This innocent appearing shed has attained a local history which I feel is worth recording, some of it going back well into the last century. An earlier owner of the property on which it was located used an oil burning stove for heat in the house. The oil was stored in a 45 gallon drum which was kept in the shed. Possibly at the same time, but maybe in subsequent years, the shed also held a washer and dryer. When Angelique Wood purchased the property at least a dozen years ago, she housed her egg laying chickens in it. She was generous, and at least a few neighbours benefited.
“When the egg laying became sporadic,” she said, “I changed the purpose of the shed to a home for my 2 dogs.” The windows became an “art gallery.”
The shed became a reason for rancor and criticism of Angelique. She had moved it onto the road allowance and a few individuals in town pounced on this as an opportunity to undermine her reputation. She had won the election for Area G Director, and they may have resented this. They may also have disliked her political views. Because the shed was at least partially on the road allowance, it was an easy lightening rod for their discontent. For some years, a number of people have stored unlicensed vehicles on the road allowance in front of their properties. This never became a similarly contentious issue.
Travis & Angelique
Wanting to remove this source of irritation, Angelique and her partner Travis decided to dismantle the shed this weekend. Undoubtedly, everyone will now be happy.
Angelique cutting with a saw, while Travis removes a window.
At age 83 Garnet Dean is again looking for a wife. “I married the wrong woman the first time,” he told me as he settled in for a wide ranging conversation in the Tea Room at the Hedley Museum. “I loved airplanes and she wasn’t interested. This caused problems between us.” He now has a sure fire formula to ensure he won’t make the same mistake a second time. Just about the first thing he says when he meets a woman is “do you make a good pie?”
Garnet has been asking this question for many years, but matrimony has thus far eluded him. Even so, he continues his quest with unabated enthusiasm.
My interest was kindled when I heard that he talks about pie to just about everyone he meets. When I arrived at the Hedley Museum at 10 a.m. last Thursday, Garnet had just ordered a slice of lemon pie. He was sitting at a table alone, contentedly sipping his first coffee. He waved me to the chair next to him.
Fortunately I wasn’t pressed for time. Garnet has a raconteur’s capacity for telling stories and confidently offering views on issues that confound world leaders. Like an ancient Biblical prophet he speaks forcefully, as though he has just received a major revelation.
My interest was primarily in his pie addiction but I would have to be patient. Retired and living in a motor home, he has plenty of time to ponder. From brief earlier encounters, I knew there were numerous topics that intrigued him.
The lemon pie arrived and when he paused to lovingly gaze at it for a moment I asked, “Is lemon your favourite?” “O no,” he responded. “I like them all, but apple pie is actually my favourite.” Now that his mind was on the subject, he held a forkful of pie but didn’t indulge. As though to present his credentials he said, “I come in here for pie every day. I’ve eaten pie in a lot of places. Sorrento, North Vancouver, Keremeos. In Keremeos the mother of the cafe owner made excellent pies. I don’t know if she’s still there. The Hill Top Cafe in Langley is one of the best. Some cafes have mostly crème pies. I prefer fruit. I don’t like a thick crust.”
Garnet with a generous fork full of lemon pie.
He slid the morsel of pie gently into his mouth and seemed to forget about me, savouring it. “I’ve been coming here since 2004,” he resumed, then drifted to another topic. “ Joe Roberts and I painted the front steps and deck of the museum. I helped Lorraine Lance rebuild the back stairs on the historic little house.”
Wanting to bring him back to the subject of pies, I asked, “in all your travels, where did you find the tastiest pies?”
“Right here!” he said with enormous gusto. He wanted me to understand he has the extensive experience required to speak authoritatively on the subject. “In all the places I’ve been to, I’ve eaten pie. Once I drove 150 miles into the U.S. to an apple pie festival. There were 80 feet of tables, loaded with apple pies. I bought a piece for myself and one for a Vietnam war vet.” He patted his stomach, still enjoying the memory. I mentally questioned whether he really limited himself to only one piece.
“The secret to a great pie is a great crust,” Garnet explained. “In one place in the Similkameen Valley their crust is too thick.” He patted his stomach again and admitted, “when it comes to pies, I’m a sinner. Margaret’s pies will be the death of me.”
At the end of 90 minutes, we parted company and the next morning he and his motorhome departed for Vancouver. He has health issues and wants to be close to his doctor.
