A wonderful feeling comes over you, when you look out the window, and see the road covered in snow, a little voice inside of you shouts, “Yeah! It’s a Snow Day”  It is as though some great god or saint gave you a free pass, because there is nothing else you can do, except curl up with a woodstove pumping out waves of heat, the inane TV, loud music or a good book (my choice). Perhaps your choice of pastimes is a hobby, but we all know this is one of those treasured days, when the normal routine must come to a halt, for safety reasons. As the day winds down the little pleasures, we have given ourselves, hang in the suspended minutes, if only this could be every day. How do you get to that state of living, put the rush of jobs, family and friends behind us?

For me, moving to the Cariboo was a choice, but I still wasn’t prepared for it. Planning for the eventual move started six years before the fateful day in 2011. We purchased a small house in the 100 Mile House area for our retirement. Retirement wasn’t supposed to happen for another ten years. Each day there was a ‘snow day’, I felt guilty. Fourteen months later I think the guilt is nearly gone. Okay, I’ve massaged the guilt by going back to school, so in a sense, I am working. I tell my friends that I’m staving off dementia. In truth I’m building a new career so when the real snow days come I can enjoy them.

The value in life is not defined by what you do, but how you enjoy each passing day. Do the hours stretch before you, beckoning you to learn something new?  Do you have more snow days than routine days where you can explore new facets of life? I like to think that my life is full of snow days, but then the cats need to be fed, the floor needs washing, there is a school assignment do and I can feel the stress building in my muscles. Finding a way to slow the routine down as though it was snowing and I had nothing better to do than curl up with a book. With less stress we are all able to accomplish more.

Think back to your last day when you could do nothing, but stay at home, I bet you accomplished many things.

When my time is not dedicated to other endeavors, I like to quilt. What does this have to do with research on the Cariboo? Hang on for a minute, I have to back up. A number of years ago, a good quilting friend, presented our quilting guild with a lesson on how to choose colour, based on the landscape. Late last month, when one of those other endeavors took hold, photography, I grabbed my camera and wandered off early on a sunny Monday morning to capture the colours of fall. The pictures sat in the camera for a couple of weeks until my husband started to play with a few of the pictures of the area around Green Lake just Northeast of 70 Mile house.

For the first time I saw how the oranges, browns and wheat colours could be the bases of a quilt. A landscape, I feel so connected to through my families' movements, spoke to me in a very different way. So the search is on for those colours and finding a way to design a Cariboo Quilt. The hunt for a piece of an old Hudson Bay Co. brigade trail is on. I want to combine a piece of the trail with the colours from the fall. 

William Manson - At long last

A little voice sneaked out, “Look at the book on the counter”. Later, I thought to myself. Second trip through the old used bookstore on Victoria St. in Kamloops, past the counter again, nope not interested I said to the book. Husband hands me a book to purchase, the book on the counter says, “Last chance, just one peek inside won’t hurt.” Dam, I picked up the book, “Exploring Our Roots: North Thompson Valley – McLure to Little Fort 1763-1959,” by Barriere & District Heritage Society, 2004. Turning to the index, I looked up Manson. There in the index was Manson, William, page 475. Not only did it contain four and half columns on William Manson, but letters written to his son Donald. For over three decades, recently with my brother’s assistance, we struggled to find any mention of William Manson. At long last, here was the man at Louis Creek.

Fort Vancouver

Part III of the Research Trip

Saturday dawned wet and miserable.  I just wasn’t meant to visit Fort Vancouver in comfort, but  I did manage to comfort myself with a trip to Fabric Depot, to indulge in my other passion, quilting.  Today I dream of the acre of material and sewing notions, thinking of ways on how to get back to Fabric Depot,  let’s not forget Powell Books either.   This trip though was not about shopping it was about research.

My first stop was to the gift store, in hopes that the rain would let up. Realizing that it was going to rain all day, I pulled the hood of my rain jacket up over my head and started for the car and drove down to the parking lot near the fort.

I stood before the fort, with images of brigades, canoes and horses moving through my mind.  It was here that everything I had been reading finally came together, for this is where Peter Skene Ogden, Dr. McLoughlin, Etienne Lucier and Donald Manson had all resided before starting out or finishing a long brigade.   On the outside the fort wall was a large vegetable garden. Somehow I don’t think there were cement walkways back in the 1840s, but I think those working the garden at the time would have appreciated the cement.  I really like the poles they are using for the beans rather than stringing them out in a line.  The perfume of the pink roses had me standing under the arbor with a cloud of the aroma swirling around my head, that is, until the sneezing started.  With my camera snuggle under the rain jacket I paid a short visit to the small interpreters’ hut and found a guide, I had just entered through the back gate, but where was the front gate?  I  would have to wait to discover that it was directly across from the interpreter’s hut.  I was going clockwise around the fort and my first stop was the kitchen and where the voyageurs and non-officers of the HBC would have eaten.  The kitchen is located just behind the big house where the Chief Factor lived and where there are two smaller dining rooms.

Unfortunately, the main dining room was behind a door with a window in it and the only shot I could get was through the window. So you will see me in taking the picture.  This is where McLoughlin would have entertained the senior officers of the HBC with vegetables from the garden, game hunted in the area or perhaps salmon with accruements brought overland by one of the brigades.  It would be here that stories of the exploits on the trail would be retold, prices of furs discussed, politics eagerly debated with large qualities of spirits. 

  The following picture is of the big house taken from near the front gate.

The dining room is at the back of the house, with a smaller dining room on the right side of the main entrance and on the left was a large living area.

In the background of the following picture, you will see two grey buildings, the farthest on is the infirmary, while the next one is where the archaeologies have a large lab for detailing and cataloguing their finds.

I’m standing at the base of the bastion, which looks northwest. From here HBC staff would have seen the brigades arriving from the north and Fort Langley.  I understand from several people at Fort Nisqually that the I5 freeway follows the old original brigade trail from Fort Langley.

The layout of the wood shop is very similar to the one at Fort Langley.  The picture below is of the counting house, which only at Fort Vancouver.  In most cases, there was an area either in the big house (Fort Langley) or in the store (Fort St. James) for a clerk to record transactions.

The day that I visited the Fort (June 2011) there was an enactment of the brigade days (when the first brigades arrive after winter) going on by the local Fort Vancouver. Participating in this enactment were children from the Dame School and the Young Engage.  Even in the rain, the children were having a great day with crafts and games.

It was a wonderful trip to Oregon and now my heart longs to go back and once again trace the steps of my ancestors.  Somehow seeing the place for myself makes my ancestors more real, there isn’t a day go by that I don’t think of what life must have been like for these individuals.  I often wonder if life was better then than it is now.  I drove all the way home to Mission, BC in nonstop rain and wondered what the trip on horseback for two weeks would have been like.