves. And then there was eight of us in the living room with little aisles between the beds where we slept.

Garett:
Wow.

Jim:
And we lived that way for almost a month and a half, two months before we moved to Fort St. John in the house that my dad had started building, which was really just a basement with walls, a few kind of room dividers, but not much, a floor at the top covered with sawdust to keep it kind of insulated. And so we lived in that for, I was going to say quite a few years. I grew up there. I would have to say, even after I graduated, I was in high school. So another almost four to five years before we even got a top on the upstairs. But the walls would freeze up in the winters, and my brothers would drive little cars around the roads they made out of the ice on the walls.

Garett:
[laughs]

Jim:
[chuckles] David could tell us all about that. We had a little wood stove in the middle that heated the whole basement. But no wood cut, so we had to go out and cut wood. We go out and chop down. There's lots of nice poplar trees around, but they're all green. And we get what dry ones we could and we cut them down. Saw them up at a big old buck saw, two of us and saw them up and then split them and then bring in all the green wood. And my dad had a five gallon pail tied to the ceiling by the stove, and he put diesel fuel in there and the little hose that run down into the stove. And we get the fire kind of going out of kindling, and then he turned the diesel fuel on and it'd start burning better. And then we stacked wood in there and then keep going and keep diesel fuel going until the fire got hot enough to burn that greener wood and it actually heated the house. And that's the way we lived for a couple of years.

Garett:
Wow. That's quite an endeavor to burn green wood. Pretty impressive. [laughs]

Jim:
[laughs] I know it is. I have much more sympathy for my mom now. She the one that half the time we got up in the morning and she had the fire going. [chuckles] I remember finally, I was probably 17 or so, and I hate living with everybody else. And so I moved upstairs. Well, just upstairs was fine in the summer or whatever, but in the wintertime, no heat, no nothing. So you get up and run downstairs at 30 below and stand by the stove to get warm. That was quite an adventure.

Garett:
[chuckles]

Preston:
Is that home that you speak of? That's not the one that you currently live in, in Charlie Lake is it?

Jim:
That's the one I currently live in.

Preston:
Same home.

Jim:
Yeah, same house. That's the one my dad. And if you've been here so you can visualize the basement. Basement only. Undone. No finish. Cement walls because it doesn't look like that now. [chuckles] Because we finished it and added more to it. [chuckles] But that's what we did. Ten people, ten kids and two adults. That's twelve of us living in that place. So if you ever think you're cramped, well, you don't know what cramped conditions are yet. [laughs]

Preston:
No.

Jim:
But yeah, this is the same house. We purchased it from my dad and mom, I'd have to say about 1983, something like that, '83 or '84 there. We come back and they were traveling a little bit, living in town, actually, in an apartment. And so we rented it from them for a while and then fixed it up. And then I said, well, how much do you want to sell it? Yeah, we'll sell it. So we ended up buying it from them.

Garett:
This is also the same property, the one acre lot that you were talking about with...

Jim:
One acre lot, yeah.

Garett:
With the trees and the "bear" that you went hunting for? [chuckles]

Jim:
Exactly. All the same, we haven't ventured very far from that.

Garett:
No, it's just incredible because I lived there with you guys for a year. It's kind of hard for me to picture that acre lot being so wooded and grown over with bush. That's quite something. That place has changed a lot.

Jim:
[chuckles] Yeah. A lot of the trees have been chopped down and grown again, but most of it we made grass to play on, and so that hasn't grown up, but it used to be that way along the whole stretch. Neighbors...

Pam:
[chuckles] If we don't mow the front lawn, you can see trees trying to creep in and grow in there.

Garett:
The Aspen Poplar trees?

Jim and Pam:
Yeah.

Garett:
So, Pam, did you stay home and take care of kids most of the time or did you work at all?

Pam:
I didn't work until all of my kids were in school. And then I went to school again and got a job and thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah. I worked in Charlie Lake for a while. After school, I've worked at a high school, the junior highs. I worked all over in the school system and thoroughly loved it.

Garett:
Is that what you did when you said you went back to school? You did for teaching?

Pam:
No, an educational assistant.

Garett:
Oh, okay.

Pam:
And a couple, I guess they pushed me towards deaf children and deaf blind children. So that was my little niche and I loved it. It's pretty fantastic kids.

