Interview
with Helen O’Neill by June Chamberland
June ; So Mrs
Grundahl, she built a frame building and she’s the one who delivered...
Helen : Oh all the
babies that were born around ion this country at that time. She even
went....
She was
crippled . She was a registered nurse from Chicago. Grundahls
come in from
Chicago
and she was a registered nurse and I never knew how come , but
one hip
was
severely crippled and she had to use crutches lots of times. She
always walked with a a big limp and she couldn’t walk in hospitals or
anything
so she got , she did alot of
it
first , the hospital from these areas and one time there was a
fellow. He got a young,
he was
from eastern...in the prairies some place, I don’t remember
where now. He
had
this young wife. He took her fourteen miles up Canyon Creek which
is
roads
too but wasn’t then and he had a whole bunch of children up there
and one time
she
went up , they had trouble so they came to get help and she rode
horseback,
fourteen
miles in there . I guess she raised particular cain about the
situation , made
him
move the family out. They were in there, no school in there or
nothing. If men
didn’t
treat their wives and family right she wasn’t too shy to tell
them about it.
That’s
Mrs Grundahl.
June : Yeah
Helen : Her daughter
Alma worked. She was a stenographer. She was the same age as my dad
and
back in the early days of Prince George there wasn’t many
stenographers around
here,
you could realize, so she used to, she worked for the Forestry
and then she
worked
the railroad and the Forestry both for quite a few years till
she actually
retired.
Pictures
: Helen showed pictures and told stories about them.
Helen : And that’s
another Women’s Institute - Farmer’s Institute combination. That’s my
mother
standing there with an apron on and that I think is Uncle Lash,
Grandpa’s
brother.
There’s Lyddie Colebank, that’s Allen’s and Henry’s mother and
that was
Mrs.
Wade. Wade Road’s named after Wade’s. Wades had the post office
before
MacKays
got it and Rupert Colebank was one of the men in early years
that used to
meet
the boat in just his latter days. Someone else did it before that.
Them latter
days
he’d take a boat from Wade’s , the mail from Wade’s post office
over to White’s
Landing
and meet the boat and take the other mail up and bring it back
to the post
office.
And like in latter days , the boat was their main .......
June :
Transportation
Helen :
Transportation and alot of the roads are built in this Strathnaver were
built
by this
Duke of
Sutherland. He even had camps and different things. They were
doing railroads
building
the PGE grade, now it’s BCR.
June : Who was this
Duke of Sutherland?
Helen : He was from
England and that’s all I know about it.
June : Everybody
called him the Duke of Sutherland.
Helen : That’s all I
know about it.
June : So what year
was it they were bringing the mail like that over by boat?
Helen : I don’t know
when it started but they did it up to 1921 or 22.
June : Okay
Helen : It’s when
the boat, when the freight boat or the BX made it’s last trip up and
down.
And
this is a road camp when they used to need road work done or bridge
work done
they
make tents you see and that’s my dad there and that’s my brother’s
wife, Mary
and the
oldest girl Sylvia and I don’t know who the fellow is but their
tents were
put up
for cook house and for sleeping and everything. Now this was,
this was
Aunt
Mary and one of her kids and I don’t know who that one is, the one
here I
think
is ........can’t see so good, she’s got glasses on . Anyway that
was the pack-
horses
they had. Now this is one the woman wanted because that’s
grandmother
and
that’s in Prince George before she moved out here. She wanted it
for the wash
on the
line because ladies nowadays don’t know what to do about hanging
the wash on the line that way. (Laugh)
You had to go along , you didn’t pull it on pulleys
because
you didn’t have that.
June : What was your
grandmother’s name?
Helen : Bertha Alice
Colebank.
June : Oh
Helen : Her maiden
name was Wilkes but they were all from the States. There’s a picture
of my
mother when she was younger and that’s Mrs Don Mitchlie and
that’s Alma
Morgan
. They moved in, in the late 20's. That was at our house. That
was Mr Mitchlie’s car. He came up from Eden, Oklahoma, him and his
wife. They
came up three years in a row and my, in the family Colebanks, mine ,
there was
only my dad and his older
brother
Gayle and they were the only old timers in that family of
Colebanks.
June : Who was, what
was your dad’s name?
Helen : Glen.
June : Glen
Helen : Yeah and Dad
got his big game guide through his older brother Gayle and Mr .
Mitchlie
came and hunted three years with Dad in a row. I’ll come to
another picture
and
I’ll show you . That was their car and they’re driving from Eden
Oklahoma and
I think
it took him nine days to get here with the type of cars they
had and the roads
they
had.
This is
a picture, a later picture of my mom and my dad. The kids are
all grown up.
Here’s
a typical barn yard picture of alot of the places around because
it kept
people
busy. They had to rustle wood out of the bush. See there wasn’t
mills and stuff
for
people to go to work around here. You had to rustle your living .
And
that was Mom with the horses and that’s my brother Paul and me and
that’s their
dog
Ring and that’s their barn.
Pat Lygas : This is
your mom and dad?
Helen : Yeah. This
is Mary Simmond before she married my uncle Gayle and this kind of ...
We made
history . I , in my life, remember the Women’s Institute now
but in those
days ,
it’s early 70's I think and I was going as a delegate to our
convention in
McBride
and I drove. My mother came as a guest and my daughter Virginia
and
they
said “That’s the first time we’ve had mother to daughter to daughter
- three
generations
to our convention.
June : That’s neat!
Helen : Here’s a
typical way people put up hay in early days.
June : It’s a good
one.
Helen : They handled
it loose because there weren’t too many balers around this early.
June : That’s how we
used to make hay.
