Island Sojourn - Those Carefree Years on Barnston Island (1930-1940)

By Rod Butler

Rod Butler grew up on Barnston Island in the 1930s. Island Sojourn is a series of short stories about his childhood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rod Butler
• Release date: Jun 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476193342

Book preview

ISLAND SOJOURN

By Rod Butler

Copyright 2012 by Rod Butler

Smashwords Edition

Editor’s Notes

When my brother and I were kids, Dad used to tell us stories about his childhood years on Barnston Island, growing up on a small farm with his parents and three brothers. It wasn’t until he presented us with these stories a few years ago that I fully appreciated what life in the 1930s was really like.

Barnston Island was named in 1827 for George Barnston, a Hudson’s Bay Company clerk. Comprising only ten square kilometres, it lies between Pitt Meadows and Surrey, forty kilometres from the mouth of the Fraser River. The only access to the island is from Surrey on a small ferry (a barge tied to a tugboat, actually). A single road runs around the perimeter of the island and acts as a dike to protect the island against spring floods; when viewed using Google Earth or Google maps, the northern portion of the perimeter road is labeled ‘Butler Road’.

Bruce Butler

Maple Ridge, BC

May 2012

Every man moves on, but there is no need to grieve. He leaves good things behind.

Alistair MacLeod

Sometimes when seeing the end of our present our past looms even larger, because it is all we have or think we know. I feel myself falling back into the past now, hoping to have more past as I have less future.

Alistair MacLeod

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Pearl of the Fraser

My First Flight

Flood Waters Rising

The Blizzard of ‘39

‘Doc’ Cogland

Noah

The Sandbar

Fishhooks & Broken Bottles

Look out Below!

Damn you, Red Baron

Big Duke, Our Christmas Goose

My Day with Harvey

When the Lights Came On

Ginger’s Kitchen

Three Sacks of Potatoes

The Log Boom

To Be Continued

Ginger’s Demise

The Way Back

About the Author

FOREWORD

Growing up during the 1930s was not easy for most people. My family, living in a farming community on Barnston Island in the middle of the Fraser River, probably had it better than many; we were able to produce much of our own food. Money brought in from the sale of small crops and dairy products not only kept clothes on our backs and food in our stomachs but also provided us with many of the other basic needs.

We never found those childhood years boring; there were always activities to keep us well occupied. The Fraser River provided us with many pleasant forms of activity – swimming, fishing and log hunting being among the most popular. We learned to amuse ourselves by finding outlets for our youthful energies. We laughed and we cried.

Although my memory seems to have grown dim with the passing years, many of the characters, places and events in the following short stories are as I remember them. ‘The Way Back’ is pure fiction, but the people and places are real.

I did return to Barnston Island in 2002 – sixty-two years after our family moved to Burnaby. This nostalgic visit turned out to be quite disappointing; very few places I remembered as a boy were recognizable. The Robson and Nesbit houses still stood – only a shadow of their former grandeur. An open field marked the spot where our barn and house once stood. We did locate the foundations of Tomer house – hidden away in some dense bushes and vines. I left the island with a feeling of sadness in my heart.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to my son David, for not only suggesting that these stories be placed on paper, but also in helping me create the book’s cover. Thanks also to my son Bruce, who took care of the computer-side of these writings, and edited them for electronic publishing. I am indebted to my wife Joan for her assistance in editing all stories. To my parents, three brothers and pal Harvey Hicks, thank you for sharing those ‘carefree’ years with me.

A special thanks to Barnston Island for providing me with some of the happiest years of my life.

PEARL OF THE FRASER RIVER

To most people, Barnston Island doesn’t conjure up any emotions, but to the few hardy residents who lived there – it was home.

This ‘Pearl of the Fraser River’, a few miles up-stream from New Westminster, is cradled between Bishop’s Reach and Parson’s Channel – two arms of the mighty Fraser River. Well-defined sandbars have, over the centuries, formed where the two streams come together at the western end of the island. The once pristine waters, where we swam and fished, are now murky and polluted by industrial waste.

Barnston Island was, and still is, a community accessible only by boat. The river and a few gravel roads offered the sole form of transportation to the early residents. The island remains cut off from its neighboring communities, however the ferry system has been modernized and the main road is now partially paved. At one time, there had been talk of building a bridge across Parson’s Channel, but that never materialized.

