Life North of the 54th

Transcript Chapters

• 00:00 - A Child of the Great Plains
• 15:26 - Settling the Peace Country
• 28:58 - Following the Wealth
• 43:34 - The Flow of Land and Ice

00:00 - A Child of the Great Plains

Opening Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff]

Garett:
Welcome to Life North of the 54th. I'm Garett Brown.

Preston:
And I am Preston Brown. And we are pleased to have with us on the show Robert Blum. Rob, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit?

Rob:
Well, I'm just a guy that lives here. I'm actually like a dinosaur up here almost now, because I've been here since I was 15. So I'm 71 now. And I've seen this country change for a little more than 50 years. So 56 years or something. It's been-- it's changed a lot. And it's going to change even more. So I have witnessed that happen.

Garett:
Do you have some early memories of it from when you were 15? Or like, why did you move here when you were 15?

Rob:
Well, it's interesting, Garett, because the first I ever heard about the Peace Country, we were back in Saskatchewan as young boys. And it was fall. And my mom came out. And she asked us to get everything put away, and like chickens and geese and ducks and all them critters that run around the place, get everything put away. And she said, because there's a major blizzard happening in the Peace Country right now. That's the first I ever heard of such a thing as the Peace Country.

My parents were interested in moving north to-- oh, I don't know-- start over. At the same time as my dad was starting to become sick with MS. Nobody understood what was happening. But he was having harder times holding down jobs because his coordination was starting to be affected. So that's the first time the word Peace Country ever came into my understanding. When I was 12, which would be '62, we made a trip up here at Easter. And it was a late spring and Easter following different years at different times. All I remember is that there was still snow here. It was Easter. It was winter still.

But a lot of things were not much different in Saskatchewan. There was lots of open area then. But it was the first time I had ever saw in my life blue jays was here. Because they're a boreal bird. And we did not have them in southern Saskatchewan. And I thought they were truly beautiful. And I made up my mind when I was 12 that I would like to live here. And we went back to Saskatchewan. It was Easter. We made the trip and went back. And we stayed there then for three more years. I finished grade 9 in Moose Jaw. My parents relocated to southern Alberta. And I took grade 10 there.

Now, why did we end up here? When my parents had the ranch out in the buttress hills southwest of Moose Jaw along Old Wives Lake, the section agent, Vic Burton, became a family friend there. And he looked after the railway. And I remember Vic many times as a child. We left the ranch when I was three. They sold out and left the ranch. But I remember him being there. He was not a buddy of mine. But he was welcomed in our home. So with dad's declining health, Vic offered him a job in Grande Prairie. So the real reason we came to Grande Prairie, to the Peace Country, was employment. That's why most people that have come here, that have come.

Garett:
Yeah, yeah.

Rob:
So there was a problem. You know, I look at young people right now. And I think, you know, everybody has issues, you know. So this is what happened. I hauled 7,000 straw bales with a neighbour's tractor and wagon off of his fields and stacked them for $0.04 a bale. Let's pick it up out of the field, put it on the wagon, drive it over, unload it, stack it. You know, you handle them bales quite a few times. That results, I had $280. Now, right now, $280 is not a lot of money to some people. But it did provide my parents with gas and, well, you know, not hotels, some food to eat along the way. We were like the Beverly Hillbillies, honestly. [chuckles] We had a car, an old truck, and we head for the promised land and everything that was of value was piled on. It was only one trip. But it was my money that brought my family here. I handed that $280 over to my mom, knowing it would never come back into my hands. But I wanted to live here. And people that, you know, employment or whatever takes them to a different place, I don't know if they wanted to go there. But I wanted to come here. I liked it here. You know, there was mountains and rivers and prairies. All the things that I thought were neat were here. And you could hunt and fish and all that stuff.

I'm going to tell you something about my childhood. When I was born, my parents lived on the ranch in the Buttress Hills southwest of Moose Jaw by Old Wives Lake. And Old Wives Lake is an alkali lake. It's bitter. You can't water cattle and horses. Does that make sense? So on our land that they had there, it wasn't really very big. They had five quarters of land. I have more land here, down there in that stubble jumping country. You know, like it's pretty-- the Buttress Hills, you think of them as being high. They're about the height of the Klusken Hills here. They're not. [chuckles] So they lived on there. And you could see the-- I knew, I could remember, you could see the Old Wives Lake from the house. And I went down there in September long weekend. And I thought, you know, I've never taken my wife ever to a football game. She really likes football. So I got tickets to Saskatchewan Winnipeg game without her knowing. And I said, we're going on a little trip. So we go on a trip. So we go to the game and everything. That was great. And I thought, you know, gee, while I'm here, why don't I take and show her where-- see if I can even find where the ranch was. I mean, that was three. That's 68 years ago.

So I, [chuckles] on the map, it showed where Crestwind is, just a typical road map. And I thought, well, OK. So we go to Crestwind. And all it is is a sign. There is not even so much an outdoor toilet there. There's nothing. There's just the railroad crosses the gravel road. So I went, OK. So we keep driving down the road. And I noticed there was a road that swung away to the right, like a 'Y'. But I kept going straight. And we come to the farmyard. I thought, well, I'll go in and ask. And I look in this farmyard, and the weeds are like four feet high. And I thought, well, there's nobody even living here. So I noticed that we'd also passed another farm on our left. So I turned around in that farm and went back. And there was weeds in that yard, like those were abandoned farms. The houses were not that old. But nobody lived there. It was still being farmed, but nobody lived there.

