WELLS: It was the closest place to heaven

My wife, Ayako and I, have travelled extensively around the world and stayed in such places as Athens, Cairo, Venice, Florence, Rome, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Washington, San Francisco, Honolulu, Mexico City, Panama City, Lima, Rio de Janeiro, Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong and many more cities worldwide but the most exciting visit I ever had was my 1984 visit to the small town of Wells in British Columbia.

That small community is approximately 749 kilometers north east of Vancouver by car and 115 kilometers west of the border of Alberta as the crow flies. The reason for my excitement was that I and seven hundred other people from around the world who had previously lived there, had returned to Wells for its fiftieth anniversary.

Wells today is much smaller than it originally was. It is now more of an art community where artists visit and/or live. Its population in February 2008 was 237,but in its heyday, its population was as much as 4,500. This is because there were two gold mines on the two mountains that circumscribes Wells.

My younger brother (Dale) and I and our mother (Ruth) had lived in that place we called heaven during the war years between October 1941 to December 1945. My father was an airman during the war so my mother decided that she would take us to that small mining town to live near her sister and her husband (Althea and Harold Fullerton) and their two adopted kids. (Sharon and Michael)

We previously lived in Toronto so when I first saw the mountains that were north of Vancouver, I was so excited, I wanted to walk to them. I was only seven years old so I didn’t realize just how far they were away from where we were staying for a few days. I really did get to see mountains up close however when we caught the passenger boat that was to take us up Howe Sound to the small town of Squamish at the northernmost end of that body of water. As an aside, the railway line wasn't put in until 1956. Further, Highway 99 didn’t extend up the coast to Squamish from Vancouver until 1959 so going by boat back in 1941 was the only way people in Vancouver could get to Squamish from the south. The mountains on the east coast of the sound begin right at the water’s edge so I was fascinated as I looked at them as they towered above me.

All the way north to Quesnel by train, there were mountains all around us and on occasion, we passed lakes and valleys but for the most part, we were surrounded by high mountains. I was excited as hell as I looked at the ice and snow-covered peaks of the West Coast Mountains as the train weaved in between them. We arrived in Quesnel after dark and got into one of Ford’s four-seater cars that my uncle borrowed from a friend and headed towards our new and final destination. The trip to Wells from the City of Quesnel took three hours. Nowadays the trip can be done in less than an hour. That is because Highway 26 is currently a two-lane winding smooth ribbon of asphalt that runs east from Quesnel to Barkerville in which Wells is just a little under eight kilometers west of Barkerville, that famous abandoned gold mining town that is now the province’s most famous heritage town. In 1941 however, and for many years before and after that year, Highway 26 was just an 85 kilometer dirt road which was dotted with pot holes. My uncle must have known where they all were because it seemed like he drove into everyone of them on the road that dark and rainy night. Of course the route is very old, considering the fact that it was built in the middle of the nineteenth century as part of the Cariboo Wagon Road during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

There were very few lights on when we finally arrived in the small town of Wells and my uncle took us directly to our three-room house which my mother had previously arranged to rent for $15 a month. It was situated on Dawson Street at the foot of Saunders Avenue. The rent of $15 a month in today’s money would be equivalent to $723 Canadian which is still very cheap for a three-room fully furnished house that has running water and electricity that is included in the rent.

Our house had a small kitchen with a small table and three chairs. It had a wood stove and a small fridge and a sink with running cold water. The living room is where my mother slept on a pullout couch. It also had a small pot-bellied wood stove, three chairs and a table. The bedroom had a double bed in it and that is where my brother and I slept. The outhouse was about 15 metres away. My uncle later built another in our woodshed which was only 7.6 meters away. As to having a bath, my mother poured hot water into a round metal wash tub and my brother and I took turns climbing into it for our bi-weekly bath. The house wasn't there when I visited Wells in 1984.

The next morning, I got up early to see where we were going to live for the rest of our lives --- so I had been led to believe. With the town being at an elevation of 1,250 metres, Wells is nevertheless surrounded by hills and peaks that offer remnants of a time long past. The town is in a beautiful valley where moose graze in the meadows. One month later, one of them was standing right at the back door of our house, probably looking for a handout.

As I stood in the front yard of our house, I could see that the rear of our house was at the edge of a small forest which ended at a large meadow going across a valley to Cornish mountain a kilometer away from our house. When I looked to my left, (with the back of our house behind me) I saw the continuation of the valley which stretched for two kilometers to the east of me. The valley consisted of a very huge meadow and it was always referred to by the people of Wells as ‘The Meadows’ or 'Sawgrass Flats'. Standing at the front door of our house and looking to my right, I could see that we were only a few blocks east of a mountain that gradually raised itself from the valley floor. It is Island Mountain. It is only 557 meters in height from the streets of Wells but to a child; that's high. I should add however that in order for a mountain to be classed as a mountain, it must be at least 500 meters (1,640 feet) in height. Anything less than that is merely a hill. When I looked straight ahead, I was looking south on Saunders Avenue leading towards the stores near the end of the street. I could also see Pooley Street which was a cross street at the other end of Saunders Street and it too had stores on it. Off in the distance, beyond the end of Saunders Avenue and down a small hill and across a flat area called ‘The Tailings’, (which was out of sight from our house) was Cow Mountain on which the community ski hill was located.

