My mother was one of those hardy pioneer women that lived in the early part of the 20th century.  She had come to Canada from London, England as a young girl.

   My father was another pioneer born in Ontario.  He was from a family of United Empire Loyalists, a very hardworking man.  He had come to British Columbia, leaving two sons with his parents in Ontario.  His first wife had died, and I suppose out of grief, he had left Ontario to start a new life in the West.

   I came into this world on September 28, 1923, the ninth one of the ten children my mother gave birth to.  Nine of us were born at home with the help of a midwife, sometimes.  Only my younger sister was born in a hospital.

   My older sisters tell me I was a happy child.  Sometimes falling face first, sound asleep, into my supper.  I don’t remember much of my first years and very little about my dad.  When I was 5, my dad died of cancer.  He was age 57 and is buried in the Midway cemetery, B.C.

   My mother, left with a big family to feed and clothe, decided to move the family to Victoria, B.C., where she had family.  The depression years were just starting, these were very lean years, I don’t know how mother kept us fed and clothed, although she did get a small widows pension from the government.  So we grew up having to wear hand-me-downs but there was always food on the table and we were a loving family.

   I was never a good student, in fact I hated school and it didn’t help me that I attended four different schools in the four years we lived in Victoria.

   My mother liked to move, in the four years in Victoria, we lived in five different houses.  In 1933, my mother made another move to Saturna Island.  She had met a man named Fred Field, a widower. They were to marry later.  So in 1933 we packed up and boarded a small boat with all our belongings, heading for a new adventure on Saturna Island. I don’t remember how long the trip took.  I just remember being very sea sick and being very thankful when we stepped onto the wharf at Saturna.

   The property, a quarter section of land, was in the middle of the Island, three miles from the wharf. My future father-in-law’s place was built of cedar shakes, no insulation those days, just building paper, a wood cook stove, buckets of water from the creek and of course, an outhouse.

   It wasn’t long before we had chickens, cows, and for a while a young goat as well as a dog and cat. The cows had the run of the Island and it was up to my brother Jack and I to find them at milking time, sometimes the cows would be up to a mile and a half away. One had a bell around her neck; our hearing was very good in those days so we would listen for that cowbell to lead us to where she was.  One day I had to go by myself to find this particular cow.  She was a mile up the road at the old Taylor place. There had been reports of a cougar on the Island, and as we started home the cow sensed the cougar was in the bush and took off for home at a gallop.  I don’t know who got home first, the cow or me.

   We attended a school about a mile down the road. We had one teacher for grades one to nine and about ten students.  The floor was oiled every so often to keep the dust down.  A big wood heater kept the room warm in the winter, us boys packed the wood in, swept the floor and cleaned the boards.  Our lunches were packed in three pound lard pails. We had homemade bread, Mother baked ten to twelve loafs at a time, and we never wasted a crumb.  The playground was between the teacher’s cabin and the school.  It was dirt and gravel.  The outhouses were out the back, one for the girls and one for the boys.  There was bush around the schoolyard, that’s where most of our play was done.  The walk home was usually the long way with side trips to explore.  One such trip I will always remember.  There was a creek crossing the road in one place.  My brother Jack and another boy and myself followed it down to a falls.  The falls were about 30 ft. high, about half way down the falls it wasn’t so steep and maidenhair fern grew there.  I crawled out on it to get some of the fern for my mother.  The moss was slippery and away I skidded, falling about twelve feet.  Below me were jagged boulders, but it just happened I landed on a bunch of cedar branches and got up unscathed.  Do we have guardian angels?  I’m sure we have.  The island was a good place to grow up.  Many places to explore from Prairie Hill with it herd of goats to the east point lighthouse.   One beach where we used to go to swim had many Indian artifacts, arrowheads, stone beads and sometimes skulls and bones.  I think it was a graveyard at one time.

   There were many deer on the Island.  They were very small, so small I remember my brother in law, Fred, coming back with one on each shoulder.  With the depression on, free meat was always welcome.

   I have many good memories of the three years spent there.  Fishing for rock cod off the float, a young fawn we raised, crossing a swamp on cedar roots that were in the valley below us.  Watching the Princess boat dock at the wharf and watching the cargo being unloaded.  This happened once a week.

   In 1936 my mother decided it was time to move again.  So we packed up our belongings, took the boat to Vancouver and then the train to Penticton in the Okanagan.  There was only three of us children still at home now, Jack, myself and sister Betty.  My mother rented a house on the south end of Main St., we were only there for a short while and then to another home on Martin Street.  The depression was still on and we could rent a house for as little as $10.00 a month.

   It wasn’t long before I was back in school making new friends.  One of these was Grover Welch, who lived across the street.  His mother used to have us in to play games and played the old cylinder gramophone for us.  It only took a short time before I learned to swim.  The water was very warm so we spent a lot of time in the lake at the diving stand and wharf. One swim that happened unintentionally was in January. The sawmill used to dump their logs in the river and float them down to the mill. One log was near the bank and being the brave fellow, I stepped out on it. I don’t remember the friend that was with me, but he gave it a whirl. Boy, was that water cold! I had the log between me and the shore and in my confusion, I chose to swim across the river, a distance of 75’. I raced back to get my bike and took off the mile for home. My clothes were partly frozen when I got there.

   The wharf, where they loaded boxcars, extended 100’ into the lake, also the Sicamous paddle wheeler used to dock there.  The train used to back into the station that was at the entrance to the wharf.

   We always found something to do, hiking, fishing, skating and of course, getting wood and other chores around home.  There was no natural gas, wood was the way most of us cooked and heated our homes.  We were fortunate enough to have indoor plumbing, a lot of homes in Penticton still had outdoor biffies and I remember hearing the honey wagon as it was called, creaking up the alley at night.

   My first job was in Naramata, when I was fourteen.  The people that run the Naramata Hotel needed someone to mow the lawns and other jobs.  A chicken house that faced toward the lake was my sleeping quarters, no glass window, just chicken wire.  My pay was $5.00 a month and my board.  I stayed there through the summer holidays.

   In 1938 I quit school not finishing my grade 8.  I did some orchard work and in the fall I got a job in the fruit cannery. I worked ten hours a day and made $.25 an hour.  I was glad to have the work.  My brother Jack had gone to the Kootenays to find work, so there was only my younger sister and I home.

   My mother had married Fred Field in 1937, so in 1939 we made another move to Victoria for the second time.  My first job in Victoria was delivering meat for a butcher shop in the Oak Bay area, $6.00 a week.  The bikes we used to deliver the meat were heavy duty C.C.M.’s, some of those hills were pretty steep, so I needed strong legs.  My second job paid a little better, $10.00 a week.  The gas pumps had to be pumped up by hand, and repairing tires was a lot different those days with the split rims.  But I did learn a lot about cars and trucks.  I made enough money to buy a real nice bike.  It had 3 speeds, something for those days.  It was about two miles from home to work so I needed the transportation.  The old mechanic was teaching me to drive.  I was to park the wrecker in the shop.  All went well with him standing in front to guide me.  I pushed on the gas too hard and it shot ahead, I was able to hit the brake in time or I would have flattened him against the cement wall.  That was the end of my driving lessons.

   It was 1940, the Second World War was on and a lot of recruiting was going on.  One day my cousin Bill Pimlot said, “Let’s join the army,” he was 19 and I was 16.  So we went down to the Bay Street armories in Victoria and applied.  I was big enough and was accepted, but Bill was refused because he had scarlet fever at one time.  I didn’t know what part of the army I was getting into, but it would have been the Infantry.  I think someone in my family must of got word to the recruiting officer and told them I was only 16 and not 18, the required age.  I spent the next 9 months at an ordinance depot, helping out with army supplies at Esquimalt.  I applied to join the Forestry Corp and was accepted.  From Esquimalt, I moved to Vancouver where our billets were in the old Vancouver Hotel.  After a month, others and I were shipped to Three Rivers, Quebec.  We were billeted in a big show building with asphalt floors and rows of double bed bunks.  We were mixed in with French troops, I guess about 500 of us altogether.  We were awakened every morning at 6 a.m. by a bugle and then to make sure we were awake, one bagpiper and two drummers would march down the rows of beds.  There was no sleeping in, we put on our uniforms and rushed out on the drill floor for roll call.     Everything was on the double.  Bedding folded just right and placed on the bedspring.  All the brass polished, the webbing blancoed and clean.  The food wasn’t to good, we used our mess tins and sometimes the tank where we washed them after the meal was coated with scum and grease.

    After a few months of training there, they moved us, the Forestry Corps Company to Val Cartier, Quebec for more basic training.  It was January and quite cold.  On one of our ten-mile route marches, we were given orders to put our gas masks on and march for a while, then to take them off.  March for another half hour, then after the perspiration in them was frozen, to put them on again.  It was good for the complexion.  One week I was put on fire picket.  My job was to keep the coal fire heaters in a number of huts going.  I still have to laugh about the sleepers begging me to stop putting such a hot fire on.  I can’t remember what they said in broken English but it was sure funny at the time. Another night, I and others had to stand guard over a number of what we called Zombies. They were men who were opposed to being drafted and would go A.W.O.L.  They were being shipped out on a train the next day.