So on our way from the Crestwind sign to where we were, there had been a road that went to the south and went gradually up these big, tall hills. Well, bigger hills. A crest in the hills. So I turned, and there's no gravel on this road. It's just a road. And I go there. I get to the top of the hill, and there's an old schoolhouse. Think of an old one-room school. And it's all-- why they put this thing up on the top of the hill in the wind is more than I ever know. But anyway, that's where it was. And I go there, and it's called the Wind Gauge School. And I thought, well, there you go.

All:
[laughs]

Rob:
Wind never stops blowing there! But when I was at the school, you could see sort of down the slope to the hill. And there was some guys combining. Well, these guys live here. Maybe they would know where Mom and Dad's place was. I mean, we're talking-- I was three. So I go down there, and this is what's happening. They had a service truck. Think of like a mechanical service truck. And they had that big quad-track case tractor pulling a grain cart. And they were blowing out the air breather at the tractor because it was sputtering a bit. You know, dust and everything, butterfly, whatever. So I waited till they were done. And I went over, and I talked to the mechanic. Well, I guess it was a hired man or mechanic, whatever. I told him who I was and what I was looking for. I said, it's not really important. I just was trying to find the ranch where I was born. [chuckles] I was three. I said, you know, it's a while ago.

He says, well, you need to talk to Blaine. He says, you go in the truck. There's a two-way radio in there. Ask for Blaine. He said, just click it on, and ask for-- I know how to use two-way radios. I said, Blaine, I know you don't know me, but this is who I am. This is what I'm trying to accomplish. I said, I was born out here, but I don't know where it is. I said, I don't know the land numbers or anything. I just know it was out here. He says, all you need to talk to Dad. He's combining five miles from here. Oh, for goodness sakes. I felt kind of stupid. These guys are trying to get a year's work off. Those days are important for them. It's their harvest. I thought he would be retired or something, because this guy-- so I get a hold of this guy, finally. He had been out of the combine having lunch. And he started up the combine. He seen on his cell phone there was a call. So he had phoned me, and I had given up. I was going to head back to Moose Jaw. And he says, yeah, this is Cliff. And I said, I know you don't know me. I told him who my name was, and I told him my parents' name. He says, I knew your Mum and Dad. You're kidding. He says, what's more? He says, I own their place.

Garett:
Wow.

Rob:
A mechanic, a son, a dad, and I was there. What's the odds of that? So then he said, you only made one mistake. He says, when you came to that 'Y', you should have followed that road around. And then you would have been a lot closer. He says, you shouldn't have went straight. Oh, OK. So he tells me how to get there. He says, you'll come along, and there's a steel gate there. And it's got a cutout of a horse on it, welded to it, just like a farm kid would make. It wasn't fancy. And the gate's all rusty and everything. I get there, and he says, you open that gate, you go in, you follow the road around the crop, you come to another gate, I'll meet you there. 15 minutes.

You know that he shut his combine down. His year's income and came to show us. And there was 280 head of cattle in there. And I know he was concerned that some donkey would leave a gate open or something. I said, well, I have cattle. I'm not leaving any gate open. But you know, and so we go. And I sat with him in the yard where I was born 68 years ago that I was last there. And talked to him about it. And he had gone in there this year in the spring. When it got so dry in June, they went in there with a track hoe. He says, I knew there was-- they went in there early in June, like when I say the spring, but there had been a spring there. He said, they knew there was a spring there. And they took the track hoe, went in there, and they cut the side of the hill away. So it sort of exposed the elevation of the spring.

And then they used those plastic culverts. You put on end, down into the hole, and it backfilled all around it. And they put a pipe out from that into a big steel trough. It's 30 feet long, 2 feet wide. And so the spring flows up and out into there. And then there's an outflow, and it runs off into that alkaline slough that's there. I says, yeah, that's where the well was. He says, there's a well there? And I said, yeah. He says, well, that's funny. He says, when we had the track hoe there, we kept hitting pieces of wood, but we didn't know what it was. I says, well, that's where we got our drinking water. I says, I stood by that well as a child. I said, I know exactly where it is. And you know what? The paths where the cattle would walk when I was a child, when you look out the window of the house, the paths are still there. The cattle walk-- you know, cattle are not too quick. They don't make new paths.

All:
[chuckle]

Rob:
And they still go down to the same place. And he sat there and talked with us for three hours rather than go back and combine his crop. And I told him stuff I knew about the land and my parents moving there and their struggles. And I says to him, I don't know which field it is, because there's only five quarters. I said, did you ever find a field here that had a lot of white rocks in it? He said, well, a lot of them do. Because the glaciers had crossed over that land and it drops off the rocks. But as Dad said, when he was-- they had a-- you've got to realize, this is before tractors, cats, and back hoes. There's a big white rock. And I don't know when you say big, how big it would be. But it was so big that he couldn't move it with horses. And he always had to farm around it.

And you know, he made an investment in a rock drill. And you know, in those days, I don't know what that would have cost. But he said it was four feet long. And so one guy turns and the other guy taps it with a sledgehammer. And that's how they used to mine. So wherever he got this stuff, he bought it and takes it home. And the neighbour in him, he said, they drilled this two-inch hole into this big white rock. And then they filled it with stumping powder. And they put a fuse into it. And they put damp clay on the top, like packing. Then they went and sat, well, 30 feet away behind the old Model T truck. Because they just thought, well, it'd split in half.

Garett:
[chuckles]

Rob:
[chuckles] This is when it went off. It was raining rocks all over the place. And each one guy was sitting right behind one of the truck rim. Like, oh, he'd sit against the wheel. Broke all the windows in the truck, caved in the side of the truck. And he said, if we hadn't been sitting beside them tires, he says, we'd probably been killed. He said, there was white rocks everywhere. It was a bomb! [chuckles] And they thought they were just going to split in half. But they weren't. But so I was telling this old guy, Cliff Barnett, I was telling him about stuff like that. He says, you know, your dad and my dad worked for the same rancher. And isn't that something, that you'd find that guy? And my family had lost touch with that land, where it was. And only talking to three people, I was there. And now I have his phone number and his address. And he said, you come back any time and walk around the place.