Helen : This is an
old time one, some picnic or something, they had that’s ..............
And
this was a guy by the name of William Coulters farm, down the lake?
Creek here
and he
kind of started this , was very strong. I don’t really know who
started it, but
he was
in this 4H club and he had Ayrshire , not cows, dairy cattle .
He had a field
day and
us kids would go down and judge his cattle . Well you see that
white collar
there,
that’s me and for judging the cattle that year and handling them
I won 13
points
above all the other kids and my cousin Sylvia was there and she
was 6 or 7
years
older than me but I did the best job handling the cattle and the
best essay on it
and
that was ....even shocked the heck out of me and that’s in
19.. My last year of
school.
See Mom was awfully sick when she was having the last part of
the children
so I
missed a lot of school and I missed years because I had to stay
home and kind of
housekeep
. And that’s myself there and my brother Paul . He lives in
Williams Lake,
my
brother Fred he passed away awhile back of cancer and my brother
Jesse , he
passed
away quite a few years ago and the last of these people in this
picture are my
relatives
with the exception that’s Ina Sahlstrom, and no Joan
Sahlstrom , no that’s
Myrtle
Johnson and her sister Anna Johnson and there was the ...Ina
Sahlstrom and
Joan
Sahlstrom and the rest of them are Colebanks and relatives except
Wilfred
Reynolds
was in there. They went back to Saskatchewan because they said
there
was
nothing here for their boys as they grew up and they went back to
Saskatchewan
before
the war broke out. And this is one you might appreciate Pat.
That’s in Hixon
Creek,
salmon out of Hixon Creek. And when I was a kid growing up ,
there was
no
salmon in Hixon Creek but I realize in later years why because in
early 60's
when my
husband and family came back up here to live there was salmon
back
in
Hixon Creek but there was no placer mining . You see every spring
there was
placer
mining and they never come up the muddy water but before that
when that
placer
mining wasn’t running there was salmon caught in Hixon Creek.
June : For goodness
sakes hey. Interesting!
Helen : And this is
a typical pack train. That’s my Uncle Gale and a hunter or a helper or
something
and his whole pack train going out because there’s no roads
back in
the
mountains in those days . They packed their train from this
“grandilist”
?
They’d
go in by pack train and go up on Baldy Mountain or Hixon
Mountain or
wherever
or down in Chubb Lake area , depending on what they were
hunting and
that’s
the way they loaded up and of course you’d see every night
they’d unpack
and set
up camp and stay out awhile and look after horses and hunt in
between .
That’s
my dad with a caribou and this is Mr Mitchlie’s same car and the
three years hunting he did with dad . He had all this stuff mounted and
he
entered it in some
kind of
a thing they had down there and he took first prize with his
trophies.
There
was even a weasel in there somewhere . These I got to keep in
this because
that’s
the one this woman wants me to.
John : Some of them
“would-be’s ” hey?
Helen : Well back in
those days that Mr Mitchlie, he said that he was grain farming . He
said
he was
just lucky but I think he must have been a hard worker because
nobody ever
made
anything on luck. You make your own luck. But he said he never
could make
a dime
with a pig. He would have nothing to do with pigs. He said every
time he had
anything
to do with a pig, he lost money.
And
this is Marshall Mack. This is my cousin Sylvia and one of her
horses. I’m not
sure
which one it is.....sitting on the
June : Who was her
father then?
Helen : Gale, my
uncle Gale. And this is.....I think it’s in Penticton and that’s my
grandmother
See my
grandfather ..... my grandfather....... my dad started school at
Lumby. They
came
from the States and .....
Helen : There’s
coffee too, whichever you prefer.
June : I take tea, I
think
John : Cream
and sugar?
Helen : Okay and
Dad’s in school and he logged for Butterworth’s there and then they
moved
from
there to Penticton and Grandpa had this orchard down in the valley
but Grandpa
plowed
some of the first ................. Orchard
down in Penticton. Then when they left there they went to
Ponoka , Alberta and that’s where Dad became a teenager and he
did
some jockey, he was jockey for awhile.
( Talk
on coffee, tea, sugar and cream)
June : Is that you
with the horse?
Helen : No, that’s
my mother before she was married. She got married before she was 18. I
wsa
born when she was nineteen. Here’s one of the first aeroplanes in
Prince George.
June : You’re the
oldest one in the family, right?
Helen : Yeah. First
plane in Prince George.
June : Oh yeah, one
of those two wings.
Helen : Yeah, this
was my dad and I don’t know who the fellow is he’s with and that’s the
dog
Bingo. Dad always smoked a pipe for years until he got cancer in
the lip from
holding
the pipe.
This is
Mom’s half brother . You see my mother was three years old her
mom left
so her
dad hired her, kept her until she was ten . When he remarried,
actually this
is kind
of funny . When he remarried , he married a woman quite a bit
younger than
him , a
Mamie Dyer, which was my father’s first cousin and they had two
boys and
Mamie
his wife was in bed with having a third child , a little girl,
when the 1918
flu
went through and it killed both the little boys . It got both the
boys. They died
at a
young age,
Pat : Which ones
your dad?
Helen : This one.
That old sweater , he seemed to wear that for years and years and years
in my
books, as near as I can remember.
That’s
Uncle Gale with a bear. This is, I don’t know who they are, I
forget. They
were
clowning around there. And this is Jack Walls and Reynard
Anderson. Oh that
was
Matt Anderson’s brother but he left here before I got old enough to
remember
much
about him. That’s Aunt Mary with her daughter Sylvia, the oldest
one. There’s
Aunt
Mary . There’s Dad’s brother, Uncle Gale and their two oldest
children Sylvia
and
Wayne and my mother. That’s Grandpa and Grandma and Aunt Mary,
Uncle
Gale
and Sylvia when she was a baby , sitting on a moosehead. This is
my dad when
he was
a teenager yet and his dad and mother.
