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Feature - Snapshots of McGuire

Dalphine McKenzie recalls life in a little community south of Whistler

The wind rises and falls with the rush of the Cheakamus River somewhere beyond the trees at the far side of a homestead near the train station at McGuire. With it’s boarded up cabins, collapsed outbuildings and wood sheds the property looks as if it’s been left to the forces of nature. Stove parts, a tossed out kitchen pot and more firewood dominate the front yard that was once a huge garden. But on closer inspection one gets a sense of the hard work that must have gone into making a home here. A second smaller garden has been put in behind the main house. And a well for drinking water sits beside a small creek that flows across the property.

The homestead is a reflection of both the history and the present, in a region that seldom stands still for very long.

When Dalphine McKenzie’s father, James, settled with his family at McGuire, just south of what is now Whistler, in 1939 he was starting from scratch. This was a time not that far removed from the Great Depression; when the world was heading into World War II. There wasn’t a lot of money and some families went back to the land.

"There were old buildings left over from a former mill," Dalphine says, from a table in the kitchen of her North Vancouver home. "He leased the land; a 99-year lease at first."

Long before James McKenzie settled at McGuire the community got its start as a construction camp during the building of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, between 1910 and 1915. One-hundred-and-fifty workers lived in tents that made up the camp south of where McKenzie would later homestead.

By 1938, when McKenzie moved to McGuire to prospect, there were several small sawmills that milled cedar, fir and balsam for markets in Vancouver. McKenzie had retired from the Vancouver City police force and worked his mining claims during the summer months with his two sons and partner, Bill Anderson.

"When he retired at the age of 60, he promptly remarried and I was born, and he brought me and my mother up there," Dalphine recounts.

Using wood from the old sawmill buildings, McKenzie, his sons and Anderson built two houses and out buildings at McGuire. Mining was more difficult.

They carried in what they needed for mining and blasted out a hole with dynamite. They’d take what ore they found to an assayer. If it wasn’t a good spot they’d find somewhere else.

Mining in the area was difficult because the veins of ore were all broken up. McKenzie found ore but never struck it rich.

Three years after he died, in 1964, McKenzie’s wife, Myrtle, sold the claims to Van Silver Mines Ltd.

Homesteading was a full time endeavour but James and Myrtle were up to the challenge.

"My father always had a hard life," Dalphine says, "and my mother had grown up on a farm."

A lot of hard work went into making the land productive. First trees had to be cut down and then stumps blasted out and roots and stones dug up.

"You dig up the ground so you can get it workable and then you start putting stuff in," Dalphine recounts. "You clear some ground and plant it. This is how you get a garden."

The family’s main garden grew all kinds of root vegetables: carrots, potatoes, turnips and parsnips.

"We had kale, which kept over the winter," Dalphine continues. "You left it in the ground and dug down in the snow to get it. We had all the vegetables you could imagine; chard and cabbages…."

They had good soil, although the quality varied on different parts of the property.

"As you go down to the slough, the little stream that went through our yard, the soil was black and peaty," Dalphine says. "If you went up higher the soil was sandy, which was good if it had water. This soil grew carrots very well and we had a lot of strawberries."

After the first year the McKenzies had a crop of vegetables. The currents, raspberry bushes and cherry trees took longer. The apples came from seedlings found near some old houses that were used by people who ran the sawmill.

But the family was not completely self-sufficient. Every month Dalphine’s parents would write out an order and send it down to Woodword’s in Vancouver. The order would be sent up on the train.

"We’d have flour and meat we’d have to eat right away because we had no refrigeration," Dalphine continues.

They shovelled a lot of snow and packed down a trail with snowshoes so they could use a mining cart to bring groceries down from the railroad. Canned goods, sugar and cereal were also brought in. Vegetables were kept in a root house and dug up in winter.

"You dug a hole in the ground and put straw in," Dalphine explains. "You put in boxes of carrots, potatoes and turnips and put straw around and covered it with earth."