15:26 - Settling the Peace Country

Rob:
So I arrived here when I was 15 in 1965. When I first came to Grande Prairie at 12, there was 13,000 people here. And it's almost paralleled my life 1,000 people a year. There's about 65,000, 68,000 here. I'm 71 now. So you see, it's almost kept track.

Garett:
[chuckles] Wow.

Rob:
The difference is, like right now, Grande Prairie's mayor has just made a kind of a video chat, something like this, where she said, you know, with the permitting that's happening here for this methanol plant and another big project, that they expect just those two projects to be in the $20 billion range. And the off-spin of other work and stuff, they're projecting by 10 years, 100,000 feet in Grande Prairie. It's been a little tough here. I'm not going to say it hasn't, because it has. I'm kind of at the age of, I'd like to retire. But now all of a sudden, I can see there's going to be this surge in the economy here. I can see it coming. And it's going to happen.

It's like the Peace Country is like a sort of a sleeping giant. And people that have come here as pioneers, I met some of those people. You know, when I was young, I was meeting the old people that originally come here. I met an old lady out by Rio Grande, which is southwest of Grande Prairie. And I sat in her home. And what I was doing at that time is I was setting up headstones. So I made the little concrete pad to go on her. And this was for her husband. And she told me when she was a little girl that they had walked over the Edson Hinton Trail. And that was a pack horse trail. It wasn't a wagon trail. And she had walked, and other members of the family had rode horses or whatever. But she walked and said, when we got to Hinton Trail, where it come out, where the Edson Hinton Trail Hall is still today, she said, from there on, they just followed 'X' marks on the trees till they came to their land. And she said, it was just more trees.

Garett:
[laughs]

Rob:
And they started out to build a home. And she talked to me about her life as a girl there. And I don't know which year it was. But one year on New Year's Day, all the people in the community got together, and they played baseball. There was no snow. It was cold, but there was no snow. And the ground was dry. And so that lady, she gave me an insight of what it was like before there was much cleared land here.

So now, as the years have unfolded, I have, with my wife, acquired some land. And what makes-- so for people that don't understand, in the Peace Country, there are four natural prairies. The first, and it's more-- a lot of bluffs in it is the Fairview Prairie. And when you go over the Dunvegan Bridge traveling north, on the one side, it's trees. But on the other side, all the hills are open. They're like grass. What causes that is the wind. And the wind that we're having-- like right now, we're having the shunt blow through. The wind has been blowing here nonstop for four days. And on Monday morning, I have some cattle. I went out to feed the cattle. It was minus 33 here in Grande Prairie. And now it's plus 8. So you get what happens to trees. It's winter burn, and it kills them. So any place that that wind can hit, there's no trees.

So the first prairie, the most northerly prairie, was called the Fairview Prairie. And Dunvegan, that was a jumping off place for a lot of people coming into the Peace Country. And there was a natural crossing there, and not really a settlement, but a lot of speculator activity. There's going to be a big town, and the railway, and all that stuff. [chuckles] Well, I go through there now I think, you guys were selling lots on that hillside. It's going to be 500 feet straight up almost. [chuckles] Some people are awful gullible.

But anyway, that was happening. And there was lots staked out on top of the hill and down along the river on the floodplain and all that stuff. Nobody in their right mind should buy either one of those places. One is going to have no water. The others could have lots of water. So anyway, those things happened, and that was the Fairview Prairie. And when people traveled across the Fairview Prairie, there was a wagon trail, and it wandered-- it tried to stay in the open areas, because going through trees meant work. So they just go around these bluffs of trees or coolies or whatever. And there's still farms and stuff. I do lots of work up there. And they have interesting names, like the Waterhole Cemetery, for example. Well, that community is called Waterhole. It's easy to understand it. There was a natural spring there, and people stopped there to water their stock and stuff. It was called Waterhole. But Fairview Prairie is the most northerly prairie. Then coming right straight across to Spirit River, which you can-- from Spirit River, you can see the town of Fairview at night, the lights.

Preston:
Yeah. I've seen that before.

Rob:
And the Spirit River Prairie was another natural prairie, which-- and as the Peace Country was settled, people from other parts, especially Europe, would settle where their friends were or family. So you get over into that area, you have a lot of people from-- with Ukrainian descent. Does that make sense?

Garett:
Yep.

Rob:
Whereas you go to Falher, if you don't speak French. Even you go to a store there now, people will be speaking French in Falher. Most of them are totally bilingual. But different communities have different people. Go to Valhalla Center, they were all Norwegian up there. Go to Woking, all Ukrainian people. Because people tend-- the land tended to open up as those waves of people came from Europe through war or famine or just people wanting a better life. So we ended up with the Spirit River Prairie across the river and to the south from the Fairview Prairie. But then if you go straight west into British Columbia, you have the Pouce Coupe Prairie by now current Dawson Creek. So there was the third natural prairie. If you could homestead land that was open, that's a lot easier deal. You could cut hay on it, you could plow it, you could plant wheat. You know what I'm saying?

Garett:
Yeah.

Rob:
You know, as compared to knocking down a forest. And here we have just plain bush and we have actually some decent sized trees. But the open prairie was settled first. And then when you come over the saddle hills south from Spirit River and southeast from the Pouce Coupe Prairie, you have the largest of the four prairies or the Grande Prairie, Grande meaning large.

