There is an old saying that says it never rains but it pours and this is the way it has hit the Van Tine family and big time. Not only did they lose their brother George, but they have also lost their brother Bill. Bill passed away in White Rock after a series of medical problems. He passed away Feb. 12. The family are going down for the service. Bill was well known in the south country as he ranched in the Tatalrose district. He was also a very close friend of mine.
While Bill was still ranching in the Tatalrose district he had a little saddle horse for sale so I went over the lake and bought her.
She was a little beauty, about 14 hands and nice manners. She was a bright bay, more or less and a red colour. There was a story to this little mare as Bill told me she was in the last bunch of Cheslatta wild horses.
A bunch of Ootsa Lake cowboys ran this wild bunch into a corral and this mare was just a baby, her mother jumped the fence and killer herself so the colt had no mother. So they gave the baby to Bill Van Tine and this was the colt I got.
She was grown up and well broke by then. We had her for about five years and she was a wonderful horse for young riders. Her name was Lady. The sad part was all our horses got away and Lady went with them.
A neighbour came to meet me and he said “Your horse was caught in an old barbwire fence and we cut her out.” I loaded her up and brought her home and went to work on her and she was a mess. I gave her drugs and she started to heal up and the sad part was she had cut a tendon in her back leg so I had to shoot her. Lots of tears were shed, believe me. It was odd to think her mother was killed in a fence and a fence was the cause of our Lady’s death. Barbwire and horses can be a disaster as I have seen lots of bad accidents in my life with it. The Bill Van Tine family had left the southside before we lost the little mare they had raised from a baby, they would have been sad too. An add on as little Lady was not the first horse I had to shoot because of the barbwire, I had to shoot another lovely mare who almost cut off her front leg, another bad barbwire tragedy.
Another little story
While we lived in Saskatchewan our mother bred cocker spaniel dogs, it was a good business and when we came to B.C. she kept on doing so.
Brother Peter and I had our bedroom upstairs overlooking the one kennel and she had a very valuable dog called Tony tied up there. He was a barker and we just got fed up with the barking.
Brother Peter opened the window and threw is big logging boot at Tony and low and behold it hit him so hard it knocked him off the kennel.
We were afraid to look as we thought he was dead for sure but he wasn’t. So when he barked all you had to do was lift up the window and Tony hid in his kennel and no more barking. One day soon mother said “Why is it that every time I open the living room windows Tony runs and hides?”
Good letter Albert
Lots of excitement in our last local paper this last week and not all of it good. When the dust settles and things get back to normal you will find that nobody really won. Everyone is going to get hurt on both sides. I would like to commend Chief Albert Gerow for the letter in our last paper, no one can take exception to it in any way.
He deserves your full support. There is a statement made by one of the well known U.S. Presidents and I will quote it as it’s been a guideline in my life, “Together we stand, divided we fall” and it’s true.
I try to stay out of anything political for family problems but this time I thought maybe I should put in my two-bits worth.
Road trip
Last week my son-in-law Rick Hunter drove me down to Terrace to visit the eye specialist there. It seems I have a cataract to be removed. When you get my age you either rust out or wear out, seems I had reached that stage.
Nice performance
Last week we had a very pleasant evening with the Decker Lake church choir singing some of the old hymns and also a short message.
It made for a great evening.
Tid bits
Just got a letter from our good friends in our old stomping grounds on the old home place.
This is a terrible snow storm that hit the district not too long ago. They enclosed also pictures of the C.P. freight train stuck in the snow, pictures of the engine buried in snow, just the top of the train showing. I can not imagine a snow storm like that back on the prairie.
Lots of excitement around our new hospital location with the ground breaking ceremony. The weather did not cooperate but that didn’t slow it down. A real shot in the arm for Burns Lake and the Lakes District. They will be hiring local help no doubt when it all gets started. This is good news too.
I just wonder if any of our oldtimers will remember this. My dear later friend Hoyt Burt told me this and it’s very interesting. This happened in the early 30s. It seems a volcano erupted in Alaska and the ash came into the Lakes District with a north west wind.
This ash covered everything, hay fields, pastures and crops. The wild animals and all the local stock just had no food as this ash was all over. Hay had to be shipped in to keep the stock alive. When the snow came the ash went into the ground and next year the crops came back to normal.
I mentioned this to another oldtimer and he remembered this when they had no feed for their stock. Lets hope nothing like this will happen again. Hoyt said some places were worse then others and he remembered it very well. Drive carefully as the life you save could be your own.
Always remember God loves you a great deal and so do I.