Life North of the 54th

Transcript

• 00:00 - Growing up on a farm
• 16:16 - Stories around Fort St. John
• 32:31 - Weather and Driving
• 45:44 - Building Community

00:00 - Growing up on a farm

Opening Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff]

Garett:
Welcome back to Life north of the 54th. I'm Garett Brown.

Preston:
I'm Preston Brown, and we're happy to have you join us on our show. And here we have joining us today, Arlin Fehr, and we'll have him introduce himself.

Arlin:
I'm Arlin Fehr, born and raised in the Peace region. I knew these boys whenever I was young, but of course, [chuckles] we're basically the same age, so we've all gotten quite a bit older now. But yeah, lots of memories from back up there, so it will be fun to talk about some of that.

Garett:
Yeah, thanks for joining us, Arlin. It's great to have you with us, and it's great to catch up with you a little bit. It's been a while, and I always appreciate having the time to spend with you when I was in the Peace Country, so thanks for joining us.

Arlin:
My pleasure.

Garett:
So if you want Arlin to introduce yourself to the listeners and let us know what some of your earliest memories of the Peace Country are, or anything you want to share about your growing up experience in the Peace Country.

Arlin:
So I grew up about 30 minutes north of a town called Fort St. John on a farm where I grew up with my parents and a couple of my siblings. I'm the youngest of five children. There's, like, a nine year gap between me and the next oldest one, so I kind of had a little bit of the experience of being the youngest, but also a bit of the experience of almost being an only child. My oldest brother lived on the farm with us through my whole life, but he was sometimes he felt more like a tenant, so I didn't have a whole lot of interactions with him than I otherwise might have. There's a lot of time just going out and just poking around on the farm, learning things. One of my favorite things to do is because they just had this really long dirt driveway, and when it would rain, I'd go out there and I'd like, damn up little channels and make almost engineering projects with these dams, putting pipes in them so water would still flow through. And then, of course, the funniest part was going over, knocking them all over and seeing the flood rush down the driveway. Farm life was always, I think it's one of those things where it's pretty special, but you don't realize it while you're going through it.

Garett:
Did your parents farm the land? Like, how much land did they have?

Arlin:
They had about a quarter section, so a little over 100 acres. It was more of a hobby farm than anything. During my younger years was when it was, I would say, at its peak production. So we had some cows usually anywhere in the neighbourhood of 30 to 80 head, had a lot of chickens all the time. There was always more than one chicken coop that we had in operation, and even as a young boy, I'd have to go out and learn to gather eggs. And I have memories of being attacked by roosters and chased by turkeys, which were almost as large as I was. [chuckles] We also had some milk goats. So I grew up on basically fresh goat milk. And it was actually kind of interesting because after I married my wife, we moved to Edmonton. So living in a big city, which I'm not particularly used to, but went to this one place and they were actually selling goat's milk. I actually started buying that and drinking and it's like, oh yeah, this is the stuff.

Garett:
The taste of childhood.

Arlin:
Some people don't really like it. They say you can taste the goat. But the thing is, I guess that's what I was expecting.

Preston:
Yeah. Most people, they taste the cow, but they just don't realize they're tasting the cow.

Arlin:
Yeah, it's different. And like, I find goat milk has like a delightful sharpness to it, but I don't necessarily get with cow's milk. But we never made cheese with our milk. I think we tried butter once. I remember churning that. Your arms get sore. [chuckles]

Garett:
[chuckles] Yeah.

Arlin:
But yeah, growing up the farm, it was like a good 30 minutes drive to get anywhere interesting. Unless you like bush, which I did, but like a 30 minutes drive just to get into the city. And that could get a little tedious, especially in winter months or after I graduated and had work, like, that's your commute. But now after having lived in Edmonton, where it was like a 30 minutes drive on city streets just to get to work, it's like suddenly it doesn't seem so bad anymore. It's like, oh, I guess that's kind of normal.

Garett:
Yeah, that's been my experience as well. But it's a little bit different when you're just going through dense city than when you have to make that drive in the empty countryside.

Arlin:
Oh, absolutely. For one thing, you can actually have streetlights and still know where the road is during a snow storm.

Garett:
Yeah, or a huge queue of cars to everybody's following the next car.

Arlin:
Yup. I'm familiar with the winter convoys. Never envy the guy at the front of the pack.

Preston:
So, growing up so far outside of town, did you have to take the school bus to town every day for school?

Arlin:
Oh, absolutely. Yes. For the longest time that was what it was all the time. Like, my dad was a truck driver for my early years. Then he started working in town at Kaltire as like a mechanic. So when he was still a truck driver, he wasn't really home or you never really knew what the schedule is. I was taking the bus and it was a long, long ride. We're talking 30 minutes drive to get to town and like an hour and 15 minutes bus ride. And I was one of the first kids picked up on the way in and last kids dropped off on the way out. There's only like three or four other stops that were further down the road than I was, so I was on it for the long haul. But in the winter months when you're waking up that early to get on the bus and everything is dark and you're still half tired, basically just find the seat over the heater and go to sleep and wake up at school.

Garett:
Yeah. So did you take the bus all the way through to high school? Because I think I guess driving in British Columbia is a little different than Alberta in terms of getting a license and driving yourself.

