Moving to Francois Lake was one of the best things our family ever did.
There are not many of these folks left here but they will remain in my memory as long as I live.
We had a good store business with a good variety as well as feed, flour, naptha gas, kerosene, rubber boots, heavy moccasin rubbers and moccasins and shells, you name it we stocked it. At that time the Prince George public library would send us a huge box of books to be lent out. Every month a box of new books would arrive. There was no charge. Folks would give us a list of the kind of books they would like. This was just great for folks out on rural districts.
Lots of our customers came in from Colleymount like Roberts, Sandy Jenkins, Fred and Mrs. Lougee, Corbetts, Mr. Hewett. These folks came with horses.
Mrs. Lougee was a very good pianist so we always enjoyed her visits. Mrs. Drew and her family lived on the north side of Tchesinkut Lake close to the far end. In the winter Mrs. Drew would drive up on the ice with a team of horses. Then the Stanton family and the Anderson family.
Both of these families lived about 20 miles down Francois Lake and the only way up was by boat for mail and groceries. Although I’m going back a long way everyone was busy ranching, logging, saw milling. Clarence Corliss and his wife Rose had a repair shop just overlooking the present Sandy’s Resort. Clarence was a very handy man with all auto repairs, welding, he was also a violinist and played for dances and socials. I played guitar with him for many years. I do not have any more room to add anymore names so please forgive me.
In those days the post office was a busy place not only as a place to meet and talk but the mail was the only means to get supplies. Big boxes of groceries from Woodwards, Army and Navy, Eaton’s, Simpsons. One time a box of fish came through and it was bad. What a smell for days in the store.
There was a man at Noralee who would get a 26 of whisky every week or so and it came in a special mail bag marked fragile. This one day it got in the wrong bag and was broken.
All the first class mail letters and all were soaked. So mother opened the bag and put the first class mail on the oven door and on the warming closet. There was a strong smell of good old booze all over her kitchen. Most all the letters were ok, a few the ink ran but it all turned out in the long run. I think Mother should have had a medal for that one. Between the bad fish and the booze made her day.
There were at that time no wholesale outlets as everything came from Vancouver by truck. Fred Beach took care of that with his truck with Earl Deeder as driver. Earl would leave for Vancouver on Monday morning with the orders and get back to the landing on Friday afternoon. They were busy times filling shelves etc.
At that time the Beach family were living in our present home. In 1944 the Beach family moved into town and our family took over the Beach house and it’s been in our family ever since. It was our home for 60 years and still is our family home. That year we lost two great families the Vern Taylor’s and the Beach family.
Problem
Some time ago I brought up about the air pollution from Pinnacle Pellet. Something is being done but it looks like an ongoing problem. There was a very interesting writeup in our paper. ‘Emissions not up to snuff.’ Then is says the pinnacle plant near Burns Lake struggles to implement cutting-edge technology. In the mean time our air is being polluted and big time. In this day and age there must be some way to clean up this very serious problem.
Cold Smoke
I hear that the Cold Smoke 2013 drag races, as usual, was a great event. It’s always very sad to hear of the accident one of the local riders had.
These big machines with the big motors made for speed there will no doubt be accidents. It seems the modern thing now is bigger machines, bigger more powerful motors so more speed and every year it keeps going on.
The new machines were clocked at 167 kms an hour. The new motto is breed for speed. Maybe they will get so big and so much speed they will put wings on them.
Yes, times have changed from my growing up. It was horses we rode and drove instead, talking horse power like today, we would talk one or two horse power. You could see the horse power. When I was about 16 I had a pretty little gal who lived about 12 miles down the Eyehill Creek. It used to take me about 45 minutes to get there and an hour to get home. No place to park then unless it was under your horse. I wonder if the modern 16 year old of today would like to ride a horse 20 miles to spark a little gal, I guess it depends on the little lady. Most of those prairie girls were pretty good looking and well worth the ride on horse back.
Coffee house
On Saturday evening there was a coffee house program. This was a fundraiser for the Francois Lake Hall. What a program it was too. We have so much talent in our Lakes District. There was a variety of singing and instrumental music as well. Even some good toe tapping fiddle music.
The kind of singing and music everyone enjoys. I have been to lots of blue grass and country music sing-songs but I think this was the best and the most variety. The hall was packed with music lovers. I have at hand the program entertainers and I would like to pass on. The Connelly family with Michelle and Jeff Evans, Tyree Parkin, Lonespur, Larry Aspen (instrumental) and Norma Symes and Johnny Pahl.
Brian Worrall did a great job as M.C. as he kept everything going the way it should. Folks are already asking when is the next one coming? The last entertainer was Johnny Pahl who did a wonderful takeoff of Johnny Cash. I’m sure if Johnny Cash had been there he would have enjoyed it too. We all got lots of laughs. The whole evening was a success and I’m sure everybody enjoyed it as much as I did.
Francois Lake is frozen over on the west end and also past the landing but the east end is open from the old Stanton farm, about 20 miles down it’s wide open to the east end. This is the second winter the east end has not frozen over. We are wondering why.
Must close out for now, take care and always remember God loves you and so do I.