A Northern Experience

A friend asked why we immigrated from sunny southern California to Canada. The only way I can answer is to ask another question; have you ever been "bushed"? The term "bushed" is one often heard in northern Canada by folks trapped for the winter way out in the bush in a tiny cabin. Sometimes it's called "Cabin Fever" and folks who live in lonely places know the feeling well.

I suffered from the opposite syndrome and I don't know if it even has a name, but if you are a country boy living in a never-ending city, you know the feeling of desperation I felt in southern California. I think this more than anything else, prompted our move to Canada in search of solitude. We stayed for a variety of reasons, but I think we came in search of solitude.

In 1969 we immigrated to Canada and drove up the gravel Alaska Highway to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. We arrived late on a Friday afternoon in early September and checked into the only vacant motel room in town. I walked down the street to look the town over and the first fellow I talked to offered me a job driving a Pepsi-Cola truck. I put him off until Monday afternoon because I wanted to check out the job situation with Canada Manpower.

Monday morning I was interviewed and hired as a maintenance man in a new mining mill 230 road miles northeast of Whitehorse at the new Anvil Mine. They wanted me there as soon as possible. I enquired about housing and was told that a new town was being built but no housing would be available for at least a month. I was told that I could stay in camp at the mine site but was advised to leave my family in Whitehorse. The big problem was, Whitehorse was booming and there was absolutely no housing available in Whitehorse except the motel room we were in and my wife wasn't keen on living in Whitehorse alone with three kids. We talked it over and decided we would stay together and pitch our tent near Faro until housing was available.

When we arrived in Faro, we drove around the town and looked it over. There were a whole lot of people working on it and a big construction camp there. We could see that a lot of apartments and a few houses were nearing completion. We found out the town had been built and nearly complete in the spring but the dummies had not built a firebreak around the town, so, in early June, a forest fire had swept through and burned all the buildings except for one. They started over as soon as possible and were really making progress. We drove back a half-mile down to the Pelly River and found a nice gravel bar and pitched our tent in a grove of aspen.

The next day, I reported in at the mine and was informed that I was scheduled 13 hours a day, seven days a week and I would be expected to work overtime occasionally. Fortunately, they paid overtime for anything over 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. The guys on the crew told me the only acceptable excuse for missing a shift was a terrible hangover. I ate all my meals in the cafeteria and took a huge bag of fruit and pastries home every night for the family.

After a few days, a construction neighbour that lived in a camper nearby suggested that we move into a vacant plywood cabin nearby. He told me that he and his friends built it to use as a bar but the RCMP had closed it down for excessive roughness. Apparently they had a party and started shooting it up, from the inside. We were pleased to move up to a 16 X 16 plywood cabin with a ROOF (it had been drizzling that day), a window, a sheet-metal wood heater, a bar, four plywood benches and a plywood table. It even had a trapdoor in the floor with a hole in the ground to keep things cool. It too was located in a grove of small aspens near the river. There was even an outhouse out back!

Food was becoming a problem for the family as we had only been able to bring a few days supply along and we had been told there was a store in Faro. There was no grocery store, only a little camp store for sundries. We decided that I should call in with a terrible hangover and spend the day shopping in Ross River, a little Indian village about 45 miles away. Luck was with us! We met the owner of the new general store in Ross River and he told us that he had opened only a week before. We managed to stock up pretty well, except for vanilla. He would not sell vanilla to anyone on Sunday. It seems that was the favourite alcoholic drink of the locals when the bar was closed on Sundays.

The weather starts turning cold in September with ice on the water every morning. It was even colder at higher elevations, so the flow in the river was noticeably less every morning when the wife took a bucket for water. By the end of September it was cold! Finally, on the 2nd of October, we were allowed to move into an apartment in town. A young couple had moved in across the street the day before and we became good friends. A few days later, another family moved in down the street and two more couples moved into town and that was it for about two weeks. Those five kids and two dogs owned the town! The guys on construction were all over town, had been there a long time, and hadn't seen kids for a while. They would give those kids anything the wanted in the way of construction materials and before long; the kids had a three-story tree-fort complete with staircases.