Arlin:
Yes. I didn't actually get my full license until after I was graduated because you can't start until you're 16. And I don't even think I started when I was 16. I think I still waited a year and then I ended up holding on to my learners. So we have the learners which you started 16 and you have to have for a year before you can take your practical tests to get an N, which you then have to have for two years until you get your full license. I think they've changed some of that since then. But that was basically what it was when I was growing up and I ended up actually holding on to my N until my license was ready to expire. I just didn't see the point rushing. It's not like I was doing road trips with everyone, it was just me going to and from work. But yes, for high school, I took the bus on Wednesday because it was about high school that my dad started working at Kaltire. So he worked Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, so I just ride in with him on those days and then we go to our church based seminary class in the morning. But the thing is, his work started before seminary started. So I ended up sitting in the truck or in the break room at work for like 30 minutes until he then take me to the church so I could go to the seminary class. And long story short, on the days when I had to ride in with my dad, I had to be up at about 05:00 a.m. In the morning.

Garett:
Oh man!

Arlin:
That was pretty brutal. But it beat riding the bus. [chuckles]

Garett:
Yeah.

Arlin:
But on Wednesdays he didn't work, so I still had to ride the bus.

Garett:
Yeah, I understand, the bus trip. We were fortunate that our route we were basically the first ones on in our bus route too. It was like a 15 or 20 minutes drive to school, but it seemed like an hour or so, maybe 45 minutes on the bus. Sort of like first one's on, last one is off. But they did change the route eventually and we were first ones on, first ones off, and that was great. So they would just take a different route back. They would take the highway back and just drop us off first and then go drop everyone else off as they went back into town. That was great. The bus wasn't too bad coming back home. It was like a taxi service.

Arlin:
Yeah, that sounds pretty sweet. It was actually kind of interesting with our bus route. I actually did like a transfer whenever you're going to high school. So whenever I was elementary, my bus would go to Charlie Lake, which was a small community between Fort St. John and my farm, closer to Fort St. John than it was to us. So right there and as a small kid, I'd get off, but even as a small kid, you kind of notice this, but like, the buses would hang out and then the older kids would get off and they'd shuffle onto different buses and then it would carry on. So some of the buses would just carry on into the city to go to the junior high and high school, and some of the buses would just turn around and go home. So they almost had like almost like a mass transit system, a transit stop where you then had to transfer over to the other bus. And, you know, all the little kids would kind of be watching the older kids transfer over. But as I grew older and had to do the junior high riding on the bus every Wednesday, I still had to do that every Wednesday. And I just remember how strange it was to have the rolls reversed. And now there's all these little kids standing around watching me transfer to another bus. But the frustrating thing about it is it actually added way more time than it should have to my transit. So it used to be like an hour long bus ride. Now we're an hour and a half to get to the school. And Charlie Lake was only like 15 minutes from my other school. It took so long. But I guess it was also preparation to learning how to use a mass transit system in a big city because it took that long and multiple transfers could get anywhere interesting too. Of course, Edmonton's transit system is not the most efficient.

Garett:
No, those are endless stories, I think, for another day.

All:
[chuckle]

Garett:
And I guess a whole whole file of official complaints. So Arlin, what were some of your favorite parts of Fort St. John? It's the energetic city. Is it actually very energetic? [chuckles]

Arlin:
That depends. Honestly, I didn't get to go to it all that often because we lived out of town and didn't do didn't really do a whole lot in town. But even in the surrounding areas, there's just some beautiful, beautiful areas you can go. But just to the north of Fort St. John by the college campus, there's what they call the community forest. And this place is just great. I love it. Summertime full of mosquitoes, so walkers, beware. And there can be some muddy patches on some of the wider routes, but like, we're just talking really, really tall coniferous trees and just the feeling in there. Like you go to some parks and you feel they're not all the way established yet, like they've been recently designed or developed within the last few years or so. But the community forest is just like it was a forest. It's always been a forest. We just got some trails in it. And my dad used to love to go on long walks through there after church on Sundays because we have to come in for church. And occasionally I go for walks with him. And even whenever I still go up there to visit, I still try to make a trip out to the community forest. One of the things about it as well is there's, like in Edmonton, I'd go to parks and you could always hear the city. It didn't matter where you were, you always knew you were still in the city there. There, you go in there and at certain moments there's a stillness which you just don't find. That was also especially true out on the farm. My dad and my parents, they intentionally left a certain portion of our land forested, so we didn't clear it all for agricultural development. We left some forests because my dad loved crosscountry skiing and so he wanted to have paths that he could cut through trees and have it kind of more interesting than just cutting across a field in the summertime. You could also go explore in those woods, too. And that was a lot of fun, too. Like, I had a lot of great time outside just on the comfort of my own property because of that. There was also up there, there's also the two hydro dams on the Peace River. There's the Peace Canyon Dam and the WAC Bennet Dam. And we used to make almost annual road trips with my grandmother to just go visit them and tour them. And I hear they don't do it anymore, which would be kind of sad, but I haven't actually confirmed that. But you could actually get on a tour bus and it would drive you around the grounds of the WAC Bennet Dam. You'd actually go into the dam and you could watch the water come in or the water come out from the other side of the turbines. Or they'd even take you down into the powerhouse and you'd see the huge gantry crane, which they had used to originally move the turbines into place in which they used to do maintenance work on them if they needed to. And it was such an experience, and I loved doing that. And even the drive there just cuts through mountains and stuff and it's beautiful.