Wells is divided into two communities, the upper community being next to Island Mountain, (the mountain on the right of our house) and the lower community (South Wells) situated immediately south of the main community at the bottom of a small hill and then on a level area referred to as 'The Tailings'(sometimes merely called the 'Flats') where all the access rock pulled out of the mines was dumped over the years. To get to the ‘Tailings’, we had to go down that part of Pooley Street which is on the hill leading to ‘The Tailings’. To the south and west of the tailings area of Wells and around Island Mountain to our right, but out of sight of our house and about two kilometers away from our house, is the Jack-O' Clubs Lake, a lake which runs east and west and is 2.4 kilometers in length and almost half a kilometer in width and according to my mother; bottomless. There are only nine streets in the upper part of Wells and twelve streets in the lower part of the town. The streets are quite small so it goes without saying that Wells is more like a village than a town. Wells had only been in existence for nine years prior to our arrival but it had grown considerably from prospector Fred Wells' campsite to a thriving community of forty-five hundred prior to the Second World War and then reduced to twenty-five hundred souls by the time we arrived in 1941.

My uncle was the principal of all three schools in Wells; elementary school, (then only one story) junior high school and high school. (those two later schools were in a small one-story building on the other side of the playing field) That didn’t get me any privileges but I wasn’t strapped when he was there so I suppose that was an edge I had over the other students.

Skiing was the main winter sport that almost everyone indulged in and skiing on the ski hill which began at the foot of Cow Mountain and ran most of the way up the mountain was where it was done. They had three ski jumps on the hill. One for the experienced ski jumpers who numbered about twenty and was simply called the ‘Big Jump’ due to the 53.3 metres of air one could fly in after lifting off of it. It was so good that the Western Canada Ski Championships were held in Wells the winter of 1936. After the war, I watched my dad go off the big one and he made me proud that day, for sure. Then there was a smaller jump in which one could fly in 22.8-metres of air for most of the townspeople who didn't have the courage to try the big one. Of course there was a small ski jump for the kiddies. That was my kind of ski jump.

To get to the foot of the ski hill, I would have to ski through town, and then ski down Pooley Road, the road that sloped towards the ‘Tailings’ from upper Wells, then cross the ‘Tailings’ for about half a kilometer until I got to the foot of the ski hill. It would take me about an hour to get there and about the same length of time to return home. It was great fun skiing on that hill although I wasn't much of a skier. I really didn't have anyone to teach me. I just watched others doing it. What I hated however was trying to remove my skis later when I got home. Ice would form all over the clamps and it was a real job to get through all that ice to remove the clamps. To undo the clamps meant that I had to crouch down and melt the ice from the clamps with my fingers which by now were nearly frozen anyway. When I was finally free of my skis, I then had to go into the house and sit near the stove so that the ice would melt away from my ski boots. The boot laces were originally tied with simple knots but during the day, as if they had minds of their own, they each ended up not unlike the Gordian Knot that Alexander the Great cut through with one fell sweep of his sword.

Many people in Wells owned skis. They were nothing like the hi-tech skis of today, but they did allow people to have a lot of fun. The tremendous snowfall in Wells contributed to many locals taking part in the annual ski meet held every February, sponsored by the local ski club since Wells had an impressive downhill and slalom hill. Many first-class performers from outside points traveled to Wells to compete. In the first March I was in Wells (1942) I entered one of the skiing contests. I managed to get the hang of skiing but I feared speed and when I found myself going too fast, I simply let myself fall backwards and let my flailing arms and legs stop me. And now, let me tell you how I won the silver medal for second place in the slalom race in 1943 when I was nine years old.

There were only three of us in my age group in that race. When it was my turn to ski down the hill, I began to pick up speed and I knew that if I didn't stop, I would straddle the poles instead of going around them. So I did what I always did when I wanted to stop. I fell backwards. Some said later that when my rear end hit the snow and my arms and legs began flailing the snow, there was concern that I might start an avalanche which could conceivably bury half the populace of Wells waiting at the foot of the hill. By the time I had stopped sliding down the hill on my rear end, I had reached the first pole. I had no difficulty in going around it. I simply walked around it. Then I headed towards the second pole and I did the infamous Batchelor stopping maneuver again. This time, I smashed into the pole and I was almost buried in the rush of snow that followed close behind me. I slalomed all the way down the hill this way.

I couldn't believe that I actually got a silver medal for this. But then I learned that the third kid changed his mind after watching my performance. He didn't want to salalom after having watched me and my attempts so only two medals were given out that year for my age group in the slalom race. The kid that got the gold medal was terrific. He only knocked over 10 poles.