Garnet is like a “rental” baseball player who is with a team for only part of a season, then moves on. He showed up in late spring, regaled us with accounts of airplanes, pies, horse racing. even a pig that lay on the couch in its owner’s livingroom. I don’t know if he is seriously on a quest to find another wife. Probably he’s having too much fun traipsing around the country. Undoubtedly though, by now he will have asked several Vancouver ladies the all important question, “do you make a good pie?”
The fall referendum will determine whether voters favour “first passed the post” (horse racing term) or “proportional representation”. (photo freewinningbets.com
Watch for a major political brawl to erupt shortly between the NDP/Green coalition and the Opposition Liberals. It’s all about the proposed dumping of the so-called “first past the post” system for electing MLA’s. John Horgan and Andrew Weaver believe some form of “proportional representation” will give them more seats in the Legislature. Andrew Wilkinson’s Liberals despise both the government and their electoral preference. They hope to cut them off at the pass and retain the present system. They are still disgruntled about the Greens joining with the NDP to ensure defeat of the Christy Clark government after the narrow election results last year. The autumn referendum will determine which system voters favour.
Certainly there are glaring deficiencies in our political structures and processes, both at the provincial and federal levels. Canada isn’t an isolated case though. In Return of History, Jennifer Welsh suggests that “across many liberal democracies, the level of trust in political institutions is at a historic low.”
In my opinion, the suggested radical tinkering with the electoral system is likely to do little more than confuse voters, and possibly also those we elect to represent us. The problem isn’t just with the system. Whichever one we adopt, we must expect that clever, powerful individuals will corrupt it to attain and retain power. The Roman Caesars did it, and politicians across our country are doing it today. The result is that constituency representatives have virtually no ability to impact policy decisions.
In Tragedy in the Commons, Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan state that many former MP’s they interviewed feel they were little more than political eunuchs. One of their major complaints was that they were micromanaged by the party. They were required to submit press releases for scrutiny. They were given questions to ask and statements to read. The party assigned committee positions and removed members if they didn’t reflect party views. The party gave or withheld permission to speak in Parliament. The former MP’s described committees as busy work and a waste of time.
Russ Peters, a former Liberal MP said, “we were told to say we were there to develop policies for the betterment of the country. The truth was, we were there to adopt policies that benefited the party.”
It is Pierre Elliott Trudeau who is generally credited with taking Canada a long way down this path. He introduced major changes which consolidated the Prime Minister’s power and severely limited effectiveness of MP’s. According to Walter Stewart in Shrug: Trudeau in Power, “he set up a counter bureaucracy. To all intents and purposes, Canada is no longer run by Parliament, the Cabinet, or even the party in power. It is run by the PM and his own personal power block.” Regarding Opposition MP’s, Trudeau said, “they have been elected by constituents to blow off steam. When they are 50 yards from Parliament, they are nobodies.” More recently, Stephen Harper also significantly curtailed the ability of MP’s to participate in the governance of our nation.
The issue of leader dominance exists also at the provincial level. In BC, former premier Christy Clark relegated the experienced and talented Sam Sullivan to virtual obscurity in the Legislature. He had previously defeated her in the City of Vancouver mayoralty race, and it is believed by many that she held this against him.
Can we make changes that would bring back true democracy to Canada? The Samara Centre for Democracy recently published a 30 page analysis of Canada’s Parliamentary system and how it can be made more effective. It argues forcefully that committees should be made more independent. In part, they contend that “if committees are given more centrality and Parliament changes how committee appointments work, the result would be positions of real prestige that aren’t controlled or doled out by the party.”
MP’s tend to agree that committees are where the most important work can be done. If there was less interference from party leaders, committees could make a genuine contribution to creating beneficial policies at both the provincial and federal levels.
Between now and the vote in the fall referendum, we’ll be exposed to a great deal of political huffing and puffing. Whatever the result, it will benefit primarily those at the most lofty echelons of political parties. Meaningful change will come only when those we elect are able to effectively represent the views of their constituents and participate substantively in decision making.
Gwen (Erickson) Fraser at the Hedley Museum, where we first met.
“We come back to Hedley every second year,” Gwen Fraser told Linda and me in a telephone conversation from her home in Nanaimo. “I make my husband drive up and down every street. I get out of the car and walk around. I talk with people and when they know I lived here in the 1940’s, they have a lot of questions. It’s like coming home.”