This is
my dad and that’s Aunt Clara and that’s a prize picture . That
was Uncle Sam
that
was Grandpa’s brother and his wife and she...that’s the only
picture we have of
Aunt
Clara. She would never let anybody take a picture, and that’s
Rupert Colebank.
Let Pat
see that one. That’s Rupert Colebank when he
was...................
And
this is just an early picture in Pineview. Edward went to school
there for awhile.
And
this is just an early picture in Pineview . Edward
went to school there for awhile.
And
this is just a picture around here.
That’s
Lyddie Sahlstrom, lived up on the farm
This is
Ira Colebank, Dad’s first cousin and he was about sixteen years
old and that
was in
Saskatchewan. He was driving a livery wagon of some kind.
June : Old picture
hey?
Helen : Yeah and
that’s just one of Sylvia and dad was great with his dogs. And this is
Mom’s
three half sisters. The oldest one was born during the flu but
she made it
through.
And this is Dad’s brother, Uncle Gale when he travelled
through the States.
Grandpa
would work on these ranches and Grandma would cook . Oh she was
a
tough
old gal when she was young. She’d go through more work than three
women
and
Uncle Gale he made money by breaking these hot wild horses in those
days. He’d
go into
a ranch and he’d break the horses to ride and that’s how he
made money.
Pat : This is your
dad again?
Helen : Yeah. That’s
Ben Colebank sitting on a cow.
That’s
cousin Sylvia sitting on a moosehead. My dad, some people
wondered if
the
bear did that but he didn’t. I think that’s Uncle Sam or Grandpa I
think with that
moose.
And this is Paul Colebank Senior. That was Uncle Marsh,
Grandpa’s brother
that
lived in the North Dakota. He raised his family down there and
Paul came up
here as
a young man , and that’s Stanley Colebank. Pat Newman
Batching?????
He
passed away just recently.
That’s
like the other one, my grandmother washing on the line and stuff.
That is
Aunt Mary.
June : That Cataline
they talk about, that’s who that is.
Helen : Yeah
Pat : Linda ( did
she say Colebank?)
Helen : Well
actually Linda is no blood relative to her because that was Aunt Mary.
She
was a
Similack. She was a sister to Lyddie Sahlstrom.
June : So your
father was
Helen : Glen
June : And his
brother was Gale
Helen : Gale. Right
June : And their
mother and father was ...
Helen : Andy and
Bertha
June : So where does
Rupert and Delbert fit in ?
Helen : They’re
Uncle Sam’s grandchildren . You see Uncle Sam , see when they come into
this
country in early years and Uncle Gale was a great promotor of this
kind of stuff.
There
was Uncle Sam, Grandpa and Lash of the four boys that I know of ,
all
raised
their families around here . That’s why there was so many
Colebanks and even the
Colebanks
around here now but they’re more distant. If they’re a
Colebank, they’re a
relative.
Uncle Gale’s family , all of them but one’s in California and
one of them’s
down by
Armstrong but they only had one boy and no family up here but
Uncle Sam
had two
boys and Bill Colebank was one and Bill Colebank had his oldest
who
was
Hjalmer Johnson’s mother and Rupert and Delbert , Marsh Colebank,
Merv
Colebank
, who never got married till later years and Andy Colebank and
he had
one boy
which is down in Hawkins ? yet and then Lash , another one of
Grandpa’s
brothers
, he had three girls actually. He had Bessie which lives in
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Nora whose been in the States alot of years
but she
had family problems
and
Ira, the only boy in the family brought her up here and she had her
family here.
Uncle
Lash’s wife died when Gladys was born, the youngest of the family
so Aunt
Clara
and Uncle Sam raised her. She was kind of, kind of from an
infant. And
then
Grandpa just had the two boys and then they had their family but
that’s why there
was so
many Colebanks because there was three different brothers. Dyers
fit in
because
in the early years Grandpa’s Sam’s and Lash’s sisters , two of
them married
two
Dyer boys.
June : So the Dyers
were all just as close.
Helen : And Uncle
Lash married a Dyer girl so there’s three marriages in the two families.
Pat : And Rupert he
was a twin wasn’t he?
Helen : Yes and that
pair of twins you never saw nothing like it. Rupert was tall and thin
like
his dad
and Delbert was short and dark like his mother.
June : Oh those two
were twins?
Helen : Those two
were twins.
June : And who was
their father then?
Helen : Bill Colebank
and their mother was Minnie but Uncle Sam and Aunt Clara was
their
grandparents and they’re both buried right up here in Hixon. Up
there where
May
Dayton lived. That was a little corner in there and the road, the
highway went
up by
Daytons house there and that belonged to John Peterson and it was
kind of a
little
corner in there that didn’t fit in across the highway so he was
going to donate it
to the
community for a graveyard . Well back in those days nobody had
any money
so no
paper work ever got done so through the years with everybody
passing on
and it
got private property and it got sold to youths? But there’s five
graves there.
There’s
Sam Colebank, Clara Colebank, Pearly ( Polly) Johnson, that was
Hjalmar’s
sister.
She was raised? at school in the fall and she drowned in the
well in the summer
and
there was a Len somebody buried in there before. Aunt Clara and
Uncle Sam
and
Hazel had a baby she lost at birth, stillborn so to say, is buried
there.