We had other winter sports in Wells. There was the dog sled race which began on Saunders Street and ended on the same street many hours later. Because the snow was very deep, the bushes of the Meadow were completely covered over and it was like dog sledding across a vast snow plain. The sledders had to sled all the way to a small hill a kilometer away in the meadow (which looked like an island in the Arctic sea) and then back to Wells again. There were also snowshoe races going the same route. Of course us kids loved tobogganing on the hills all winter long.

Icicles hanging from the roof eaves were something to see. Many of them were extremely large because, notwithstanding the sun shining almost every day, they didn't melt away and thusly they often reached the snow on the ground and then spread outwards as the melt water ran across the surface at their base. On one occasion, a few of us boys crept under the wooden sidewalk that fronted a number of the stores and the community hall on Saunders Avenue and just as I was crawling on my back out from under the sidewalk immediately north of the community hall, a very large icicle broke loose from the roof of that building and hurtled downward towards me. Imagine lying face up on the bascule of a guillotine and watching the blade descending. That's how I felt at that precise moment. The "ice blade' missed me by mere inches.

Building snow forts in Wells was great fun because the snow was often much higher than our heads. If fact, it piled right up to the eves of our one-story homes. I remember us kids building snow forts on the raised tennis court at the north end of Saunders and then bombarding them with huge snowballs we propelled up into the air by putting them on one end of a board and jumping on the other end. The huge snowballs would crash through the roofs of our forts and by the time we were finished, the forts were smashed beyond repair. Well you know what they say; ‘War is Hell.’

It could become very cold in Wells in the winter months and Wells had a policy that if the temperature by 8:30 in the morning had not risen above 20 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing ,(the metric system wasn’t in vogue then) we didn’t have to walk to school. However, by the time one in the afternoon came, the temperature would be warmer and this meant that we then had to go to school after lunch.

I will never forget the first Christmas season I experienced in Wells. The snow by now had covered everything. Many of the homes had Christmas lights on the inside of windows which gave off an eerie glow in the snow piling up above the windows. Christmas songs such as "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and of course, Christmas carols were constantly being sung. My favorite Christmas song then and still is of course, "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas". Bing Crosby, the best loved crooner of that time sang it in a movie. Whenever I would hear that song on the radio, I got all tingly. A group of singers sang their way up and down our streets on Christmas Eve and I and my brother sat around the stove warming ourselves with hot chocolate; waiting for that visitor we knew was coming to our home later that night; despite our mom's pronouncement that he only visited those who were good.

My uncle brought us a small Christmas tree every year for my mother by cutting off the top of a small fir tree. That was very easy to do since anyone walking through the forests at that time of the year was walking through snow that was almost to the tops of those trees anyway. Later, when all the snow had gone, it was a funny sight to see so many fir trees around Wells with no tree tops.

We spent each Christmas Eve at the home of my aunt and uncle and sang Christmas carols. My mother played the role of Santa Claus in our family and she always managed to give us gifts in our stockings and under the tree. That first Christmas in Wells was the one in which I got my first and only pair of skis. Our dinner on Christmas Day was at my aunt's and uncle's home and it was there that I first remember eating Christmas turkey. I probably ate this fare earlier in my life but if I did, I don't remember those occasions.

Wells had a nice custom. Every afternoon on Boxing Day, all the children in town were brought to the community hall where they met Santa Claus who gave each boy and girl up to the age of 14, a small gift that had been specifically chosen for him or her by a committee of citizens. This event was paid for by the Gold Quartz Mine on Cow Mountain. I remember trying to talk to that year's Santa Claus but being unsuccessful. No doubt, I spoke to him many times during the year but I didn't catch the connection.

The community hall is quite large. It comprises of as much as 1,483 square metres. The main floor (683 square metres) includes a large gymnasium with bleacher seating, entrance lobby, offices, bar, and storage rooms, and a proscenium arch, raked stage with dressing rooms. The main gymnasium area is lit by rows of large windows above the bleachers. The downstairs (same size as the floor above) includes men’s and women’s washrooms, showers and locker rooms, two club rooms, 2 banquet rooms. Cubs and scouts held their weekly meetings there also. (It has since been converted to the community’s library) The roof was as high as a three-story building. At the sides of the insides of the hall, we could sit on various levels of platforms going up at least one story. The stage was at the west end of the building. I remember Ms. Berlin (my piano teacher) would play waltzes for people to dance to. Years later, the vintage 1938 building had structural difficulties resulting from age and neglect. The building by the turn of this century was restored at considerable expense.

There were many dances that took place in Wells, the annual ones being The Muckers and Minders Ball, (whatever that was) New Year's Eve, Klondike Night, Halloween Masquerade, and the Snow Queen Ball. The latter always began with the crowning of the new queen, and the presentation of trophies to the winners of the downhill, slalom, cross-country, ski jumping and snow-shoeing races. My mother had the enviable task of creating the Snow Queen's crown. Her friends would lend her imitation jewelry to place in the crown. She would spend hours designing and creating the crown and loved every minute of her task.

