There was a creek behind our house. I have no idea if it had a formal name. We called it the creek. It was up the mountain a ways. Maybe a quarter mile from our house. The water ran west in the general direction of the Salmon River, which emptied into the Shuswap Lake. At one time, before we hooked into the municipal water system, we had our water piped down from the creek. In the winter we had to shut it off to keep the pipes from freezing. My father used to bring large milk cans full of water, and we used the outhouse. At twenty degrees below zero Fahrenheit, thankfully not often, the outhouse was not fun. You held it as long as possible. One aspect of the creek I never thought about when I was a kid was that if anybody stood on the bank downstream from the outflow pipe to our house and peed into the water - and I would have never done such a thing - their pee would have flowed down the creek into the Salmon River and then into the lake. It would have then slowly drifted past Salmon Arm, past Canoe, past Sicamous, through the Cinnemousun Narrows, past the Adams River, past Copper Island, past Scotch Creek and into the Little River. A long way, but its journey would have just started.
The Little River is about 3.5 kilometers in length and empties into the Little Shuswap Lake, which is the headwaters of the South Thompson River. Water picks up speed in the Little River and flows merrily along into the Little Shuswap, passes by the small town of Chase and enters the waters of the South Thompson and is carried serenely along to the growing city of Kamloops. At Kamloops further dilution occurs as the South and North Thompson Rivers merge and become the Thompson.
It is at Kamloops, at the confluence of the South and North Thompson Rivers, where my story ends. However it was not the end of the water flow. The Thompson kept flowing to Lytton where it merged into the mighty Fraser River and thence flowed to the Pacific Ocean, and perhaps curled around the fabulous beaches at Vancouver's English Bay. Where it would have gone from there doesn't matter. Our expedition did not lead us to the ocean.
Calling it an expedition is a stretch. As journeys go it wasn't that long, a week at the most, and there was no underlying purpose other than fun. We weren't there to map the extensive shoreline or calculate how all that water could flow through what is probably the smallest river on the continent. We had no intention whatever to study the Shuswap watershed or write a scholarly journal. We were just getting out of school for the summer. Writing a treatise on anything was a non-starter. It was not contemplated. No, there was no higher educational or scientific purpose. We were simply setting sail on the lake so to speak, although our flotilla was powered by gasoline guzzling outboard motors, not sail and wind. Flotilla is another stretch, a big one. Two twelve-foot motor boats do not a flotilla make. Nor were they armed. We had no cannons, rockets or torpedoes, just two small boats and four boys armed with nothing more dangerous than a can opener or two, maybe a two-inch jackknife.
It was June 1960. We were seventeen and just finishing grade eleven at J.L. Jackson Jr. Sr. High school. I don't know where the J.L. Jackson name came from. It doesn't matter. It was the only high school in town. If anybody asked what school you were going to, you said Salmon Arm. It was less tongue twisty that way. The BC Ministry of Education enhanced our summer vacation time by accrediting our school J.L. Jackson, or whatever you called it. That meant that students who got decent grades did not have to write final exams. And that allowed us to get out of school a week or two early. Vacation time.
Four of us, Ken, Mike, John and I decided to boat around the Shuswap Lake for a week. I don't remember whose idea it was. I didn't have a boat so it wasn't mine. But I liked the idea. Cruise the lakes and rivers all the way to Kamloops. However the boats we had available were not fancy cabin cruisers. Both were open twelve footers with outboard motors. However it came about, the four us thought it would be a great way to spend the time we had saved by not having to write exams.
Shuswap Lake is big, and has a huge shoreline. There are four arms, which connect at the Cinnemousun Narrows. From the air the lake looks like a badly-formed letter H, much like my chicken scratch H when I write in a hurry. I am not saying my handwriting is terrible. It is, however, God's truth that no teacher of mine has ever suggested that I take up calligraphy. My lack of precision at putting marks on a piece of paper, whether it be by pen, pencil, or, God forbid, watercolor brush, came to haunt me a few short years later when I was tasked with making accounting entries in books of account. The advent of personal computers years later was a blessing. The use of computers in making accounting entries went through a lot of growing pains. But that is another story for another day.
We set sail from the wharf in Salmon Arm, but not before we stocked up with provisions and equipment. I brought along an arctic-rated, down-filled sleeping bag, which, even in June before the full onset of summer temperatures, was overkill. It did keep mosquitos away. And, yes, lest there be any doubt, there are mosquitos hiding out in the Shuswap, ever alert for unwary strangers foolish enough to bare their skins after sundown. Female mosquitos I might add. They are the ones that suck your blood like vampires. Sorry ladies, but truth is truth. I also brought a can opener (for my stock meal of pork and beans), one of my father's hunting knives (I fibbed about the two-inch jackknife) a fishing knife, a fishing rod and reel c/w an assortment of weights, leaders, flies, spinners and other lures, pork and beans, my cadet mess kit (tin plate, tin cup, tin fork, tin spoon, tin knife – a lot of tin), matches in a waterproof container, a jacket, extra socks and underwear, and a world war two vintage, felt-covered military water canteen. But no journal to record our journey. The failure to take accurate notes of our excursion was not a deliberate attempt to protect the innocent – or the not-so-innocent – we just didn't think about it. Besides, the only students I knew who took good notes about anything wore skirts to school, and there were no girls on our expedition. It was a boy thing. A male enterprise. I don't know what provisions my friends brought with them. However, there were two or three tarpaulins with tie ropes that played an important role in our journey.