By October 31, there were enough kids in town to start a school, so one was organized in a basement apartment. We still didn't have a store but the building was nearing completion and Hougens Ltd. of Whitehorse agreed to open a branch in Faro. In mid-November we were among the volunteers helping them stock the shelves with merchandise so we could get the store open as soon as possible. I remember that morning it was -35 when we pulled out of our heated garage and parked at the store. Six hours later, we went out to start the car and it wouldn't even turn over! I had a friend tow it to our place and the drive wheels wouldn't even turn! The rear end just slid along the snow without turning! When we got home, I had to use a winch to pull it inside the garage. Fortunately, at that point, the mine was running a bus to and from town for employees.

We were from Southern California, so we didn't have any clothing for cold weather. We relied on a lady from Yellowknife, NWT that had spent her life in the North to advise us. We got out the Sears catalogue (Simpson-Sears) and she pointed out the things to order. We also ordered a new washer and dryer. About three weeks went by and it was really getting cold and the winter clothing still had not arrived. We called Sears and they put a tracer on the order. The shipment was in Whitehorse but was undeliverable because we had given them the name of a town that didn't exist! Well, we got that straightened out and the next day our order arrived at the mine warehouse. We also ordered groceries from Whitehorse until our store opened. We would make out a list and send it in on an ore truck, they would select their best brand names and make substitutes as necessary and send it out C.O.D. to the mine warehouse. This system actually worked pretty well and we learned Canadian brands and prices that way.

That winter, when we finally got the store open at the end of November, our kids discovered how easy it was to make money by delivering groceries on a sled for customers. We also learned that the interior valleys of the Yukon and Alaska have the coldest weather in North America. The record of - 81F was set at Pelly Crossing, YT and Snag, Alaska. We always had a six-week stretch from late December until early February when the thermometer refused to rise above -60F and one morning we recorded -76F. You learn to recognize people by the parka they wear and their own peculiar cloud of steam.

If the winters are long, dark, and cold, the summers are brief, bright, warm, and glorious! This was a new mine in the middle of nowhere, so a new town had to be built to serve it, and a new highway built where none was before, to serve the town and mine. We bought geographical maps of the surrounding area and with a pencil, drew in the new highway using visible landmarks. We then located the lakes that were a half mile or less from the highway and walked in to them with our fishing rods. Most of these lakes had never been fished by anyone, ever and each was a surprise! We cast out with tried and true lures and caught whatever was in there. Some lakes contained whitefish, some lake trout and char, others were filled with Arctic Grayling, while others were strictly Northern Pike. They werent wary or hard to catch but most were not too big as the fish population in each was so high. To my wifes dismay, I would load up the kids just about every evening and go fishing for an hour or so.

These lonely lakes had no names on any map. There are thousands of them all over the North. When my wife's aunt came up from California to visit, we decided to surprise here by naming one of the beautiful deep water lakes that we had found after her. I made up a nice big plywood sign and painted Lake Eleanor on it and nailed it to a post we had placed there. Later we took her to the lake and she christened the sign with a bottle of beer. A friend recently found that Lake Eleanor is now listed as one of the area attractions.

Absolutely fascinating. I can't imagine -76 degrees that must have been brutal. I enjoyed this story very much is there a part 2 coming?

I thought it was too long as it is. One thing I didn't mention was winter transportation. We had about six weeks every winter when the temperatures never rose above -60F. During that time, no one drove to work and only the foolhardy drove at all because the engines had to be kept running continuously, 24 hours a day to keep them from freezing up. We rode company buses to work and back and stayed bundled up because the bus heaters were ineffectual.

In town we either walked or called the taxi. I recall calling the taxi and asked him to bring me a case of beer. He did, charged me an outrageous price for it and helped us drink it too!

I want to read more, I read it while I was eating my lunch!