Garett:
Yeah, I agree. So this is a drive from Fort St. John to basically Hudson's Hope?

Arlin:
Yup.

Garett:
It's really nice.

Preston:
Very beautiful. Something interesting I remember about the WAC Bennet Dam is it is the largest dam in the world that is Earth dam by volume, and it's the third largest dam by volume in the world. So it's one of the biggest dams internationally as well. Depending on how you're measuring the size of a dam though. [chuckles] If you measure by electricity output, it's not the biggest by any means anymore.

Arlin:
No, but it's still an impressive piece of Earthwork. And I actually remember living up there where there was this time where these sinkholes started opening up in the dam and everyone was kind of kind of freaking out about what was going on because it seemed like there was this gaping structural flaw that was opening up. And it was a bit of a scandal for a while. Everyone was talking about it was like, what's going on with the dam? But apparently they did some remedial repairs, figured out what was going on. But there was a time when so there's a road that actually goes along the top of the dam, and you get to the other side of the dam and there's this really nice lookout point where you can see over the spillway. And that is quite an experience when the spillway is actually open, you can feel the sound of the water. It's awesome. But there was a period of time where you couldn't actually drive across the road because the road was closed, because they didn't know if it was going to swallow a car or something. [chuckles]

Garett:
[chuckles] That would be pretty problematic.

Arlin:
Kind of cuts down on the tourism factor. Yeah.

16:16 - Stories around Fort St. John

Garett:
So on the farm growing up, did you mostly explore by yourself or do you have friends or other family that would be there to hang out with you, do you recall?

Arlin:
Usually dogs. If I had friends coming with me, we usually I guess we'd do some exploring. There were some friends who I would take around. Yeah. So we do a little bit of exploring. Like, there was kind of my dad had an old scrapyard at the top of the field. That was always kind of fun, especially as a young kid, all these rusted out vehicles. Like, what boy wouldn't find that interesting.

Garett:
Yeah, exactly. And how do you have an acreage with hobby farm equipment that doesn't have a pile of broken down stuff somewhere?

Arlin:
Exactly.

Garett:
Abandoned projects and extra parts.

Preston:
[chuckles] Not a real farm if it doesn't have it.

Arlin:
[chuckles] My first car actually ended up out there until my mother had to sell the farm. So I could just walk down to see my first car sitting there, and it wasn't drivable anymore after a head gasket blew out.

Garett:
Was that a New Yorker?

Arlin:
Yeah, actually. 1987 Chrysler New Yorker.

Garett:
Yeah. I remember when I was living in Fort St. John and you were driving that. It was a luxury car that was well past its prime.

All:
[laugh]

Arlin:
The seats were fantastic. The seats were still so comfortable. I loved riding on this thing. But the thing is, it was as you said, it was a luxury car. It was like really advanced for its time. So it had like digital display, power seats, power window, powered mirror, and it had like an actual audio voice which would tell you what was wrong with the car. So it actually say, checked tire pressure, or fuel level low, or anything like that. Anytime you had a check engine light on, this voice would tell you what was happening. Well, one day coming home from town, I was letting my dad drive the car. My mom was in the passenger seat, I was in the back. We pull into the garage, we put it into park, and the voice rattled off everything it could say in this long winded spiel of like, tire pressure low, check fuel level, check the oil level, and it just rattled through everything and then never spoke ever again.

All:
[laugh]

Arlin:
It's like, here you go, here's the laundry list. I'm done.

All:
[laugh]

Garett:
That's amazing. Did you retire the car at that point, or did you drive it for a while longer after that?

Arlin:
No, I kept driving it. So the story of what happened with this is, like old vehicle, perpetual check engine lights. You know how it is.

Garett:
Yeah.

Arlin:
So you kind of get this feel for what problems are actually problems and what aren't problems. And the digital display has this thing where whenever you start, the temperature gauge would spike up to the danger zone and then go back down to normal. And me and my dad, we looked at it, we figured it was just the thermostat which was wearing out, but it seemed to still be functioning, like the temperature was actually staying good. It wasn't actually overheating, it just seemed to be something problematic with the sensor itself. So we just kept driving it. And then one day I'm trying to get home and all of a sudden the temperature gauge spikes and it doesn't go back down. And I didn't notice because I'm used to ignoring it. [chuckles] And then steam starts coming out from my hood and I'm like, oh, we've got a problem. I ended up actually limping it back to your relatives, Jim and Pam Brown, because they lived along my route to get home. And I actually managed limping it back to their house, calling home, and my dad had to come rescue me. And we get the thing up on a trailer because he's got an old tow truck and stuff, get it up on a trailer, haul it back to the farm, and we find it had actually overheated this time and blown a head gasket. We're like, well, that's the end of that. [chuckles] Longest time it lived in that scrapyard. Cause I wanted to repair it. Cause you always kind of have a special place for your first car.

All:
[chuckle]

Arlin:
I never got around to it.

Garett:
No, it would just be a money pit at that point.

Arlin:
Absolutely. You were correct when you said well past its prime.

Garett:
[laughs] Thanks for sharing, Arlin. At the time you had your first car. I also had my first car and there were piles of junk.