Gwen was born in the Princeton hospital in 1939, 10 minutes ahead of her twin brother Glenn. Her memories of Hedley are those of a young girl growing up untarnished in a community where gold was king. “My Dad worked as an accountant, first at the Canty mine. When it closed he went to the Mascot. We lived next to the staff house on the corner of Daly and Irene. A number of mine workers lived there and they had a cook. We’d often go and talk with the cook.” Not having television, they were actors in their own real life reality show. She and her friends roamed about in their rustic, geographically constricted world, never troubled by thoughts of being molested or kidnapped.
“There were a lot of children in town then,” she said, “and the 2 story Hedley school was full. For some of those years, I didn’t really learn a lot because I had rheumatic fever. I couldn’t do much and the teachers didn’t expect much. Some days I mostly did puzzles. They passed me anyway.”
Beginning in 1900, six hotels were built in Hedley. Over the years they all burned to the ground. Gwen recalls that in her time one, (The Great Northern), was still intact and functioning. “The workers put the empty beer bottles out behind the hotel. We’d go back there and help ourselves. Then we’d go in the front door and sell them to the hotel.” Maybe she wasn’t entirely untarnished.
Unsupervised, in winter they gravitated to the river. “We clambered all over the ice when it piled up. A few times, one of us broke through.” In warmer weather, they sought adventure elsewhere. Curious about the cemetery, they at times played among the headstones and white crosses.
On one occasion their play became overly realistic and produced a serious consequence. Gwen’s twin brother was hit in the eye by an arrow. A local physician, Dr Ride, had an office on the upper floor of what is now Rod Moncrieff’s building. This case was well beyond his level of expertise, however. Because the Hope-Princeton Highway was not yet completed, the family made an emergency run to Vancouver via the much longer Fraser Canyon route. In spite of the efforts of the specialist, Glenn’s vision in that eye remained significantly impaired. Even so, he later trained as a welder and worked for the City of Vancouver for many years.
The gold mines attracted a substantial population and Gwen remembers that Hedley had a police officer. “When my dad wanted to buy a new car in Keremeos, he took us kids along, and also the officer. Probably he borrowed a car for this and needed someone to drive it back. On the way to Keremeos the officer spotted a car travelling well over the speed limit. He ordered dad to catch it. The surprised driver stopped and received a ticket. He had not realized the long arm of the law could reach this far out of Hedley.”
Much of what we take for granted now was entirely out of Gwen’s experience . “I never saw a plane fly overhead. The first time I ever saw a plane was when one landed in a field just outside Hedley. Lots of people went to have a look. We walked around it again and again.”
Gwen remembers the Hedley flood of 1948. “Some families moved into tents on the golf course. Us kids thought it was great fun.”
When the Mascot mine shut down operations in 1949, Gwen’s family moved on. Later, as a young adult, she met Doug at a party next door and they eventually got married. They lived 20 years on Vancouver Island’s west coast where Doug was a lighthouse keeper. “There was only one other family.”
At the end of our conversation Gwen again said, “when we come to Hedley, I feel I’ve come home. There’s a sense of peacefulness, of community. Sometimes, I’d like to move back.”
Gwen (Erickson) Fraser. Hedley would welcome her back any time.
A surprising number of children turned out for the bike parade, led by Jennifer Douglass. Dylan MacKay carried the flag.
Constable Doleman holds the Mountie hat in place.
Constable Mike Doleman of the Princeton RCMP detachment brought a smaller size red serge and Mountie hat. With Constable Doleman’s patient assistance, a number of children put on these items and doting parents snapped photos. Constable Doleman was a crowd favourite.
Terry Regier & Constable Doleman
Several adults managed to squeeze into the red serge. A bit tight, but anything for a photo opportunity.
Music was provided by Jodel Music Woman of Hedley. Solara sang 2 numbers with her.
Meeting Murray on the street in Hedley stirred my interest in homelessness. He was making adjustments on his heavily laden bike when I approached him. Learning he was homeless, I invited him for coffee and Linda’s cookies. “I was married and we had 2 children,” he told us. “I haven’t seen them or my 94 year old mother in a long time. For about 5 years I’ve lived in a shack I built along the river in rural Cawston. I don’t want to live in a house.”
The media frequently carry accounts of incidents fueled by homelessness, drug addiction, mental health issues and related problems. Recently CBC reported that addicts were routinely throwing dirty needles out of the windows of their high rise apartments. We want to believe these problems exist primarily in large centres. Even in Hedley though, we have a drug house and individuals who frequent it on a daily basis. Drugs, mental health issues and homelessness are a growing blight on our society.
