Joey

Joey was telling me about dog sleds and a team of sled dogs while he was filling up the jeep. A truck loaded with sleds and dogs had stopped at the gas station the day before. Pretty cool. It was a working dog sled - not for racing or show, and was headed up the highway to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Some sort of expedition. The whole time that he was telling me about it, there was a woman standing nearby. She had been walking her dog. She kept making comments. I think that she had seen the truck. So there she stood, dressed like a fur ball while this tiny dog in a knit coat kept running out on one of those extension leash things - like it should have a reel. Somehow the contrast between this woman and her dog and trying to imagine the musher and his working dogs was too much and I had to keep apologizing to Joey because I was laughing inappropriately.

After he filled up the jeep we went inside and since there were no other customers I asked him about his time in the Yukon. Now it's important to understand that the gas station in Kitwanga is really the center of the community and Joey is the acting manager. In the past I'm told that the train station was the center of activity. But it was torn down a number of years ago. Then the curling rink was, but it is closed now. Has been for quite awhile. Blew a compressor according to one person. Now the center of things seems to be Dollops Gas Station. It was named Dollops by Eric Doll, the owner – operator, in a fit of wry humor. Eric is in Vancouver getting radiation treatment for prostate cancer and is reported to be doing very well. Meanwhile Joey is the de facto station manager and in addition to the duties of running a small business and being the only employee, he makes the coffee for the twice-daily gathering of local guys and provides some of the best one-liners to go with the coffee.

Joey (Kirsch) is 46, was born on Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands) and "moved a lot." He lived in the Yukon for ten years and has never lived further south than Telkwa. Telkwa is just down the road from Smithers which is only about an hour south-east of Kitwanga. He has now lived 24 years in Kitwanga and worked a variety of jobs. Curiously, his first real job was when he was in the seventh grade - pumping gas at Dollops Gas Station. Two years ago he married Irene, who can be found keeping books at Terry's or working the cash register at the general store or straightening out accounts at Dollops.

Because of his central role in the community, Joey is also a great source of information. Some of it true. O.K., most of it. Joey is the one who recently told me about the cougar and wolf sightings around Kitwanga, and the fact that many of the local folks are concerned for their bite-sized pets.

One of the most important things about Joey is the fact that after some ten years of serious struggles with alcohol – the time in the Yukon was the worst - he quit and has now had 12 years of sobriety. This makes Joey one of those remarkable people that it’s an honor to know.

... Bob
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Snowbound

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;

Snowbound: A Winter Idyl by John Greenleaf Whittier

Groundhog Punxsutawney Phil was right - we are still in winter's grip. Yesterday morning we woke to a blizzard. We watched as finely grained snow swept past our windows in horizontal drifts; great clouds of powder snow swirled off the rooftop whenever a strong gust of wind hit, and the temperature stood at minus 0.4 degrees F. The winter storm lasted most of the day… leaving behind almost a foot of new snow on top of what was already on the ground. Fortunately Bob had gone into Kitwanga on Friday to pick up a few supplies, so we are all snuggled in for a snowbound weekend, listening to Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe on CBC Radio One and eating grilled cheese sandwiches.

We first started listening to Stuart McLean when we lived and sailed in the northern waters of British Columbia. Then soon after we moved to Kitwanga, we learned there was going to be a live performance of the Vinyl Café in Terrace. Obviously it is popular with others too because the first performance was quickly sold out, and a second performance scheduled – the one we attended. The Vinyl Café is a lot like The Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. It has the same folksy quality and humorous monologues. Stuart McLean’s monologues are about a fictional family… Dave and Morley, and their two children Stephanie and Sam. Usually there is one monologue during the one-hour radio show, but with the two-hour live performance, there were three: Morley Runs Over a Racoon, Dave and Morley Have a Baby, and Dave Takes Sam to Coney Island to Ride the Roller Coaster. Stuart McLean is lean, almost gaunt, with a shy, gentle face. When he performs his monologues, his whole body is in motion; he sways - waving his arms, his legs bend like silly putty, and the familiar voice with pauses and inflections that we have grown to love, flows effortlessly as he tells the story. The audience sits completely and thoroughly involved in the telling. We smile. We laugh. We know what’s coming and the anticipation is part of the pleasure. It was an evening well worth the hour and a half return trip back home late at night.

McLean’s charming book, Welcome Home, guided us to the small Canadian communities we visited during our 'Looking for Hope' cross-country trip. Towns such as Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. In my September called “When Past is Present,” I wrote:

“I had been reading about this little town in a book by Stuart McLean called Welcome Home. He wrote it in 1992, so what were the chances that we would find his favorite places still here fifteen years later? Places like Carson Currah’s Bakery? Stuart wrote, If you ever find yourself crossing Saskatchewan on the Trans-Canada Highway, you could do worse than drop down Highway 21 into Maple Creek for a coffee and one of Carson’s cinnamon buns. Well Currah’s Bakery is still here, along with the best cinnamon buns I have ever tasted. We poured our own coffee from the pot and sat down at one of the five tables… ”

It was also in Maple Creek that we were treated to the rare sight of The Empress 2816, a vintage Canadian Pacific steam engine pulling into the train station for a special fund-raising event. (Photo at Where Past is Present)

So what could be nicer than to be snowbound with Stuart McLean telling us a funny story about ice-fishing in Keswich,Ontario.