June : Hmm
Pat : Well nowadays
there’s alot of stakes? To remember the graves to tell where they are
because,
so they’re not disturbed ( Can’t really hear)
Helen : Well up on
Nadines? There’s trees growing right up in it. I don’t know if I could
find it
or not. I did find it in early years because Bernice and Monroe
and I went
around
. We went up to the graveyard on the Horrocks place and I guess
they’ve
logged
it all off and everything. Be lucky if you could find it
anymore. And there was
a grave
up at Green Lake. It was Jack McMurphy and them helped us get
there and we got the number of the land and approximate , as near as we
could
get to the spot on
this
number of land and we had sent it to Victoria because they didn’t
have records
of
where they were buried , where they were but I’m sure the one on
Edith Bell’s ,
you
couldn’t argue with Edith , she’s real stubborn like that lady so
she said one
thing
you just let it go and I know she gave us the wrong place because
I remember
there
used to be that you went in on this road, there used to be a
white fence in there
a
graveyard and that’s on the same place , it was on her dad’s first
homestead before
they
moved down to where Edith lived in later years.
Pat : Is that where
her mom and dad would be?
Helen : No. I don’t
know for sure just where her mom and dad is buried. I remember being
at the
services but I don,t remember where they were buried.
June : So when
you’re going up the Colebank road there and there’s an old building ,
sort of
a
cottage roof building, I was going to bring the pictures along and I
forgot and
there’s
sort of a barnyard there now. Who, which Colebank built that
house?
Pat : John
Bangemoty’s ( CHECK NAME)
Helen : Oh well that
cottage roof and that first house there was built by Engelking ( CHECK)
and the
timbers it was built out of came from the PGE which is now
known as the
BCR but
PGE first grade there was alot of timbers scattered along there
and that
was ,
his name in the ...I”ll show you.Mr Engelking.
Back in
those days we were never allowed to use first names so I only
remember
Mr. and
I knew he had another name . It’s in the book but I remember
when that was
built .
June : So it’s not
that old like?
Helen : No, the one
up where the buffalo are that’s caving in , oh, that was built in the
early
1900's.
June : Oph really?
Helen : Yeah because
that was my Grandpa and Grandma’s homestead and when they moved
in this
country they came down on the boat , landed at Woodpecker
Landing and
went in
there and the reason they homesteaded there was because there’d
been a big fire
through
and all they had for clearing was a team
of horses and stuff . It was easier
cleaning
and there was a little creek run through which dried up later
but they didn’t
know it
at the time and because in 1914 Dad filed on his first
homestead that Mitchell
Road
that goes up , well Mitchell Road , the house was on this side of
it and right
across
that corner Dad had a field out there , it’s all grew up. You
can’t see it now
and
what used to be a blacksmith shop was Dad’s cabin on his homestead
and he filed
it when
he was 18 years old before he went overseas.
Pat : So across the
road , they were logging that last year or the year before.
Helen : Yeah but then when he went overseas in
the First World War and then when he came back he realized at this time
that
water was a problem up in that area so he took up
this
homestead down here that Earl Magnusson and a whole bunch of them
live on
there
now and the field, that field, out there where the highway is and
Henry Colebank
and all
them live , that was my dad’s field.
Pat : You mean where
Magnusson is now down by the old mill? And your mom was down
there ?
Helen : Yeah
Pat : Where Percy’s
lived and stuff?
Helen : Well before
you got there , the old house that used to sit in there and that was
the
house
that we grew up in.
June : But that
house is not there anymore though?
Helen : Oh it caved
in , it’s still, remnants are there.
Pat : Mr B. lived
there
Helen : Well he
lived close to it. One of the ......
Herre’s
cut the
front of the house out and made a garage out of it.
June : That’s a good
way to weaken a house, cut a big hole out of it.
Helen : Here’s part
of the Bachelor’s Hall, one that is newer and here’s the first Hixon
Hall.
Pat : Was Clem Brown
one of those bachelors?
Helen : No he came
in later. He came in when I was a kid. And Emil Nash? Art Ney, they
came in
after then Second World War and I remember they came in , they
wanted to
get out
of Germany and they got out
To try and come over here and get
their
families but they got hired in the 30's when nobody, Canada was
real hard up.
People
were so they couldn’t get there. Canada war broke out and they
couldn’t get
their
families out of Germany because they wouldn’t let them .
Now
here’s a good picture of the Woodpecker Hall. It was up by that
little church
and
pile of rubble that grey building, well that was the Woodpecker
Church , and
that’s
where I went to dances and stuff and then my kids.
Pat : It was the
Woodpecker Church?
Helen : Hall.
Pat : Is that the
building that’s right against the church now?
Helen : No that’s a
bigger one, a lot bigger one . Pete kept stopping, I didn’t when we
come up
in the
60's . It was getting pretty deteriorated so Paul and Joe
decided to plow it
down
because they were sure it was going to come down on somebody.
Helen : I started
out , I was going to show ypu a picture of that Engelking house you were
talking
about.
June : Oh yeah, the
one that I took the picture of.
Helen : Yeah, well
this building’s still srtanding across the bridge over here.
June : Yeah, I got
that one ( CANYON CREEK SCHOOL)
Helen : That’s where
I got all my schooling and quite a bit of history there too . All the
schooling
that I ever got here in Hixon which was .................
END OF
TAPE
I went
to school here in Hixon , the three younger ones took all the
schooling here in District #57 all the way through and then alot of my
grandchildren went through Hixon school and started out great grandson
started
school here in Hixon and I got a great
granddaughter
will be starting this fall.
June : Gee that’s
quite a record. So did you ever go to the Woodpecker school or not?
Helen : No Uncle Gale’s
kids, they went to all the achools . They went to Woodpecker, they
went to
Hixon, they went to Strathnaver School and they went to Camp
Creek School.