   I had a one-day trip into Quebec City.   At the time it didn’t impress me at all, old buildings, narrow streets, very quaint.

   It was February, 1942 and our time had come to go to Scotland.  They loaded us on a train and we headed for Halifax.  They wasted no time getting us off the train and onto the wharf.  We were in full pack, from rifles to our duffle bags, marched up the gangplank into the boat.  It was cold, so we had our great coats on.  Once on the boat they gave us each a hammock, which we hung up over the mess tables.  I was so cold, as there was no heat on the ship, I only took my shoes off; and great coat and all I climbed up with many contortions into that hammock that was to be my bed for the next 7 days.  They moved the ship out into the harbour and the heat came on which was a lot better.  The next day with another troop ship and two small frigates for protection, we started our sea journey.  Going out of Halifax we hit some big rollers, up and down went the ship and me with a few hundred other men headed for the rail of the ship.  This was the second time I had been seasick.  One morning on the menu was greasy kippers, what a revolting development for a seasick kid.  I existed on bread and jam for the next 7 days.  I was sick all the way till we entered the Clyde in Scotland.  I guess I’ll always be a landlubber.  On the third day out we hit one of those north Atlantic storms, the waves looked about 30 ft. high.  It got so bad that they strung ropes for the crew to hold onto to cross the deck.  Us soldiers were confined to below deck so we wouldn’t be washed overboard.  U boats were an ever-present enemy force, but our frigates would protect us.  These little ships would disappear from our sights as these great waves would roll over them, then they would pop into sight again.  I’m glad I wasn’t on one of them.  By the way, the ship I was on was called the Bergensfjord, she was old but fast.

   The other troop ship was loaded with air force people.  It was a long seven days when we would look out and see nothing but the restless Atlantic Ocean.

   I wonder how those men on the Santa Maria felt without seeing land for months.  What a relief it was when we saw land and it wasn’t long before the submarine gates were opened so we could sail into the Clyde River.

   We were loaded onto smaller boats and taken to land. Again, I was over being seasick as soon as my feet were on solid ground.  From there, a train took us to the camp that was built for us.  The camp was on the River Dee about five miles down stream from Balmoral Castle. I, with another fellow walked up to the gate one day but we couldn’t go in. We crossed a bridge and walked down the other side of the river. There were no more bridges when we got across from our camp. Ten miles back around or wade the river. It was supper time so we chose the latter. It was February and the water was ice cold. We waded in water up to our armpits, but we got our supper.  I also visited a little stone built home where they still spoke Gaelic and cooked over an open fire place.  I wish now I could have been more appreciative of all I saw then.

   Apparently the equipment that we were to log with had been sunk on the way over from Canada, so we were split up and shipped out to other Forestry Corp companies.  I had my two brothers in 18 Company, so I asked to be put there.  It was good to see Verdun and Jack again.

   I was put to work falling Scotch pine trees.  No high stumps, crosscut saws and axes were our tools to cut as close to the ground as possible.  They supplied knee pads as we knelt down to saw.  We would get a nine-day leave every three months.  Travel was free to us so we could visit all these places we had read about: London, Edinburgh and Glasgow to name a few.

   After about a year, my brother Jack transferred to a tank corp., the B.C. Dragoons.   I was next to go, I transferred to the R.C.E., Royal Canadian Engineers.  I was moved to Farnborough where we had extra training, lifting mines and booby traps, learned knots and lashes; how to take a Bren gun apart and put it together again as well as a lot of other things.  After all this extra training I was posted to the 23 Field Corp. Engineers.  The Company was stationed at Box Hill west of London.  I remember watching at night some of the baby blitz from this vantage point.

   They decided to make a driver out of me.  Except for the little bit I learned as a gas jockey, I knew nothing.  They sent me out with some other men to drive around for a day and a night.  My instructor was very nervous and I guess I gave him reason to be.  I passed a parked truck and he let out a gasp as he thought I was going to scrape the other truck.  One time I ended up on the right hand side of the road, in England they drive on the left.  They gave me a sixty hundred weight to drive, it had the motor extended into the cab and to get my size 12 boots on the clutch, brake and gas pedals was a real challenge.  The compartment was so small one man later told me he drove with his shoes off so he could get his feet on the pedals.

   September 8, 1943:  I wasn’t with the 23rd long when we were sent to the town of Bedford for more training in bridging and other water crossings.  There was a river and canal in Bedford, where at night we would put the Bailey Bridge together and push the bridge across and then jack it into place.  The bridge was built more than twice as long to balance it when pushed across and the back part was dismantled and the approaches leveled.  These Bailey Bridges would carry 40 ton tanks when doubled up.  The officers would say we could go home when it was all dismantled.   Six men with carrying handles to each panel and each panel weighed about 400 lb.  The fellows would be almost running to get it apart in a hurry.  We then would march through the town of Bedford to our billets in the early morning, singing all the war songs.  I can still recall the hundred or more voices singing, “There are rats, rats, big as alley cats, in the store...”

   We return to Box Hill, a few bombs hit near the camp, but little damage to the camp.  At this time I was sent to London on a driving course.  I guess they sensed I needed more instruction, so with others I was sent to London where ex-bus drivers were to train us.  One half day was spent on driving and the other half on mechanics.  I drove over most of London but never knew where I was, as my instructor would say, “Turn here,” or “Turn there.”  Sometimes he would drive us to Canada House so we could buy him hair cream.  One day I stalled the 60 hundred weight on Oxford St. at rush hour and caused a great traffic jam.  I guess that’s why I never liked Fords.  I had flooded it, a real disaster to me then. The fellow who taught us mechanics had buckteeth and you didn’t want to sit in the front row as you would be spit upon.  After a month I passed my driving test and was sent back to Box Hill.

   I was given a brand new 15 hundred-weight, that was like a three quarter ton of today.  There was a lot more training on rafting storm boat crossings and bridge building.  Now that I was a qualified driver, I didn’t take part in these training sessions, I just transported men and equipment to the training sites.  A few of the places where we trained were Ryerson, Yorkshire, Goole; Lincolnshire just south of Scunthorpe, also on the Trent River which has a tide.  The training sessions were called the Kate schemes, learning to do assault crossings with storm boats and rafting vehicles across the river.

   On the 26 of May, 1944, we returned south to Ashford, where we make camp in a field, our last camp till we cross the channel.  On June 6, 1944, the assault troops have landed in France.  June 15, while still in England, we see our first Buzz Bomb, it landed in a quarry behind us.  We watch hundreds of bombers pass overhead, loaded with bombs, a steady roar that would go on for an hour.  I was glad those bombs were for the enemy.  July 2, 1944, we are on six-hour notice.  Our trucks are all water proofed and ready to drive through four feet of water if necessary when landing on the beaches of France. By this time I was driving a 7 ton armored car. It was equipped with a radio 18 set, and two radio operators rode with me.  Bill Connolly, a close buddy was one. The only tent we had was a mess tent. Us soldiers slept on the ground using only a groundsheet, two blankets and a gas cape. One night I woke up and it was raining. I pulled the gas cape over my head and rolled over. A flood of water hit my back. Boy, was that a shock. I, and a lot of others gathered up our stuff and headed for the mess tent where we spent the night.

   July 6, 1944:  The time finally arrives and we drive to Tillsbury where our vehicles are loaded on a liberty ship called the Lea Overman.  We all go aboard and we stow our stuff below.  We are going into action and getting short haircuts seemed a necessity.  Some had pig shaves, others have Iroquois cuts, I just had a crew cut, and not knowing when we would have our next bath.

   We sail at night, and the next day we see endless ships moving back and forth, feeding the bridge-head that the Allies have fought for.  We have to wait aboard for our turn to disembark.  It was kind of scary at night when sleeping below, the bombs going off would resound against the ship.

   On July 11, eleven more vehicles are lowered onto the landing barge, mine being one of them.  We have to go over the side on a Jacob’s ladder, a distance about 30 feet to reach the landing craft.  The waves were about six feet high so you had to judge the right time to jump.  I made the trip a couple of times, once to help another man who was afraid of heights.

   We were soon in our vehicles with the motor running.  The trip to the beach was short and when the ramp opened we shot off the barge expecting deep water, but about two inches is all we had to go through. The place where we were to disembark was the Canadian area code name, Juno Beach. I see it so often on T.V., the same building I remember I drove past.  As I drove up the beach there was explosions to my right and I knew we were in the war for real.  Our first job was to take the water proofing off our vehicles.  As we drive inland I see ambulances bringing wounded back from the front.  Our first bivouac is near Caen, where we make our own supper rations.  We cook for ourselves, with a throw away small burner.  There has been much fighting here, dead bodies of men and animals, smashed trees and houses.  What are we in for...