Arlin:
[chuckles] I kind of went through a long line of scrap on wheels for a while. We were kind of a firm, Dad was a pretty handy mechanic, so it's like if we get something for a good price at an auction, he could probably bring it back to life. So it wasn't much he couldn't do with the cars. But Fort St. John, and even up in the north, they're going to be sometimes questionable road conditions. Fort St. John actually had some really terrible potholes in places. And I once ended up destroying something in my car by hitting a pothole too hard, just rammed into it and then suddenly started making a loud grinding noise and there were bits of metal on the road behind me. And I'm like, oh, that's not good. [chuckles]

Garett:
Yes, I also damaged my car on a drive. It was a drive between Grande Prairie and Fort St. John. There was construction and I didn't see the massive hole. I mean, it was construction. There was no one there doing any work. And I was driving faster than I should have and I saw the hole too late, tried to slow down, and it was a massive thump. And I didn't really notice any difference at the time. It shook me because it was such a massive pounding on the car that it felt like something did break. And it did. Basically, the front struts had broken and the car then was like pointing down for months or maybe like a year or two before I got it taken to a mechanic. And they're like, your front struts are gone. And I'm like, oh, okay. So then they fixed it and it felt like I was driving a truck because the car went from pointing down to what felt to me like it was pointing up.

All:
[chuckle]

Garett:
Yeah, I agree. Potholes can be bad, especially if you're driving too fast.

Preston:
Yep, if I remember right. Not even all the roads of Fort St. John were asphalt. They're still gravel roads for the streets. Some places.

Arlin:
In some places, yes.

Preston:
Most of it was paved.

Arlin:
Yeah, well, that's one of those funny things, right? Because the town I grew up in and the town that's there now, there's whole neighbourhoods that didn't exist. There's entire sections of town which have been developed and are full of houses and parks and things. When I was growing up, that was just a field with some trees in it. It's actually the church that I went to whenever it was built was just surrounded by fields with trees in it. There was no housing developments or nothing. It was like on the north end of town and there was nothing next to it. Now it's surrounded by some of the newer and nicer housing developments in town. But I actually have memories of playing a game of Capture the Flag and some of those trees and fields around there. So it was so thick with bush and trees, you couldn't see from one flag to the other. And we were doing it after the sun had set, so it was dark. We had like flashlights, bush, and I'm surprised no one got injured.

Garett:
Yeah, I certainly recall that too, because when we lived in Won-o-won, we went to church at that building. As a small child, I remember when we were there after dark for some church activity, then it was eerie. Because the parking lot lights weren't, I mean they illuminated the parking lot, but there was quite a bit of field, if I recall, in between the lot and the border of the trees. But the light didn't shine to the edge of the trees. And so it was just like this creepiness of, I don't know, whatever was lurking in the darkness. For us, it's like living in Won-o-won, where it's like super small town and likely bears is walking through town at some point. That's sort of what it felt like, because it didn't feel city.

Arlin:
I had seen moose walking in town, but especially out on the farm, like, you'd see deer in the yard, you'd see a bear. But one of the things is in that darkness out in the bush, like at night, was especially something. With my windows open, you can hear like wolves and coyotes howling. And when they're in the distance, there's almost something cool to it. It's a familiar sound, but when they're close, suddenly the sound is less friendly and more terrifying.

Preston:
Sounds of dread.

All:
[chuckle]

Arlin:
Yes, exactly. Now I knew I was safe in the house. They weren't going to get me in the house. But if those sounds were too close, then there was a thought of, oh, what about the livestock? And am I going to have to go out there? What's going to happen here? Or you'd hear the dogs just tear off into the bush barking. It's like, well, I hope they come back.

Garett:
[chuckle]

Arlin:
The dogs always did nighttime patrols, barking through most of the night. Seemed like they were quite keen on protecting the livestock and protecting us. So good dogs. It's like if a pack of wolves pin you guys, you're done. [chuckles]

Preston:
Yeah, they wouldn't even stand a chance.

Garett:
Were they big dogs or medium sized dogs?

Arlin:
We usually had big dogs. We had quite a few. A lot of border collies. We had an actual collie-collie. As the farming operation kind of started to wind down, as my parents were getting older, then we sort of transitioned to smaller dogs. Easier to take care of, mostly. Although then you weren't as confident in their ability to scare off a stray animal or something. But there was one dog we had Morgan, her name was. She was a border collie. She was just this big, fluffy dog. We called her BFG for Big Fluffy Dog.

All:
[chuckle]

Arlin:
And she loved my mother. Every time mom went out, she'd follow her wherever she went. And she was actually pretty good at herding chickens. So we'd actually let the chickens out in the afternoon so it could free range scavenge for bugs and food and greens and that sort of thing. But whenever it got to a certain point, then we wanted the chickens back in the pen. And for the most part, they just wander in on their own. But occasionally you get a few stubborn stragglers and Morgan would just get them back in the henhouse all lickety split. She was good at that. She was going to be a coward.