For some reason which I don’t understand even to this day, I started telling the kids at school that my mother was going to start a Brownies group. When she heard about this, she was really upset. But as fate would have it, many of the mothers in Wells talked my mother into starting Brownies for their daughters. When we moved into our second house on Margaret Street, (near where that street meets Hardscrable Street and Duncan Street) there was a vacant house right next to ours (which neither were there when I visited Wells in 1984) and she held the Brownies and Guides (which she also started and led) meetings in that house.

There was one man in Wells who was not that well off as the rest of us. He was Reverend Stobie of the United Church. The church was on the north east corner of Saunders Avenue and Baker Street and right next door to my aunt and uncle's house. It was across the street from the old fire hall that burned down one night in February 1943. He was single and the church hierarchy had given him a small stipend to live on but it really wasn't enough. He had two very small rooms at the rear of his church which was rent free obviously but his stipend gave him little enough income to buy much food for himself which became apparent to everyone in town. No one really objected that much when he would pay a visit to their homes in the mid afternoons, knowing all along that they would feel morally compelled to inviting him to stay for supper. Because my mother was for all intents and purposes, a single woman with two small boys, and because he too was single, he felt that tongues might wag unjustly if he showed up for supper at our place so he would occasionally come to our house during the lunch hour. This was before Mom was working in the school preparing the hot soup and rice pudding for the student's lunch. After a while, Rev. Stobie would come to our house at least once a week for lunch. One day Mom didn't expect him so she prepared three dishes of Jello just before he arrived. When I, my brother and Rev. Stobie were eating our Jello, I asked Mom where her Jello was. She didn't want to embarrass Rev. Stobie so she exclaimed, "Oh! You know I don't like Jello." My brother was about to blurt it out that Mom always ate it before but I managed to get in a well aimed kick before he blabbed the truth.

Rev. Stobie wore thick glasses which brings to mind the bottoms of Coke bottles and one day he was skiing on the ski hill on Cow Mountain. He dropped his glasses and everyone on the hill began helping him find them. We all knew that if he couldn't find them, he would have to be led by the hand back to town. Believe it or not, his glasses were actually found in the snow on that large ski hill. He was a likable enough chap and many of the townspeople felt that anyone who was nearly blind who would ski down a ski hill can't be all that bad so they began attending his small church on Saunders Street. They figured if he could ski on their ski hill, they could attend his church. He even talked me into singing Land of Hope and Glory by Elgar at one of his services. Actually a girl stood beside me to help me as my voice didn't carry very far. I stayed with his church for a year and then my mother sent me to the St. George Anglican church on the south side of Pooley Street because Mrs. Berlin was still my piano teacher and she was the organist in her husband's church and they wanted me to sing in their choir.

Mrs. Berlin was the town’s piano teacher. She and her husband lived on Bowman Crescent, a short distance from their church. She charged my mother 50 cents for an hour’s piano lesson that I was given every Saturday morning. We didn’t have a piano at that time so my uncle gave me a copy of the key to the elementary school for my own use so that I could practice on the school piano that was in one of the rooms of the then one-story school. My mother made me practice on the school piano for one hour every night from seven to eight except Sundays.

When the Jack-O-Clubs Lake froze over, it was great for skating across when it wasn’t totally covered with snow throughout most of the winter. I remember one day however walking across almost the entire length of the lake on the very clear and thick ice. It was like walking across glass. Those that skated on it that day practically skated right out of sight. A part of the lake at the eastern end was always kept clear of snow for hockey games.

Three of the most popular forms of indoor entertainment available to the people of Wells in the 1930's and 1940s were radio, live theatre and cinema. Radio was very popular and families that had radios would have their radios run off a car battery or small dry cells. The car battery had to be taken up to a garage every so often for recharging. The radio reception was not always good, and people might receive little reception during the day, but a station in Calgary could be heard quite clearly on most nights. Wellsians would gather around and listen to the Shadow, Amos and Andy, Jack Benny and other radio entertainers of the 1930's and 1940s. I remember my brother and I couldn't pick up the children's program ‘Let's Pretend’ as our radio was too weak so we crossed the street to my friend, Ronnie Mast's home to listen to the program as their radio was much larger and could pick up the signals from whatever radio station it was coming from.

Because no one in Wells had television sets, and not many families had radios unless they were very powerful radios and very few subscribed to out-of-town newspapers; most of us were oblivious to the events of the war as they were happening. Of course, a few people had newspaper subscriptions sent to them from Quesnel and they would share them with their neighbours. In any event, we got the news events approximately a week after they occurred when we would go to the movies at the Lode Theatre and watched the news being shown to us through the auspices of Movietone or Pathe. The 'news' would be shown for about three or four minutes and then we would get a cartoon and then the evening's feature. A ticket to the movies would cost 10 cents for kids and 25 cents for adults. The theatre burned down in 1994.