    July 14, 1944:  We move into Caen and have our camp in a treed garden.  The city is completely destroyed; the bombers have done their work.  There are many dead bodies rotting beneath the rubble.  Flies everywhere.  This is my first night so close to the front lines.  I dig a trench to sleep in and partially covered it with an old door.  Our artillery were shelling over our heads was continuous as well as enemy fire landing around the camp.  I became very frightened and realized this could be my end.  ‘There are no atheists in foxholes’, it has been said, and I called upon the Lord to save me.

   Even in my fear of dying plus the noise of war, I finally fell asleep.

   We were to build a Bailey Bridge across the Orne River that ran through the center of Caen, and clear a road way for the four division tank to cross.  We had almost completed the bridge  when enemy planes dropped flares that lit up the whole area around the bridge.  We all looked for cover as bombs rained down, only a few incendiary ones landed on the bridge and one brave man ran out and kicked them into the water.

   Our main job was to open and repair roads at that time as the front moves forward. We move up as the front advances. Our camp now is in a place near Mezidon. We arrive there about noon. There were signs of a great battle. A dead cow is rotting there, we try to dispose of it by cremation but when the fire dies down we had a cooked cow, only the hair was gone.

   We just got bedded down the same day and orders were given to move ahead. Our convoy travels at night, only pinpoint lights allowed. At one point we stop for a long time. I fell asleep and woke up with the front part of the convoy gone. Fortunately, I made the right turns and caught up again. Whoo!

   We stop in an orchard in the early morning, get out our bedrolls and sleep on the grass. In the dark we don’t see that cattle have grazed there. Some of us have laid in cow dung.

   As I drove into the orchard, I was stopped from something seizing up in the armored car. The next morning I discovered a camouflage net rapped around the drive shaft. I was able to cut it off and be mobile again.

    August 27, 1944:  The whole company is moved up to the River Seine where we are to make an assault crossing with storm boats across the river.  There are soon boats in the water and the infantry are ferried across.  We are being shelled, but we have no casualties.

    The infantry cross a half-mile of green fields to a little town where gunfire opens up.  Soon casualties are brought back to our side, some German and others ours.

   By this time we have rafts built to ferry vehicles over.  A bulldozer was taken over to cut down the far bank for a bridge approach.  Unfortunately a mortar landed near it and killed the first operator.  The Germans had left there in a hurry and a lot of their equipment is left on this side of the river, even bags of letters from loved ones.

   I looked through binoculars to the hill about half a mile away and you could see the enemy digging in and firing mortars that were landing around us. One of our tanks pulled into the river’s edge and returned fire. The operator shouted to me to get under the tank. That was the last thing I’d do, I could imagine it moving with me under it.

   The enemy is finally driven back and a bridge is built and a great amount of equipment is crossed over.

   After a lot of road and bridge maintenance, we are ordered to proceed to Nijmegen, Holland.  On our way we drive through Brussels, the whole city was out to greet us, showering us with flowers and other gifts.  We can only drive very slow, at one time I had a dozen people hanging on the outside of the armoured car I was driving.  We now realize why we are here.  Convoys usually travel at 25 miles an hour, these heavy vehicles are low geared, with no power steering and no automatic drive and no comfort like the trucks of today.

   The tanks and infantry have cut a corridor three miles wide and we are ushered up this corridor.  The Dutch people line the route and hold out their hands so we could touch them.  We really feel like liberators.  The driver of our cook truck that was behind me was so engrossed in the hand touching that when I had to stop he didn’t.  He smashed into my vehicle puncturing his radiator.  We couldn’t stop, so we lost our cook and truck for couple of weeks.

   September 18, 1944:  We finally arrive in Nijmegen and park along a treed road waiting for further orders.  The advance has stopped and the airborne troops have to be evacuated back across the Rhine River from Arnhem.  The 23rd and 20th are to go across with storm boats and bring back as many of what’s left of the paratroopers as we can.  We drive to a small town called Valberg Station and wait for night.  We watch planes trying to drop supplies to the paratroopers but many are blown apart in the air.  A number of enemy planes sweep low over us, we all ducked and they didn’t see our truck parked in an orchard.

   As it gets dark we proceed to the place where we are to cross the Rhine.  We unload the boats.  I helped carry the first boat over the first dike.  It was raining and very slippery.  Just as we got over, the shells started coming in.  One exploded 20 feet on my right.  I was half way to the ground and felt a tug at my back by shrapnel.  I found a cut along the back of my leather jerkin the next day.  We had another dike to cross and then a hundred feet to the water.  Star shells lit up our operation, the area was raked with machine gun fire, the tracer bullets looked like fire flies.  We finally got the boat to the water but it was full of holes and unusable.

   More boats followed and soon disappeared in the darkness to reappear with the paratroopers, some of them were wounded, helping each other up and over the dikes.  As I have said, I was not one of the boat crews, so had to wait till the operation was over.  At one time I thought I would crawl to a big culvert but one of our brave sergeants shouted, “There’s no room for you in here Casselman.”  I guess that’s where he spent the night.  Out of 8,000 paratroopers, the boats rescued 2,500 from the bridgehead, another 300 by the 20th Field Co.   Seven of our men died and a few others are wounded.

   We finally arrive back in Nijmegen where I make my bed in a slit trench.  Enemy planes strafe the next road over from us; I just about jump out of my skin, my nerves are on edge.

   We move around a lot and on December 31, 1944, we move into billets in Hertogenboch.  We have heated quarters and even a bathtub with hot water!!  About 20 miles from us, the Battle of the Bulge was going on, Hitlers’ last big effort to show his power.

   We are to maintain a floating Bailey Bridge at Mook.  The Germans have opened the Roer Dam and the river is in a great flood and the bridge has to be closed for traffic.  While getting my breakfast one morning I looked up to see a Buzz Bomb coming straight for our camp.  No place to run but fortunately it veered off into a field and exploded.  It was full of propaganda pamphlets. One day I and another fellow drove up to a village close to the German border. A soldier who was really shaken told us his sergeant a few minutes before had stepped on a mine and was blow to pieces. He looked around but nothing of him could be found. Another time we drove out on a road where a German artillery place was set up. Two German soldiers had died there sometime before. The blowflies had done their work.

    We ended up in Nijmegen again and were housed in a power plant.  It was noisy with the dynamos going, but warm.  I drove one of the lieutenants to the middle of the bridge one day - enemy shells started exploding against the steel beams while I sat in the jeep waiting for the lieutenant.  Fortunately, I did not get hit by shrapnel.

   One day soon after, my throat got very sore and I had a fever.  I reported for sick parade.  The doctor checked my throat and temperature and told me to lie down on a stretcher that was brought in, boots and all.  I was loaded into an ambulance to be driven to a hospital somewhere in Holland.  After swabs of my throat, I was told, “You have diphtheria.”  Again I was loaded into an ambulance to another hospital in Belgium, where I spent two months; One month was confined to bed and the next month I was allowed to get up and roam around the ward.  My next move was to a place called Kenoka on the coast of France.  The second day I, and about fifty men were taken on a two-mile run and then to a big casino where we did a lot of exercises.  I was ok till that night when I woke up to both legs cramped up and had to leap out of bed, rub and exercise them for half an hour.

   I was only there for a few days when we were told the enemy had surrendered.  We all rejoiced, finally we were looking forward to going home.  I was sent up into Germany for a short while. What a trip that was! I had been celebrating the night before and at six a.m., I and others with all our stuff were to march about a mile to a railway station, where they loaded us on a railcar. The windows were blown out. It had wooden seats with a net luggage rack overhead. We had a twenty hour trip ahead so sleeping was a real problem, with the noise and wind whistling in the broken windows. One man climbed up in that five-foot luggage net and strapped himself in with his belt. I slept on the floor.

   We were let off at a little town where we would spend a couple of days. We had to sleep on a marble floor with no padding except our two blankets – boy was it hard. A truck finally delivered me, to the 6 Field Company, stationed in Germany. I was able to hitch a ride to my old unit and had a visit with my old buddies before going home. I was only with this new Company for a short while, as I had enough points to go home.  My next move was back to Holland, we were camped near a place called Hilversum. We slept in pup tents while there.  It was there that we heard the news that the Americans had dropped a great and terrible bomb on Japan, killing 60,000 people. I did have a two-day leave in Amsterdam. It was a nice place. Finally, my turn came, #216 repat draft, and with other men were driven to a port in France called Calais.  My next move was to a camp in England, I remember looking across to England to the White Cliffs of Dover and the words of the song, “There will be blue birds over, the White Cliffs of Dover …”, which have finally come true.  There I had to wait for a ship to return to Canada.  We were all sent on leave to fill in the time.  Finally my turn came to go home, I and another 1,000 troops were loaded on a ship called the New Amsterdam.  It was a new ship with bunks and with bathrooms.  We ate twice a day, about 500 to a sitting.  I was put on cleanup, so I would sit down with the first bunch and again with the second, so I had four meals a day.  The sea was very calm and days were sunny.  There was no comparison to the trip over.  Some days we could watch the dolphins swim along side the ship.  We were in Halifax in short time and loaded onto trains.   Soon the click of the train wheels was carrying us back to our families and homes, through the Maritimes, Ontario, the Prairies, then finally the Rockies to our beloved British Columbia.