All:
[laugh]

Arlin:
My dad has this story that he told of, like so if it was a choice between my mom and my dad, Morgan would pick mom. And dad would just be left to whatever he was doing. But if dad was the only one out there, then Morgan would go trucking on after him and follow him, whatever he was doing. Dad was going for a walk down to the field. I think he was going to check out something in the bone yard and he heard something in the bush. I figured it might have been a bobcat or something. Or some kind of cat, one of the bigger, meaner ones, because we had had those in our area a few times as well. They'd come wandering around. Usually you'd get warned by neighbours or something if they saw one, and this is one of those situations. But he heard something go crack in the bush and he turned and looked. And then he looked for Morgan to see where she was. And she was already almost all the way back to the house. She's just like, nope, leaving you to die, see ya.

All:
[chuckle]

Garett:
Certainly man's best friend there.

Arlin:
Her bark was much worse than her bite.

32:31 - Weather and Driving

Preston:
So Arlin, like, Peace Country is notorious for hot summers cold winters, but are there any like weather events that you remember in particular?

Arlin:
I think I got two that really kind of stand out in mind. One's more of a general idea, and the other one was an actual specific event. So one of the things we had on the farm was we had this huge glass window in the living room, which you could kind of see out to our garden and over the tops of the trees. And the trees were pretty close, so it's not like you had this commanding view of a valley or anything. Like you'd get down in southern Alberta out on the prairies, but you still see a good portion of the sky. And when you had a summer thunderstorm sitting in that living room on the couch with the lights off, just looking out that window, that was an experience. You'd open the two side windows so you can actually get the sound rolling in too from the thunder. And you had a commanding view of a large swath of where these strikes would be. They just light up the sky and then you'd feel the thunder come rolling in through the window. And you were happy to be indoors. [chuckles] But I always loved watching thunderstorms like that. And like in the city you just can't. Whenever we moved to Edmonton, like the buildings just blocked the line of sight. Sure you might see some flashes here or there, you might hear the thunder, but it's just not the same. And the only places where I've been able to recreate anything like that is in kind of more wide open spaces. Like I went to Saskatchewan for a summer and I watched a storm roll in for like 2 hours from the horizon and that was just glorious. But I always loved watching those storms out on the farm. It's just you feel this real sense of the power from it and also a sense of your own vulnerability.

All:
[chuckle]

Arlin:
Always loved thunderstorms since then. But as for cold winters, one winter was particularly bad. There was a lot of snow and stuff, but we actually ended up being without power for about a week out on the farm.

Garett:
Oh, wow.

Arlin:
Yeah, pretty much everyone north of town was just knocked off the grid by this while they were trying to repair everything. Because a bunch of trees fell on lines and stuff and it was a bit of a mess. But yeah, we were without power for about a week and basically couldn't get off the farm for a couple of days either just because of the condition of the roads. We did all right because we had wood stove, we could heat water, had plenty of like preserves and canned food. So it's not like we starved or went cold or didn't have anything to drink. We had a generator that we, no, I think that might have been before the generator.

Garett:
Maybe the reason they got the generator?

Arlin:
Maybe the reason we got the generator!

All:
[laugh]

Preston:
Cause and effect.

Arlin:
Like in the wintertime, keeping food's not that hard if you're okay with frozen food. You just throw them outside. We had like a bunch of open coolers on the deck so we didn't have to worry about everything in the deep freezes thawing out. But I tell you what the worst part of it. So we had the wood stove in the living room and it did a great job of keeping the living room warm and some of the surrounding area. But some of the rooms that were far away from it still got quite cold, including my bedroom and including the bathroom. And you're not going to go without washing yourself for a whole week. So you basically have to take a pot of water, go to the bathroom and give yourself a sponge bath in air that is only slightly above freezing.

All:
[chuckle]

Arlin:
So you take a hot sponge and you rub that and then immediately it starts to evaporate and freezing. You just try to do it as quickly as you can. So that was kind of awful.

Garett:
Yeah, I can't imagine.

Arlin:
Yeah. But power outages weren't uncommon out there. So we had, like, oil lamps and candles and all kinds of all kinds of stuff. But a week was a bit longer than we had faced before. We actually even had an outhouse on the farm for part of my time growing up. We did have indoor plumbing, but, like, when there was a power outage or something wrong with the pumps or something, at least you still had somewhere, even if you had to go outside for it, which in the winter time is unpleasant.

Preston:
[chuckles]

Arlin:
And in summertime, sometimes it could be wasps nesting in the air, which was also unpleasant.

Preston:
Yeah. Or you're trying to do business and the mosquitoes are just having at you. [chuckles]

Arlin:
Yeah, there was a lot of bugs out there. That was something that was strange about living in the city, is just how few bugs there were. I wasn't complaining, but I went for a walk in the community forest with my wife. We took a trip to Fort St. John for some not so great reasons, but we ended up taking a walk in the community forest. It was kind of shocking how many bugs there were. I was like, I don't remember this part, but it's always been I've just been spoiled by the city.

Garett:
Yeah. It never ceases to astonish me how many mosquitoes there are in places where there are so few people. I just don't know what they live off of.

Arlin:
Bears and moose mostly.

Garett:
Yes. I suspect. Other large mammals.

Arlin:
And those moose, they are not small creatures whenever you see them up front.

