Pinchi Lake

Pinchi Lake

by Rosemary Rains-Crawford

I marked my eighth birthday by our arrival in Prince George, British Columbia after my family’s tortuous trip over bad roads in an old truck packed with all our belongings.  My father’s dream of nirvana had begun with a rather rocky journey, but we were officially “landed immigrants”.  During the next eight months, we moved from shack to shack, often living in the truck for days at a time.  Finally, we settled into a cabin on Pinchi Lake, at the end of the road out of Fort St. James, about 60 miles from the nearest town.

A fair sized town sat on the lake fairly close to our cabin, but it had been abandoned when the mercury mine closed.  After WW II ended and the demand for mercury slowed, the government closed the mine and the town buildings had been gradually giving way as nature reclaimed the area. 

It was like a treasure hunt for my sister and me as we prowled around Pinchi town whenever we got the chance.  Over 1000 people, housed there by the Canadian government during the war had left the detritus of their lives littering the houses and streets.  Molly, who was 10, and I took up the daily treasure hunt through the town as soon as we finished our schoolwork.  Since there were no schools within many miles of Pinchi Lake, we took correspondence courses provided by the British Columbian government.  We worked mostly on our own, quickly reading the instructions and doing the lessons while Mama tended the smaller children, cooked, cleaned and tried to make a home of our leaky cabin.  We did our lessons and helped with housework, but Mama happily released us to explore when she caught a quick nap in the afternoon.

We all longed for a boat to explore the lake.  As we fished from the shore, we could only imagine how much bigger fish we could catch if we could get out on the lake.  We could barely see the other side, and it stretch out as far as we could see to both the north and south of where our cabin sat on the east side of the lake.  An old Indian man came by periodically in his dugout canoe that fascinated us.  He had hollowed out a whole cottonwood tree then carved a prow and burned out the center until it formed a canoe.  The first time he came by, it was a big event for us as we rarely saw anyone outside the family.  We watched anxiously as he made his way up the hill from where he beached the canoe next to our fishing area. 

“Do you want to buy a whitefish?” He asked Mama, holding up two beautiful big fish.  Mama really wanted the fish, but sadly had to say, “I don’t have any money at all to buy a fish”.  

“Will you give me a cup of flour for the fish?”  She didn’t have any flour to spare, but she really could use the fish.  “Okay” she finally said, and went inside to get the flour while he waited patiently and we peeked at him from behind the door.

“Will you trade another fish for a cup of sugar?”  He asked as he gave her one of the fish.

“I guess so.”  Sugar was in scarce supply, but a fish was more useful than the sugar so she gave him a cup of sugar.

“What do you want for another cup of sugar?”  

“I really can’t spare any more sugar.”

“How about jam or jelly or anything like that?” 

She had to send him away with just one cup of sugar and one cup of flour.  Mrs. Bjornstad, the owner of the resort on the lake and the only other resident on the 90-mile lake told Mama later that the Indian was looking for ingredients to make wine.

In scavenging around the town with Daddy, we came across a pile of ship-lap lumber. It had laps on each side where about a half-inch groove from one side of the board fit into the half-inch slot on the other side. Finally, our dream of a boat could come true.  Daddy put us to work hauling the boards one at a time to the cabin.  We never doubted that Daddy could build a boat.  We thought he could do anything, so we became his willing accomplices in both the lumber theft and the boat-building project.   He had even brought some caulking rope and a gallon of tar to Canada with his mill stuff.  He sat down and drew up a plan for a boat.  With his all girl crew, he built a 16’ long and 5’ wide boat to go with one of the few possessions he had brought from the States - a five-horse power outboard motor. 

For the next 3 weeks, we forgot our school lessons and worked on the boat.  Every board had to be caulked to the next one so that it wouldn’t leak. We painted tar over each seam after we finished caulking.  When we found a gallon of bright blue paint in one of the houses we knew it was destined for our boat.  We called the boat “Old Glory”.

When we finished the boat,  we spent every evening on the lake.  When Daddy got home from his job scouting lumber we had dinner prepared and in a basket.  We all climbed into Old Glory and went out fishing. The Canadian summer evenings lasted until nearly midnight.  When the sun started to set it lit up the entire sky and we enjoyed the majestic beauty of the Canadian sunset over the lake for most of our fishing trip.

The five-horse motor gave us a long range and allowed us to explore many miles of the nooks and crannies and small streams on the huge lake.  One day Mr. Bjornstad stopped by. 

“We have a fisherman missing and need to go up lake to look for him”  “Do you think I could exchange motors with you for a couple of days?” he asked.  Motors were extremely rare on that lake in those days and the resort only had three two-horse motors for their clients.

“I can probably spare my five horse for a couple of days,” Daddy said reluctantly, as he really did want to help find the fisherman.  Even though prospects of finding him alive were pretty slim, they needed to make their best effort to find him quickly. 

The next day Mama stayed home with the two babies as the sky to the north had darkened.  Even though we still had sun, the clouds looked threatening. 

“We won’t stay out too long,” Daddy promised as he and Molly, and my five-year old sister, Bonny, and I headed out fishing.

We fished quietly, with the boat rocking gently and all of us absorbed in our thoughts.  We only noticed the weather change when we suddenly got cold.  A fierce wind seemed to come out of nowhere to hit us hard.  We could no longer see our side of the lake as white-capped waves battered us and the gray sky descended all the way to the water line.  Daddy had already turned the boat toward home, but we were many miles away and we could barely move against the wind.  The small motor stuttered as the propeller bounced in and out of the water as the boat lifted with the waves. Still several hundred yards out from the shore, the motor quit entirely. Fortunately, we had reached the long shallow area on our side of the lake.  Daddy jumped from the boat, initially holding on and paddling as hard as he could.  He finally reached a spot where he could touch the bottom, and soon, Molly and I got out and helped push to shore, leaving Bonny in the boat.  We reached shore just when we thought we couldn’t go another step.

Since the lost fisherman was presumed drowned, we worried each time we went out in the boat that we would find his body.  The resort people found the body the next week, which relieved that fear, but the water that we drank from the lake and that we swam in remained a bit suspect for the rest of the time we lived on Pinchi Lake.