So as the years unfolded, there's been lots recorded and produced and histories done of the Grande Prairie. When I was a teenager, on the wall of the one building in Grande Prairie, somebody had reproduced a photograph as a wall mural of opening day of the land office in the hamlet of Grande Prairie. July 29, 1911, the Dominion government, not the provincial government, the Dominion government opened the Peace Country for homesteading. The surveys had been done. Everybody knew where they were. And people sat there to buy what would be the last free land on Earth. We're talking buying a corner section for like $5 or something. [chuckles] I got to go spend half a million dollars for the same piece of ground now.

Garett:
[chuckles]

Rob:
But that happened on July 29, 1911. We're only talking 110 years ago. There was no roads, no trains, no airplanes, no cities, nothing! It was just raw land. And people came here for-- the people that came here came for one reason, land. And when they came, some of it was really, really hard work. I met-- I was out hunting one time, and I went to ask-- I was west of Woking, they're up against the saddle hills. And I went in and asked this-- it was kind of a humble situation there. And I thought, well, I'll go see if I can go back at his place and hunt, because there's ground land there. And this old guy, he was alone and had been living his whole life alone there. And he wanted to talk. So I said, go ahead and I sat there and talked to this old guy. He said, on a good year, he could clear five acres with an ax, depending how big the bush was there.

Garett:
Woah, yeah, that's a lot of work.

Rob:
You're trying to make this into a wheat field. So after you get the trees knocked down, however-- what size they were, it doesn't matter. Then you got to pile it up and burn it, or haul them off. And now he's got a couple of old horses there, and some just typical horse harness. He says, and then you wait for a while till the stumps start to rot. And then you got to take the horses and pull them stumps out. Now you're ready to start clearing land. So you can see why to have land that was open was very desirable. And of course, the open land was homesteaded first. The first guys come, file first. But the problem was a lot of people that were already living here actually weren't legally here. They just decided this is our home. And so once it was over homestead, they had to scamper. And there was lots of rules. Each person over 18 could file on one quarter land. So if you had a wife, you could file on one quarter. She could file on the second quarter, which gives you a half section together. But if you had, say, a son who was 17, could file under his parents' name, or a daughter that's 17, now you could have a third quarter as a family block. But you couldn't be 16. You had to be 17 coming 18. Because at 18, you could get your own land.

So some families, when they came into the Peace Country, they would be big families. Like our family, there was us four boys. And we were-- homesteading was done by then. But if you used our family as being typical, there were so many of us boys. And we were only three years apart in age. If we had come there and we'd all been 17, 18 at that time, we could have got a block of land together and started to produce a farm. And you start reading about these old timers and how they operated. You see, you had to build a house or a shack. And you had to live there so many months. And then you could get title to it. And you had to have open so much land. So if you had a hay meadow, you could call that open land. And you'd just hay it once. Well, that's farm, see? So it became very desirable to have some open land.

So I read this account in the Up and Fairview in these two old bachelors. They were on quarters that bordered each other. So they built a house right on the property line. [chuckles] One door. One guy's room was on one side of the house. One was on the other. [chuckles] And this guy like, well, we both have our house. [chuckles] They didn't build it on either property. They built it right on the property line, which is-- at that time, they got away with lots of stuff.

But the way that a lot of people came here is there's a tremendous history in the Peace Country and its settlement after the Boer War in Africa. Say we all lived at that time, 1905. We go down there, and we march around and shoot a few Cape Buffalo, whatever they were doing down there, and came home. If you were a veteran of the Boer War, England awarded you a quarter section, 160 acres, anywhere in the British Empire with the piece of script they give you as a veteran. All right? So some people that were being indifferent to that sold those for $20 or something, whatever, that piece of script. And other guys started collecting them, and they'd have like six of those. And they'd come up here and throw them down on all these quarters. This is for old Ralph, and this is his cousin, and blah, blah, blah. But they weren't there, see? So some people got a nice block of land using script. And that's why it was called last place on Earth you could get free land. You got it for being, for military service for England, even though this was Canada. But you could have went to Australia, see? Does that make sense? Or South Africa, or wherever. Or they chose here. People came here for land.

28:58 - Following the Wealth

Rob:
Throughout all history, mankind has always moved to the source of wealth. OK? And to see this, look at the California gold rush in 1850, 1849. You know, there was hardly anybody in California. And all of a sudden, there was thousands of people. Same thing happened in the Klondike gold rush. But you see, the wealth to them at that time was gold. But the real wealth here that people came for was land, soil, dirt, a place to make a farm. So you get an influx of farming people. And if you look at the census at that time, and how many were English or British people, there was a lot. And quite a few Americans, actually, believe it or not. Now, they bought quarters that were their homestead. But the English people, a lot of them came with script.

And then if you get into the more Scandinavian countries, a lot of them people, they came here with nothing but their clothes. And they came because this was a dreamland for them. They escaped war and everything else. And by the time of the Depression in the '30s, this land was being taken up and settled. But if you talk to the old people, and I've talked to a lot of old people about this, they said they didn't even know there was a Depression. It wasn't dry. And everybody had a garden.

Garett:
Right, so there was no dust bowl in the Peace Country?

Rob:
No, not like here. No, it was just like it is now. It was green, and there was grass. And there was an economic stress throughout all the country, US and Canada, and probably lots of Europe. But here, people said they didn't know there was a Depression. Like in the fall, people go out and hunt a moose or whatever. They had their garden and just survived. Because nobody was wealthy. They were just living off the land almost. And as the years unfolded after the '30s, and then you had the First World War that happened, and that took a lot of the young men out of this country. And then the Depression came, and then the Second World War came.