Garett:
Yeah, I remember, I may have been the closest I've ever really been to a moose. I was driving from Grande Prairie to Fort St. John again, and I was on the south side of the Taylor Hill, and I was coming almost to, like, the crest of the hill, ready to go down into the valley, into the Peace Valley. And I wasn't really paying attention to the road because I was driving, it was getting late, and I was probably tired. And then suddenly there was a moose right next to the car as I drove by it. And it was like, right next to the car. I almost hit it. And as I passed by it and I saw how big it was, it was like, oh, its head is as big as my torso. Like, my whole body, it's just its head, like, this thing is huge. If I had hit that thing, it would have been all the other stores that you were in the Peace Country about people hitting moose. The whole car is just done. Yeah. It's terrifying. They're so big.

Arlin:
Yeah. I was driving actually from Grande Prairie to Fort St. John. And just before you come to the Alberta and BC border, there's this weigh scale and there's this wider section of road so people can go past the trucks as they're turning off. I'm driving along there. Road's clear, road's dry, everything's fine. And I reached down to grab something from the center console and I look up, there's two moose crossing the road. And I was like, where did these come from? Of course, they didn't really have any time to think. So I just grabbed the wheel and I swerve around and come back. And I swear one of my tires came off the road from that. That's how close they were. And it's like they just came out of nowhere. So I don't know, maybe we need to do some investigation to see if moose can teleport.

Garett:
[laughs]

Preston:
Well, one of my experiences of almost hitting a moose, I was in high school, driving to town. No, it's post high school, I was going to work. And the snow is heavy, it's morning, it's dark, and the snow is so bad that visibility was poor, but not so poor, that like, you can't drive. And here I am, driving, and the moose just like, in a full trot just comes up on the left side of the road. But I didn't see it until like, because the snow and the headlights, till it was like, great Scott. Like, I'm going to hit this thing. We're on collision course. But like, I managed to go far enough right that I didn't go in the ditch, but I almost hit its chin with my mirror. Like it felt that close, but it's probably exaggerating it. But it was like yeah, its head was huge, like as high as the pickup, the top of the pickup truck.

Arlin:
I had a pair of them cross in front of me on a country road. Thankfully, I saw them coming so I could stop. But like, they're going by. Like, their bodies is taller than the Minivan I was driving. It's like, man, these things are big. Yeah, they're not small animals.

Garett:
Yeah. I think the final story I'll share is I was with my dad. We were in oil and gas country doing work in oil and gas. And it had been a particularly heavy snow for the winter. I think over the course of the winter, it had easily gone over six or seven feet. And they're constantly plowing the roads to let oil and gas traffic get to the sites. But that meant instead of the ditches going down, they had filled and now has started to build these walls. And there were like three or four foot walls of snow on the sides of the road. And this poor moose was on the road. And we were basically following it for a couple of miles until it finally got brave enough to climb over the ridge and get out of the way. But it was just like wandering back and forth slowly as we crept behind it. And of course it looked terrified because this thing bigger than it was there. It didn't know where to go and it couldn't go anywhere.

Arlin:
Yeah, sometimes you get some dumps of snow like that. It's insane. There was one year in Fort St. John where over the course of two days we got more snow than we usually got over the entire month. So it just all decided to just dump all at once. Like the snow plows are going nonstop through the actual blizzard. And then whenever the blizzard was done in Fort St. John, there's a lot of snow and sometimes they didn't always get to the actual removing it from the streets part. So they just pile it up in the middle of the street. So where normally you have a center line, now you have this Large Mountain of Snow. It was so tall you couldn't actually see the lane on the other side. You couldn't see the other cars, you couldn't see the people, nothing. It's just this wall of snow and they had breaks in it for areas where you might want to turn and get off the road. But that was it just a dump of snow. And like on the main drag in Fort St. John, it's a four-lane road and at that time it wasn't. It was just two lanes.

All:
[chuckle]

Arlin:
And one of the other interesting things of living up there is of course the chinooks because when it gets cold, it's not necessarily just going to stay cold. You get these blasts of warm air coming in from the mountains and it'll just almost dissipate winter for a bit. The most extreme one I had ever had was like a week of minus thirty and then we had a chinook and the next day it was plus twelve and everything was melting and wet and muddy and gross. But at the same time it was also great because it was minus thirty and now it's not so you're wearing T-shirts.

All:
[chuckle]

Arlin:
Those sort of things can help make the winter pass by. I'd say, it's nice to have the little breaks. I know some people say that it probably doesn't do anything good to our immune system and that might be true. But all I know is it's nice to suddenly have below zero temperatures after facing that inhuman temperature the week before. Because when it's hitting minus thirty and minus forty, nothing wants to work right anymore. I actually once ended up having to walk across town in a blizzard, of minus forty, with a friend of mine. So I got to school on the bus. The weather was okay. And then this like sudden snap blizzard kind of rolls into town and it's just blowing snow. It's terrible. The roads are awful. And my dad, and the buses got canceled, like they're not going out on the roads anymore. And I'm stuck in town, and my parents are stuck on the farm, and I'm like what do I do now? So my one friend, Jonathan Ross, good friend of mine, I've known him since high school, but basically he says I can go and stay at his house. So we end up walking across town to his house in this blizzard and I assure you I was not dressed for that. [chuckles] And we get to his house. And I swear it felt like, as my legs were starting to get feeling again, it almost felt like they were it's the weirdest sensation I've ever felt. And I don't want to say it was frostbite, it could have been, but it almost felt like my legs were melting as they were heating.

Garett:
[chuckles] Oh, man.