They also had chickens and goats in the early years. Dalphine’s father bought a baby goat from people five miles down the tracks. McKenzie brought the goat up to McGuire sitting on his lap on an open speeder.

"I think he wrapped his coat around it to keep it warm because it was not happy," Dalphine says.

Baby chickens also arrived at McGuire by train.

"We got them early in the spring, when there was still snow on the ground," Dalphine says. "We’d have to open their beaks and stick water and food in and hold them and keep them warm and give them a hot water bottle. We even had the oven warm and had them wrapped in towels to try and bring them along. They’d pop out of the oven and run around the floor. I thought it was just great. The whole idea of just growing things and raising things."

In some ways homesteading must have been a very rich way of life but just about all the money the family had went for food the family couldn’t grow.

"Fifty dollars a month covered food and taxes on the property," Dalphine says.

The property taxes amounted to about $10 a year.

Dalphine’s mother was a true pioneer. If she got a chance to go to town she’d buy fabric to make clothes.

"She’d use old flour sacks, which were good quality cotton," Dalphine says. "She would bleach them and dye them and make clothes, curtains and spreads for the beds."

Dalphine’s family kept fresh strawberries they picked in summer and made jams and preserves. They also shipped strawberries on the train up to Jordan’s Lodge at Alta Lake.

"We sold them to the lodge and they’d serve them to their guests from the city," Dalphine says.

Summers were also a time to prepare for winter. The family had a wood range stove, which also heated the house, and so they cut firewood all summer. They also used coal that fell off the coal cars on the railway.

"In summer when we walked down the tracks we’d pick up little bits of coal," Dalphine says. "When you need a fire going all night you put in some coal. It burns longer than wood, which you’d have to get up and rekindle."

The coldest day Dalphine remembers was when the temperature hit —12 Fahrenheit.

"In the coldest part of winter, when there were blizzards, we would have to have a fire going all night or our pipes would freeze," she says.

Meals could take a while to prepare.

"You had to dig up your own vegetables," Dalphine continues. "If your meat was something that was living around there you had to cut it up and prepare it also. If we had an animal my mother would cut it up and put it in jars and preserve it that way."

The animals included goats, deer and bear.

"The bear tasted like beef," Dalphine says. "We had grouse when we could catch them and not blow them all full of buckshot. We also had a rabbit the dog caught once."

Water came from the spring well. When the well got low in summer, Dalphine would go down to the Cheakamus River and carry water up in buckets to put on the carrots. A pump, insulated by sacks of sawdust, supplied water to the house.

• • •

The passenger train that ran up and down the railroad twice a week was vital to the families that lived at isolated train stations like McGuire.

"That was our only way of getting supplies or going in or out," Dalphine says.

If Dalphine’s mother wanted to see a doctor she’d write a letter or go all the way to Vancouver on the train and stay with relatives. There was a telephone in the station that the residents of McGuire used to find out if the train was on time or late.

If there was an emergency the telephone at the McGuire station was invaluable. The telephone service may have saved the life of Dalphine’s aunt, who suffered a stroke. Dalphine found her on the floor of the guest cabin one morning. Dalphine quickly told her mother, who rushed to the station and called the operator, who "patched" the call through to the doctor. The doctor instructed Dalphine’s mother to put her aunt to bed and keep her warm and comfortable and quiet. That night when the train arrived, men came with a stretcher and transported her aunt to the train. She made a full recovery.

• • •

As a child, Dalphine was always busy. If she wasn’t studying correspondence courses, which she took until Grade 9, she was making something or drawing or writing or playing in the snow and exploring.

"Maybe I’d see a wild rabbit or snowshoe hare," she says. "You never knew what you might find."

There weren’t many other children around in winter but in summer family, people from the mining operation and the sawmill would drop in.

"There were one or two people at almost all the stations," Dalphine recalls. "At Garibaldi and Alta Lake there would be more people."