25:02 - Generations of Tires

Preston:
So, Jim, Pam, what was it like raising your kids especially for you, Jim, because you've already been there one generation, and now that you have a second generation, how was the differences between your childhood and their childhood?

Jim:
Well, the big difference was when we were living here as kids, they made us walk down to where the mailboxes are, a ways, I don't know, a few hundred yards or so to catch the bus. When my kids were here, we had the most kids, so they actually drove up in front of the house. So that was the best part.

All:
[chuckle]

Jim:
I could sit here, and there is the bus, and they'd honk the horn and the kids around at the door. [chuckles] No, I don't know. Travel was a lot nicer and conveniences. This house was a little rough to live in, but it was still way. We had bedrooms upstairs and bedrooms downstairs, so we had more room. It was just much more modern, convenient now that everybody's gone, everything's fixed up and nice and even more room. We have a big deck, I don't think you've been here for a while, but we got a big deck out back, which is nice to sit in and sit on and kind of look over the lake a little bit. And the trees are all beautiful and lovely in the summertime. And I built it basically it's a workshop because underneath is all a big workshop for woodworking and working on things down there, so that's there now. But we never had that growing up with my kids. [chuckles]

Pam:
The biggest addition, the biggest change was when we built onto the side of the house, and we actually built on a mud room, and that's almost a necessity in this area because of all of the mud. People ask us, how come you guys take your shoes off when you come to our house? Well, it's tradition because I would kill any kid that walked through the house with muddy shoes. [chuckles] So it's just easier to say we're just taking our shoes off even in the summertime, just to keep all the mud and the mess to a corner. So it's nice to have a mud room in which everybody can sit down, take their shoes off and their coats off, and put them away like that ever happens. [chuckles]

Garett:
[chuckles] Yeah.

Jim:
When I was growing up, all we had was one door. It was kind of in the living room for a while, but eventually we built so we could come into the side where the kitchen was, but we had shoes, stacked there, coats, everything all crammed into where our kitchen and cupboards are now. So it's different. But talking about mud, I guess the thing is mud and the Peace is totally different than mud anywhere I've seen in the country. I mean, it grows on you, literally.

All:
[laugh]

Jim:
You walk along and you grow three or four inches. You put your hand in it and it sticks to it. It just sticks to you, and it is really, really slick. It's just like grease on anything.

Pam:
How many shoes have you lost in the mud? [chuckles]

Jim:
There's a reason they're called gum boots, [chuckles] just like walking in gum.

Garett:
I agree it's very sticky, but it's very slippery, and it's just sort of like, how can a mud be so sticky and so slippery at the same time? I'm guessing that you've seen a lot of mud because you're in the tire business. So how did you end up in the tire business like you were in the tire business, you were staying in Dawson Creek, and then how did you end up in tires back in Fort St. John?

Jim:
Well, I started, see when we first came up here, my first job was working for Gordon Strate, but he had a farm out by Beaton Park. And I go out and farm for him. And from then it was, well, farming is over. I need some walls painted in the tire shop. So I come painted and then it moved to tire machines. So I always worked and had ample work working in the tire shop. So I just kept at it because you could make a fairly decent money. It's much better than flipping hamburgers at McDonald's or anything like that. You make better money and better hours. And he always treated me good to allow me to go play basketball and other things I wanted to do. So I kept working at tires. And when I come back from welding and worked in welding shop, then, like you said, I went to Dawson Creek and that venture didn't turn out because it was in the 1980s. And we call it the Deep Depression because the whole country is shut down because of politics from the east, shut our oil research and discovery and all that. All these companies, there's lots of companies that shut down. And so we got caught just as I was starting. We bought into a tire shop in Dawson. And then after a couple of years, we bought too big because hoping it would go big and it didn't. So once that left and we came back to Fort St. John. It was slowing up. It wasn't really a job to go back to work at the tire shop. So I set up a vulcanizing shop, taking big tires and you cut them out and fill them back with rubber and boots and stuff and cook it all together. So I kind of run that part time and part time at tire shop and worked at that for a couple of years and then vulcanizing kind of died out a bit. I was working full time. We needed a mechanic to do front end alignments and stuff, and he was getting ready to leave. So I started that. I went to school to get my suspension and brake certificate and then I started doing wheel alignments and I did that for a few years and just kind of evolved into, they got another mechanic and I kind of evolved into the front office and sales and other working. And I enjoyed it. I kept doing it. I keep telling them, I'm not an expert in anything really, but I've done just about every aspect of a tire shop. A bookkeeper left and we couldn't find a bookkeeper. So I went in the back and did books for six to eight months. So I did that. I've done just all things and I just have enjoyed it because it's something different every day there's a different situation or problem. It's not like just nailing two boards together and passing it on. It's something different every day and most times people are fun to deal with, but there's others not. But you can deal with that in any business.