... P. L. Morningstar
(Photo: Stronach Creek in ice and snow.)

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Northern Exposure Redux

Long before I headed north to live, I enjoyed watching the TV series Northern Exposure, set in the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska. Cicely was an isolated community of colorful characters and misfits, who even in their eccentricities managed to form a supportive bond with each other. Now that I live in these northern latitudes, all I have to do is look around to find those same kind of unique individuals that entertained a television audience with 110 episodes over a period of five years.

There is of course, Eric’s Garage in Kitwanga where the same group of guys have been meeting for coffee twice a day for years. Then there is “Chris the Swiss” who lives just down the road from the garage. He came to Canada from Switzerland 58 years ago but still speaks with a Germanic accent. He has lived in Kitwanga for 38 years, raised his kids here… “But they’ve all moved away” and his wife is gone. He has a barn and a few cows, “It’s something to get me up in the morning,” he says with a shrug. He also butchers wild game for people and runs a backhoe for hire, which he used to dig the water line that runs from our creek to the water turbine. Every time he sees us he waves a hand in friendly greeting.

Then there was Ken, the 7-feet-plus Jack-of-all-trades. I say “was” because sometime during our cross-country trip this fall, he closed shop and left town. In his mid-fifties, he had done a little bit of everything; lived on a sailboat in the Desolation Sound, did some logging and panned for gold. He was well spoken and bright. He owned – or managed – the Bulldog Towing Company, auto salvage, truck repair, used car sales, and the local U-Haul franchise. Used car sales sounds a bit grand for the tiny row of five cars in varying degrees of decrepitude that used to line the chain link fence. They were a lot like what we used to call “island cars.” They didn’t look too good – a little rust here and there – but they ran, most of the time anyway. Ken and his employee, “The Mexican,” salvaged auto parts from wrecked cars and used them to fix up old clunkers. When they got one up and running, it went into the “Used Car Lot.” It could take up to a year of salvaging parts to get one car ready, but time doesn’t mean a whole lot here.

“Dumpster Dan” isn’t here any more either. He used to oversee the public dump just outside of town. A small man with dark eyes and hair, he had a wonderful French-Canadian accent, and his dog loved to chase after the eagles, ravens, and rats that competed over the piles of refuse. “Dumpster Dan” is either in jail or on the lam – depending upon whom you talk to at any given time. Either way, it doesn’t look good.

Then there was the obituary I spotted in The Northern Connector – a free newspaper that arrives in our mailbox once a week. We usually use it for fire starter, but this time I opened it and saw a headline that read, “Northwest loses a character as Mighty Moe passes away.” Mighty Moe, whose real name was Maurice Beaudoin, was born in 1934 in Swastika, Ontario. (Yes, there really is such a place. It was named after the Swastika Gold Mine staked in the autumn of 1907.) He got into acting at an early age “after an injury hampered his ability to do school work.” No mention of the kind of injury, or where he did his acting. The article continues, “While living in Ontario he trapped and was a prospector before joining the merchant marine in the 1950s, a career that took him around the Great Lakes.” From there he came to northern B.C. to work in an asbestos mine in the Cassiar region, then bought a trap line, and slowly got into the tourism business at Cotton Lake. “Officially it is known as Cotton Lake. But to the man who lived beside the lake just off Hwy37 north of Dease Lake for years it was Lac de Mighty Moe and the resort he ran was Mighty Moe’s Place.” I guess he was quite the promoter… when speaking about an event that was to take place at the resort, he admitted, “It’s really just the second one but I call it the 10th annual canoe race because people take it more seriously.” After 25 years at Mighty Moe’s Place, he moved permanently to Terrace in the mid-1990s when he, “lost his resort through circumstances never fully explained.” But that didn’t stop him from promoting tourism. “For several years, Beaudoin camped out at the highway rest stop between Terrace and New Remo, decorating his aging blue pick-up truck in flags and stuffed animals. There he’d talk to tourists…” until the Dept. of Transportation blocked off the entrance to the rest stop. His final years were spent at the Willows Apartment Complex, but he still drove around town in his pick-up and dropped in often at the Happy Gang Centre (Senior Citizen Center). Oh yes, and he briefly hired himself out as a male stripper. (Mighty Moe photo credit: Dustin Quezada/The Northern Connector)

Latest local news? The Kitwanga Coffee Cup has hired a “Pastry Chef” from Kansas. Northern Exposure redux? Of course, I guess that makes us part of the cast of characters too.

... P. L. Morningstar
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