But if you look from the time of the Second World War, it's been nothing but prosperity here. And then things started to change. I think guys looked around them at everything. There's timber resources, the strong forestry industry here, mills, and all of that. People needed homes and stuff. So the forest industry became a driver. Agriculture became a driver. And so then gas and oil became even a bigger economic driver. And now mining. See, this is not a one-horse town here. So it changed. And each peoples that were coming for new things, like say the guy that's working in the oil industry, he didn't come here for land. He came here for employment. It's a different thing.

And as the years went by, the successful families-- and I'm just going to-- that understood this country and maybe were more capitalized or whatever, the farms got bigger. So you bought out your neighbour, OK? And he moved to town or passed away or his kids didn't want it or they went to war. You could see what happened. And so now the people that I have known in my life here that were original settlers here are mostly all dead. And you listen to their stories and their lives here, and it's amazing, actually, how hard they worked, what they did without. And for the most part, they were really quite happy people. They had their struggles. There's no question they had their struggles.

But I did work for Sylvo Swanberg. Sylvo, when I first met him, he was already my age or better. And he'd been a trucker. And I was doing floor on an addition in this shop that he was doubling or tripling the size of it. And they had all these big trucks that were-- you see those big bed trucks, those really big old girls. [chuckles] They can't go more than 20 miles an hour. And they put tanks and stuff on them. He had, I think, a half a dozen of those that they were fitting to go to Bolivia. So they're in their shop, and they're being painted. Everything that was wrong with them is being fixed. Down to Vancouver, they're being put on a ship, taking to South America. See, he started to become an international company.

And you could tell he was sort out of his league. But he talked to me one night. And this is what he said. He said, the first time I was ever $100,000 in debt. He said, I didn't think I'd ever be able to pay it off. He bought two trucks. He was a young man. He says, I am just working day and night, and carrying that debt, worrying my family. When he sold Swanberg Brothers Trucking, $156 million. He hauled them trucks all over the country. And he worked hard. I mean, that's the thing. I'd never begrudge people their success, because a lot of them paid hard for it. They worked hours and hours and hours, and took risks, and helped build this country. They hired people. They bought equipment, and they put it to work.

And I just look at it, and you can find that story repeated many times in many different sectors, the economy there. And so in terms of mining, it's kind of a late player. And when you think of mining here in a Peace Country, you think of coal mining. At least 20 years ago, I was in Worsley, the little community up there, north and west of Fairview. And I was doing an addition on the school there. And I went to the only little cafe. I thought, I better get over here before this thing closes, because I'm kind of hungry.

All:
[laugh]

Rob:
There's just the lady that owns it, that's cooking, and serving, and doing everything. And there was an old guy there. Well, he happened to be her husband. And so we sat there and talked. And he said to me that he was one of the original guys that mapped the Rambler Creek iron ore deposit in the '50s, 1950s. And he said that they learned that that iron ore deposit went all the way west to the BC border.

Now, there's not been even one crumb of that mind yet. But this is what sits there. There's a layer overburden of rock and soil, whatever you want to call it. Overburden. And beneath that, there's a layer of coal. Now there's another layer of overburden. And then you come to the iron ore. And the iron ore also has a small amount of gold. Here's the plan. We mine the coal, pile it up. And we use the coal to smelt the iron. And we send the iron out of that country in pigs on the train, going to foundries all over North America, wherever they're going to sell.

They're not just sending the ore out. They want to start processing it. We're not going to make cars out of it here. But it's going to be a smelter here. Now, that's a whole closed industry. Just south of there, you have the Peace River, which gives you good hydro opportunities. Now, I'm sure that you guys heard that they've been talking this for years, putting a low level dam across the Peace River, strictly for hydro power. Like, we're only talking like a 20-foot high dam. And all it does is it gives you an opportunity to generate power.

Garett:
On the Alberta side?

Rob:
Yeah. All of a sudden, you have power close, right? And you can pipe water close. And you have iron ore. And you have coal. You see, it's all there for a smelting industry. That hasn't happened yet. I know about this a little more from the inside. Maybe I should. But the one guy that I sold some land to, he has a significant financial interest in that, OK? Now, when I say significant, I mean it's not $10. [chuckles] So when he says this is what they're going to do, how it's going to do, how it's going to happen, I've seen him rise from nothing to building a very successful business here, retiring a millionaire at 51. I've never achieved any of that. So when he says they're going to make this mine, I believe him.

So it will take 500 men 50 years to mine that deposit of iron ore. Now, is mining becoming a big player? See, now we've got something more than a coal mine situation, like Grande Cache or along the foothills there. We have coal developments. So mining becomes a different player here. Now you have another driver in the economy of a Peace Country. Agriculture is still big. Forestry still happens. We still have strand board plants and lumber mills and pulp and paper and all that stuff. The gas and oil industry, now right now here in Grande Prairie, they've announced that methanol plant. Methanol is big stuff. And we have these other drivers. And when I look at things like that, iron ore deposits, to me it's like money that's sitting in the bank. And someday, when the conditions are right, maybe financially or whatever, governments, or how it eventually will happen.

And in my lifetime, there was a doctor here. And he was the coroner. And he was a very forward-thinking person. And he made a lot of investments in properties and buildings, even though he was a doctor. And he had a lot of insight. That Giant Tiger building that's in Grande Prairie there, it's kind of like a Canadian Walmart sort of deal. Well, he built that building. And I done all the work for him. And I got to know him because I did a lot of buildings for him. So he comes along one day and he says, he has an idea. This is his own money, see? He wants to build a 90,000 square foot tile factory in Grande Prairie using clays from the Peace Country. And if you go up to Dixonville, there's a deposit there. There's millions of cubic meters of glass-grade silica there.

Garett:
Wow.