Pam:
He's about done every little piece of scouting as well. He's done Beavers and Cubs and Scouts. I don't know. Do you ever do Ventures?

Jim:
No, but I help with Ventures and I was a district Commissioner here. But I enjoyed it because it did give me an opportunity to do these things, to be involved heavy with Scouts and coach elementary school teams for quite a few years. I don't know how many. Probably seven or eight or nine, maybe ten years of working with elementary kids, basketball, soccer teams that I was able to work with and coach with them, which if I didn't have the job I had. Most places it's really tough, unless you're a school teacher to do that. But this job gave me the opportunity to do it, so I enjoyed it.

Garett:
Like you were saying, it was good hours. You compare that just a moment ago to flipping burgers like a fast food place is going to be open super early and stay up super late. But a tire shop is mostly nine to five. And if you are the guy on call, then you have to be on call. Then you're not on call anymore because you're in charge.

Jim:
[laughs] That's right. And the other thing is they work with me. In order to coach, I'd have to take a couple of hours off in the afternoon. So we would open at seven or eight. So I go in at eight and work until two and then take a couple of hours off and come back from five to six. There's my 8 hours day, you see. So they worked with me, allowed me to do that, and it was good. And I enjoyed the people I was working with.

Garett:
Yes. And even though I only worked with you in a tire shop for a year, but you're right, even if you're pulling things out of tires because somebody drove over something, it's a new day, you never know what new things somebody is going to run over and you're going to find a screw today. Is it a key? Is it a hook? You never know what it's kind of exciting sometimes, even though it's the same process, the same sort of thing. But people manage to break tires in so many different ways. [chuckles] It's always sort of exciting to see what they've done.

Jim:
It is. And I've seen just about everything. I've seen an axe head. The one that scared me the most was a live bullet.

Garett:
Holy cow.

Jim:
It still had its primer and shell and powder in it, and we were starting to dig around. I said, wait a minute, let's look at this closer. We don't know what would happen, but you pounded away with a probe and hit that primer. Now you got an explosion.

Garett:
Yeah. Thanks for sharing that.

34:33 - Features and Quirks of the Peace Country

Jim:
Any other questions, Preston?

Preston:
I don't think I have any immediate questions?

Jim:
You got something on your list you sent me. Any memorable weather events or seasons? Yeah. What's the saying? If you don't like the weather, wait 15 minutes. I've seen it go from like 15 or 20 above Celsius to ten below in about half an hour. It's just Wham! In the old days, before they put the dams on the river, the river used to freeze enough that they drive trucks up the Peace River for freight, like haul freight up and down the Peace towards Hudson's Hope or Chetwynd. That way they use the Peace as a road. And I remember one time they had a big, huge truck and they had a big cat on it and they were headed up the Peace down not too far from the Taylor Bridge. They were headed up north on the Peace and the back wheel broke off into the ice and the truck kind of dropped down into the water. Well, they happened to be in kind of the middle of the river, but there was a sandbar there, so that's no problem. So they back the cat off of the truck into the river. And of course it broke through, but it's sandbar, so that's not bad. They got the truck out and once the cat was off, then they could continue on and go. So they said, well, what are we going to do with the cat? It's not that deep. Well, it's not that deep, we'll just turn and drive it to shore. Well, now they took and heading to shore and they drove off the sandbar. You can drive diesel engine underwater as long as it's getting air. So they cut the fan belts and kept going and going and going until the water was up, even ready to go over their intake pipes. So they had to shut it down. Now the river freezes again. Now they have to get the cat out of the frozen river.

All:
[chuckle]

Jim:
They spent three days getting this thing out with all kinds of winch trucks on the other, they had about four or five big winch trucks all chained and tied together, trying to pull this cat out because they couldn't drive it anymore. Now they had to pull it out. That was quite a story. I was trying to find some information on it, but I just remember driving by a couple of times and seeing them working there and hearing stories about it. It was quite the ordeal to get that all out of there and kind of exciting around town.

