Robert Budd - Echoes of British Columbia: Voices from the Frontier

ECHOES OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Robert Budd

foreword by sheryl m ac kay

---

voices

from the

frontier

Copyright 2014 by Robert Budd

Foreword 2014 by Sheryl MacKay

14 15 16 17 18 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

PO Box 219

Madeira Park BC Canada V0N 2H0

www.harbourpublishing.com

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-1-55017-678-0 (paper)

ISBN 978-1-55017-630-3 (ebook)

Editing by Lucy Kenward

Cover design by Shed Simas

Cover photographs courtesy of Marian Hargrove (top left); BC Archives i-33187/Frank Cyril Swannell (top right); BC Archives a-02022 (bottom left); and Glenbow Archives na-3439-3 (bottom right)

All photos courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives except where noted

Audio compilation edited and produced by Robert Budd

Click here to download all audio files

Printed and bound in China

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

For Jessy, Levi, Emma and Mylie

and

Imbert and Ian, without whom these stories would be lost to time

Authors Note

Authors Note

Echoes of British Columbia, the book and audio recordings, are intended to immerse you in the history of British Columbia: read the introduction to each story, listen to the speakers narrate their own experiences while you follow along in the text and look at the photos and the map. Discover a sense of place and meet the personalities who shaped the province, including interviewer Imbert Orchard, who occasionally speaks with and prompts his interviewees. Through these audio recordings, Orchard has provided a window into the remembered past, allowing British Columbians to speak for themselves.

I am hopeful that this book will provide a unique chance to experience the history of the province complete with a sense of the atmosphere of the times. Furthermore, I hope that these samples from Orchards collection will encourage you to look for details about the aspects of BCs history that appeal to you, or look into details about your family history amid the material at the BC Archives or your local archive.

The architect of all interviews in this book: between 1959 and 1966, oral historian Imbert Orchard and sound technician Ian Stephen travelled across the province collecting nearly a thousand interviews with British Columbias old-timers. Photo courtesy of Nick Orchard

Map

Foreword

Its in the Voice

sheryl m ac kay

Host / Producer of North by Northwest, CBC Radio BC

As soon as I opened my copy of Voices of British Columbia, I was hooked by hearing the stories of the provinces pioneers written in the words of the people who had lived them. I arranged, via email, for author Robert Budd, or Lucky as hes known to friends, to come in for an interview about the book and the wonderful source material of the Orchard Collection at the BC Archives.

I am not sure who I was expecting to show up at the studio, but I do know that Lucky was a bit of a surprise. He looked younger than I imagined, and I soon realized he harbours the enthusiasm of about seven people! We talked about the book, he told some great stories, we played some audio from the collection, and by the end of the interview I knew I wanted him to be a regular part of North by Northwest. Happily, he thought that was a great idea too. But then youd be hard-pressed to present Lucky with a project he wouldnt take on whole-heartedly.

That was four years ago, and since then Lucky has presented the stories of dozens of British Columbians in their own voices. Through his curatorial work with the Orchard Collection, he has connected people listening to the radio today with voices that link us to events and people of this place reaching back 150 years or more. I am so grateful that Lucky Budd is carrying on the work that Imbert Orchard and Ian Stephen started when they travelled this province fifty years ago.

There is something magical about listening to these voices with accents and pacing that we dont often hear on the radio. These folks are true storytellers, and I love how the little details in their stories really bring the history of BC to life: Minnie Caldwell discovering the benefits of being one of five girls in a frontier town filled with hundreds of men, Forin Campbell learning the hard way about how to drink whiskey when its thirty below and Bob Gamman sleeping on the woodstove in order to survive his first winter as a greenhorn from England.

After one of Luckys segments has played on North by Northwest, I often hear from listeners who have been touched by the stories in some way and want to add to them from their own family experiences, and sometimes I hear from descendants of the original speakers themselves.

How wonderful to open the pages of Echoes of British Columbia and find some of my favourite stories from the radio and learn more about these characters. I am sure you will enjoy meeting them too, as you take this special guided journey back through some very interesting pages of BC history.

Introduction

Imbert Orchards Time Machine

Sound recordings are time machines, and oral histories in particular give us a personal connection to events and places often far removed from our own experience. Its this ability to learn about the past through the vivid stories of people who were there that has long drawn me to the study of history, and of British Columbias oral history in particular.

In 2000, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was on a quest to have all of its audiotapes that were scattered across the various provincial archives digitized and catalogued. It was because of this initiative that I began working as an audio preservationist at the British Columbia Archives later that summer. Among the CBC material there are several important sound recordings, but the crown jewel, as far as I was concerned, was the Orchard Collection.