December 19, 2008
The Columbia Valley Pioneer • 9
Continued from Page 8 Hubert also had a contract to cut trees for Kirk’s Christmas Trees, a company that grew and distributed Christmas trees near Radium. In 1954, Eleanor also took at job at Kirk’s Christmas Trees, where she was kept busy tagging the trees that the contractors, including her husband Hubert, brought into the yard. For 35 years, she tagged Christmas trees for Kirk’s, sometimes coming home to do the same thing for Hubert when he was cutting trees in the fall. When David graduated from high school, he joined his mother at Kirk’s. “It was supposed to be a part-time job, but I just kept coming back,” he laughed. In 1969, David met Sue Cavanagh at Kinsmen Beach in Invermere. They were married March 14th, 1970 and 10 months later Sue gave birth to their eldest son Jason, now aged 38. He lives in Cranbrook with his wife Jodi and their two children: Kenda, 4, and Kellan, 2. David still remembers taking his son Jason out to cut Christmas trees for the first time with his own father in the early 1970s, a memory that he said is etched in his mind forever. “I can remember Dad and him walking down the road – my son Jason, he was only three or four – pulling a Christmas tree behind them.” David and Sue went on to raise three other children: Julie, who lives in Kelowna with her husband Chad Schraeder and their two daughters, Ava, 4, and Naomi, 3; Lynn-Ann, who lives in Wilmer with her husband Paul Digney and their two sons Carter, 3, and Ryan, 16 months; and Nathan, who lives in Calgary with his girlfriend Michela Bietz. Each year the family comes together to cut trees, making some lasting family memories. “My oldest boy Jason, he always used to like ropes,” David said. “One time when he was about four years old, my wife Sue was yarding trees and he tied the truck to another tree.” Sue, who was driving, couldn’t understand why the truck wouldn’t move. “She couldn’t go anywhere, and here he had tied the truck to a tree,” David laughed. David’s daughter Lynn-Ann remembers the thrill of riding on top of the trees as a child when they were being hauled to the yard. “I remember the smell of fresh air and pine needles,” she said. Throughout the years, their children grew fond of the family affair that came along with cutting trees. “It’s about being together and doing something that has been passed down,” said Lynn-Ann. David was employed as a supervisor at Kirk’s Christmas Trees until they closed their Radium office in 1994. During the 60 years they were open, contractors cut more than 200,000 trees per year for Kirk’s, and sent them as far as Mexico. David now works for Canadian Forest Products in Radium Hot Springs, but – just like his grandfather – he still makes time to continue his family’s legacy. This season, David took his grandson Carter, aged three, to cut trees for the first time. Carter represents the fifth generation of the Statham family to head out to the woods to cut Christmas trees. Together the family cut 4,000 Christmas trees this year. Together they give thousands of families the special memories that go along with picking up and decorating a fresh Christmas tree. “It makes me real happy,” he said.
Above: Eleanor Statham with her sons David, left (shown on opposite page), and Wayne. Left: Jason, Julie, LynnAnn and baby Nathan Statham, children of David and Sue Statham, celebrate Christmas together as children, under one of their father’s homegrown Christmas trees.