Garett:
Have you guys traveled around in the Peace Country and driven on any ice bridges?

Pam:
We drove on Charlie Lake.

All:
[laugh]

Pam:
A couple of times.

Jim:
We used to, all the time, I tell Pam when we had ward activities, or branch activities and go out and pull our little car. We had a little Ford Fiesta, little front wheel drive and we went out there and hooked a tube on the back and drove, the snow wasn't too deep, and we pulled everybody on the Lake there tubing because it was kind of before quads and there were snow machines, but nobody really had any of them when we were at our party. But that was kind of fun. And then one time we were headed home, because they set up kind of a race track for cars, mostly bikes, like bike racing, and they had one down at this end, the Charlie Lake end of the Lake there. And she said, ah, we were driving home in the pickup and she said, let's go out there and try it. I said, no, [chuckles nervously] I don't think so. But I got home and I said, well, you still want to go on that, and drive on that? Yeah. I said, well, I'm not going to take the pickup because if it falls through, I'm in big trouble. So we got our van and went back down there with our van and timed ourselves on how quick we could make it around the thing and had fun chasing around on the Lake.

Garett:
That's pretty cool.

Jim:
Because they have graters, lots of time they have a grater to clean it off so that they clean the snow off.

Pam:
They do High on Ice.

Jim:
High on ice.

Pam:
They used to do Klondike, no it wasn't Klondike.

Jim:
Mukluk days.

Pam:
Mukluk days! They used to do down at the Lake.

Garett:
They do public skating on the Lake, too.

Pam:
Occasionally.

Jim:
Occasionally, actually, the Crystal Cup is called. They have a hockey tournament that they set up about four or five rinks there and they keep them fairly clean and they have a hockey tournament there with a couple of big tented places to keep warm and change. And they run out. It's about a long weekend almost. They start on a Friday night and go Saturday and Sunday, and that's kind of neat.

Garett:
Cool.

Preston:
I remember hearing stories about snow golf. Is that a real thing?

Jim:
I haven't seen it for a long time. But they used to have snow golf and I never played it, but some of it was set up with a bigger bright ball that they set up different spots where you had to get it up in the air and try and get it almost like Frisbee golf.

Preston:
Okay.

Jim:
Okay. That same thing, but instead of up high. But I mean, you use the big bright ball and use big clubs to try and bat it around.

Preston:
[chuckles] Okay.

Jim:
But that's about all. They used to have dog sled races. We haven't seen that for quite a while. But dog sled races up and down the Lake. Well, they used to have one between Fort St. John to Fort Nelson. They had a big one. I haven't seen that type of stuff for a long time because of population and roads, environment. I don't know all of it. And not as many dog racers as there used to be. They used to have that. It used to be a fairly big event.

Garett:
That's like 400 km, right? From Fort St. John to Fort Nelson.

Jim:
Yes. I'm not sure how far. There is actually a trail that goes up there. Not on the road. They didn't do it, but there is a trail up there and I'm not sure exactly how it goes. It might even be a little further than that because the trail would wind around different things.

Pam:
[chuckles] I was thinking the trail might be a little straighter than the old Alaska Highway.

All:
[laugh]

Jim:
Yeah, that good old, you heard that thing, right?

Garett:
No.

Jim:
Alaska highway Winding in and winding out Fills my mind with serious doubt As to the lout who built this route Was going to hell or coming out

All:
[laugh]

Preston:
That's very clever.

Garett:
Yeah. They have straightened it out a bit more over the years, haven't they?

Jim:
Oh, they have. Actually, you can make Fort Nelson easily, not really, but you can make Fort Nelson in three and a half hours now. And I remember I went up there when I was 18 before my mission, 18 years old, and it took me six or 7 hours to drive it. And trucks were taken twelve to get up there.

Garett:
Oh, man.

Pam:
And the damage occurred to the car was just... You had wonder if it was worth it or not.