   We finally arrived in Vancouver.  I grabbed my packsack and duffel bag to walk into the big C.P.R. station and there to welcome me home were two pretty young girls, Fae and Thelma.   My journey was not ended yet, so onto a boat again and early the next morning I walked down the gang plank into the arms of my family, I had been away four years.  I was on leave from the army for a few weeks, so was free to travel a little.  I bought some civilian clothes, the first I had put on for over five years.  I felt really good in a new suit.

   September, 1945:  My brother in law, Harry Bjorn, had bought land up in the Kootenays and he wanted to check it out, so decided to combine it with a hunting trip.  I was invited along with my two brothers, Jack and Verdun, along with two other men.  I bought an old Winchester 32 special.  It was old and had an octagon barrel. 

   We started out from Victoria, crossed on the boat to Vancouver, then to Midway, where we stayed overnight at the Boltz’s ranch, formerly belonging to Esau Casselman, my dad’s uncle.  We slept there that night in the barn.  The next day we drove to Cranbrook, then Fort Steele, then on to Fenwick Station where we looked across the fields to the old ranch buildings that would become Picture Valley Ranch.

   The Kootenay River bordered one side of the Ranch and to the east the mountains called the Steeples.  The ranch was run down and many people had camped there. 

   The next day we parted with the two other men and we drove east to White Tail pass to an old abandoned camp, from where we would hunt.  It was pleasant to roam through the untouched forest by myself.  I really wasn’t interested in killing a deer of which there was plenty.  Just to climb through the gullies and up the hills of the best Province of this great land of ours was enough.

   I did not know that the next day would be a big turning point in my life.  It started out with a good breakfast cooked over a campfire.  One of the men and I started out together, we saw lots of deer but passed them up.  Climbing up a hill, we spotted a wild goat.  We both fired and it tumbled down a steep rockslide.  We followed and got to it and gutted it out, put it on a pole between us and started down the slide.  We stopped for a rest and I laid my rifle beside me.  As I went to get up my rifle slid down the rocks, the open hammer clicked down on the shell in the breach.  As the bullet tore through my left heel, it somersaulted me down the slide. When I stopped I sensed numbness in my leg, looking down I saw my pant leg torn up to the knee, my leather shoe ripped up the back.  My friend said, “Someone is shooting at us,” I told him what had happened.  So cutting my shoe and sock off and I put an army first aide field dressing on that I had carried with me from France.  My friend went for help.  I leaned against a tree with my foot up in the air for three hours.  It didn’t bleed fast, and I didn’t worry, as I knew help was coming.  Finally help came and I was piggybacked down to where a road was being built to a waiting pickup, they drove me to a lumber camp, where my brothers were.  They drove me to Kimberley hospital where I was to spend a couple of months.  After a couple of casts and a lot of good treatment, a taxi driver drove me to Cranbrook where I boarded a train to Vancouver, ending up in the military hospital called Shaughnessy.  I had some skin graft operations.  At this time I was discharged from the Army and given a 5% pension, which amounted to $2.50 a month.  After discharge from the hospital I worked at a number of jobs, cutting mine props at Nanoose Bay, Rock Quarry at Pitt Lake.  One day I was asked if I would be a Whistle Punk for a small logging operation in Port Coquitlam, where I met Fred Pullinger.  He was a good friend and we worked together a lot.

   My wounded heel started acting up, so back into Shaughnessy Hospital with osteomyelitis infection.  While I was there, a young lady talked to me and I visited to where she lived with her aunt.  She was not for me but I did meet her Aunt Doreen, we dated regularly.  I had bought an old 1930 Dodge delivery truck and would pick her up for dates in it.  I traded it off for a car, a 1929 Roosevelt, more comfortable and more reliable.  Doreen’s’ sister named Beatrice and her husband, John, moved their family to a big house out in White Rock, so Doreen went with them to look after a bed ridden Captain.

    Just a word about my wife Doreen. She was born in Kaslo, the youngest of 9 children, her mother came from Norway and her father from Denmark. She grew up in the depression of the thirties and knew hard times. She was (and is) a good wife through these past 52 years of our marriage. Her quick laugh and wit has made her many friends through the years.

   I was still working for Paddy Barnes, logging off small patches of timber near Port Coquitlam, where I lived with my sister and family.  The big flood on the Fraser River was in May 1948, so we all helped out placing sand bags and moving chickens to higher ground while the ladies made sandwiches for the workers.  You could walk in the field and look up to see boats nine feet above you on the other side of the dike.  They say the Fraser was twenty miles wide in some places where the dikes had broken, ours held.

   Doreen and I were married on June 15, 1948, I not only got a wonderful bride, but a six-year-old daughter named Pat.

   We only had our personal clothing plus a few wedding presents, but it was enough to get us started.  We spent a couple of days in Victoria meeting some of my family I still get reminded of the family visits on our honeymoon.  My brother in law drove us to Swartz Bay to catch the ferry to Saltspring Island, where I was to work logging.  We rented a little two-room shack, I think it was $6.00 a month.  Only a camp cook stove, we packed water from a creek close by and only had gas lamps.  It was our first home.  Doreen took it all in her stride.  She had grown up in the depression as I and knew what hard times were.  She soon made it into a comfortable home.

   My first job was bucking behind the fallers.  My tools were a seven-foot crosscut saw about a ¼ inch thick, a double bitted axe and a wedge.  It was hard work sawing through trees four feet thick.  After a week or two the Donkey engine arrived and my job was to run it.  It would take too long to describe what I did but it was called Highlead logging, I ran the Donkey engine, which pulled the logs out of the bush to the spar tree.  This was up my alley and I loved running machines.  These were not small trees we logged, some logs being six feet on the butt and forty feet long.  A three-log load was the norm on the big logging truck, two smaller ones on each side and one of these six footers in the middle.  The truck would rumble by our cabin and Doreen said it would shake the dishes.

   I had left the Roosevelt in White Rock, so we took the boat to the mainland to get Pat and also the car, so now had transportation such as it was. 

   After work we would pile in the car, drive to a wharf and fish.  Pat would wander along the beach looking for crabs and other sea creatures.  I would park the car on a hill as the battery was poor and to get the motor started I would roll down the hill, letting the clutch out.  We were young and enjoyed ourselves.

   Doreen’s mother came for a visit, and she couldn’t pass up all the blackberries and would come home with her apron full of them.  We had seven of us sleeping in the cabin one night.  My brother in law, Otto, his son and a friend came to go hunting.  They slept on the kitchen floor.

   One day we had been someplace and Doreen was standing on the running board of the car.  I jerked the car ahead to dislodge her, but the rear axle broke.  I took the broken axle out, got it to the machine shop hoping to get it welded.  The man looked through his junk pile and came up with a replacement part, and it only took a little machining to reassemble.  We were mobile again.

   My job was over, so we packed up our belongings, loaded the Roosevelt and drove onto the boat.  We still had battery problems and wondered if the motor would start when we reached Vancouver.  It was an anxious moment when I pushed the starter button, but wonder of wonders, it started.  We drove through Vancouver, out to my mothers place at Port Coquitlam and then the motor died.

   I took a job as a donkey engine operator.  We were logging a small patch of timber at Albion with Fred Pulinger, a man I’d teemed up with before.  We finished the job in a couple of weeks and cashed our cheques at the hotel.  I found out later the cheques were worthless.

    We rented a house on Langan Ave., the house the Augustine’s lived in later.  It was a cold winter.  The water line froze out by the street, not very pleasant for Doreen and Pat, but we had our first Christmas there as a family.

   My brother had come down from Canal Flats for the holidays and suggested I work with them, as I was in need of employment.  I willingly accepted.  We packed up our stuff, which consisted of our clothes, leaving our other belongings packed in a crate at the old house.  We caught the train to Nelson where Doreen and Pat took the bus to her mothers in Kaslo.  I continued on the train to Cranbrook.  I caught a small bus to Canal Flats. It was thirty below out and not much warmer in the bus.  My feet were like ice by the time we got to the Flats, a distance of 70 miles.  I went into the Hotel and stood over a floor furnace to thaw out.

   I met a man there who worked up at Camp 12 where I was to be employed and he drove me the 15 miles up a snowy road to the camp.  I was given blankets and pillow and a bunk.  The buildings were built out of rough lumber; an office, cookhouse, washroom and bunkhouse, and the bunkhouse was heated by a big barrel heater.  The flunky kept it going as well as other jobs.  Two Chinese cooks kept us fed and made our lunches.  Our work place was another 7 miles further up in the bush.  We were transported up there in a Crummy, a cabin that slid on the back of a flat deck truck.  It had an airtight heater in the center with benches around the outsides. At lunchtime we would all gather around the stove in the Crummy. We would toast our frozen sandwiches on the side of the heater. There was about ten of us in the crew.  My two brothers and another man with myself did all the falling and bucking the logs, which then were cut into lumber in the portable mill.  There were two men who stopped off at different points to cut railroad ties, they were called tie hackers.  Another seventy-year old man used to work on the road to keep the icy places clear.  I was told that years ago he had worked for a placer miner in the Caribou and had took off with the gold to Seattle where he blew it all.  They said he was still hiding out.  The Flunky was also a funny character.  It was told that he had lost a lot of money in the ‘29 crash.  He disappeared one day and was never seen again.