Rob:
And he was going to use the sand to make the glaze, the clay to make the tiles. And guess what? He got old and died. It's never been done. But you see, it's all there. It's sort of like it's something-- it's an industry sitting there that will someday happen. And people say to me, oh, well, they'll never do that iron ore thing. It's like, yeah. When you go to Wisconsin and the mammoth iron ore mine that was there, it was a huge mine. Well, it was only, what, four years ago, whatever? Guess what? It's empty. They finally mined it all. We made it all into train tracks and cars and whatever we do, rebar. [chuckles] It's empty!

And so new opportunities, they're sitting there in reserve. And as I've had the opportunity to meet with other people, I did a job for London Drugs here in Grande Prairie. And the superintendent there, he was a pretty knowledgeable man. And he was a foreman. East of Fort Nelson, there's a mountain of copper, the whole mountain's copper. So he's the foreman there and developing this mine. Well, just in time for the copper prices to tank and they shut it all down. But he believed in this country. And before that happened, he took his life savings and he built a subdivision off of Fort Nelson, put in roads, water systems and everything, sewer system. He lost everything. But here's my point in saying that. The mountain of copper is still there. See? Does that make sense?

So as I've been exposed to people about the wealth that sits here, it's like money in the bank. And our lives here, I'm starting to get a few years on me here. And I look at it and I think, yeah, well, I kick around for 20 years. I'm going to have to retire. I mean, that goes with the time. But working at 71, it's like, hmm.

Garett:
You should start a garden.

Rob:
Yeah, every once in a while, you look in the mirror and there's this old fart standing there and you think, jeez, I don't know who that is. [chuckles] But you guys are young guys. But I'm trying to show you is that we've built on the shoulders of people that came here 120 years ago, 110 years ago. But there's still lots to come. All right? Does that make sense?

Garett:
Oh, it sure does.

Rob:
There's growth here that people-- somebody that doesn't lack any vision of tomorrow, they're not going to see it. But I see it because I've traveled all over the Peace Country for years and years doing work. And I've got to know a lot of people in different communities and the things that they tell you. It's just interesting. And your perspective changes.

43:34 - The Flow of Land and Ice

Rob:
So when I had the opportunity to purchase some land, because I'm really like the guys that came here first, I just wanted some land. It's interesting to me that I bought land on the very first hill that the Chinook winds hit when they came out of the Monkman Pass off of [unintelligible]. That hill, I own. And it's interesting land in that some of it has-- you can't find rock on it. I mean, you can walk all day and you won't find a rock. Because here's what happened. Go back to the days when we had glacial coverage here, OK? Ice ages. I mean, just think back. So the land that we're walking around on now is covered with ice. And the evidences of this-- I'm going to talk about this for a few minutes. But out here on my land, when I'm putting in-- not driven posts, but I put in some big gate posts. And I use used power poles, salvage power poles. So I'm making a hole 12 inches diameter. I put them about five, six feet. At two feet, I hit clay. But the first two feet is sand. Now where did that come from, see? And people--

Garett:
Right, because that's sand on top of the hill, right?

Rob:
No, not so much on the top of the-- I don't have too much hilltop. But just from where the hill starts from the wet ground and starts going up, that's where my land is. But if you go down to the Wapiti and Red Willow rivers, you can see where it cuts through sandstone. I mean, you can see the sandstone there. So say the glacier's melting. There's no trees, no grass around. You see this on a delta created by a glacier. There's just-- it's kind of like mud. So it dries out, and the sand is blown away by the wind. Now you go lots of places close to rivers, like up here just north of Rycroft when you come into the Peace River, you'll see all these little moguls of hills. But if you dug a hole in them, they're sand. Same situation, see? That's land-- so I have my land covered with sand that buried all the rocks. So the grass grows down and hits the clay, which has lots of water in it. And even if it's dry, I still have good hay crops. But the sand on top is dry. And then some of the fields, it don't matter how nasty it is, like wet in the spring, I can still dry it a little bit. Because it's sand. And the one field I have has-- I don't know what-- in the Arctic, they call them-- I think the word is esker. It's like the sand makes a trail. But in that part of the country, it was done by glaciers, so there'd be this roadway bed of gravel that might go for a mile. And it's just deposited by a glacier. But on my land, I have this sand. And I look at that.

And so I got to know one of the only real old neighbour there. And old Bill-- here's his story. His grandfather came over the Edson-Hinton Trail. And he homesteaded the quarter that's the very beginning, the west side of the hill-- mine it comes around to the south side, the same hill. And he became my neighbour. There was a county road between us. So the people homesteaded the quarter immediately south of him. There was a natural spring on the side of the hill. And those two old men, using picks and shovels, they opened up this spring. And they dug down. He said, I look, 12 feet. And they cribbed it all up with rocks they'd picked up out of their own fields, field stone. And all the neighbours in the country come there to get drinking water.

In those days, surface water-- people didn't have very good water systems. And creeks in the spring are always dirty and runoff and everything. But this spring was always clean. And everybody got drinking water for coffee and cooking and stuff. They watered their stock out of a pond or whatever. But drinking water, that's spring. So it's a strange world we live in. So I sat in class right behind a guy by the name of Larry Dahl. Well, Bill Dahl was his dad. And I ended up buying land. And then I met the other boys in the family, Doug and Rob. And anyway, Doug had become an engineer. And he's successful at what he's doing. And he's-- well, Bill has got to be 90 now. So put him around 70-ish.

So he shows up at the homestead there, the farm, where that spring was. And he had brought-- it was a long weekend. He brought this big track from work. Somebody got a bottle of whiskey or whatever. And he brought this thing home. And he took that spring that was there. And he told me-- first of all, he took it and stripped all the black dirt back. Then he started digging. And he built a dam at the bottom side of the hill. And he said they went down. And he says, when I was at 30 feet deep, he says I had to get the track hoe out of there because the water was coming in so fast. And he had built this all. And then he sloped all the-- put the black dirt on. He did this all in one week. And he run that thing all week. He had it. And nobody knows it.