Uncle
Gale was a going concern. It’s said if he’d put all his efforts
into one place he’d
of had
a beautiful place but he opened up and built roads, that road
that goes in to the
Brownscombe
place , he hewed that out of the bush and the government
took it over
later,
that road going into Chubb Lake , Uncle Gale hewed that out to
the first site
there
and the Government picked it up and cleaned it up later and he
was just a going,
going,
going, going, going but he scattered his efforts so much but he
had the
ambition
for both of them.
Pat : Well I know in
‘52 it seemed you come to a bright spot in the road you know, that
there
was a house there or something but the highway was from Quesnel
to
Prince
George - the old highway.
Helen : Yeah
Pat : It was all
grown up I mean.
Helen : Well here is
-- now some people talk about the big flood in 1948 but I remember the
first
big flood, a lot of people don’t remember , in 1936 and there was
a passable bridge between Prince George and Quesnel and the bridge at
Hixon ,
believe it or not, the
creek
come right up on that and that was quite a space -
this Canyon Creek. It left
the
bridge standing in the middle of the stream and it took everything
out around it.
The
Hixon bridge went right down the river, down the creek, and Dad
went and took
....it
was near the end of June and Dad went and took and put a tripod
in the middle
of the
road and hung a kerosene lantern on it and he thought “ well
this isn’t good “ so
instead
, he didn’t want to get a team of horses out and harness them
at night so he
took as
big a log as could pack and went to put it down just around ,
he put that, before you come to a little bend in the road . Somebody
went
around that lantern , around
the log
and come within , not any farther from here to the stove to the
edge of the
bank
before they realized what was up. They said they thought it was
some kind of a kid’s trick . It wasn’t Hallowe’en. Kids didn’t do those
kind of
things in those days.
June : And were they
driving horses then or cars?
Helen : Car. It happened
to be a car. It was the teacher trying to get through but most of us
had
horses but there was Dick Yardley had a car , Bert Lochyer had a
car and Mrs.
Grundahl
had a car and Uncle Gale usually had a car. The rest of the
country was
on
horseback or on foot. ( If I quit yapping so much I might
find.......)
June : It’s
interesting all the stuff you’re telling
Helen : I might find
that building you’re talking about here . Some of those pictures I
showed
you , they’re in here.
John : Alot of
houses around out here, old log houses.
Helen : Uncle Gale ,
he did more opening up in this country than any of the family.
John : Cut a road
through to the Fraser, I don’t think he knew what he was doing.
Helen : Well he knew
more than what he was doing . He did more than all the rest of them
put
together, if it come down to it. He done more work than all the
Colebanks in the rest of the country.
John : Sure he did,
only one that done anything.
Helen : Well let’s
not get carried away . That’s left to rioght - Dean, my aunt Mary and
Sylvia.
That’s Aunt Mary and that’s 1916 by Gale Colebanks and our
first home.
That’s
what the home’s made of
- logs and sod roofs.
June : So what year
did they - did the Colebanks come to this country then?
Helen : Oh well as
near as to my recollection that I know of, it had to be in the early
1900's
because
1914 as I said Dad filed on his first homestead before he went
overseas
and
Uncle Gale already had a homestead or two and Grandpa and Grandma
already
had
their homestead and when the rest come that’s all very ...
June : Yeah I just
wanted to know the earliest ones . Your grandpa and grandma were here
first
like?
Helen : Pretty well,
yes and Uncle Gale actually come in first from Alberta because he
wanted
to go to California . He was the one that tried to get us all to
go to California
too but
it didn’t work.
June : He was the
drifter and dreamer hey?
Helen : Yeah, oh he
did dream but you know that Aunt Mary , she had to be some woman that.
In
those years you had to do all your washing by hand . She had eight
children and lived in every possible situation you could find. She had
lots of
good times because when
he had
money he didn’t go to town and blow it on himself . He spent it
on the family
going
places. He took the family to every dance or opening . He didn’t
even dance. He’d take them to town and everything. Not like the rest of
the
deod ???? boys around
here
but then he’d go so fast , he’d go broke and then of course he was
very hard up
but
that woman kept up a pretty good stance with all these kids and all
that moving
again.
June : Life was
never dull I guess.
Helen : I don’t
really like when people say that because that was darn hard for us .
Talking
about
being dull, that was darn hard work for us.
June : Yeah
Helen : That woman
worked! Really hard!
Pat : So that house
on the corner of Michelle Road then that Rupert and his wife lived in
there.
Helen : Oh they
lived there but that was after. See when Grandpa got his old age
pension
when he
was 70 years old , he had to sign his place over to the
Government to get
it so
when he moved from there to the Okanagan, that place belonged to
the
Government
. So when Rupert got out of the army and wanted to settle he
got the
place
through the Government but that was Grandpa’s first homestead.
June : Your Grandpa.
So that’s the house we took the picture of .
Helen : On Mitchelle
Road, yeah.
Pat : And then this
other one of Banjolini’s that belonged to Colebanks somewhere.
Helen : Yeah that
belonged to my brother Fred at one time but that was Mr Engelking ‘s
property
and then I’m not sure but I think it was Sid Hall that got it.
Oh no, it was
Curt
Brown and his wife had it before Sid Hall and then Sid had it and
Fred - oh -
some
people by the name of Dingwalls got it some time and Fred got it
off Dingwalls
or
Dingwalls bought it off Fred. I think Dingwalls bought it off Fred
because
Dingwalls
went to St Mary’s Lake and the Benjolinis the last and the
boys are still
there.
Pat : And that
red-headed lady that used to work in Williams Lake , Quesnel. She was a
cousin
somehow.