One of the biggest occasions in Wells was the July first weekend. Wells had a well developed fair grounds on the flats running adjacent to what is now Highway 26 including a half mile race track, a softball diamond plus other areas for such things as log sawing and log chopping competitions. A nail driving competition was always well attended also.

Of all the outdoor sports to draw the largest crowds during the summer months; baseball was the most successful sport. There was an active league composed of two teams from Wells, (each of the two mines in Wells had their own team) Wingdam, Quesnel, and Williams Lake and games were also played with a team from Prince George during holiday celebrations. A small fee was charged for the locals to attend the games and sometimes games would be washed out due to the considerable amount of rain that sometimes falls in the Wells area. Willow Creek would overflow and the baseball diamond next to it would be flooded. It would take approximately an hour before the mud hardened enough to play baseball again.

Summertime in Wells was a great experience for all of us kids also. There was Island Mountain and Cow Mountain to play on, forests to play in, the lake to play at (no one swam in it as it was too rocky) and a narrow river to play in, (Willow River) which wound its way through the Meadows and then through lower Wells to the lake.

I remember one day my brother and I and several of our friends decided that we wanted to go rafting on the river. The trouble was that we didn't have a raft to float on. Then a great idea came to my mind. My mother had taken the storm door off the back door of our house after the snow had gone. It was in the woodshed, but not for long. I and my brother and our friends carried it along Dawson Street, around the bend of the street to the path leading to the small bridge that crossed Willow River. Then we began floating on it up the river. Well, actually, we carried it some of the way up the river as the river was shallow in many parts and worse yet, going in the wrong direction. We finally reached an impasse; a part of the river that was clogged with logs, bushes and stones. No! We didn't bring the door back home. I thought that the door had been abandoned in the woodshed so we merely abandoned it at the impasse. My mother thought otherwise and was not pleased when she learned what we had done with the door. In those days, corporal punishment was in vogue and she had a strap for the occasion and this was one of those occasions when she felt the need to use it.

Not far from Wells, then about an hour's drive east of Wells because of the condition of the roads, is the Bowron Lakes Provincial Park. The park comprises of five lakes in the form of the outer lines of a square. Many canoeists from around the world paddle their way through the 116-km route of the chain of lakes, and when camping, keeping an eye open for grizzly bears. The westernmost lake was the one that everyone in Wells used to visit at one time or another. It was also called Bear Lake. It's about 18 kilometres east of Wells. When my mother took us there, it was always my uncle that would drive us there in his car with my brother and I sitting in the rumble seat in the back. Unless you have sat in such a seat, you can't imagine what it was like. The trunk had the handle at the top and when it was pulled down, the seat (room enough for only two) would appear. There were no doors to the area of where the seat was so we had to climb over the side and fall into the seat. It was great fun kneeling on the seat and looking backwards as we sped along the dirt road at 16 kilometres an hour. We could only go that speed because there were so many pot-holes in the road. Going any faster would cause irreparable damage to the frame of my uncles’ car, not to mention the cross beams. Unfortunately, sometimes we would end up choking on the dust which flew up into the area of the rumble seat from the front wheels of the car. There were 16,536,075 Model T Ford cars built and the last one was built in 1927 so the one my uncle’s car had to be at least 15 years old when I first saw it. He later sold his car in 1944 to someone in Wells when he moved to Creston, British Columbia. We would stop at a large pond for a rest and my brother and I would clamber onto a floating wharf and try grabbing frogs in the pond. We were unsuccessful. The frogs were obviously quicker with their feet than we were with our hands.

For two weeks during most of the summers, my mother would rent one of the cottages at the lake for us. I remember one summer however when the roof leaked in the cottage. The owners of the resort put us up in the lodge. It was then, that I first tasted Root Beer. I later learned that it was homemade. I got the owner of the lodge to punch a hole in the cap with a nail so that when I went to bed, I could prop it onto my pillow, turn my head sideways and suck on the bottle when I was of a mind---which was a good part of the night, until the bottle was empty. It was here that I learned that Root Beer was one of the few drinks that doesn't go bad if you re-open and reseal it repeatedly and it doesn't freeze in winter.

A river ran out of the lake near the lodge and men from the Fisheries Department gathered every day to catch the salmon at the salmon weir and tag them by inserting a needle through their backs and securing a button-like tag to each of them before tossing them back into the river that ran out of the western part of the lake. We were told that these salmon would be swimming to the Pacific Ocean and then later returning back to the Bowron Lakes to spawn and die --- which was quite a swim considering the fact that they would be swimming more than halfway across British Columbia --- twice. As to be expected, the lakes abounded with Rainbow Trout. Those amazing fish, just like the salmon, could also jump/swim up small waterfalls. The lake was rather cold (as was the Jack-O-Clubs Lake in Wells) so we rarely swam in it but nevertheless, it was great fun playing hide and seek in the large barn and the forests and around the cottages with my friends.

