Elder – Hilda Mason

ELDER

Hilda Mason

The bonds created through taking care of family are some of the deepest humans can develop. Day in and day out, Hilda (Edzerza) Mason cooked, cleaned and cared for her younger siblings as they grew up in remote Atlin, B.C. in the 1950s. Growing up with no electricity or running water, the whole family worked hard to ensure the family was well taken care of. Hilda always helped out with her family throughout her life because that is the Tahltan way.

Hilda Mason is a Tahltan Elder who is part of the Etzenlee Family and the Wolf Clan. Her parents are Grace and George Edzerza and her grandparents are Walter Creyke and Coonishma, and George and Mary Edzerza. She has two children, two grandsons, one great-grandson and currently lives in Victoria, B.C..

Born in Telegraph Creek, B.C. in 1940, Hilda spent three years there before the family moved first to Lower Post and then to Atlin, B.C. in the 1950s. She was the ninth oldest out of eighteen children who grew to adulthood and spent her teenage years helping her mom care for her siblings and cooking for her dad during hunting season when he was guide outfitting. She cooked food provided from the land like moose, caribou, and vegetables grown from the garden. She washed the entire families’ laundry with a gas-operated machine - eleven sets of sheets a week and everyone’s clothes. When it broke down, she quickly learned how to repair the engine. It was not all hard work though, as she loved riding horses and played baseball in the summer, skated in the winter, and sang folk songs with her family around the campfire.

Hilda moved to Vancouver in 1960 with her sister Louise to attend chef’s training. When she graduated, she moved to Teslin to work as a cook and used some of her wages to supplement her younger siblings’ education. She then worked a few different jobs in Northern B.C. before landing in Whitehorse where she raised her two children and was a chef for the Edgewater Hotel.

In Whitehorse, while her two children were young, Hilda decorated weddings cakes and made cakes for special events. She taught herself how to sew and moved from sewing clothes for the family to sewing wedding gowns, bridesmaids’ dresses, and Sourdough Rendezvous costumes. When Hilda's two children went to school full time, she returned to cooking part time at the Edgewater Hotel and then took on the flight kitchen where she was responsible for providing all the meals for up to six flights a day.

After her son finished school in 1986, Hilda and her husband, Jim Mason, moved south to Vancouver Island to operate Shoal Bay Lodge for the summer and in 1988 moved to Victoria where she owned and operated the Old English Pie Shop. Their days would start at three AM to prepare the pies for their commercial customers. She operated the shop for many years before starting a catering business where she would serve events of up to 1,000 people.

In 2010, Hilda started creating her own soaps, creams, and salves out of traditional Tahltan medicine like caribou weed, balsam bark, pine pitch, and spruce pitch. She utilizes the healing power of each traditional plant - using caribou weed to stop bleeding and heal bug bites and she has an amazing story of how pine pitch helped her heal her failing kidneys.

From Atlin to Victoria, Hilda has lived in areas from the remote wilderness of Atlin and Lower Post to the city centres of Vancouver, Whitehorse, and Victoria where cultures collide. She remembers first arriving in Vancouver for cooking school and had to learn how to operate a dial phone and use the bus system. With determination and her Tahltan work ethic, taught to her by her parents, she perfected the craft of cooking and provided for her family just as she did back in those cherished days when she grew up with her large family.