   My sister, Alice, suggested that Doreen and Pat come and stay with them until we found a house in Canal Flats.  Doreen and I were able to get together on the odd weekend.  One of these weekends, Verd and I were returning to camp.  It was 30 below and no heat in his 29 Model A Ford.  It was a long 70 miles.  We had a salt bag to keep frost off a five-inch diameter hole in the windshield to see through. It was a very cold 70 miles trip back to Canal Flats and to the warmth of a cup of coffee in a cafe.  The people in Canal Flats all seemed to be related in some way, about 75 people in all.  Lumber and ranching kept the town going, portable saw mills trucked in lumber to the main mill in town.  Railroad ties and lumber were loaded into boxcars.  Long distant trucking had not come into its’ own yet.

   The house we rented in Canal Flats was nice and roomy but we pumped water from a well next door.  Also an outdoor biffy that was cold in the winter!   My brothers were very helpful and found a mammoth old McClary cook stove and moved it into the house.  Alice and Harry loaned us enough stuff to set up house keeping.  My brothers also brought in a big load of wood, dry tamarack.  For the first while I stayed in camp all week and came home for the weekend.  Later I was able to ride up and down with one of the bosses, so was able to be at home every night.

   My wife would cook a big meal on Sunday.  Jack and Verd would come for a big Sunday meal.  They were rewarded for all the help they had given us.  Doreen put Pat into school.  She was in Grade 2.  Doreen got a part-time job in the general store.  You could buy almost anything there.  She learned how to cut and handle a quarter of beef, or sell someone a shirt or the many other things the store handled.  One old man who was called Hinky, used to come into the store.  He was probably in his late seventies and would sit on the store porch along with other friends of his age and spin yarns.  Now Hinky was a small man, he had no teeth and when he talked his nose and chin would almost meet.  Once they were discussing the weather and he said, “I have never seen a yanuary widout a taw and I seen towsend of them.”  Canal Flats had its share of characters like most small towns.

   Winter turned into summer, so we shed all our heavy clothing.  The job was the same but with the very hot days of summer, my brother Jack and I would be stripped to the waist and in that hot sun became tanned a dark brown.  It was hard work and I consumed over two gallons of water a day.

    One day I came home and was out in the back yard. Along came the Forest Ranger and said, “Come with me”. Other men and I were loaded into a truck and driven up to fight a fire back in the mountains near White River. We hiked all day but no fire, so back to an old logging camp to spend the night there. We would try again the next day. There were some old bunks in the camp, mine was beside a window and someone had pasted paper over a hole in the window glass. A little mouse used it for an entrance into the cabin; he was surprised to see me there! We just got to sleep when it started to rain heavy, so the Ranger took us home.

   Our neighbour, Mrs. Johnston, had two sons, one Pats age, and a younger one.  They went for a walk one day and the three year old fell into the water filled ditch.  Pat was quick and jumped in and rescued him.  His mother was very grateful to her and thought she should have a medal.

   My brother Jack had bought a Jeep with a half cab and one day we all decided to go to the ranch for the weekend.  Before leaving camp, we showered and got cleaned up, then picked up Doreen and Pat.  Pat and Doreen sat in the front of the Jeep with Jack driving, Verd and I in the back.  Being a half cab, we had no protection from the elements.  The road from Wasa to Fort Steele was not paved then but was crooked and the dust was four inches deep between the two centers.  By the time we got to Fort Steele, Verd and I looked like we had been dumped in a flour bin - so much for our showers.  I had a swim in the Kootenay River, which runs past the ranch and felt clean again.  The ranch was given the name ‘Picture Valley’.  The mountains to the east were called the Steeples, many pictures were taken of them as they were very impressive.

   Our job came to an end for a while, so we decided to make another move.  Kaslo was our next home.  Our belongings had increased, so we hired a truck to move us there.  We rented a apartment in one of the old office buildings with ten foot ceilings, but as usual Doreen made a home of it.

   There were a lot of mines around Kaslo and it had a lot of history.  Doreen had grown up there, and her mother and brother still lived there.  I was soon at work again, Doreen’s brother, Charley Lind, gave me a job in the Cork Province Mine where he was a superintendent.  I had never been in a mine before and had a lot to learn.  I was given a hard hat, fitted with a carbide light.  I followed the other men into the main level, which had a small rail track running the sixteen hundred feet into the hoist room.  From there we climbed down ladders to two lower levels, about 100 feet altogether.

   I was shown how to push the tramcar up the track to where there were chutes and a man made entrance into the stope, where the ore was blasted down into the stope.  I would pry up the boards in the chutes and fill the tramcar, then push it down the track to a grizzly or a bin, then the ore was hoisted up to the main level and trammed outside to a holding bin.  At first I was apprehensive when hearing strange noises, but soon got used to them.  Our carbide lights would go out with time and then we would have to refill with fresh carbide, spit into the container, screw the top back on which held the water, strike the flint to light the gas and then you could continue your work.  All this you had to do in pitch blackness, it’s absolutely black!  The next thing I was given to do was nipping, this was helping the miner to set up for drilling.  This was building a platform consisting of wedging two small poles across the stope, then putting planks across so the miner could get his stoper (drill) up on the platform to drill off the ceiling.  Then I would tram again until the miner had finished drilling.  I would pack the box of blasting powder up for him, help him load the holes, insert the blasting caps and cut the fuses to length.  The center holes were called the burn, they would go off first, then work to the outside.  The fuses were cut to the right length so this would happen.  I would stay with the miner till he had them all lit, about 30 fuses.  Then we would climb down into the drift (tunnel), go around the corner and count the explosions.  The company that owned the mine expanded the output.  They rebuilt the old camp, modernized by running electricity into the mine.  They put on three shifts so I had to live in camp most of the time.  This is a very steep country and one day we were taken up to the mine but were stopped by thirty feet of snow slide that covered the road.  We made the rest of the way there on foot.

   I was at home on night when the fire alarm sounded.  These old buildings were built close together and one of the stores had caught fire, by someone using a torch to thaw out pipes.  We observed the fire and thought it might take the whole block as the firemen were having trouble with frozen hydrants.  We packed up what we could and were ready to vacate.  Fortunately they were able to stop the fire after it burned down three stores.

   Pat was very thin and the Doctor, a Japanese, said she should have her tonsils out.  She was in the operating room a long time and Doreen was very worried.  The Doctor said he had to put stitches in her throat to stop the bleeding.  I was up at camp and didn’t see her for a week but Pat was much better when I got home.  She gained weight after the operation.

   At Easter time we decided to move to the coast to Port Coquitlam.  So we packed up and put our belongings on the train.  We took the bus and landed in Port Coquitlam.  My mother put us up for awhile, thank goodness for mothers!  We found a house to buy on the corner of Salisbury and Flint Sts., an old farmhouse that had been moved to a large lot about a block from its original setting and put on a new cinder block foundation.   Structurally, the house was sound but needed a lot of work.  There was an old cook stove in the kitchen and a half brick chimney that needed replacing.  No water hooked up, no drains, and only a type of port-a-potty in that day.  I guess some people thought we were crazy to start on a project like this, but a big corner lot and a house for twelve hundred dollars was a good deal to us.  It was our first home and we were young and also ignorant of the task that lay ahead of us.  We had the energy but lacked in experience.  Our bank payments were small but so were wages.

   Doreen had good ideas and liked pulling walls down while I was at work and I would build new ones at night.  We should of made movable petitions it happened so often.  I had to build a new brick chimney so I ordered a load of used bricks, which had to have the old mortar cleared off.  With Doreen and Pats help, this was accomplished but not without losing a lot of skin off our hands.  We didn’t have mortar mix in those days, so sand, cement and lime had to be mixed to make mortar.  I mixed the ingredients and started to build the chimney, but the mortar all fell apart.  Then I found out that I had to slack the lime.  This I did in a forty-five gallon drum.  I had the basement to do this in, but this was another mistake.  When I mixed the lime with the water, it let off such choking fumes that I had to rush out into the clean air or I would have perished.  It’s a good thing the basement had no glass in the windows to let the fumes out.  It was quite a job with Doreen and Pat carrying brick to me as I got higher and higher, finally through the roof and above.  We were all thankful when it was finished.

   There were many things we had to learn about building as we remodeled that old house.  One window that we took the trim off, we found an old letter dated 1922.  I think the house was built in about 1910.  The house was about 40 years old when we bought it in 1950.  It’s still in use as far as I know, now in 1999.