Helen : Oh Shirley.
Pat : She said she
lived there. She was a Colebank originally.
Helen : Red-headed
lady? That worked in Quesnel?
Pat : You know the
store on the corner there, used to be a Chinese store, turned to a
ladies
wear.
She lived up here later on.
Helen : Oh it’s
Dorothy Kennedy. Yes but they come in the 30's , Ira brought them in
because
his
sister Nora, she had a crippled hip, one leg shorter . Of course
she’d that way
most of
her life that I know of
and she’d been in an abusive .................
Pat : Oh she wasn’t
a Colebank then ?
Helen : Yeah, she
was. She was Ira Colebank’s sister.
Pat : Was Ira a
cousin of yours?
Helen : She was a
first cousin of my dad’s. Well her kids and us are second cousins. Some
people
get this all screwed up and I, the last time somebody started to
ask that , it
was
when Elaine Dyer married to a second cousin of mine . She said
“well these are
not
really second cousins, these are third cousins”. Now just how do
you get from
one to
three, where does the two go?
(Talk
and laugh about second cousins)
Pat : Dorothy didn’t
have any children?
Helen : No. Well
this is history of John’s family. This is Okanogan and he was around - this
is some
of us at Lumby.
June : So when did
the two of you get married? What Year?
Helen : Oh well Dad
sold this place in 1940 and we went down to the Okanogan and Dad’s
place
he bought close to Nellie Elson’s ? Which is his aunt. She was
only five years
older
than him but his aunt .
June : So what was
the names of the children in your family, like your brothers and
sisters?
Helen : Well I’m the
oldest. Helen, Paul, Fred, Jesse, Alice and Ruby. The two youngest
ones
were girls and the three boys in between.
June : Three and
three - six.
Helen : Well I was
the oldest girl and then they had the three boys and then the girls.
June : Were you born
here or Alberta ?
Helen : I was born
here. I was born in the house on Mitchell Road.
June : Yeah because
Mrs Grundahl.....
Helen : She
delivered me.
June : She delivered
you, yes.
Helen : And my brother Paul. Mrs Grundahl
delivered him, brother Fred, Mrs Morgan was in attendance for him and I
think
she run into trouble and had to call Mrs Grundahl
in and
for Jesse, he was born in the same house I was born. Dad took
Mom up there and
then he
took the horses and went over to Mrs Grundahl’s because it was
in March ,
you
couldn’t get cars through yet , brought Mrs Grundahl over to
Grandma’s house
so
that’s where Jesse was born. Alice was born right here in our house
in Hixon .
Ruby
was the only one born in the hospital in Quesnel.
Pat : So when did
Mrs, when did the Grundahls come here then?
Helen : Oh, before
my time . I think it’s , be in here some place.
Pat : It said 1920
there on that one picture.
June : Oh yeah, in
that book there.
Helen : In the book
. It’ s here some place if I can find it.
June : So was she a
Hainisch?
Helen : Hainisch was
related to the Grundahls somehow.
Helen : Oh don’t ask
me to describe - that was a real mixed
up thing.
Pat : But he wasn’t
a brother of Mrs Grundahl’s ?
Helen : Hainisch was
an adopted son. Mrs Hainisch I don’t know if she’s some relation or what
she was
but she adopted this son Hainisch and when he grew up she
married him. They
had a
housekeeper whose name was Con. She married what they called
Little Black Joe
I don’t
know his last name and after he saved money there , anyway his
wife and
Hainisch
got the money and she didn’t want Joe anymore so he moved over
to
Grundahl’s
and he worked for old Pete Grundahl for years and years and
years and the
two of
them did the farm work on Grundahls but Hainisch’s were some
relation but I
just
don’t quite know where it fits. But I know they are related and I
know this Con
married
this little black Joe that worked at Grundahls then for years
but she lived with
Hainisch
, even after Mrs Hainisch passed away. Mrs Hainisch went to
bed in the First
World
war and never got up again. They claim that’s why she went to bed
but I
question
those kind of things , has to be more than that. I don’t think
just because
the war
broke out a woman would go to bed and stay there for the rest
of her life.
June : And then did
her husband commit suicide or ?
Helen : It was Mrs
Grundahl’s husband that committed suicide , yes and the old hay shed
now is
a duck pond. The Judge used to own it but I don’t know who he
sold it to.
Pat : Is that where
the Judge is now?
Helen : No, he’s on
the farm.
Pat : On golden
pond.
Helen : Up there?
Pat : Yeah, on the
Grundahl road.
Helen : Yeah
Pat : Golden pond.
Helebn : Yeah
there’s a field and there was a hay shed in there , used to be a field.
June : Beside the
pond?
Helen : No there was
no pond there.
June : Well where
did the pond come from?
Helen : The pond -
beaver dam.
June : Oh so it was
a hay field before.
Helen : It was a hay
field before . I know it was a hay field and there was a hay shed in
there.
Pete
Grundahl hung himself in that hay shed.
June : Oh, okay.
Pat : And there was
doubt whether he hung himself because there was nothing underneath
that he
could have stood on.
Helen : Oh well I’ve
heard so many rumours and I’ve just never repeated them. I kind of .....
It’s
like my grandma used to be pretty damn good at starting stories
that weren’t
true
and I learned through her to be very damn cautious.
June : That’s right.
If you ever know somebody that, or even somebody that exaggerates....
Helen : You don’t
repeat what they tell you.
June : Yeah.
Helen : What the
heck was I looking for here girls?
IDLE
CHATTER
Helen : Here’s the
Grundahl family I was seeking. In 1919 they came in. Called it Diane
Ranch by Alma Grundahl in 1919.