There was no swimming pool in Wells but there was a swimming hole that most of us kids played in. It was next to the softball diamond which was located between Highway 26 (leading into town) and the Jack-O-Clubs Lake. Willow River wasn't very wide at this juncture but it was deep in parts and it was at a narrow bend in the river adjacent to the softball field that we would swim in. Well actually we couldn't really swim in it because it simply wasn't large enough to get a half decent stroke in. We more or less jumped in it or pushed each other into it. Our eyes would always end up being red after playing in the swimming hole because of the sodium cyanide that ran into a small stream along side the gold processing mill of the Island Mountain Mine. That stream then flowed down the mountain and into the Willow River where we kids were waiting for it to flow into our yes, up our noses and down our throats.

When the gold was to be removed from the ore, the ore was mixed with sodium cyanide. The gold and the cyanide reacted to form a compound from which the gold was recovered by electrolysis. By the time the cyanide solution left the mine's mill and headed down the mountain towards the creek, it was pretty well diluted but not enough to not redden our eyes that would then remain red for days on end. That’s why we were always forbidden to swim in the creek but then who obeyed their mothers in those days. My mother always knew when we were swimming in the creek by the redness of our eyes. You can imagine how diluted the cyanide was by the time it reached our swimming hole considering the fact that an ingestion of less than a fraction of an ounce of cyanide will bring on instant death. It was even used in gas chambers in some of the prisons in the USA.

There was one part of the river that we really enjoyed playing in. It was the wooden flume near the swimming hole which ran about two blocks in length to the lake. It was about 3.04 metres wide and the walls were about 1.8 metres (six feet) in height. The water was about 61 centimeters deep. It ran quite quickly through the flume so we would get wide boards and lay on them and float down the flume and into the lake at a very fast clip.

It was the summer of 1942 that a religious group (Jehova's Witness) came into town to show us kids how to see the 'light' so to speak. Every morning, a bunch of us would go to a small hall on the south side of Pooley Street in which we would play games (that got us there) and be told stories (that kept us there) and then we would be given talks about Jesus and so forth. (by then I was daydreaming about other things) I remember on the last day, they asked us to kneel beside them and pray. They said that we could leave any time we wanted. They added that they would remain behind until the last kid got up off his knees and left. I was the last kid to leave. I stayed there kneeling with my arms across the seat of the bench with my head resting on them for an hour and a half with our two religious teachers kneeling on both sides of me. They were very impressed. I on the other hand, had fallen asleep. They may have suspected this after Miss. Eleanor Marks, one of two women later tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear, "Would you like to pray longer, Danny?" and I responded with, "Where am I?"

It was during the winter of 1942 or 1943 that the Canadian army sent a contingent of soldiers up to Wells to conduct maneuvers at playing at attacking a small town. I remember them heading towards the town in huge enclosed vehicles with tank treads. The snow flew in every direction and they made a loud and scary noise. It was great fun. The soldiers found us kids to be pests however considering the fact that we were always pointing to other soldiers who were attempting to hide behind buildings and houses. Although the summers of those years were great fun for all of us in Wells, it was obviously not so in other parts of the world. It didn’t really dawn on me then that some of these soldiers would later die in battle.

I doubt that any of us kids in Wells would have enjoyed ourselves fully that winter, or any other time of the year had we known then what was happening to the children in conquered Europe and Asia. It was only after the war that we then became aware of the atrocities committed by the Germans and the Japanese. Looking back at that period of time, I realize how fortunate we were in free countries like Canada during those frightful and terrible war years in Europe, North Africa, the Pacific Islands and in Asia.

The beginning of the year of 1942 showed an increase in the price of food. Veal was 13 cents a pound, chicken was 25 cents a pound and you could buy frozen shrimp for 15 cents a pound. The Americans developed a process of canning meat. It was (and still is) called Spam. A loaf of bread cost 6 cents. Beer was only 5 cents a glass; although I wasn't drinking it then and soda pop was only 34 cents for an entire case.

