My First Interview
Everyone has to start somewhere, to state the obvious.
In my case it was in the lowly capacity of copyboy with The Daily Colonist before its merger with the Victoria Daily Times—two years of my doing everything and anything but writing, at least on company time.
Any writing I did was on my own dime.
But knowing and getting along well with editor John Shaw no doubt helped me make my first freelance sale to the paper’s Sunday edition, The Islander. (About a shipwreck, in Victoria’s Inner Harbour, of all places, and the first of 100s on that particular subject.)
This led to assignments—interviewing people suggested to Shaw and to the city desk but who weren’t considered newsworthy enough to justify a reporter’s time.
Many 1960s Victorians were retired and a treasure trove of great stories for those willing to seek them out and to listen. —www.flickr.com
Victoria was a retirement Mecca in those days and many seniors could tell of incredible experiences and adventures, including service in both world wars—if only they had a way to share their stories. Some actually tried writing their memoirs, both longhand and, if blessed with a younger and skilled family member, by typewriter.
But they’d spent their working lives as timber cruisers, loggers, sea captains, army officers...they weren’t professional writers.
Neither was I but, even though a teen, I was better at it than they were. That’s what gave John Shaw and the city desk the idea of passing the buck to me, to follow up as I pleased. Mostly, it got them off the hook.
Initially, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea. I was still wet behind the ears, very shy, and not quite sure how to proceed. The idea of having to contact old people, strangers, some of whom had hoped to be paid for having their stories published in the Islander, was daunting.
(I should point out that I didn’t—still don’t—like introducing myself to strangers over the phone. What might seem natural to many was almost anathema to me then, something I avoid even now. Thank God for email!)
Nevertheless, came the day that I girded my young loins and made my first contact with an elderly gentleman named Charles Taylor.
He’d submitted a handwritten manuscript to the Islander. On half-size paper you’d use to write a letter, he’d penned a story about the colourful pioneers of the Albernis of a century and more ago. That’s where he’d been born grown up, married, worked and spent almost all of his life until retiring to a singles-only subsidized housing complex in Victoria.
Which is where I made the discovery that ‘old age’ really is a state of mind.
Kiwanis Village/Villa was a seniors’ centre divided between couples and singles. As a widower, Mr. Taylor lived in a dormitory-style, ground-level building containing tiny suites with just enough room for a single bed, dresser, chair and small table; for our Sunday afternoon interview he sat on his bed, I on the chair.
Down the hall was a large dining/common room which I didn’t see but I sure could hear. First came the tinkling of a piano then loud voices then a rhythmic thumping. The concrete floor beneath my feet as I sat in Mr. Taylor’s suite began to throb—they were dancing and the whole place was shaking.
I could hardly believe it, These were old people, some of them even older than my grandparents, and they were having a ball!
That’s when I learned that aging wasn’t something to dread, that one can truly be as young as one feels. A valuable life’s lesson that I owe to my visit with the late Charles Taylor, bless him.
He was hard of hearing but his mind was as sharp as a razor and he proved to a joy to listen to—and learn. Thanks to him, Alberni history is the richer; with little help from me, he recorded several otherwise unknown events and characters for the Colonist and posterity.
Such as this fascinating tale of the time when ‘Bears were a bother on Horne Lake Trail.’
* * * * *
Today, shorter routes and regular hours have made the lot of the mail carrier a happier one. It was not always so.
One early route in particular remains fresh in the memory of Charles Taylor, a resident of Kiwanis Villa, 3035 Cook Street. The last of the original Alberni pioneers, he’d been a citizen of that region since 1884, when his family immigrated from Edinburgh, Scotland. Now 85 years old, he has spent the last four years in Victoria.
The C. Taylor homestead, 1896. —BC Archives
“When Alberni's first post office was established in 1885, my mother was appointed postmistress and a young half-breed named Wattie Watts was named male carrier. The Alberni mail bag came up by boat from Nanaimo and was landed at Qualicum, where Wattie took charge of it. The only land route the Alberni Valley had to the east coast of Vancouver Island and civilization was the Horne Lake trail.