Rob Turnbull & Tracey Harvey in front of our Hedley home.
In an extended conversation with Rob Turnbull and Tracey Harvey in our home last week, Linda and I gained some understanding of how deeply entrenched the blight has become. We also learned what their organization, Streetohome is doing to combat the cocktail of issues related to homelessness and addiction. “It’s a multi-faceted issue,” Rob asserted. “We can’t just build our way out of homelessness, expecting this will solve all problems.”
Rob Turnbull & Tracey Harvey in front of our Hedley home.
Streetohome is a Vancouver based organization with connections throughout the province and beyond. It began almost 10 years ago with a mandate to provide housing for homeless people. Since that early beginning their understanding has expanded. “We’ve had considerable success in leveraging funds from the private sector, and we’ve provided a lot of homes,” Tracey said, “but we have come to understand that homeless people are often grappling with multiple bewildering issues. When they are given a home, these issues rarely go away.”
He was homeless until he participated in the Streetohome program. (photo with permission from Streetohome)
I was reminded of our friend Sophie, deeply addicted and always on the verge of homelessness. When Linda and I initially met her, she was 40, gorgeous, with gleaming white teeth, an ability to express herself succinctly, and a figure to inspire lust. After her boyfriend died of an overdose, her life spiraled downward. Her parents several times paid for stays in costly treatment centres. While there, she excelled. Out on her own though, her resolve faltered. I have often wondered why this beautiful, talented woman was so tightly bound by addiction.
Rob seemed to read my thoughts. “There are gaps in the continuum of care. Wait lists for treatment are too long. Often there is only a brief window when someone is ready. Also, 30 to 90 day treatment programs aren’t long enough to deal with feelings of isolation from society, lack of social and work skills, low self esteem and the need for meaningful activity.”
Do they have an effective response to this wily monster with its tentacles sunk deep into all levels of society? “We’ve brought a lot of people in from the cold,” Tracey said. “Now we’re working toward a promising new approach that is being used in the U.S. The Addiction Recovery Community concept will offer a safe place where individuals can participate in programs and support each other. Much of the program will be led by people who are themselves in recovery.”
“Live in treatment programs rarely address employment and vocational needs,” Rob added. “We consider these key, along with having a home to go to when they are ready.”
I was impressed by the emphasis on a continuum of supports. “We are looking for ways to stretch program engagement up to 2 1/2 years, with life long, peer supported after care,” Tracey said.
Streetohome readily shares its experience and knowledge. In Farmington, north of Dawson Creek, the North Winds Wellness Centre is aware of this model. In a telephone conversation executive director Isaac Hernandez said they have plans for an Addiction Recovery Community in Pouce Coupe, It will offer a 2.5 year program emphasizing life, training and work skills. “We will use indigenous cultural healing traditions and best, non-indigenous practises.”
Rob, Tracey and Isaac are disciplined, passionate and committed. They know it will not be a skirmish, but a prolonged all-out war. To avoid being overwhelmed by this festering scourge, our nation will need to become just as committed.
Ken Hoyle, Karen Cummings, Margaret Skaar & Roy Evans
Two Hedley men with big hearts painted Margaret Skaar’s house at no cost to her, except for the paint. Local fabric artist, Karen Cummings, helped Margaret select the colours. Ken Hoyle and Roy Evans, and also Karen, are quite new to the community. “Margaret has given time and energy to the community for many years,” Ken said. “We wanted to do something for her.”
Andrew & Bonnie Kozley
Andrew & Bonnie Kozley came from Alberta to donate a mining photo to the Hedley museum. Andrew’s father & uncle and several cousins worked at the Nickel Plate Mine. Andrew is the brother of former long term resident, Mary Leslie (deceased). He has had the picture for many years. His nephew, Thom Leslie (deceased), an earlier President of the Hedley Museum, suggested a number of times that the picture be given to the museum.
Art Martens & Mark Woodcock
When Mark Woodcock saw the sturdy stick (actually a club) I carried on hikes into the wilderness along 20 Mile Creek, he said, “that isn’t good enough. I’ll make something better for you.” “I need something sturdy,” I told him, “in case I have to defend myself against a bear or cougar.” A week later he appeared at our door holding a very nice walking stick. My name is burned into it & it has the points of the compass so I don’t get lost. It also has a cross, rabbit tracks & flowers engraved on it. Since then he has produced more of these creations & has made them available in the gift shop at the Hedley Museum.
A small town perspective on people, community, politics and environment.