The island’s rich soil is the result of sedimentary deposits left by the river’s flooding over many thousands of years. Every so often, as it did in the late 1930s, the raging river carried away buildings carelessly built on its banks. The rising water clawed its way to the top of the dike before spilling over to the agricultural lands on the other side. In an attempt to stem the raging waters, the whole community worked together sandbagging the dikes.

Sometimes the river would breach the dikes, leaving behind a rich layer of silt covering the fields. Farmers set up a complicated system of ditches and pumps to help drain the wetland. One large steam-driven pump handled the water seepage for many years – it was upgraded when electric power finally arrived on the island. Soon after the soil had dried out the farmers once more began planting their crops.

Island residents, during the Depression Years of the early 1930s, made their living from fishing and farming – food not consumed by the desperate families was sold, bringing in just enough cash for clothing and other necessities of life. Although most residents were not well off, they never went hungry.

A number of local framers supplemented their income through commercial fishing. Fresh salmon was canned, smoked or sold to ‘packer boats’ that plied the river during fishing season. Many of the island’s young people felt quite at home on the water – they could usually earn extra spending money by working on fish boats or even going out on their own with borrowed nets.

The farmers produced many varieties of vegetables, small fruits and dairy products. Meats such as beef, poultry, pork and lamb were readily available. Daffodils and tulips were usually shipped to New Westminster where they were sold on market days. Some farmers specialized in dairy cattle – Ayrshire, Jersey and Guernsey being the most popular. Others raised beef cattle, pigs and sheep. Large cash crops of beans, peas, oats, barley and small fruits such as strawberries and raspberries were grown.

Although a gravel road ran partly around the island, the river remained the main highway. Milk was collected daily by fish boat and delivered to a waiting van at the ferry landing before being rushed by truck to a large dairy plant in New Westminster. A local fisherman and farmer provided mail service from Port Hammond to the small postal outlet on the island. On rare occasions, when the river froze over, the milk and mail had to be delivered across the ice by horse and sled. Heavy freight usually came up river by barge or on the ‘Samson’ – a paddle wheeler.

The river also provided a continuous supply of fuel for our stoves. Logs often broke away from the booms making their way slowly upstream to the lumber mills near Mission. Many residents quickly laid claim to these prize logs. After towing them ashore behind small rowboats the men quickly went to work cutting the logs into manageable sections. Teams of horses dragged larger sections to woodsheds where they were again cut and split into stove-size pieces – ready for the hungry stoves.

Barnston Island was a virtual smorgasbord of sights and smells. The pastoral farmland was dotted by herds of cattle and sheep grazing lazily in the fields. Cows often looked up as flocks of honking geese flew overhead or when an occasional bi-plane landed in a nearby field. The din of croaking frogs often broke the silence of a spring evening. Deep-throated foghorns and the rhythmic thumping of boat motors seemed to be ever present. The distinctive smells of new-mown hay, ripe silage and steaming manure piles penetrated the countryside.

Families on the island were dependent on each other in times of need – farm machinery and manpower being shared during the harvest season. Neighbors rallied around each other in times of sickness. All residents worked side-by-side sandbagging the dikes when rising water threatened their homes.

Our one-room schoolhouse and a community hall were used for concerts, dances, meetings and other social functions. There were a couple of fine fiddlers on the island and a number of wives played the piano – we had music for every occasion. Those who could get into New Westminster by boat or car found relief at movies, picnics and May Day celebrations in Queen’s Park. At first, our battery-operated radios gave us access to local news, but when the electric powered radios came into vogue, the world began to shrink.

Barnston Island was where we lived during the ‘Great Depression’ and the years leading up to World War II. It was an idyllic spot – far away from the problems of the big city. Life was never dull. I will always have fond memories of those happy years spent on our island.

MY FIRST FLIGHT

One morning, while standing in front of us, her small class of rural students, our teacher Doreen Wallace announced that she had a surprise for us. I can still recall her kind face and the excitement showing in her eyes – we all knew something very special was about to happen, however, more about that later…

My childhood, during the difficult years of the ‘Great Depression’, was happily spent on a small 20-acre farm on Barnston Island in the Fraser Valley. Our community of closely-knit residents was located a few miles upriver from New Westminster. The only way to get on or off the island was by a small two-car ferry that shuttled back and forth across Parson’s Channel – the south arm of the mighty Fraser River.

Soon after serving two terms of duty in France during the First World War, our father decided to try his hand at farming –