Jim:
And that's another thing changed. I mean, when I first moved here working at a tire shop. People'd come and drive the Alaska Highway. Well they had big screens in front of their windshield and lights. They had extra Jerry cans, four wheel drives, and big cars driving up and they drive up there and it was only paved or kind of, if you call it pavement to about mile 80. And after that, it was all either dirt or kind of chiprock a little bit. But it was a rough tour of it. Over the years, now you see any type of vehicle going up there. I haven't seen Lamborghini, but real fancy Cadillacs, and other sports cars going up there. Everybody goes up there now with it. It's not quite as hard. Still a long ways! But you guys have driven that way, way up there. Where did you go?

Preston:
Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay.

Jim:
Prudhoe Bay. Okay.

Garett:
Yeah. But you're saying that old Alaska Highway, it sounds a bit like driving from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay or Dead Horse, depending what you want to call it? But you've got to make sure you take extra gas and make sure you probably got a second spare tire.

Preston:
Yeah. And never know when the pavement is going to end.

Jim:
Yes.

Garett:
My wife's brother, he drove his Audi from Kansas City to Alaska and back. He said he even helped tow a guy out of the ditch with his Audi.

All:
[chuckle]

Garett:
Yeah. It's much different now, although I think it's good advice. Anybody who does drive the Alaska Highway, the most dangerous part is tourists who are driving RVs, who aren't used to driving RVs.

Jim:
Yeah.

Garett:
You got people driving big wide RVs looking at the beautiful scenery and not watching the road.

Jim:
We had a family relative basically who had cycled from Alaska and they were going to Dawson Creek and they stopped and they were looking for a place. They ended up coming for dinner at our place one Sunday and we listened to their story. They had been on the road for two months, and they almost two months or a month and a half. On bicycles! And they were young. They were from eight years old up to a grandmother. [chuckles]

Pam:
And they were all in one real vehicle, and the rest were bikes. And so they would drive the real vehicle and get out and ride their bikes and meet up. And then they'd all go together.

Jim:
And the oldest male was an 18 year old, one of their sons. So, I mean, there was no dads and stuff. This was just a couple of sisters that got together. Let's do this.

Pam:
One was from New Orleans.

Jim:
Yeah. Down in Southern States. But it was great. And they said the scariest thing of the whole trip was not the bears nor the traffic. It was a herd of Buffalo!

Preston:
Oh, Woodland Buffalo.

Jim:
Big old Buffalo. Because them guys, those Buffalo don't care about nothing.

Garett:
No. And they're pretty big sometimes because they don't get hunted.

Jim:
What happened is that they come out and come along and they were following a big semi truck, and it wasn't bad, but the truck kind of finally got ahead of them. And then they were all just enclosed around them. [chuckles] It was a pretty scary thing. That was neat. I don't quite see as many, but that used to be a big thing for riding a bicycle up to Alaska or down from Alaska. I don't see as many on the road anymore.

Pam:
That and the wild horses.

Jim:
Yeah. And wild horses on the road as many.

45:38 - Some Additional Stories

Pam:
Okay, so back to the weather. The dirtiest cars. One of the first things I noticed when we moved here was how dirty the cars were. Some of the cars, they only had maybe ten inches where the windshield Wiper would go. They were that kind of covered in just thick dirt, just normal dirty cars. And I think some of it stems back from the old wives tales superstitions that if you wash your car and it's going to rain the next day and it will all be for naught. And I think that still holds true for Fort St. John. If you come up from anywhere else, you'll notice that everybody's driving a dirty car. You see a few really nice, pristine cars. But for the most part, all of us drive mud colored cars.

Garett:
[chuckles] You see a clean car. It's like cows lying down in the field. You know, it's going to rain in a couple of hours.

All:
[chuckle]

Jim:
It took me a long time to figure it out, but I figured it out that all these trucks, all these big trucks and everything, travel out in the bush and pick up all they all get muddy and dirty. And then they come in and it falls off. You think, how can it be some muddy, everything's paved around here, but it's all brought in from the bush and falls off and then it rains and then everybody's muddy.

Garett:
Yeah. It's different here in Toronto. They use an incredible amount of salt on the roads in the wintertime because it doesn't get so cold that the salt becomes ineffective. But instead of being like a mud color, everybody has this silty grey and it gets everywhere and it's nasty. Sometimes I prefer the mud.

Jim:
It eats your car right up.

Garett:
It does, yeah. I was going to ask, have you been sightseeing around into Peace Country in your time? You've been there a while. What sort of sites have you seen?