When
that Bachelor’s Hall was built there was Dorothy Yardley. She was
on the
Rool
?old place with her brother Dick
and dad. Dorothy Yardley and my mother
had
come down here and Alma Grundahl were the only single women around
here
at that
time so they had their choice.
June : Lots of fun
hey?
Helen : Well back in
those days you didn’t fool around with your fun because your price
was too
high.
June : No I din’t
mean that kind of fun”
Helen : The
Brownscombes came in and I remember Uncle Gale sold them the farm,
that
was his farm to begin with.
Pat : So when
Hainisch sold his property then,
Dahlstrom, did he move down to this end
of town
to a little old shack?
Helen : No, that was
Yorgy Howart, Hainisch never lived down here that I know of. I
don’t
think he ever left the farm. ( something about Yorgy moving down
here)
Pat : Where did he
live, in Trapper Reids?
Helen : No, no
Trapper Reid’s been there and for so long, I don’t remember.
Pat : What kind of
shack
Took it down, it
was a log house?
Helen : Yeah down
behind the Fireplace. Could have been.
It’s
gone now, the shack, yeah.
Art
Thompsoon built a place down
Art
Thompson had a frame house in there too and that’s gone now too. He
was here in the early 30's.
June : Is that the
same Thompson that lived at the store or worked at the store on the Hart
Highway?
Helen : He built
that store on the Hart Highway and all the folks down here that knew
him
thought
this man was crazy, go that many miles in the wilderness and
build a store.
How in
hell would he make a living ? Look where it built up to. I
didn’t like him
very
much.
TALK
June : So when your
parents came here , they all farmed did they?
Helen : More of a stump ranching style. You
had a MacDonald-type farm. You had your own milk and your own chickens
and bake
your own bread and you picked your own
fruit
because there was no ........ and you had to have the root
cellars . You grew a
good
garden and you had a root cellar that wouldn’t freeze because
there was no freight
trucks
to haul anything that wouldn’t freeze. You see there was no
refrigeration in a
truck
or anything and the store couldn’t keep stuff that would freeze.
Well you
couldn’t
get it to town in the winter so you had your root cellar with
your root
vegetables
and there was no money so you had to sort of .......Dad got
a little bit of
money
from working for Forestry in the summer. He was Forest Warden
here for a year or two and he did game guiding in the fall and trucks
got stuck
on Matt Anderson’s
hill ,
the old road going out the back there and because the roads
weren’t that great
and
he’d get a dollar or two from pulling guys out of the ditch because
....before
they’d
drive a car they had to have a couple of dollars to get out of
the mud and
there’s
a funny story went with that, because this mud hole .... there
used to be a
really
sharp corner up there.
You come down that old hill , then you went round
the
corner up there and you come down here and then you went around
another real
sharp
corner like this......well they took plows and scrapers and they
cut through there
Well
that spot in the middle there of the road, it was muddy and every
spring it was
soft
and of course Dad, he mouthed of. I remember him talking “ Them
........
Roadmen
, they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. If they’d fix
that road right,
they
wouldn’t be having so much trouble” but he yapped so damn much
they hired
him to
do it. So he did it. He filled it up with rocks . He had to haul
it by hand. He
had no
machines to do ( it with) . Filled all the rocks , put gravel
over it and then
he said
afterwards , he said “ Oh shit, I screwed myself” because the
trucks and cars
were
not always getting stuck and that always gave him a little money
to buy .....he
always
pulled them out.
LAUGH
You see
if they were coming from the north , they’d always go and get
Matt Anderson.
If they
were coming from the south, the last house they saw was Dad’s
and they’d come and get him . He fixed that hole in the road and that
fixed him.
I often laugh about
that.
Oh you should have heard him. Then he had to depend on the Hixon
Placers and
the
Quesnel Quartz got him working then. He did pull a little freight
in because they
came up
in spring before you got trucks in there. You know you had to
realize those
trucks
aren’t like they are nowadays either and he’d get a little money
doing that and
then
they could work off their taxes a bit on the road , take a team of
horses and haul
gravel
to put in these little holes , mud holes.
Pat : Well I know
when I came out here too, there wasn’t much for cars on this road. I
mean
there
was only 7? Cars in all, well there was more than that. LAUGH
Helen : You see ,
well my first memory of the mail route going here , that I remember from
as a
kid, my own memory, not what was told, as I saw was, Cap Foster
.....and this
is
another cute story about at that time. Cap Foster, he used to be
captain on one of
the
boats , but anyway he had this truck and he ran through three times
a week and
he
picked up cream cans and stuff like that and made a little extra
with freight along
the way
and Myrtle ..... He fancied himself’s nephew was there , Ted? A
nice young
man but
he was very outspoken . He wasn’t like so many of the young
fellows are,
they’re
sort of .............. but this Ted , he was a red-headed kid
and he , mouthing
around
like kids will , you know when somebody comes, when a stranger
came in
You
didn’t see that and this Cap Foster , he’d want to
flirt
with the women so he said “ Oh kids are better off....supposed to
be seen and
not
heard” and he says “ And you’d make a better looking man if you
fell on your
belly
and stick out your chest”. Well, if we’d have said something like
that we
wouldn’t
sit down for six months.
June : You’d get a
spanking, hey?
Helen : But that was the year of the first
mailman and Charlie Houghtaling and Henry Houghtaling owned a car , a
bigger
car in those days and I don’t remember how often
a week
they went, but they’d go through from Prince to Quesnel and then
back to
Prince
again and that was your passenger.
June : If you wanted
to go from one place to another, I guess.
Helen : Yeah. My
first memories of the price, it was five dollars for a trip to Quesnel
and
back or
Prince and back.