I went with John in his boat which was kept in the moorage area on the west side of the wharf. Mike and Ken used Ken's boat. Mike's boat was at their cabin across from Chase on Little Shuswap Lake. Back in 1960 the wharf in Salmon Arm was nothing like it is today. Over the years it has been expanded to the point where it is one of the biggest wooden wharfs I have ever seen. It used to be quite modest. There was a bird sanctuary on the east side where you were not supposed to swim. The water along the sanctuary wasn't particularly clean but on occasion a few boys would swim there after dark, especially in the rain, in their underwear, or not. But never me – honest. And no one would ever pee in the rain in the bird sanctuary.
We left early and followed the shore line from Salmon Arm around Engineer's Point to Canoe. There was a municipal beach at Canoe, pebbles and small smooth rocks. We passed it by. We also passed by the Tippee Canoe Resort cabins where the daughter-laden Johnson family vacationed on occasion. Perhaps, later that summer one of those Johnson girls saw me diving off the adjacent wharf. Perhaps not. I didn't know she existed until nine years later, a year before we got married. But I digress.
Our initial goal for the expedition was to make it to Cinnemousun Narrows the first day. We tooled around too long at Sicamous and didn't make it. We camped out at a marine campground. We constructed two tents by tying tarps over two picnic tables and then prayed to the rain gods to hold off. Our prayers were answered. It did not rain, but a few mosquitos managed to buzz around my nose.
The next morning we took our time going up Anstey Arm. There was nothing there except water, trees, a river mouth and a sandy beach by the river. We managed to kill the rest of the day swimming and eating. There were no picnic tables so we slept under the stars. Once again the weather Gods co-operated. I carefully set my sleeping bag twenty feet from the river. When I woke I was two feet from the river. My sleeping bag either grew legs overnight or my friends managed to move me without waking me up. No easy task. I was a light sleeper. It could have been worse. I hate to think about how long it would have taken to dry out a thick down-filled sleeping bag.
We returned down Anstey Arm and turned into Cinnemousun Narrows. The narrows are well named. It is a very narrow strip of water and a lot of water flows through it. All of the water that flows into the lake from the Anstey River, the Salmon River, the Shuswap River via Mara Lake, the Eagle River, and a myriad of small streams and creeks, moves through the narrows and outflows at the west end of the lake. I found out the hard way that the water in the narrows is cold. We were puttering along the west side of the narrows along the provincial park and I wanted to have a whirl at fishing. In the process of attaching a reel to my fishing rod I dropped my father's best fishing reel in the water. Luckily we were in close to shore where it was only ten or twelve feet deep and the water was clear. I could see the reel on the bottom. I stripped and went in. Short of near hypothermia I had no problem retrieving the reluctant reel.
By the way ladies, a lot of shrinkage occurs when boys jump into cold water. The colder the water the more shrinkage. The ambient water temperature in the Cinnemousun Narrows is cold enough to remind a teenager what it was like before puberty; perhaps like a little boy who might have peed into a creek on a mountain. But that is pure speculation.
Being semi-stubborn, I fixed up my rod and reel, attached a wicked looking spinner and threw in the line. The fish saw me coming snd I caught nothing. Fortunately, the weather was still good when we in the narrows. When storms are a-brewing the narrows turn into a wind tunnel and it can get dangerous.
After we had our fill of the narrows and exploring the provincial park we left the narrows and turned up Seymour Arm. Unlike Anstey, Seymour Arm showed signs of human life. An entry point for gold prospectors in the 1860's, Seymour Arm grew into a town, burned down, was rebuilt and then sank into oblivion as the gold dwindled. At the time of our visit, no town existed. Only the Collings Tudor Mansion and a vacant hotel building. Charles Collings, a well-known artist, built the Tudor mansion and surrounded it with English style gardens
Guy Collings the owner of the estate took us on a tour of the mansion. At the time Guy was the only remaining member of the family there, and being unmarried, lived alone on the estate. Guy was handy with tools and had made some of the furniture in the house. I wondered at the time why he let the public into his house, but I came to realize that it would have been partly for the contact with other people. It must have been a lonely place. It was however, a fabulous house. To this day, I have never been in a house that I liked as much. It was an antique collector's dream. Guy had a collection of old music players and phonographs, which my father, who owned a used goods store, would have drooled over. Guy had a Regina type metal disc music box with changeable perforated metal discs. It probably dated from the late 1890's. He also had two wax cylinder phonograph players from the early part of the 1900's. Among other things, I have a vivid memory of his pool table. The slate and mahogany table was covered with almost pristine green felt and graced a games room on the top floor of the house. Designed exclusively for playing old-fashioned carom billiards, the table had no pockets. I have never seen another like it although they are not rare. I read recently that six or seven years after we were at Seymour Arm, the hotel and the store reopened.