The word 'rationing' comes to my mind when I think of Wells during those war years. One ration book was issued to each member of a family no matter what the age of that person was. Whether he or she was a six pound baby or a 300 pound man or woman, all ration books were the same. The cover of the ration book was dark yellow and it had the words, RATION BOOK 1 (or other numbers) and a serial number such as KR 336318 printed on the front cover. My ration book would have my name on it, just as everyone else's ration book had their names on it. When a rationed product such as butter, sugar, tea, coffee, meat and bacon, jams or jellies was purchased, a different colored stamp with a number on it along with a letter; M for meat (yellow) B for butter (blue) etc, was torn from the ration book and given to the grocer. If you used up your stamps for the month; or worse yet, if you lost your ration book, you couldn't purchase these items because without the stamps, there could be no sale unless of course, you were a very close friend of the grocer. You couldn't even purchase jams and jellies at a charitable function unless you exchanged rationed stamps. You could be in serious trouble if you were found hoarding sugar, coffee, tea and canned foods. One man in Toronto was sent to jail for two months for doing just that. Gasoline was rationed also beginning in April 1942. For non essential use, the permissible amount of gasoline that could be purchased by the owner of a car for the entire year of 1942 was only 1,364 liters or around 33 fill ups. To get gasoline, you had to give the gas station attendant a green coupon which had the words, ONE UNIT printed on it. During the worst year of rationing, drivers filled their tank only once a month. Anyone caught abusing the gas rationing laws could be fined up to $5,000 (which is equivalent to $63,000 in 1997) and also be imprisoned for as much as five years. And to conserve gasoline, the federal government put a speed limit on how fast cars were to be driven. The limit was 64 km/h for all of Canada as of May 1, 1942 and anyone caught speeding over that limit could get as much as a $50.00 fine (which is equivalent to $492.00 in 1997.) Of course that isn't as bad as the $5,000 fine given to a speeder in Sweden who was driving a mere 25 kilometres over the limit in 2002) Considering that that $50.00 in 1942 could represent a wage earner's total earnings for the month; that was a high penalty. And on top of that, the motorist could be sent to jail for ten days. Of course, that speed was academic in Wells and environs unless the driver had a desire to commit suicide on the pot-holed roads. New rubber tires were simply unavailable. If you had only baldies, you drove on baldies. If your tire was punctured, you had to patch them, that is if you could find rubber anywhere to do it. Many car owners put their cars on blocks and decided to use public transit. Of course in Wells, we didn't have public transit so practically all of the owners of cars in Wells who their cars on the blocks merely walked around town.

I remember the day in May 1945 when the war in Europe ended. Sometime around three in the morning, someone cranked up the air raid siren at the community hall and kept it going at a high pitch for about five minutes. Then someone on our street yelled out, "The war with Germany is over!" That afternoon, there was a great party for all held in one of the fields in Upper Wells with free hot dogs and soft drinks and beer (great) and speeches (boring) and no school for the day. (Hurray!) Later in August of that same year, again during the early hours of one morning, we were all awakened with the siren and another person screaming with joy, "The war with Japan is over!" Again, a party was held in the field with free hot dogs and soft drinks and beer (great) speeches (boring) and since there was no school anyway during the summer months, the impact of the news wasn't as great to us kids as it was in May of that year.

The only time we in Wells were impacted to some degree by the war (other than some of our fathers fighting overseas) was when the Japanese sent over balloons carrying explosives from Japan to North America. They were designed to wreak havoc on Canadian and American cities, forests, and farmlands. The 9,000 Japanese bomb-carrying balloons launched were 10 meters in diameter and when fully inflated, held about 540 cubic metres of hydrogen. The last one was launched in April 1945. The jet stream blew at altitudes above 9.15 kilometers and could carry these large balloons across the Pacific in three days. Each balloon carried incendiary and high-explosive bombs to be dropped on the United States and Canada for the purpose of killing people, destroying buildings, and starting forest fires. The concept was interesting but a failure except in one sole instance on May 5, 1945 when five children and a woman picnicking in Oregon grabbed one and were instantly killed. The Canadian government sent someone to Wells to keep an eye open for these balloons. I remember spotting a white spot in the forest on Island Mountain and when I told the government man about it, he looked through his binoculars and said, "You may be right." He spent the entire day searching for it and came back in the late afternoon saying that it was only a small patch of snow. Apparently there were no Japanese balloons found in our area but I can't help but wonder if there are hundreds of undiscovered Japanese balloons carrying incendiary and explosive bombs still hanging on the branches of trees in the forests around B.C.

I remember several of my friends and I laid on the grass a block west of Saunders Street north of Baker Street and look at all the stars and since having moved from Wells, I have never seen so many stars in the night sky as I did then.

Generally, the friends I played with were; Ronny Mast who lived across the Street from us when we were living on Saunders Avenue and Billy and Robert Alpine, who lived next door to us on the south side of us.

There was one boy in Wells I will never forget. His name was Jason Barry Curtis. He was the best artist I ever saw for a kid of his age. What he could do with coloured chalk on a blackboard astounded everyone. There wasn't any teacher at school that could draw like this kid did so I have to presume that he was born as a gifted artist. He later became a very well respected artist but I didn't see just how good he was until I visited Wells in 1984. He was still living in Wells, that is, a few miles west of Wells on Highway 26. Some of his works are found as huge murals on the sides of buildings in Quesnel and his paintings and sketches of the Gold Rush days in Barkerville have been sold to a great many people around the world. I am fortunate enough to possess two of them which he personally signed for me. His murals in Quesnel have been retouched lest they fade away but several of his murals have been left to Wells.