Pam:
We don't have to go far to see the Northern lights. In fact, they had a really beautiful display and I was too busy to even notice they were there. So the next few weeks I kind of looking outside to see how beautiful and bright and they don't always come out, but when they come out, it's always cool to see them. And unless you're so used to them that you don't pay attention to them anymore.

Jim:
I remember when I first moved up, my dad was custom combining and it was winter time because it had been a wet fall. So they were combining grain and it was like 20 degrees below zero. Everything, it didn't gum up or anything that the fans blew the frost off and just like you were normal combining, except the grain was frozen. But I remember one night or a couple of nights we were combining, I was helping them combine. The Northern lights were so bright you could almost see your shadow. We didn't need lights. It was just they were dancing clear across the sky all night. And nowadays I see Northern lights, and oh well, it's not like what I remember, [chuckles] but they can be pretty. It was a night. I remember a couple of nights that it was just as bright as could be and colorful and beautiful. It just went from white to different colors and then it was a great experience to be out there. Normally I wouldn't be up at 03:00 in the morning helping run a combine, but I was then and that's when they come.

Pam:
So there's not a lot of tourist attractions up here. We've been to the dam and we've been through it a few times. We've been to different parks along the way, but there's not a lot of, you know.

Jim:
Kinuseo Falls. I'd like to go see that again. We haven't been there for a long time, but we keep talking about it. Liard Hot Springs, I think going to make that there one of these days maybe. I keep thinking about it. It's only six and a half hour drive from here. So you think, oh, that's a long way. Well, I'm in Edmonton in six and a half hours, so why would I go north? [laughs] But they've made it and made it pretty up there. And there's neat things. I found some, like with Cubs when I was teaching Cubs. Every year we take and go and go down to Bear Flats. Where, what is it, Alexander McKenzie writes in his journal about Bear Flats, about the elk and the bears and other things there. We sit there and look at it and see the animals lots of times in the field there and try and visualize these guys because they had a canoe in Taylor for the longest time, that's kind of canoe. These guys are paddling. The boys say, man, their arms must have been strong to paddle upstream, yet they weren't paddling downstream. They were paddling these things upstream with all their food and supplies. So it was neat looking at that stuff. And the Peace River it's beautiful driving along there. And you guys haven't been up here for a while, but they're building that new Site C dam. But what they've done for the road between here and Hudson's Hope, it will be like a 35, 40 minutes drive. Before long.

Garett:
Holy cow.

Jim:
They've straightened the roads out and put a bridge clear across the halfway from one side to the other, and Lynx Creek, where you used to go into Hudson's Hope. And that's all one bridge across there, clear to, and it's amazing what they've done. When you ever get here again and drive across that, you're going to go, wow, I don't even recognize this place.

Garett:
Yeah. I've seen some statements that I traced back to a publication in the Prince George newspaper in like 1915 where they talk about how the Peace River is one of the only Rivers that cuts through the Rockies. So if you look closely at a map, you can see that the Fraser River coming out in the Vancouver area. You can sort of follow the Fraser River up. Not that you really would. The canyons and gorges there are monstrous and dangerous, but the river basically goes all the way up towards Prince George, and then there's like two or 300 meters with not very much of a rise and fall where you go from the Fraser River and then you catch some tributaries of the Peace River. And then from there you can go all the way back down through the Rockies and into Alberta and the north into the Northwest Territories. The Peace River is like major watershed way for getting from the west side of the Rocky to the east or from the east to the west.

Jim:
And that's what they were looking for. Alexander McKenzie was looking for a pathway to the Pacific.

Garett:
Yeah. And it seems like the Peace River. If you look at elevation maps, the Peace River is one of the ones that seems to cut through the best, because when you go down towards an Okanagan region in Southern Alberta and Southern BC, those mountains are steep and the valleys are narrow and there's not much of a passage. But the wide open countryside of the Peace region is much more passable. You just got to go in the summer. [chuckles] You don't want to get trapped there in the winter when you're just got a tent and no food.

Jim:
Exactly.

Garett:
Have you been ticking Kakwa Falls down in the Two Lakes region just inside the Alberta side of the Peace Country?