The next interesting part of the expedition was Copper Island, the only natural island on the lake. Copper Island is two kilometers offshore from the Shuswap Lake Provincial Park at Scotch Creek. When my older brother Micky heard about the expedition, he told me a story, perhaps a tall tale, about a man who tried to raise foxes on Copper Island. As his story went, the lake froze over and the foxes escaped. Back in the days before the government bought the island to be part of a provincial park, the lake froze over fairly often. The island is part of the park and overnight camping is not allowed. So the rules say. But not everybody follows rules. When we arrived at the island we went ashore and explored, mostly on the rock bluffs on the south side of the Island. It is fairly common these days that people do cliff diving off the bluffs. We were not that adventuresome, especially me. I no like cliffs. I no climb cliffs. I no go within ten feet of the edge of a cliff. The operative word is panic.
John and I didn't stay long. It was late in the day, dusk was upon us and the weather was turning. We were an hour or so from Mike's cabin at Silvery Beach on the Little Shuswap. We were going to get soaked in the rain and be travelling in the dark, John and I, but not Ken and Mike. They wanted to camp out overnight on Copper Island and stay dry. They kept the tarpaulins to make a tent and John and I braved the coming rains and left for the comfort of the cabin.
It was a miserable ride. Night fell, the rains came, the winds picked up and the lake got choppy. We were heading into the waves. We huddled as close as we could to the windshield to avoid getting hit by the spray being thrown up as the bow crested a wave and slapped down into the trough. Nicely wet from the rain and the spray, I shivered from the cold. We didn't talk much but we kept a watchful eye out for logs, especially waterlogged one that were submerged or partially submerged – deadheads we called them. While we were getting wet and cold, Mike and Ken cozied down in their sleeping bags under the waterproof tarps. No doubt they thought they were pretty damn smart ducking the rain like that.
It was about ten or eleven when John and I arrived at Mike's cabin. We built a fire, dried off, drank some hot chocolate and retired to our warm sleeping bags. As accommodation went it was a significant improvement over tarps tied over picnic tables. The cabin was nice, more like a cottage and had screen doors and screens on the windows to battle any mosquitos that survived the annual spraying programme at Silvery Beach. The cabin was warm and dry. With a rainstorm raging outside, John and I thought it was Shangri-La.
At two a.m., we were rudely awakened by a banging on the door. The door flew open, Mike and Ken burst in, the lights came on, rivers of water streamed down off them and puddled at their feet. "What happened?" John said, "Did you guys fall in? You look like drowned rats."
"No," Mike said, "the tarp collapsed."
"It rained like crazy," Ken said, "and it pooled on the tarp. Lots of it. Probably a couple of feet deep. Then it collapsed and the water fell on us."
John and I were too tired to laugh as much as they deserved. But we tried. Mike and Ken got into some dry clothes and then they wrestled for half an hour to warm up. I thought if I told my brother this story he would think I was trying to lay a tall tale on him. Not that any of my brothers would ever make up stories to tell a gullible kid brother.
The next morning we dried out wet clothes and bedding as best we could and ate a leisurely breakfast. Then we headed for the South Thompson River which wound its way to Kamloops. There were a surprising number of cabins and cottages along the river, and houses that looked like full-time residences. After riding through a rainstorm on the Shuswap Lake, boating on the South Thompson was very calm and we made good time even though we stopped to explore a couple of cabins along the way. Technically speaking, we did not break into them. The windows were open. And we did not burglarize or vandalize. We left everything just the way we found it. We were just curious to see what kind of stuff people had. We found very little to titillate teenage boys. The only article of interest that I found was a sex manual. It was not called that. It was called an instruction manual for newlyweds. I flipped through it quickly. Being barely seventeen I was not at all interested in marriage.
After we got to Kamloops I surprised my brother Bill and camped out on his living room floor overnight. He was less than thrilled. But he let me stay. While I was there, Bill's best friend Harry dropped by with his girlfriend. From the look on Bill's face I thought he wanted to throw Harry out the window and scoop the girl. He had this glazed look in his eyes and he sidled close enough to smell her perfume. I had never seen Bill react like that to a girl before. I was thinking I should have nicked that marriage manual and left it for him. He was twenty-two and I didn't think he would last much longer as a bachelor.
The return trip to salmon Arm was uneventful and much quicker. We had already done our exploring and we did not need to repeat Seymour Arm or Anstey Arm. A month later, at the end of July, I went for a stroll up the mountain and ran across the creek. I hadn't seen it for a few years, and because we no longer got our water from the creek I had forgotten about it. At that moment my bladder started aching. It wasn't planned, it just happened. I unzipped and let fly with a golden arc. It dissipated and flowed seaward. Hello Vancouver.