Summer Work in the Kootenays

Summer Work in the Kootenays

A couple of years later—I had the best summer job of any kids in high school—we were

surveying the highway from Kootenay Bay into Crawford Bay, a small rural community. We

spent the whole summer surveying this winding road. It was dangerous work at times. In those

days we used to place the instrument in the middle of the road. People would be rushing to catch

the ferry, so they'd speed around the corners. On occasion, we had to grab the equipment and get

out of the way lest we get run down.

Mr. Affleck was also hired by the Department of Mines of British Columbia to survey out and

get the road constructed from Shutty Bench, adjacent to Kaslo, to the Lardeau on the west shore

of Kootenay Lake, a road that was about twenty kilometres long. Mr. Affleck would do a

reconnaissance, tying pieces of cloth or something to trees, and I would follow along with the

original survey.

At that time in the area, we travelled on the sternwheeler Nasookin, which was a bit bigger than

the Moyie sternwheeler or paddle-wheeler. So, we would go from a little bit of a town at the

head of the West Arm of Kootenay Lake called Procter. We would load all our gear and supplies

onto that stern wheeler there, and then we would be transported twenty or thirty kilometres up

the lake to what was called Johnson's Landing, where our home base was for the summer. Every

day we would go to work on the road across the lake. We were surveying the whole road.

I still have a photograph of me from that time in the Kootenays. It's kind of a good picture of me

as a teenager, standing nonchalantly with my foot on a culvert. I had just finished grade twelve

and was feeling pretty good about my life.

Anyway, Mr. Affleck was the engineer in charge of building the road. He had a big budget,

several million dollars in his bank account supplied to him by the government. It was his job to

get this road built, but he had trouble with one of the four crews that were building the road.

The fellow in charge of this crew would not follow Mr. Affleck’s orders and was not doing a

proper job. The fellow was just a small equipment operator; he had his two sons working on the

road, along with maybe one or two other guys. This fellow had backup from the provincial

government.

Mr. Affleck decided that if he didn't have complete authority, he would not have anything to do

with building the road. So, he quit, even though the project was worth a lot of money to him. He

said he wouldn't carry out and be responsible for a job that was not being done his way.

The road eventually got built by another engineer from Kimberly, named Stan Schuler. But work

for me didn’t stop. I worked for Mr. Affleck that summer on different jobs and subdivisions

around the Sheep Creek area, which is south of Nelson and east of Salmo.