Jim:
I have not. No. We've been up around Williston Lake a little bit, Dunlevy Inlet and some of that stuff up there. When I was doing tire work, I've been all over the, Pam hasn't, but on service calls way out. It's an amazing country. You can drive along on an oil field road and all of a sudden come across the camp with two or 300 people in it. It's just amazing country. There are some neat sites out there, but it's just like a lot of people, you know. Home, well, you just become accustomed to it. Don't really look at the beauty that's around here that's hard to see. And you just become, well, yeah, I see that all the time. They're definitely a beauty to the Peace River and both ways, both north and south, it draws a lot of people to come see it as we come see it.

Garett:
As we come to a close, do you want to share with us how your feelings for the Peace Country have changed over the years? From your first impressions to kind of what you were saying? We're sort of just home now as you feel.

Pam:
When I first got here, believe it or not, I met people from Fort St. John that had been here, and they told me about it, and I didn't even think about it because I didn't know anybody in Fort St. John. Being here and seeing gravel roads. All the town was gravel roads except for maybe two or three of them. And they kept digging them up and relaying that pavement down every year in the same spots. Yeah. And it was two main streets and wonderful people. From Seattle, I would drive on the buses and I really didn't ever talk to the people sitting next to me usually because I didn't know who they were. And it was kind of a privacy thing. But being here in Fort St. John and buying groceries and everybody just talking to you while you were in line and helping you along. Just wonderful people. And now there are so many people here that's not quite the case anymore. But it's definitely fun to see how Fort St. John has boomed out and the different nationalities of people that live here and to get to know them. It makes it kind of fun when you say, hey, where are you from? And they'll say India or Mexico or Philippines or wherever they could be from. It's kind of fun because they're experiencing this for their first years. And it's like, yeah, kind of fun to see them go through it.

Jim:
And I would say when I come here, it was because this is where I had to come and have no choice, but I've had opportunities to go other places. Even when I was in University at the College there, I had a job offer here. Stay here and work for me, whatever you want. I just want you to work for me. No, I don't think so. A lot of it points back to our beliefs and our religions being members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That's a part of our lives. And I've seen it grow from a little branch. We first started going of like 30 to 40 people, grow as big as having two wards of over 130 people in each and then back down smaller again. But that's been part of it to be able to see people sacrifice and work to build a building. I remember when we met in all kinds of rented halls and different things, especially this year we're studying the Doctrine and Covenants you see about these people sacrificing so they can build. I mean, for us nowadays, if you're going to put a Chapel up, well, it just goes up. They don't come around and saying, well, you guys need to raise a couple of hundred thousand dollars in order for you to afford that. And you want a temple. Well, we need to have you kick in a couple of $1,000 a year to help build a temple and we don't have that. I remember growing up, that opportunity and it's just never left of having to sacrifice and look at the things that we've built because of the sacrifice of the people. And it's just great to be part of it. Still, whether we ever leave, that's hard to say. It's looking to become easier, because the warmth [chuckles], you crave the warmth a little more sometimes.

Pam:
[chuckles]

Jim:
But it's been a lifetime of meeting people and associating with them and friendships and sacrifices and other things. And it's just like a family. You grow closer the more you work with and sacrifice for each other and it just becomes a piece of you. And that's what the Peace has become for us because as I look at it, you know, we're talking going on 52 years now that I've been here.

Pam:
You speak for yourself. [chuckles]

Jim:
I know.

Pam:
[chuckles] I'm not that old. [chuckles]

Jim:
[chuckles] But she's not that far behind either. [chuckles]

Jim:
Well, we've been married 40, don't ask me, you'll have to ask her. But the Peace and there are differences, that's for sure. There's a difference between Dawson Creek, Fort St. John, and Grande Prairie, and Peace River. But the people in the stake, or mainly in the Peace Country. This Fort St. John has been a kind of a go, get, and moving town because of the oil patch. It's got to be done now, now, now! Dawson is a farming community and it's a little more laid back. We don't need it right now. We can get by and make this work and it's different types of people, but all of them together make a great country.

Preston:
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your stories with us, Jim and Pam. It's great to hear your sides of the story.

Jim:
Well, thank you for inviting us.

Pam:
Yeah.

Jim:
Hopefully we made some sense. [chuckles]

Garett:
I think you did. Hopefully we'll see you soon.

Jim:
You bet.

Pam:
Yeah. It would be great.

Preston:
Yeah. You take care.

Ending Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff with drumbeat]