Pat : Were they any
relation to the Houghtalings that’s got Horrocks place now?
Helen : I don’t know
, could be, but then.....
June : (I should
take a picture of you and your husband. It looks like he’s going to go
to
bed or
something.)
HE
WASN’T.
Helen : In later
years Base? Wilson married Flora Houghtaling, a sister to the boys, and
he
drove the stage coach and then Bob Baxter had by this time taken
over driving
the
mail truck and he’d pick up the cream cans and he’d do shopping.
You used to
give
him the money and he’d pick up bread and he’d pick up seed grain .
He’d
run
around town doing this shopping for dropping off on his
and
charged so much for it.
Pat : Well I know it
used to take four hours from Prince George to Quesnel and this road
never
went through till ‘56 or ‘57.
Helen : It was in
the ‘50's yet.
Pat : The old road,
you couldn’t pass anybody , like you had to wait for a pullout.
Helen : No , well
that was only ......you could pass but that was only on the old
Cottonwood.
You had
a switchback on the Cottonwood.
Pat : When you went
up it was hard to pass on this old back road. When I first come out
I come
down the old back road.
Helen : Oh yeah,
behind Doucettes. Yeah. Well you could pass loads of places but you had
to slow
up and pull off and stuff like that you know but the one place
and the worst
place
on the whole road was the old Cottonwood Hill. It was a fairly
steep hill and
you
come up, you come around and there was a switchback there and you
had to just
switch
and you had to go back up in there.
June : I was going
to ask you...do you know anything about Matt Anderson at all?
Helen : Yes, I knew
him all my life, yes.
June : He was the
one who had the place where Doucette is now.
Helen : Yes, that was.... the first cafe in
Hixon was that log building at Doucettes. I don’t remember the man’s
name but
in corporation with Matt Anderson because Matt
Anderson
would take people to town for a price. He used to take George
Colebank
and
Mary ( home) a couple, for a price. He took them to town but they
built this cafe
but he
was a good cook but held up on him better and there wasn’t much
trade and
if he
did have any money he’d get drunk on it instead.
Pat : Did he sell
it, Joe ?
?
Helen : Joe and Bev
were there when we came back up here in the 60's. I was trying to think
who was
there in the 50's because we left. We were down in Hixon here
in ‘52, ‘53
and
they had portable schools over there in the yard at the time and
they used the old
school
house for studies and m
For the higher grade.
June : Ah, Falkus,
do you know anything about Falkus?
Helen : Oh yes, Sid
Falkus he? Used to work for Sid Falkus and Charlie Falkus and some
of the
others ,
Christiansen and Charlie Falkus , I think there was another
man but
Reynard Anderson ( That’s Matt’s brother) and Charlie Falkus ,
they left
I was
old enough to remember but Don .......................on the old
Sid Falkus place
and Pat
and Sid Falkus
Helen : That was his
wife that bought the place on
Road up here and Mrs Falkus
her
folks came from Africa to Victoria and she came up to work for Mrs
D
That’s
where she met Sid and married him and then they built the place
up there.
Sid was
already there so he had built the buildings there like and
Charlie Sahlstrom
I
remember his little bachelor shack on the hill and I remember Lyddie
when she first
came
into the country to visit her sister , my Aunt Mary, and she met
Charlie and they
got
married and Charlie built that Deans are still living in.
June : And how long
ago was this?
Helen : Oh in the
20's sometime.
June : Is it a log
house too?
Helen : No, it’s a
square timber house.
June : Square timber
house. Where is that?
Pat : On George and
Ellen’s road then,
Helen : Yeah, you go
in, like you’re going to Dorothy’s and you go on Sahlstrom Road right up
to Jim
and Sue Deans and it’s still there and they’re still living in
it there.
Pat : Oh there used
to be some people , Wilsons
Helen : Sley? Lived
there too. They lived there before . Stevens, Margaret and Gene Stevens.
I don’t
remember when Deans, Jim Dean bought it.
Pat : I knew Lyddie
lived down there somewhere.
Helen : She used to
go to the W.I. meetings and she used to walk all the way up from there
out to
the road and sometimes the snowdrifts were so bad, she’d crawl
on her hands
and her
knees but she never missed a W.I. meeting.
Pat : Yeah, she used
to tell me some stories.
END OF
TAPE
Second tape :
Helen : ........all
the skin off my knuckles and everything.
June : Washing
clothes for your mother?
Helen : Trying to
get them clean. A pile of clothes, I was going to get them all done up.
Poof!
That was a relief, I got it all done. Two, three more days . Oh I
don’t want that
again
so I started washing once a week but that was too much so I did
it twice a
week ,
then as time went on, I changed it to all washing clothes that
needed washing
and
ironing and mending on Mondays and later in the week I’d do all the
bedding
and
stuff that didn’t need ironing. Well then I realized this won’t
work unless I
make
those kids bath so they won’t be as dirty so after I started
helping Mom out
and
then in a year or so worked into the whole thing. I finally got so
that Mom hardly
ever
did the work after that. I usually did it on a board. Of course I
did it on the
board
when I was first married for the first three children.
June : Right. Yeah
that was hard work!
Helen : Oh those
darn overalls they used to buy. They’re the hardest things to finally
get
them
clean.
June : Because
they’re so rough.
Helen : You get
them, you take them like this and you have to go like this on the board
trying
to get them clean. Grandma did hers, but she used a bunch of
lye.
John : You need hot
water.
IDLE
CHATTER
Pat : Do you want to
talk some more or did you want to go?
June : I’m going to
go pretty soon but I’m going to take a picture of them.
END OF
TAPE
.