Arlin:
It was bizarre. And we were just so cold, but so happy to be indoors again. Yeah, I was grateful to him for giving me a place to crash because my next best plan was to hide in the library and sleep behind some books.

Preston:
[chuckles]

Garett:
Yeah, that's crazy. I wonder if it was the same storm when I think I was in high school, but I don't think our older brother Travis was. I think he was in town working and a blizzard came in and he stayed in town for the night because it was just so bad that it was way too dangerous.

Preston:
Yeah, I drove home with dad in that. Dad picked me up from basketball or something. And we drove home, which wasn't very far, but we saw like a dozen cars in the ditch on a short drive.

Arlin:
Yeah, you get some of those storms and you're driving on the road and it's like, oh, there's new car. There's new car. There's a new car all in the ditch. It's like, go slow, hope for the best, and maybe don't leave the house for a few days.

Garett:
I think in a related way, one of the things that I kind of found disappointing about, maybe that's not the right way to say it, but I kind of found disappointing about going to school in the Peace Country, is that you almost never got snow days. It was almost always cold days, right? Like, they were so they're so well prepared for dumps of snow that almost no amount of snow is going to cancel school. It really has to be atrocious snow to cancel school. And then it's usually canceled for two days because the next day is the cleanup day because it's still so bad. And so you hear stories about people getting snow days and having a great time. I mean there's a whole movie called Snow Day. But it's different when they cancel school because it's too cold. Then you don't want to go play outside because it's too cold. [chuckles] It's, different.

Arlin:
I know at the elementary school up in Charlie Lake, and this might be one of those old urban legend things, but I do remember that they did actually used to do snow days at Charlie Lake where the school could actually just be closed. No one was coming in. But, and this is the urban legend part, apparently some kid got dropped off at school on a snow day, and school was closed, so he couldn't go inside. So I'm guessing he just walked to the Charlie Lake store or something nearby. But apparently it was like all this big scandal. So then the school district mandated that the school had to be open regardless, even if it was just one staff member, to get the doors open in case some kid gets dropped off by, I guess, parents who didn't realize that a blizzard is bad news. And so after that, there was no snow days at Charlie Lake anymore and it might have been for the whole school district, so hence no more snow days. But living way out in the country, we could still get a day when the buses were canceled. And that was our excuse.

Preston:
Yeah, that's where I was growing up. Like the school was always open, but if the bus is canceled, you have no obligation to go to school. [laughs]

Arlin:
Then often then sometimes I'd end up just getting driven to school anyway by my dad who was on his way to work or something. So it's like bus is canceled, but I'm still going. And there were a few days, like there were a few days in Charlie Lake, normally for recess or lunch, they just kick us out, out into the elements. But there were some time when it was so miserable they weren't going to kick the kids out into like blizzard like conditions. So then we'd all end up hanging out inside the school for our recess and lunches. And the office actually had like boxes of toys for the classrooms. You could go down and sign up for like a set of jacks to play, jacks. So that was always kind of cool.

All:
[laugh]

Preston:
It's not 1950 anymore Arlin.

All:
[laugh]

Arlin:
Hey, I didn't pick the toys.

Garett:
Same toys, since 1950.

Preston:
From when the school first opened.

Garett:
Just keep signing them out.

45:35 - Building Community

Garett:
So Arlin, having grown up in the Peace Country and now living in a bigger city, can you make some comparisons for us with the slower pace laid back nature of the Peace Country that you grew up experiencing? And do you think that was inherent to the Peace Country or do you think that was sort of inherent to childhood and a sense of free time?

Arlin:
Well, I mean, most people I know wouldn't describe the Peace Country as laid back. A lot of resource work, people working hard, a lot of that go, go, go mentality, as the old saying is, get 'er done. A lot of that up there, very hard working place. But there was, to a degree, I would say less busyness. Like, yes, there was hard work, people busy a lot with work, but when you weren't working, there wasn't necessarily as much going on, if that makes sense. Like Edmonton, living in the big city, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of amenities, there's a lot of things to do, there's a lot of places to go. All that. They're bonuses,that's perks. I'm not going to lie and say that it's not. But by that same token, you can also end up in a way feeling more isolated from the people around you. My brother Brendan describes the big city as a place where you can go, be surrounded by people, but still be completely alone. And up in the Peace Country, I know many people and some friends who have very different experiences than me. And part of that goes to, I guess, you know, I had the church community to lean on. I had my little circle of people who I knew way out in the country that we could talk to. Like, out in the country, if something bad's happening, you help your neighbour because no one else can. Like, there was one time where one of our neighbour's houses actually caught fire. And we were well beyond the fire protection service radius, so neighbours just started calling neighbours, and we had one guy show up with a water truck and rest of us were trying to pull out belongings, forming bucket brigades and that sort of thing. And we did what we could to save the house and save the people. And we all just banded together. There was no question of, well, whose responsibility is this? The responsibility was to whoever could do something. And in a lot of ways, I think that sums up kind of that more isolated life. And that's something which I found to be lacking in a big city. It's not really a question of what can I do? It's more of a question of, well, whose responsibility is it? Yeah, there's always an office at City Hall whose job it's supposed to be. And so no one decides they want to do it. That said, not everyone was like that up in Fort St. John. Very transient town. Some people were just there for the work, just there to make a lot of money and have fun and then leave when the work is gone. But for me, I had community. I had people who cared, and we tried to do things for each other because who else is going to do it? It's like way up there Fort St. John. It's not on the way to anything except the Yukon, and there's even less there than there is where we were. [chuckles] No one has a reason to go to Fort St. John just to go to Fort St. John. Like, that was a thing. Edmonton. That's a destination. There's reasons to go there, there's reasons to be there. But you don't go to Fort St. John because you thought, hey, that sounds nice. You go to Fort St. John because there was work, because that's where you were originally from, stuff like that. It wasn't a destination. So you had to make the best of what you had.