But then those boys, they all got together. And they bought a-- oh, just like one of them small aeration windmills you see on dugouts. And they put that there for aeration. And then the other boys bought the trout for-- and their dad was 83 at that time already. And they done it so he could go fishing. But he'd go down there and throw the pellets in. And the fish, he wouldn't catch them. And you know there's big trout in there. I know that they're still there. [chuckles]

So the thing was, those old people, when they came here, they worked together. And the spring wasn't on Dahl's Land. It was on the quarter south. And when those people-- I don't know who that was. When they sold out, Bill Dahl bought it, the same quarter that his grandfather had helped make spring. And that's how they come to own the spring. You see, life is like that. And now I know they turned down $600,000 for that quarter land that they'd spring on. So if you come around the hill, on that hill, I know of one, two, three, four. There's five springs. And I own two of them. And you can tell there's a spring there when you look out in the middle of a guy's barley crop and there's cattails growing there on the side of the hill. It's like there's got to be water under there. And they just farm over it.

So I bought this piece of land. And I thought, well, if Bill can do it, if he can make a pond for fish, so can I. So I hired a track hoe and a D8 cat. And it was spring. And the road bans wouldn't let them haul them away. And I had built five dugouts. And I said, have you guys ever cleaned out a spring? And they said, no. I said, do you want to? And they said, OK. Well, see, they couldn't move the equipment anyhow. It was just sitting there. So the deal they made me was I only have to pay for the equipment they're using. So if they used the track hoe one day, I just paid for it. If they used the cat, I just paid for that. Because it was just sitting there. They couldn't haul it down the road until the road bans came up.

So he started-- and this started to teach me about this country, about what's under the ground. The operator phones me and says, I'm out of clay. I said, what do you mean you're out of clay? It's hundreds of feet deep. It's not here. He says, I'm out of four feet. He says, there's no clay left. I said, well, what do you mean? He says, sandstone. See, the spring, there was a layer of brown sandstone and a layer of blue-gray sandstone and another layer of brown sandstone. But right between the layer of blue and brown at the top, there was a trickle of water that comes out of there. And it had been coming up for years into the surface. So I said to him, well, you start digging with that track hoe, and I want you to line all the dam with rock, big chunks of sandstone. And he put it all around the thing.

So I made this pond. And at 29 feet-- this is interesting, because this goes to-- he hit coal. OK? And I'm going to tell you that, because I'm going to tell you about somebody. So he follows me. So I hit coal. I'm at 29 feet. How did he know he's at 29 feet? Because I run a string from the top of the thing to the face of the dam. And I'd measure down with the tape. I just slide it along the string, like a 100-foot tape. So I stuck it in there, and I could go down. If you went 10 feet, you dropped 10. If you went 20 feet, you dropped 16 feet. So at 29 feet was the coal. And I said, you're going to have to bury it with clay, because maybe the water will just run away through the coal. That was my reasoning. So he had to bring clay back in. We filled it.

So now I have this pond that fills up from a spring that's over two layers of sandstone and a coal seam. It's about 30 feet from the top of the dam. But I lose a couple of feet, because-- and it's reached a point of equilibrium now. The water doesn't come up any higher. But all of the springs on that hill, for about five miles around the hill, come from the same water source. At the top of the hill, there's this big muskeg. And they had to make the highway turn to go around it. And I think, well, what happens is it charges that, and it runs through the rock, and it runs forever. It never, ever stops. But it's reached a point where the pressure of water coming in-- and I just got lucky on this. The amount of evaporation that you have on the surface is now equal to what's coming in, I think. And it's reached a constant level now, about two feet below the top of the dam. Thank goodness, eh? [chuckles]

All:
[chuckle]

Rob:
It's like, whoops. [laughs] So anyway, we did create an outflow for it. So now I know how far down the coal was. So I want to tell you about coal in Grande Prairie. The first time I met Bernard Tissington, I was 16. And Tissington's had property south and west of Flying Shot Lake. It's a little lake just west of Grande Prairie. And they went into the-- where you're down along to the Wapiti River, and there was a coal seam exposed there. And they started a mine, and they were selling coal into Grande Prairie. And they'd load it up with a wagon or sled in the winter. And a four-horse team, they'd pull it up the hill and into Grande Prairie to be sold. It became an enterprise.

And then to have proper ventilation-- I mean, we're talking a long time ago here. They didn't have cars. We're talking horses. They sunk a shaft from the top of the hill down through all the overburden over the coal. It was like 150, 160 feet. I mean, imagine digging this. They dug a shaft so then it would draw air, fresh air in the bottom, and vent out. And they never had any cave-ins or anything there. And coal was what they were doing. And the seam was like three feet deep. So you're only working-- you're crawling around with your belly in there, OK? This was pretty primitive mining.

So the mining inspector came. And when I had met Bernard Tissington, this is what I learned. He was 17, and he was the foreman of that mine. He was the guy that run it for their family. He was just a kid. And the mine inspector came out, man, and says, well, who are you? He says, well, I'm the guy.

All:
[laugh]

Rob:
But they looked at everything that was done. And he signed off on it and said, you're good to go. Keep going. So I met him. And then I met another guy here in Grande Prairie. And these are people that are sort of midterm. They're not original settlers. Charlie Turner told me this, not Bernard Tissington. They were building what was called the Ashdown Building, right by the train tracks, where Earl's is right now in Grande Prairie. So you kind of know the location. So right beside-- it was like a warehouse. And it had a rounded roof.