   We were on the edge of town, a few houses to the Coquitlam River.  We changed walls, lowered the ceiling, changed the stairs to the room upstairs a couple of times, windows and doors, bathroom and all the plumbing, siding, all in the eight years we lived there.  We never got any permits from the City and didn’t know we needed one.  For heating, we tried a sawdust heater in the basement to a wood and coal furnace that was like an octopus with all the round heating ducts coming out of it.  In the end we had installed a natural gas furnace and hot water tank.  The cement floor in the basement I mixed all by hand, about a thousand square feet of surface.  Doreen helped smooth it.

   We raised chickens and rabbits and our daughter Pat had two different horses on the lot as well.  I think our neighbours thought we were nuts.  We were right across from the Viscount Alexander School and Pat’s friends and also later Mickey’s friends would congregate at our home, as well as cousins.

    I teamed up with my old partner again, Fred Pullinger, a good man in the bush and very safety conscious.  Our first place of tree falling was on the British properties in West Vancouver.  There were a lot of big Douglas fir trees there, some as big as eight feet in diameter.  The chain saw we used weighed over a hundred pounds and had a five-foot cutting bar.  I carried the motor end and Fred was the head faller.  It’s very dangerous work, but I liked it.  One eight-foot snag that we had to fall was a good example.  The bark being about six inches thick and ran up the tree about a hundred feet.  It let go when we cut into it, piling up around the tree base.  We had to make a quick exit.  Fortunately the chain saw was not damaged.  We always had to watch for falling limbs, ‘widow makers’.  Our next falling assignment was Grouse Mt., falling ski trails and clearing merchantable timber, we would ride up and down on the chair lift.  It was a long day as we traveled from Port Coquitlam to the chair lift, a distance of about 35 miles.  I would be up before six, walk a mile over to catch my ride with Fred, he was never in a hurry and sometimes it was after six before I got home.  Doreen always had a big meal waiting for me.  We also fell trees at Silver Creek.  We were taken to the camp by motorboat up the Pitt River then a mile up the creek to where the camp was.

   It was a rough country to fall trees in, great boulders had broken off the cliff above and now big cedar trees grew amongst them, making falling them difficult.  One weekend we had to walk into camp a distance of about seven miles from the end of the road.  It was raining hard but we made good time till we came to a waterway about thirty feet wide.  It was about three feet deep, so the man I was with said he would piggyback me across, we did okay till we got about ten feet from the other bank, when he got stuck in the mud.  Of course we both got soaked, but made it to the camp by suppertime.  Calk boots, bone-dry coats and hard hats were a must when working at logging on the coast where rain was always a possibility.

    I bought an older chain saw and felled a patch of timber up the water shed near the Coquitlam Dam.  From there I took a job falling on the oil pipeline that was to be brought into Lake City, Burnaby.

    My brother in law, Fred Field, had got a job a Dominion Bridge and told me they were hiring men.  I had never worked in a steel plant before but a steady job was worth going after.  I was hired, also my other brother in law, Otto Augustine.  My first job was cleaning the rust off the steel parts that were to be painted.  There was no dust masks or hearing protection in those days.  Working in the paint shop had its drawbacks as the dust and red lead paint that filled the air wasn’t pleasant.  It was not a good place to work in.  I stuck it out and was soon given another job in another area as a fitter’s helper.  This was more interesting, helping the fitter assemble sections of bridges or some other steel structure.  The plant covered acres of ground and with all the machines running plus the hammering made the noise level very high.  Drafting of a bridge to the finished product took a lot of trained men.  It was a new experience for me but the fitter I worked with was patient with me. He was a good man to work with.  They had just started building the Granville Bridge, when I was hired.

   In 1953, a beautiful little red haired girl came into our lives.  We had applied to adopt a child and after a long wait, my wife was asked by the welfare to look after a baby six months old and of course she said yes.  On the appointed day that she would arrive, the welfare phoned to say that the baby was in hospital with malnutrition.  Almost two weeks went by before a car drove up to our house with our baby.  I was at work so I just have to relate it as I heard it.  My wife rushed out and took the baby from the woman that held her and back into the house.  She stopped long enough to thank Mr. Hicks, the welfare worker.  The baby was a very thin and crying her heart out.  The blanket and other clothes that came with her were in terrible condition, but my wife was happy she had her baby and all the motherly love took over.  The next day was the Coronation day of Queen Elizabeth.  Fortunately, my Mother spent most of the night knitting a sweater and bonnet, so we could show her off at the celebrations.  Mickey, as we nicknamed her, was at that time a foster child, but that was not in our minds, only adoption.  We did adopt her a year later.

   After a year or two at Dominion Bridge, I was asked to learn how to operate the plate rolls.  This was a machine that you could put a flat steel plate into the rolls and form it into a round cylinder.  The company had taken on a contract to fabricate a thirty mile water pipe line.  The pipe was to be thirty inches in diameter and rolled in sections, then welded together to make a pipe forty feet long.  Along with two helpers, I would roll up over a hundred of these five-foot sections in a shift.  I was given the afternoon shift so I’d start work at 4:30 pm and finish after 12 pm and then the drive home.

   I’d try to make as little noise as possible and get undressed in the dark so as to not wake my wife.  She was great at moving furniture around and this night I went to sit on the bed but it wasn’t where it should have been and I landed on the floor.

   I worked at Dominion Bridge for nine years but after the collapse of the Second Narrows Bridge, the company fell apart and most of us were laid off.

   My next job was with the City of Port Coquitlam.  This was closer to home and a different line of work altogether.  Gumboots and rain wear was a must.  It was said that if you couldn’t see the mountains, it was raining and if you could, it was going to rain.  As was in my jobs, I started at the bottom.  Patching potholes, cleaning ditches, sweeping streets with a push broom.  I have to laugh now when I think of it, but a few months earlier when we were in Vancouver, a man was sweeping the gutters and I said to my wife, “I’d never do that job.”  How my words came back to haunt me as here I was, doing just that.  I learned to drive dump truck graders, back hoes, street sweepers, also to put in storm and sewer pipes and to use a surveyors transit.  This would really come in handy on my next job.

   After eight years we sold our house on Salisbury and bought a five-acre farm on Coast Meridian and Kingsway, still in the city.  There was a house, barn, workshop and other small buildings.  We soon had chickens and a cow and raised our own beef.  We grew a lot of our own hay and vegetables.  There were apple and plum trees on the place so we lived well. In 1958 we had another addition to our family. Our daughter Pat, who was always busy with her horse, and Teddy, her dog, was growing into a pretty young lady and of course attracting young men that would call on her. One young man who won her heart was Roy Lube. For a short time she forgot about her horse and in 1958 they were married in the Free Church by Pastor Henry Geortz. This all happened before we moved to the farm. There was a partly built house on our property, so we told Roy if he wanted to finish building the house they could live there, so he did and we had them as neighbours for a couple of years.  They had a daughter Terri then, and a son Dave was born while they lived there.

   I would like to say something about our daughter Pat, who was a child from my wife’s first marriage and six years old at the time of our marriage.  She was a good kid, very bright and always happy. She was a born tomboy, snake-skins and woolly caterpillars were in her collection.  Dogs and horses took up her leisure time.  After school you could find her in jeans, looking after her horse or off riding with her friends.  Pat was very independent in her younger years, and she could play by herself for hours.  One summer, when she was eleven and we lived in Port Coquitlam, we let her spend the summer at the Bjorn ranch near Fort Steele.  Getting near the end of summer, we sent a letter for her to come home.  Without any warning a taxi drove in the yard, Pat got out and said, “Dad, will you pay the taxi”?  She had come all the way by train, no big deal to her.

    My sister Florence, had left an old Austin car at our place, it was not road worthy.  Roy got the idea to make a tractor out of it, so we cut the back of it off, and put another transmission behind the original one to a rear end from an old Dodge car.  We were in business.  It worked great for hauling stuff around the farm.  One day I let Mickey drive it around the field.  She went tearing around at top speed, scared the dickens out of me.  I thought it might tip over but fortunately she finally got it stopped much to my relief.  She was about twelve at the time.

   Our farm was located on diked land and when it rained very hard the pond and ditches would over flow and we would have a foot of water to go through between the house and the barn.  It would take about a week for the pump to catch up, returning the water to the Pitt River.  We enjoyed our eight years on the farm, but with my job at the City, it was a lot of work for both of us and we decided to sell.

    In October 1963, a great change came into my life.  My wife used to send our kids to a little Evangelical Free Church, when we lived in our former house.  My sister Grace used to go there also.  Doreen started attending the adult Sunday School, so between our daughter Mickey and my wife asking me to accompany them, I was a little hesitant but finally said yes.  So Sunday morning I dressed in my best clothes and entered the church, after the open session, the adults had their class.  As I listened to a clear presentation of the gospel by Don Kyllo, the teacher, I realized how far I was from God, a lost sinner without hope.   I knew I had to ask Jesus into my life.  After I got home, I got by myself and confessed by sins, asking Jesus Christ into my life.  A great peace came over me and I wanted everyone to have this same experience.  I’ll be ever thankful for those who were praying for me.  My wife had accepted Jesus into her life a few months previous to me.  We both had a lot to learn in our Christian lives.