Ken and Edna Stockdale, the McKenzies’ nearest neighbours, lived five miles down the track at the water tank between Brandywine and Garibaldi. The Stockdales serviced the train steam engines and worked for the railway putting in railway ties.

"Sometimes they would come up and sometimes we would go down," Dalphine says. "We would ride the railway speeders and walk one way."

The train whistle could be heard from several miles away and the arrival of the passenger train was always an event. The train meant mail and maybe a visitor.

• • •

Dalphine remembers walking along the railroad tracks with her grandfather to the next train station, up at Alta Lake. In 1950 there were clusters of people living around the railway station.

"They lived close to where the train stopped because that’s what they depended on for everything," Dalphine says.

Whistler wasn’t even thought of in those days.

"It was Alta Lake," Dalphine says, "and it was a lovely little valley."

The population in the valley was very fixed. People worked for the railway or stayed on their homesteads. Homesteading seemed to be a catharsis for the hard years after the Second World War. But not everybody was so fortunate.

"I do remember in the bad years after the war there were tramps who rode the rails," Dalphine says.

She remembers one man who came to McGuire.

"He came and asked for food and my mother fixed him a lunch and even put a piece of cake in on the sly," Dalphine says," but, she didn’t tell dad because he didn’t want to feed them. He said they were just bums. She said, ‘well maybe he will get a job when he gets to Squamish.’"

Dalphine’s mother couldn’t see the man go hungry.

"He was rather elderly I think, or maybe, he wasn’t elderly so much as being in poor condition," Dalphine says.

"He didn’t expect all that much," Dalphine remembers, "he really sounded sincere in thanking her.

"It was after the war and they weren’t necessarily hobos by choice," Dalphine continues. "They had no job. They would wander around looking for work. They had nothing. It was a very bad time.

"They made their camp by the railroad track," Dalphine says. "We’d find their little tins they’d use to boil water and empty egg shells and the little fire that they had made."

One hobo would pass through McGuire and then another. One of them would go up and down the railway and inhabit that area for a little while and then disappear. Dalphine only remembers the one who came to lunch, although there may have been others.

"After a while, when things got a little better, you saw them no more," Dalphine says.

• • •

After the war job prospects increased. A small shake mill operation at McGuire, between the railway and where Highway 99 is today, produced squares of shakes for the Vancouver market. And in the 1950s 100 people worked at a sawmill that shipped out a carload of lumber a day to the coast.

In 1961, Tony Biggin-Pound’s father, Jack, staked land at McGuire. In those days a Crown grant was awarded under the condition that $600 in improvements were made over five years.

"We built a 12 by 16 foot cabin," Tony says. "We lived there for six years."

With the installation of hydro lines there were big changes on the horizon in this part of the Sea to Sky corridor. Dalphine’s brother, Doug, may have been the first person to drive a car over a treacherous piece of gravel road that accessed the hydro project and would one day be part of the route to Whistler. Acting on a challenge from his father, who said it couldn’t be done, Doug made it as far as a steep hill and found he couldn’t go any further. He tried letting the air out of the tires and finally got a tow behind a powder truck.

Dalphine has her own Highway 99 story.

"I remember driving over it when it was gravel and washboardy and rather scary," she says. "There was a place called Deadman’s Turn where you went sort of down and out right over the Cheakamus Canyon. You could not see around the bend and just hoped another car wasn’t trying to come around from the other direction.

"The train was much more fun!"

• • •

Dalphine moved away from McGuire when she was 13 but always went back during summers. In 1996-97, Dalphine’s daughter, Andrea, and her husband, Philip, lived at McGuire and would take Dalphine’s mother, Myrtle, up in summer.

If the small train stations like McGuire have a legacy perhaps it comes from the perseverance of the people who carved homes out of the wilderness and for a short time found ways to make a living and raise families.

"It’s different now," Dalphine says reflectively. "It’s not isolated. It’s not cheap. You’d have to pay taxes which are very high. And I don’t know if the train would even deliver you groceries anymore."



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