My best Christmas ever happened in the village of Harrison Hot Springs in the year 1947. We had moved there from Portage la Prairie in the fall of 1946 and it was the first Christmas in our new home.
Harrison was a tourist destination in the summer and a logging town in the rest of the year. The logging activity was mainly on the west side of the lake and Dad had a job as a book keeper and first aid man at a little gypo logging company at Bear creek which was about ten miles up the lake.
In those days logging was a dangerous trade with upwards of one hundred deaths recorded each year in the woods of British Columbia. There was no EI or welfare in those days so it was work or starve to death. There was also no medical insurance and any accident had to be paid out of the injured man’s pocket.
Access to the logging camps was by boat and as they had just started at Bear creek the bunk house and cook house were on rafts tethered to the shore. The logs were bucked and trimmed and then skidded down to the lake and arranged into booms to be picked by tug boats and taken to the mills at Harrison Mills to be processed into lumber.
Accidents were frequent and in those days the nearest hospital was in Chilliwack about forty miles away. In those days there was no bridge over the Fraser and traffic was by ferry which only ran during the day. Anyone who was injured and needed treatment had to be transported by boat to Harrison and then by ambulance to Rosedale and then catch the ferry to Chiliwack hospital. The companies usually paid the cost of transporting the injured person to hospital but after that you were on your own.
Needless to say most of the seriously injured died in transit. Compensation was still a few years in the future so if you were injured and couldn’t work it was up to your family to care for you .
We had come out from the prairies because one of the postings my Dad had during the war was to Harrison Hot Springs where they were using the major hotel as an advanced burn center and convalescent hospital for bomber crews and tank crews who had suffered horrendous burn wounds in action.
Dad had been badly injured in a jeep accident in May of 1945 and it had taken him two years to get back to health. Dad really loved Harrison and had built a house there which we moved into in 1947. My Mom was less enthusiastic but that is another story.
This was our first Christmas after the war when the economy was booming and there were products on the shelves of stores that we hadn’t seen since the beginning of WW2. Dad and Mom went over board and we were almost thigh deep in Christmas presents under the tree.
The logging camps were beginning to close for the holiday season when news came of a horrendous accident at one of the small gypo logging companies of the east side of the lake. Three men were killed when a cable snapped dropping a log that was being bucked killing the choker man, the log bucker and the boss.
Two of the men killed were married and had kids about the same age as me and my brother Bob and little sister Charlotte. When the news finally was confirmed and the bodies of the men were brought to the village then taken to Chiliwack for autopsy. It was a somber group of loggers and townspeople that gathered in the pub at the largest hotel in town.
My Dad was among them when someone produced a wash tub and put the names of the dead men on crudely scrawled signs and then took the tub to each table and the loggers threw handfuls of money into the wash tub. The guys had just been paid out for three months work and they filled the tub with bills. The money was totaled up divided into three and given to the bereaved families.
We kids knew what had happened which was explained to us by our teachers and the absence of our playmates. We all felt very bad but were not sure how we could help.
At any rate we were out of school for the Christmas holidays and as was our family custom we had our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. We were not, however, allowed to open our presents.
My Dad and Mom were busy after the meal putting a hamper together and then had each of us, little Charlotte included, pick out one of our presents to go into the hamper. Then Dad announced that myself and my brother were to load up our new sled and take the hamper and the presents to one of the bereaved families who were living on a houseboat just up from the burned out mill on the east side of the village.
We were having a very white Christmas as my bother and I trudged off into the storm. It was with high excitement when we arrived at the gang plank and went towards their front door. We had to be careful to not rock the houseboat as we snuck up to the door. Then we carefully placed the hamper and the presents on the door step and brother Bob stealthily took the sled up the gangplank and when he was clear I knocked loudly on the door and ran like hell up the gangplank. The boy who was my age answered the door and yelled after us that they had a Christmas dinner and then after a slight pause he shouted “Thank you!”
My bother and I ran laughing like idiots back to our own Christmas and frankly I have never ever felt better about any other Christmas. The trick is that in giving we always receive the best gift of all.
Merry Christmas to all!
J.