Garett:
Thank you. That's insightful.

Arlin:
Yeah, because I remember one time there was an apartment building in town that actually caught fire and the tenants had to be evacuated. And basically there was a sudden influx of people who had nowhere to go. And I remember there was just this huge outpouring of donations and stuff, offers for places that people could go, just dropping off stuff. Like there was this large space which they had set aside and it just ended up getting filled. People could do something, so they did. It didn't always work out that way. Like, we had homeless people in Fort St. John. There was a real problem with that. And in a lot of ways, I wish there was more that we had done for them. But that's also a very complicated issue, sometimes more complicated than just giving people a home because there was substance abuse problems up there too. It was almost inherent with the patch, with the oil patch, that is. And that was one of those things, right? Either you had a community and you were looking out for each other, or you were on your own and it could be a hard place. Very different experiences depending on a lot of factors. For me, I would call my experience if they're generally positive. But I've heard from friends who didn't have as positive at the time as me. And I think that's one of the things that I took away from the Peace Region, honestly, is a lot of your life is defined by the community you're part of. So try and pick good ones.

Garett:
Yeah. I found when I lived in Fort St. John with my uncle Jim and Pam, that's where most of the friendship that I have with the you Arlin developed, because at that point, we were more independent. We were adults, I guess.

All:
[chuckle]

Preston:
You could vote.

Arlin:
We were more adult like.

All:
[chuckle]

Garett:
Yeah. But yeah, I found the difference between living in Fort St. John and living in Grande Prairie was the community of people. Like, it was mostly my interactions with people at church. And I found that the group of people in Fort St. John seemed to be more engaged in activities that were like they were building something and building something together than in Grande Prairie where it felt like everybody was just sort of there. They would show up and do stuff, but they weren't sort of creating this larger scale thing together. And I always found that like the young single adult group in Fort St. John was sort of more homely like together, that it was sort of a more tightly knit, I guess. I think, like a specific example is it always just astonished me that in the spare time of some of the people in Fort St. John, they would write books or make movies or endeavor creative projects of some scale or some amateur level. And then I'd go back to Grande Prairie, and it was sort of like, hey, do you want to play video games? It's fine. And I enjoyed it, but it's just sort of different when the energy is focused in creating something than it is in just partaking of it. So I have a really fond place in my heart Fort St. John.

Preston:
What's that?

Arlin:
I said, I appreciate that perspective. It's nice to get an outsider look at your circle sometimes.

Garett:
Yeah. Did you and your friends play DnD or like Dungeons and Dragons?

Arlin:
Not really my church friends, but I had high school friends that I did play that with. Yeah, I know some of the other people in the young adult group had had experience with it in other circles as well. Yeah, it was a thing I don't think we ever did it as a group there, but that would have been a good idea. Hindsight.

Garett:
Yeah. Nathan, our cousin, Jim and Pam's son. Nathan introduced me to DnD at the general level and as a kid, when I was younger, I just did not understand the concept. It's like so you create the character yourself and you can write down their strengths and abilities with a pencil. Why wouldn't you just max it all out and just make it the best? It took me until I actually began playing it, actually, weaknesses are really the ideal parts of character that make the character interesting. It's not their strengths, it's their weaknesses. Well, Arlin, thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Arlin:
Absolutely. This has been delightful.

Preston:
Yes, it's been great to hear your stories about Fort St. John and the Peace Country.

Garett:
Is there anything that you want to share or promote, Arlin?

Arlin:
Promote? You're leaving that window open?

Garett:
Yes, we have about four listeners on average.

All:
[chuckle]

Arlin:
Well, to that staggering number of listeners. You did mention that in our young adult group, there's a lot of creative endeavors going on, and I am one of the partakers of those creative endeavors. I like to write, write science fiction, some fantasy. You can just do a Google search for my name and you'll probably find some of my stuff on Amazon or maybe even my website. So be great to have four more readers.

Garett:
Yeah, we can definitely put a link to your site in the show notes.

Arlin:
Can do.

Garett:
It's been a pleasure, Arlin. We're so grateful that you could join us and share your stories with us. We know that taking an hour to swap stories is such a small fraction of anyone's life. So thank you for sharing some of those. We appreciate it.

Arlin:
Yeah, absolutely. It's been a pleasure. And I'm probably going to have to go listen to the rest of your podcast because this is a very interesting project you got going on here.

Garett:
Thank you. To all of our listeners, if you have questions, or comments, or feedback, you can email us at lifenorthofthe54th@gmail.com. We're happy to hear from you, to hear your stories or just to hear from you and let us know that you're listening.

Preston:
Till next time, thank you for joining us.

Garett:
See you around, Arlin.

Arlin:
Cheerio.

Ending Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff with drumbeat]