   We had bought a brand new1966 Chevy Van.  It cost about $3,000.  We put an extra seat in the back for passengers and we were very proud of it.  My wife was leading the young peoples at the church and it was great to take the group to different meetings.  One day we decided to take them to 100 Mile House, about a three hundred mile trip.  They would join in with the young peoples there for the weekend.  So Friday afternoon we loaded up, there were six of us, two dogs, and food for the weekend.  We got onto the freeway past Abbotsford when I saw an accident up ahead, so I touched the brakes to stop.  From there I don’t know what happened, but the van went out of control and rolled into the meridian on its side.  The windshield fell out and we all got out except for Mickey.  Where was she?  Under the van?  My thoughts went wild!  I rushed back to the van and found her under a blanket.  She had hit her head on something and was knocked out.  I picked her up and carried her out and laid her on the grass with the others.  What a relief no one was badly hurt, we were taken to a hospital where it was found one boy had a broken collar bone and my wife had a badly cut and cut hand.  It was one of the worst times in my life.  I felt so bad because I was responsible for the accident.   I want to add that Mickey had gone through an operation on both her legs and was still in casts at this time.  We didn’t make it to 100 Mile but was thankful for all the help from friends.  Our van was badly bent and had to go to a body shop for repair.  We never drove it again and sold it.

   Pat and Roy decided to move north to Prince George where he worked for the Forestry. So we rented out the house to my mother and then later to another couple. With all the work at the farm and our involvement with church work, we decided to sell the farm so we sold the farm and we rented for a while in Port Coquitlam.  I was still working at the city but the Cariboo was calling us.  We had made quite a few trips to 100 Mile House and liked the area, so we sold most of our stuff and bought a new mobile home that was at Cache Creek.  We had it moved to the Travelers Trailer Court in 100 Mile.  So with the help of a friend, we moved what was left of our stuff and on December 6, 1968, arrived at our new home in the Cariboo.  The mobile we bought was furnished so the only big furniture to move was Mickey’s piano.  We had bought a new Datson car and had a block heater installed before we left Port Coquitlam.  We were sure thankful for it as the temperature turned very cold after we got there.  I got plywood and leaned it against the mobile, banking it up with snow to help stop the cold, which at one time got down to 52 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. It was 40 below most of January.  I was glad I didn’t have to go out and work in that intense cold.  I was only unemployed for about six weeks although I did get a few odd jobs in that time.

   I had put my application in at the Village office, but my first steady work was with the Highways Department.  I was doing a number of jobs from falling trees to driving dump truck.

   One day I was asked to accompany two other men to Ocean Falls to patch some of the paved roads there.  This meant a few days away from home.  We took the equipment we needed in the dump truck and traveled to Vancouver.  The truck was loaded onto a boat and we had a sea trip to Ocean Falls.  We were put up in a hotel and the next day we went out to do the job.  The material that we had to patch with was too oily and along with the warm weather made in impossible to do the patching.

   The next day they loaded the three of us on a float plane, first to Bella Coola then to another float plane to Horse Lake near 100 Mile House.  I’ll never understand how the government can waste so much money on useless projects.  It was a nice excursion for the three of us, a trip to Vancouver, a nice boat ride then a plane ride back home.  Some of the other employees wondered how I got all the pull, they had worked for years and I only a four month employee.  Another job I got was driving behind people who were walking from 100 Mile to 108 Mile and back.  I don’t remember what they were raising money for but we had a pickup in front and one at the rear.  Have you ever driven 16 miles in low gear with lights flashing?  Boring, but I got overtime pay for it.

   Near the end of the summer I got a note from the Village  Administrator asking me to apply for the foreman’s job.  If I stayed with the Highways Dept. it would have meant shift work, which I didn’t want to do.  I put in my application and was hired as foreman.  There were only three other employees on the payroll.  I accepted the position but after two years I found it wasn’t my thing being foreman, also dog catcher, plus building inspector and fire inspector.  I don’t know what they thought I was so I just took the position of lead hand.  Now I didn’t have to attend council meetings and make out reports to them.

    While I was employed at the Village, they went through three more foremen and I had to show each one what to do.  I worked there for almost 15 years and even after I retired, they were still coming to me for information.  I drove dump truck, operated the backhoe and sweeper, looked after the water system, read meters, installed water mains, sewer and storm drains, dug graves and buried people.  In the winter, sanding and snow removal were added, just to name a few of my duties.  There were many other jobs I did in the 15 years I was employed there.  I saw the Village grow from just a few people to about two thousand.  I remember a machine shop right in town, they were fabricating steel roof trusses and would turn them around on the main street as the shop was too small. A lady driving her car didn’t see the trusses and bumped over top of one of them.  Boy, did she come awake in a hurry, as they were about 8” high.

   100 Mile House serviced another twenty thousand people who lived out in the surrounding area.  We weren’t happy in the trailer park so for our next move we bought three acres at Gusville, about eight miles out on the Forest Grove Rd.  We moved our mobile onto the property.  The driveway off the highway was quite steep to bring a mobile home in and as the mobile came in over the edge, the front was scraping gravel while the back end was about six feet up in the air.  The driver was very confident and from the time he hooked up at the trailer court to the time he was leaving was about thirty minutes.  I guess he was late for supper.

   Our next job was to jack up the trailer and level it.  We had to put in a septic tank and drain field, have the power hooked up, a well drilled, and also put skirting around the mobile.  All before winter!  We bought a 250 gallon oil tank to keep us in oil through those long Cariboo winters.  We were to live there for the next eight years.

   We both liked camping and we graduated from a canvas tarp to a tent and then to a truck and camper.  Next came an outboard & boat.  There are lots of good fishing lakes up in the 100 Mile area and we fished in most of them.

   Our little redhead, Mickey, or her real name Linda, was growing up. She was a beautiful child, very co-operative and was just the opposite from Pat. She loved to be dressed up and was all girl. As she grew older she had some severe medical problems. First we found out she desperately needed eye glasses. Then the casts on her legs and eventually she inherited from her biological father a disease called ‘Charceau-Tooth”.  This is a deteriorating muscular condition. But she was a very determined girl and after a year of Bible School, she moved to Vancouver, where she worked as a medical secretary in several doctors offices.

    She met Alan Smith, who she had known in high school, and they were married by Pastor Walter Toronchuk at the Free Church in 100 Mile House in 1972. Later they had a daughter they named Shona Lynn.

   In 1974, a friend and neighbour, Frank McCusker suggested to us that we join them in a tour.  This tour would take us to London, Athens, Israel and Rome, twenty-one days in all.

   At first we thought we can’t, too expensive, but another friend said to go borrow the money and have good memories.  So we approached the bank loans officer who asked what the loan was for and how much do you need, so we told him $3,000.00 and he said, “O.K.” - just like that.  Now we had to make preparation.  Clothes for twenty-one days, camera and film and all the other small but essential items

   Our tour leader was Pastor Gadger, he had taken other tour groups so he knew the ropes.  There was about twenty-three of us and we all couldn’t get on the one plane and so eight of us had to get a regular flight over.  Our first stop was Edmonton, then over the Arctic to Prestwick, Scotland, where we touched down briefly.  When we got to London, the pilot, having to wait to land, banked the plane as we circled over the city so we could get a better view of the buildings and streets.  We finally landed at Heathrow Airport.  We were able to join the rest of the group at the Cumberland Hotel near the Marble Arch.  The next two days were very full.  We watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, very regimented and colourful.  The Tower of London with the crown jewels, the Wax Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Big Ben and the Tower Bridge.

   I had seen some of these things thirty years ago as a soldier on leave.  My memory of it then was air raid sirens, bombed damaged buildings, soldiers everywhere - now it was back to a great city with all the bustle and noise.  The first taxi ride we had in London almost gave us a heart attack.  The way the drivers weave in and out the traffic and on the left hand side of the street made it seem worse.  After a full two days we boarded a plane for Greece where we landed in Athens.  Here again we had a bus and guide to show us the sites.  Our first day we visited the Acropolis.  How they moved those great pieces of marble from a quarry to the top of the hill it is built on is a mystery to me.  We stood on Mars hill where the Apostle Paul preached to the men of Athens.  We were bussed out to the old city of Corinth to see the remains of what had been unearthed, and the old pillars and foundation.  One thing that sticks in my mind, were the public toilets, the seats all chiseled out of stone.  It was said there was a tax on the urine as it was used to tan leather.  There were still people excavating the site.  There is a lot of archeological work going on in all the ancient countries.

   One strange thing that happened to me was one night at dinner in the hotel in which we stayed, a waiter came to me saying I was wanted on the phone.  The first thing that came into our minds was trouble at home, someone hurt.  I did answer the call but it wasn’t for me but for another Casselman holidaying in Athens.

