Budd - Voices of British Columbia: Stories from Our Frontier

LISTEN to the sound recordings that correspond to each chapter by clicking on the hyperlinks at the beginning of each interview. If your reading device does not support hyperlinks, you will find the recordings on the following website: http://voicesofbc.ca

Imbert Orchard interviewed hundreds of BritisColumbians. This map shows the locales described in the twenty-four stories reproduced here.

Its In the Voice

MARK FORSYTHE

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THE HUMAN voice soothes, nurtures, connects people. Recently a new mother was telling me how her baby had been fussing most evenings, so she sang a tune shed crooned during her pregnancy. As her daughter heard the first notes of Joni Mitchells Both Sides Now , she calmed. Instantly. The human voice is a wondrous and powerful thing; we catch its rhythms, its nuance, its rise and fall, even in the womb.

Imbert Orchard knew the power of the voice. He listened to a thousand voices as he and CBC Radio recording engineer Ian Stephen lugged tape recorders around British Columbia to interview the people who founded this province, including Aboriginal people whose stories reach back thousands of years. Today, those audio archives sound as fresh as the day they were recorded: theyre crisp, warm and personal. We hear apprehension, humour, sadness, reflection, and realize the things that make us human are all wrapped up in the sound of our voices. Even a pause during a conversation can be revealing as someone searches for the right words to give their story clarity and meaning (or avoids answering a question weve posed). We hear people think during such moments.

The fact that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation encouraged these two to travel across B.C. to gather so many stories is commendable, especially since many of these interviews were never aired. CBC recognized the value of building this first-person archive, which is exactly what a public broadcaster should be doing. These memories and stories are our social history and provide context for our times.

In this world of sound bites, long-form interviews like the ones conducted by Imbert Orchard are very rare indeed. Today we dont have the patience to listen, to attempt to understand the broader context of whats behind those sound clips, to sort through the fragments of information charging toward us via radio, TV , cell phones, the Internet. Tuning in to the radio for a one-hour conversation between Imbert Orchard and one of his pioneer subjects would be unheard of today. Were partial to the fragments, even if we dont know what they mean.

Imbert Orchard, though, knew he was on to something when he began talking with B.C.s pioneers. He was also an excellent listener and guided conversation in a masterful way, much like another great CBC radio interviewer, Peter Gzowski. When he was interviewing, Peter thought of himself as sitting at the back of a canoe, steering, with his guest riding up front. Peter understood the overall direction of the interview and guided that journey by listening carefully then dipping his paddle in the water, asking a question or making a well-placed comment to keep the conversation on course. In Peters interviews, his guests did almost all of the paddling: the story propelled them toward their destination, often with an enlightening detour or two along the way. In his own way, Imbert Orchard did much the same thing. He sat away from the microphone. Listening carefully, and posing simple, direct questions, he encouraged his guests to tell their story. In their own words.

My CBC colleague Deborah Wilson has spent hours listening to many of Orchards oral history interviews as she prepared profiles of B.C. characters and events for broadcast. She comments that listening to him interview people in his gentle, unhurried way was to be, transported to another place and timeWhat I learned from Imbert Orchard: slow down and savour the details.

Orchard tapped memories like some people tap maple trees. The stories flowed, and the range of experience was remarkable. He asked about places like Port Essington on the Skeena River, a canning community that no longer exists yet is no less a part of the story of British Columbia. He met Joseph Coyle, who moved from New Jersey to Alaska then to Aldermere, near Smithers, where he launched the areas first newspaper and described how his newsprint was carried into the valley by the legendary packer Cataline. (Coyle went on to invent the egg carton.)

In his collection, we hear first- and second-generation memories of a vast province being opened up by riverboats, railroads and cattle drives. Imbert listened to Annie York of Spuzzum tell him about her grandparents recollections of Simon Fraser as he descended the river to Lytton during his search for the mouth of what he thought was
the Columbia River. And he heard her sing the same Aboriginal songs that would have greeted Fraser. He drew out the stories of homesteaders on Read, Hornby and Theodosia Islands, tales of pioneers who followed Aboriginal grease trails and Alexander Mackenzies route into the Bella Coola Valley. Orchard teased out details that would otherwise have been lost forever, and in retelling their experiences, the pioneers
re-experienced these events like they happened yesterday.