12 - CASUAL COUNTRY 2013
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Stampede
Grains of Squinas/Dorsey wisdom passed to next generation Sage Birchwater Casual Country 2013 Dave and Jean Dorsey grew up together in Anahim Lake. They were both born the same year, in 1935, and they both went to school together for one year when the first school opened in Anahim Lake in 1947. Dave’s mother, Mickey Dorsey, was the teacher. Dave says the school was set up by the Indian Department for First Nations children but non-aboriginal kids went too because there was no other school available. “There was me and my brothers Steve and Mike, and Stan Robison, who stayed in the old Hudson Bay store, had three kids.” Asked how they got along as kids, Jean says she and Dave fought like crazy when they were going to school. “He threw a snowball at me and I got mad and got a stick,” Jean says. Both sets of Dave and Jean’s parents were legendary. Jean’s father, Thomas Squinas, was a distinguished Dakelh (Southern Carrier) guide, trapper and wolf hunter. Her mother Celestine Dagg, was of the Tsilhqot’in Guichon clan. Together they raised 10 daughters and a son at Anahim Lake. Dave’s father, Lester Dorsey, came to the Chilcotin by horseback from Eastern Washington in the 1920s and became a well-known frontiersman. He established several ranches, broke horses, raised cattle and guided hunters. Dave’s mother, Mickey Tuck, grew up in Bella Coola after her boat-builder dad migrated there from Newfoundland. Mickey was a school teacher very much at home in the wilderness, and over the years she taught school in Bella Coola, Rose Lake, Anahim Lake, Williams Lake and Riske Creek. Dave was the old-
est of Lester and Mickey’s six boys and one daughter, and was home schooled by his mother and had her for his teacher most of his student life. Dave never really took to book learning in a big way, and was more like his dad that way, at home in the outdoors. He talks of a time when he was 12 or 13 years old, and went off with his younger brother Steve, and family friend, Ollie Nukalow, to hunt wild horses in Chezacut. “Us kids got a kick out of Ollie Nukalow,” Dave says. “I think he was sent to babysit us kids. We’d go some place and nobody knew how to cook, and Ollie would end up doing a lot of the cooking. We went to Chezacut for three weeks in early May, trying to snare some horses.” Dave says every place you went in those days you’d run into wild horses. “We were on Ollie Knoll’s range at the time. Every direction had horses in it.” They bought lots of new rope from the store, and used it to set snares on the trails. Then they got around behind the horses and tried to chase them into the snares. “We had lots of big ideas,”
Sage Birchwater photo
Today Jean and Dave Dorsey continue to make their home in Anahim Lake. Dave says. “We were going to get rich catching these wild horses, but we never did catch any. This was probably a lucky thing. I think one of them wild horses at the end of a rope would have done us more damage than we’d have done him.” Jean and Dave both remember during the Second World War when the Canadian Army did winter exercises in Anahim Lake in February and March of 1945. Known as the Polar
In her teens Jean Dorsey fed and took care of her team of horses. Her father, Thomas Squinas, was a noted guide and trapper.
Bear Expedition, the exercises were intended to provide ground support for Bella Coola in case of a Japanese invasion. They involved hundreds of men, snowmobiles like small tanks, two-man motor toboggans, different types of small tractors, and tracked transport vehicles known as Weasels. The battalion set out from Williams Lake on Feb. 15, 1945. Part of the entourage was a 128-horse pack-train
to provide transport for 75 mm mountain howitzers mounted on travois poles lashed together. Dave was attending school in the Bella Coola Valley when the army was doing the exercises in Anahim Lake. Part of the training involved Jean’s dad, Thomas Squinas, helping guide the troops through the Rainbow Mountains to Bella Coola, where they were loaded on a ship and transported to Vancouver.
“I can remember the army marched through and going by the Hagensborg School,” Dave says. Jean was in the middle of the excitement in Anahim Lake during the training exercises. A runway was ploughed on Anahim Lake and planes landed on the ice. “They had lots of airplanes, snow machines, lots of everything. They gave us rides in the Weasels,” Jean recalls. “We liked that. All four kids go in there and we loved that. The only one who could speak English was me. My grandmother said, don’t go with a white man, don’t trust him. Don’t go, going to kill you, army. I said, no he’s not going to kill us.” Jean, who was nine or 10 at the time, says the Weasel was a jeep with a track on it. “One guy buried the Weasel at Goose Point when he went through the rotten ice.” A few years later Dave went on three of the last beef drives leaving Anahim Lake for Williams Lake and Quesnel. He rode on two drives to Quesnel following the Blackwater River with Pan Phillips and his dad, Lester Dorsey.
Photos submitted
As a child, Dave Dorsey (second from the right) enjoyed swimming with his friends and brother Steve (far left) at Batnuni.
He preferred the Blackwater route because you just followed the trail down the south side of the river. Going to Williams Lake was another matter. Dave was 19 years old in 1954 when he made his last beef drive to Williams Lake with Tsilhqot’in cowboy, Felix Bob. Lester had gone pulp logging in Bella Coola and Dave had never been on this route before. “Felix Bob knew where he was going but she was some rough country.” Dave says they managed to push 132 head of cattle belonging to his dad, Lewis Holtry and Johnny Weldon through the jack pine into some open country along the Chilanko River east of Towdystan. Then the trouble started. It turned dark and there were no fences or corrals to hold the cattle overnight. The animals bedded down OK, then in the middle of the night some of the cattle got up and started heading back home along the trail. Dave attributes it to Johnny Weldon’s dairy stock. “Milk stock are a bad one. You can’t drive them. They just jump up and away they are gone.” To compound things further, Dave was on one leg. “I had just had my leg taken out of a cast and I was hopping around.” Dave says if he had known there were milk animals in the herd, he would have just let them go home. “Milk stock don’t rest. They lay down for a little while and chew their cud, then all of a sudden they’ll start walking. They walk like a horse. They’re different than beef.” They only lost five animals that escaped and went home. The rest finished the drive to Williams Lake. They went across country through Ollie Knoll’s and Bill Mulvahill’s places, then through the Ross Ranch. See LONG, Page 13