   On the way back from Corinth we stopped to view a canal that had been dug so small ships could have a shorter route.  It was four miles long, seventy-five feet wide and two hundred feet deep.  Very impressive when standing on the bridge watching as ships passing through.  After a busy two days we boarded a plane and landed in Tel-Aviv in Israel.  This would be the highlight of our trip- the land of the Bible, where our Lord lived and walked.

   We were bussed to Jerusalem to an Arab hotel called Panorama.  The next few days we were to visit many places.  We were given a brand new bus with tinted windows and air conditioning.  Our driver, an Arab named Ballia, and a Jewish guide named Jacob, were both very capable.  We toured Israel north to south and east to west, or from Dan to Beersheba.  Our guide took us to most of the places we have read about in the Bible.  The Garden of the Tomb, Place of the Skull called Calvary, attended a service in the Garden Tomb, stood in the Garden of Gethsemane at the Church of all Nations and looked up to the Eastern Gate.  It is sealed up until Christ’s return.  We walked through many of the streets in the walled city.  This wall is only 400 years old.  They have found 17 layers in these excavations, so our guide said this wall was called new.  We walked to and through Jaffa Gate, St. Stevens Gate, Sheep Gate, Zion Gate, and Dung Gate, all of them still used today.  We were taken inside a room that was part of the Wailing Wall.  The Wailing Wall is called this because it is as close as the Jews can get to the Holy of Holies, where the original Temple stood.  Now the Dome of the Rock, as it is called, is a place where Muslims worship, so you can see why the Jews are wailing there.

   We spent two days at a Cabuts called Hagoshrim and had a bus ride up on the Golan Heights.  From the Cabuts we could hear shelling as the war was still on with Syria.

   It was a wonderful 9 days we spent in Israel, so much to see.  We planted a tree at a reforestation area, visited the Koomerong Caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  We swam in the Mediterranean at a place called Zatania and had a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee.

   Our next plane ride was to Rome.  Here again we were bussed to all the sites. We saw the Coliseum, walked through some of the catacombs, and visited Mamertine prison where the Apostle Paul was held as a prisoner.  We were taken to the Vatican City where we toured through St. Paul’s and stood in the Sistine Chapel.  Rome is full of statues, one statue of St. Paul inside the entrance had the big toe replaced because people would kiss  the hand and then touch the toe of the statue and wore it down.  How many million people it took, you can only guess.  Like the other places we toured, there is so much to see and do.

   We were flown back to London and spent two more days there and visited the Wax Works, the Planetarium, and Hyde Park.  We went to a church where John Wesley preached and to the office where he studied. We were also boated down the Thames River to the Navel College where I had to walk right up to see that the pillars were not made of stone but were painted on the wall.

   Our tour was coming to an end and we were ready to go home.  It was a great experience for Doreen and I. It was twenty-one days in our lives we will never forget.

   The next ten-hour plane trip landed us in Vancouver.  After customs we were greeted by Mickey and Allen, our luggage and us were squeezed into their Volkswagen beetle and we stayed with them until we returned to our home in 100 Mile House.

OUR TIME ON THE FARM

   Less than half the years we spent in Port Coquitlam, was on our little farm, a little over 5 acres.  We grew our own vegetables in a big garden, and we also had fruit trees, apple, plum and cherry.

   Our animals gave us milk, cream, butter and meat.  It was a great feeling to walk into the barn and open the half door and watch the cows walk into their stalls. They would eat the shorts and hay that would be put out for them; periodically they would press their noses down on the drinking fountains for long slurps of water.  Meanwhile we would wash the udders of the cows and pull up a stool, place the milk bucket under the udder and tart the milking process, pull and squeeze.  Our hands and arms grew strong from this exercise, twice a day, seven days a week.  On wet days you would have to watch that a wet tail didn’t unexpectedly swish around and slap you in the face, or the cow would want to piddle.  Boy you had to move fast to save the milk and get out of the way.   At other times one of the teats would hurt and that back foot would come forward right into the pail of milk.  It was always very maddening but you couldn’t blame the cow when a sore spot would be aggravated.

   Calves being born was always a big event but most often it would happen out of sight.  You would find the cow grazing with the calf who had already found its legs and had its first feed of mothers milk.

   Our next move would be to carry the calf to the barn with the cow bumping at your back.  It would be our lot to feed the calf from now on.  When a cow comes in fresh, their milk output is at its highest.  Part of it would go to the calf.  Leading the calf to drink from a bucket was another experience!  You would put two fingers in the calves mouth to suck on, then lower his snout into the pail of milk.   This would work for a while, but the calf usually had other ideas.  With a jerk of his head upward, the pail of milk would go flying – usually soaking the one that held it.  With anger under control, you try again.  After several sessions like that, the bovine pupil would finally get the idea.

   While we were on the farm, we had as I remember, three different cows to milk. Kitty a Holstein, Gerty a Guernsey, and Molly was a Holstein.  We raised Molly from a calf.  We needed a separator with all the milk that the cows produced.  So we went off to the auction at Pitt Meadows.  We looked over the stuff and low and behold, there was one, just what we needed.  So when it came up for bid, up went my hand - $10.00, $11.00, $12.00.  It seemed someone wanted it just as much as I, so up it bid till I said $19.00.  The auctioneer said $20.00 and my lady opponent said $20.00.  It wasn’t worth that much to me, so we went home empty handed.  I felt sorry for the lady as it was back in the auction a few weeks later.

   We did get out cream separator a little later.  Pat had a friend, Eddy Clock, who came to visit us and said his dad had one for sale, it cost us $5.00 and it was in top shape.  We used it until we sold the cows.  We separated lots of cream, thick and tasty, also many pounds of butter.  We even sold some cream.

   We also had chickens.  They were penned up to keep them from wandering away.  They gave us lots of fresh eggs and we had customers coming to buy them also.  We were living pretty high as far as food goes.

   In the summer I kept part of the pasture for hay.  A neighbour would cut the hay and I had an old buck rake to pull behind our ‘Moanin’ minny’ (Moline) tractor.  My mother lived next door and helped us buy the tractor.  I would bunch the hay up with the buck rake, then pitch it onto a trailer; when loaded, haul it to the barn where it would be pitched up into the loft.  Doreen was always there doing her part.  It was always a great feeling when it was all in and we could see the results of our labour.  Sometimes I’d run out of hay and would take the pickup to the Minnikada Ranch, and load 20 bails on the pickup.  That was usually enough to keep us through till the pasture was growing sufficiently for grazing again.

   We kept bees for a while, two hives and then added another when I picked up a swarm of bees that had landed in a neighbours’ tree.  We got some honey for our efforts.  Doreen had the job of extracting the honey from the frames, a very sticky job done the hard way.  I had the sweetest stuck up wife, after she licked her fingers for a hundred times.

   Along with our chickens we had a banty rooster, Tommy.  We had given him away once but he had been returned.  We didn’t know how old he was, but he was a mess of scars.  We let him run loose and off he would go to the neighbours where he would pick a fight with their big rooster.  Our neighbour would bring him back all bloody and torn.  I found him in the barn one winters day, fallen over in the hay.  He had succumbed to all the fights and age.  There are many more stories, but they’ll be for another time.

Author’s Note:

   As I undertook this project, I had no idea it would develop this far. I was asked at the last reunion by a man from Alabama, who had a big book of stories of men whose name was Casselman. He asked me to write my life story to add to his collection.

   I have to give a big thanks to my wife for correcting me on times and places. To Beverley Stirling who has typed and retyped with patience over the last year, these words you are about to read. Thank you and God bless you Bev.

Russell Casselman

February 23, 2001

VICTORIA

THE STORY

Did you ever hear the story

It’s as true as true you should know

About a wonderful thing that happened

In Bethlehem long, long ago

The Prophets foretold in past ages

That the Christ one day would be sent

That God in His mercy would send a Saviour

To a world that was dying and spent

An angel was sent to the Virgin Mary

With a message that she would give birth

To a child that would be called Jesus

That this babe would bring peace to the earth                             

The shepherds were filled with wonder

As the angels sang praise from above

The world would now have a Saviour

All glory to God up above

Joseph called the child Jesus

A name through the years to come

Would give hope to millions of people

Who would repent and receive God’s only Son

At the temple in the city of Jerusalem

At the age of twelve Jesus came

He astonished the leaders and teachers

With a wisdom His father ordained

The apostles He called to Him followed

He taught them His purpose and love

That when He was gone they were to wait for

The Holy Spirit He’d send from above

The four gospels tell in their pages

How He healed the sick and blind

He rebuked the hypocrite Pharisees

But to the repentant was gentle and kind

Have you hear His Spirit calling

Have you repented and confessed your sins

Have you looked at the cross He died on

For it was there He bled for your sins

Dear friends don’t wait any longer

Jesus loves you and wants to forgive

For very soon He’s coming to claim those

Who have responded to God’s wonderful gift

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