Barry was born in a house a mile or so west of Barkerville and he came to school on the school bus my uncle drove every day. Later when he was an adult, his house was transferred to Barkerville so that it could become part of the houses in that historic site. When I saw him in 1984, he was sporting a thick beard and he told me that he acted as a guide on certain days in Barkerville when tourists would visit the site. He was quite amused at the surprise on the tourist's faces when he would point to a window on the second floor of his old home and say in a voice sounding like an old timer. "That's where I was born, many years ago." I strongly suspect that many of these tourists believed he was in Barkerville during the Gold Rush days especially when he told them that Barkerville had been a ghost town for almost a hundred years. The way he talked to them, one would think he was well over a hundred years old. Unfortunately, that talented artist died in his home one day when he was in his sixties during the latter years of the Twentieth century.

Wells, during the entire war years was invariably the best place in the world to live. Everyone tends to say that about where they have lived, especially during their childhoods but there was something special about that town in that era that made it distinct from any other place in the world.

Aside from the fact that there were no crimes committed in Wells; even by the youngsters, (we had only two police officers who were members of the then British Columbia Police) our town benefited in a far better way. It seems that the government made a blunder that turned out to be one of the best kept secrets of the war. The bureaucrats honestly believed that during the war years, there were still as many as 4,500 people living in that town. That pleased them because that meant more gold could be extracted from the mountains surrounding Wells and Canada needed as much gold it could get its hands on to support the war efforts. Prior to the war, there were that many people living in Wells but after the war began, the vast majority of the people left Wells to go to the large cities where there were better opportunities for work for both men and women. That left only 2,500 people in Wells. Because some bureaucrat didn't update his population records with reference to Wells, the government was under the impression that as many as 4,500 still lived there instead of the actual 400. What this meant of course was that foodstuffs for 4,500 would have to be transported to Wells every week. What do 400 men, woman and children do with foodstuffs delivered every week for 4,500? They eat it, naturally. While the rest of the world starved, or at least found itself limited to what it could eat because of the rationing or shortages, all of us in Wells were never without. When our rationed stamps were used up---who cared? It was only shortly after VE day (Victory in Europe---May 1945) that this top secret of the war leaked out. One of the families moved to Vancouver and within weeks, the Vancouver Province, a Vancouver daily newspaper had sent a reporter up to check out the rumor going around about that small mining town in the interior. When the reporter returned to Vancouver and wrote his story, it was headlined, "BEER FLOWS IN THE STREETS OF WELLS" That was when the government then discovered its blunder. By the time they got around to correcting their blunder, VJ day (Victory over Japan---August 1945) had come about and rationing was beginning to dwindle away after that.

Do I feel guilty about this? No I don't but I do sympathize with the billions of people around the world who had to do without although at that time, I really didn't know just how well off we really were or how bad off everyone else was. Normally when rationing isn't in effect, the average Canadian adult gulps down every year approximately, 1,154 pounds of vegetables, 1,136 pounds of dairy foods, 694 pounds of meat and fish, 34 pounds of poultry and 598 pounds of fruit --- for a whopping two and a half tons of food. In terms of weight, that is equivalent to eating an African white rhinoceros. During the war, that was what the average amount of food an adult in Wells would eat whereas in the rest of the world, the food intake was considerably lessened as was the intake of us children in the town of course---not that we really noticed it.

My father who worked in the Island Mountain Mine after the war deserted us and moved back to Toronto. We were now living on Saunders Avenue at this time in a two-story log house. My father bought it for $500.00. (It wasn't there when I visited Wells in 1984) My mother then got a job at the Jack O’ Clubs Hotel at the top of the hill on Pooley Street as a waitress. She arranged for my brother and I to eat our suppers at a small table in the hotel’s kitchen. The meals were really great at that hotel. We ate there from August to the end of December of 1945. It was then that we left Wells. I moved to North Vancouver, my brother to Creston and my mother to Vancouver.  

When the mines closed down in 1967, the town's population dwindled gradually until it was nearly a ghost town in the early seventies. Now that recreation and art has turned into an industry, Wells is growing again. But there was only about 200 people living in Wells by the time I, my brother and mother, my aunt and her two children and my wife and our two children visited it in 1984.

For many of us who lived there during the war years, the town of Wells was the closest we ever got to living next to heaven. We had no war, no crime, an abundance of food, anyone who wanted to work had a job, no one was homeless and everyone knew everyone else and considered them as friends. And on top of that, we were free from the worries of the rest of the world as we were for all intents and purposes, isolated from the rest of the world and as the topping of the cake, we were surrounded by mountains, forests and beautiful lakes. You can’t get closer to heaven than that. If it were possible to relive a fraction of our lives over again, I undoubtedly would pick the years 1941 through 1945.

It’s easy to appreciate why so many former residents of Wells who were there during the Second World War came from all over the world in 1984 to celebrate that community's fiftieth anniversary of its founding. If I live to be a hundred and one years old, (27 years from the time of this writing) I will attend Wells’ hundredth anniversary however, I doubt that any of us who were in Wells during the war years will be there in 2034 to attend that celebration. That’s one celebration I will sorely miss.