They were young men in their 20s. And they were working there. There was an accident. And they both fell. They slid off the roof. And the building was from the eave to ground 20 feet, I'd say. They both fell. Bernard fell first onto the ground. Charlie Turner landed on top of him and broke his back. But Bernard never told me that. Charlie did. He says, I was the one that broke his back. I landed on him. And he went on from there, working as a carpenter. And they started a prefab plant. And they rented the old Second World War hangar here in Grande Prairie out at the airport. And they started a modular home plant. And if you go into Grande Prairie, to the south side of town especially, and northeast, you'll find all of these-- they're like shoebox houses. They're like 24 feet wide, typically 48 feet long, single family homes. They're not bad homes. And some of them have a garage put on them or whatever since. But there's lots of streets of them. Well, that's where they came from. That's how I got to know him is because I worked there. I was pounding nails. I was 16, you know?

So they had a fire. Lost everything. So they went and rented another old building out there, another service building for that. The hangar was big. Like, I don't know, you take big planes in there. And then they carried on. And they worked for a while. And then I got to know the two boys, Dennis and Fred. And I worked with them. I poured floors for them. You know, I quit pounding nails. I give up on that. And I started more doing concrete. And I started to work for those boys. And you know, character traits in people carry down through generations. And I don't care how you want to say it, but I could show you something. I was doing work. And one day, Fred Tissington, which would be Bernard's son, he phoned me and he says, you need to bring me an invoice. He says, just bring it. And bring it. Don't send it. He says, you come to the office. So I go to the office. And he sits me down in his office. And he said, this is Friday. He says, I'm going to give you a check. I want you to go straight to the bank and cash it. For what I owe you-- he says, because by Monday, I might not be here financially. That's pretty honourable, eh?

Garett:
Yeah.

Rob:
I mean, he laid the cards on the table and said, go right now. There's still some money in the bank. Take it before somebody else comes along and grabs everything. And you know, fortunately, that didn't happen. But he was pretty honourable, just like his dad was. You see what happened there?

Garett:
Yeah.

Rob:
And now, back in 1983 in Grande Prairie, this is the Peace Country. We're going through this right now a bit. But in 1983, there were seven houses built here. I'm trying to make a living trying to pour the floors in these houses. Seven houses! I could have done them all in one day.

Garett:
In the entire year? 1983?

Rob:
Yeah. It was terrible. In that year, I was a young man. I was your guy's age. I had $166,000 in bankruptcies from companies. And you know, when someone phones you and says, oh, can you come and do this building for me? I can pay for this one and the other three I owe you for. Well, what do you do? You go and do it. But does he care whether he owes you for three buildings or four? Because you go to pick up this check, this imaginary check you saw I had to file. See, the honour in families and the people that came here that sort of kind of rose to the top, they were the honourable people. They're the ones that came here to work, to build something. They weren't there to cheat somebody. You know, if someone comes to you and you're a businessman, and they say, if you come on this job, there's risk. And if you can't absorb that risk, then you have to decline. And if someone says, oh, come ahead. There's no problem. Get your guys here. Let's get this done. And then they don't pay you. Now you've got to pay your guys. That's the law.

My children were small when I was a young man, and I threw away a lot of work. And it really disheartened me. And I started over. I lost all my equipment. I lost my shop. I lost my house. And here we are in 2021 era, 2022 type thing. And all the conditions are here for the same thing. So now I get really cautious who I work for, you know? And last October, I went to a particular contractor here, and I said, I need to be paid. It was $6,500. But at the same time, I had went and done the job, and he got paid for it. And I had my guys I have to pay. You know, and I went back every week for about six weeks, and finally he paid me. That started on the 1st of October, and I finally got paid. At the end of November, he filed bankruptcy for $2.2 million. See, I was only wrong by one month.

So I watch this, and I feel bad for people. You drive through Grande Prairie right now, and you see these empty shops, empty buildings, these big retail stores that are sitting empty here. You know, you haven't been here for a while maybe, but you think back, Sears store, Canadian Tire, Windsor Ford, Hanson Ford, they all built new buildings, but nobody's moved into the old one. And they're paying the tax and keeping the heat on in these buildings. There's got to be 50 empty shops here.

So we're at a-- I think we're starting to go up, right? We've been really depressed economically here, but I think we're starting, you know, hopefully. And the price of oil is increasing yet. So oil field companies that have left Grande Prairie, I think, will return and open facilities. And these shops will be taken up again, and Grande Prairie will get going again. Our mayor is projecting 100,000 people, population here for 10 years from now, and I believe it, because it takes drivers to make it.

So going all through that big ramble, the people that came here first came for land. And then they found other things here. You know, there's been some people make some serious wealth here in this area, and they took risks and they did whatever they did. But you can rub shoulders when people have some serious money here. And then you can have, right on the same streets, people that can't feed themselves. We have that here. You know, there's lots of homeless people here and people that are struggling.

But the thing that I like about the country here is that what I've learned about the country. I don't know what it is, but I've always been exposed to people that have kind of helped me or had something to learn. Does that make sense?

Garett:
Oh, it does. I think there's always something to learn from other people.

Rob:
Oh, yeah. So I don't know. I probably imagine you guys want to get out of here.

Garett:
We really appreciate this, Rob. It's been great. If you would like to send us feedback, ask us any questions, or write in a story for us to share, email us at lifenorthofthe54th@gmail.com. Thanks again, Rob.

Rob:
OK. It was good talking to you.

Preston:
Yeah, it's great to have you on, Rob, and to hear your great stories and your lengthy monologues.

Garett:
Yeah.

Rob:
Alright

Ending Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff with drumbeat]