This was an old Indian [sic] route that crossed the mountains at Horne Lake and terminated at Qualicum Bay. An Indian called Qualicum Tom had a sort of roadhouse, or at least an overnight shelter, near the end of this trail, as it was rather frequently used.
A great many of the early settlers came over this trail, packing what outfit they had. Also a few of the very first women and children came into the area by this route. It was a hard trip, especially in winter, when the snow was steep on the summit.
“While delivering the mail, Wattie sometimes used a pony but more often travelled on foot. One day he was climbing this hill, walking behind his pony, when they suddenly came upon a bear, standing in the middle of the trail. The horse left the path and started down the mountainside, dropping the mail bag which had been strapped to the saddle.
Wattie climbed down after the pony and succeeded in catching it, but it took him a long time to find the mail bag which had fallen into a thicket.”
When Mr. Taylor's parents moved to McCoy lake, the post office was transferred to Frank McQuillan’s store, situated across the Somass River, “but for a short time an old man had charge of it. He moved everything into his shack and the mail was handled in a very slip-shod manner.
“One time, a rancher living near him was expecting an important letter that hadn't arrived.
“He made frequent visits to the post office, demanding the reason for the delay. Well, the old man finally became tired of this and suggested that if the rancher would help him lift some of the floorboards they were very likely to find the letter had slipped down through a crack!
“On another occasion, a man arrived just after dark with some letters to post, two of which had to be registered and have money orders enclosed. At the shack that served as post office he found that the old man's lamp was dry and that there was no spare coal oil.
“However, the old man's improvisation saved the situation. He managed to find some pieces of kindling, and by tying them together he made a torch which he held over his head with one hand and with a pen in his other managed to fill out the necessary forms!”
A second post office was later established at McCoy Lake to serve the Sproat Lake district, Mr. Taylor's mother once more acting as postmistress.
“It became my duty to carry the mail bag from one post office to the other. My greatest problem was crossing the Somass River, as there was no bridge at that time.
“If I asked an Indian to take me over he invariably wanted 25 cents. Sometimes, in desperation, I took a canoe without asking, but upon my return I usually found the owner waiting at the landing to greet me and demand 50 cents. As 50 cents was all I received for each trip with the mail bag, my profit was gone for the day.”
Sometimes, borrowing a canoe without permission cost Mr. Taylor his day’s pay. —BC Archives
Mr. Taylor paused as another incident came back to him from more than 70 years in the past: " I remember one other story concerning the Horne Lake Trail: a man named Cameron took up a bush ranch in Alberni. He spent the winter on it and built a small shack. Being a logger, he left in the spring to take up a summer job farther up the east coast, probably Rock Bay.
When this work was over in the fall, Cameron returned to Nanaimo but ‘fell by the wayside,’ and went on a spree.
While still under the influence, but with the notions of the farm he expected to have someday, he went to a store and bought a complete outfit of dairy utensils—milk pans, pails, a turn, a cooler, and so on." He started up on the Comox steamer and was landed at Qualicum, still very drunk.
“When he sobered, he found that he was on the beach at the end of Horne Lake trail, surrounded by his dairy outfit. He could do nothing with it, of course, but managed to make a deal with some Indians. They gave him a dollar or two for the outfit. The pants and pails they they could use and the churn was converted into a keg, probably for making home brew.”
About 1887, the wagon road was completed from Nanaimo to Port Alberni and a stagecoach service was established to convey the mail and passengers.
The Horne Lake trail was little used after that and was completely obliterated when logging operations started. But it was a useful route in its day and was about the only link Alberni had with the outside world, as there was no regular steamboat service then."
* * * * *
This is the sort of low-key, firsthand history you rarely find in a book, never in the official records. The sort of history that resonates with us today because it’s so down-to-earth, believable and offers insight into everyday life on the Canadian, in this case Vancouver Island, frontier.
