Walhachin: Birth of a Legend

WALHACHIN: Birth of a Legend

A new by Larry Jacobsen

(Synopsis)

Perched on the narrow lacustrine (lake-bed silts) flats overlain by unfriendly, bony topsoil, high above the Thompson River lies the remains of a hamlet known as Walhachin. It is wedged between the river and the sagebrush-covered southern uplands midway between Savona and Ashcroft and was aptly named for, in the Skeetchestn language, Walhachin meant stony ground. It might as easily have been called Hell’s Kitchen, for its late-May (1969) temperatures, when I twice checked them around 7:00 p.m., hovered at a hellish 104° F in the shade. I don’t know how hot it got out in the direct sunlight in the quarry. I do recall that I became thoroughly dehydrated every day and suffered from unquenchable thirst every evening.

Walhachin (pronounced: wal'-ha-sheen) was a Utopian orchard community, of more than 4,000-acres, situated in the Thompson River valley between Ashcroft and Savona. Conceived, planned, and built by Charles E. Barnes, an American Civil Engineer, relying on the financial backing of the British Columbia Development Association (BCDA), a British company, which marketed it to wealthy English families.

After a grand beginning it looked as though the project would live up to all that had been expected of it. A trickle of immigrants arrived in 1909, and by 1914, 180 enthusiastic residents and a labour force of similar size swelled the ranks. The Ashcroft and Kamloops news media forecast a glowing future for the village.

Utopias have had notoriously short shelf lives. They are created with the seeds of destruction inherent in them. In the legend of Camelot it was intrigue and treachery that did in King Arthur's court. At Walhachin it was in large part loyalty to the empire that, draining the village of manpower at a crucial time, sounded its death knell.
 
ISBN 978-09781640-3-4 204 pages - 9" x 7" landscape, hard cover (case bound)
Nearly 150 century-old photographs (50 full-page) plus many newer ones. Retail price: $24.95

Also by Larry Jacobsen: 
*Leaning Into The Wind: Memoirs of an Immigrant Prairie Farm Boy - 2004 (Authorhouse)
*Jewel of the Kootenays: The Emerald Mine 2008 (Published by the author and the Salmo Museum)
*Salmo Stories: Memories of a Place in the Kootenays, 2014 (Published by the author)
 Contact: Larry.Jacobsen@gmail.com

Salmo Stories: a new book by Larry Jacobsen

 

Join Larry Jacobsen at the launch party for his new book Salmo Stories

11.30 Saturday November 3rd at the Wilson Centre, Port Coquitlam map

(Available at many BC libraries or for under $40 from the author)

review by: Greg Nesteroff - Nelson Star, September 12, 2012 
Did you ever hear about the housewife who tried to kidnap a Golden Gloves contender at gunpoint just to liven up her party?
Or about Canada Bill Feeney, who lived outdoors while cruising timber at 30°F below?
They’re just a couple of the characters in Salmo Stories: Memories of a Place in the Kootenays, a new history book being launched this week by author and former resident Larry Jacobsen.
It’s really several books in one, for it reprints Rollie Mifflin’s long out-of-print memoir The Early Salmo Story in its entirety, and includes a previously unpublished manuscript by Cliff McIntosh, who arrived around 1904 and kept a journal.
Stumbling across the latter was sheer luck, according to Jacobsen.
“I went into a coffee house in Salmo and a guy had this photocopy of a photocopy he picked up at a garage sale,” he says. “A lot of the print was very difficult to read. But with a lot of hard work I managed to turn it into a readable manuscript.”
McIntosh, whom Jacobsen calls a “precocious youngster,” played piano at local dances as a teen. He left Salmo in 1920 and died in 1986, but not before completing an autobiography, which few have seen. Jacobsen tracked down McIntosh’s sisters in Williams Lake, who gave him permission to use the material...
Jacobson further drew on family stories collected by the Salmo museum and supplemented them with over 100 interviews to paint a picture of the community from the 1890s to 1960s. (It took him almost three years and close to 3,000 hours.)
The accounts vary in style, but while Jacobsen edited them for space and readability, he tried to preserve each person’s voice. “I introduce each storyteller and my connection to them,” he says. “Apart from that I get out of the way.”
They’re presented roughly in chronological order of each family’s arrival, beginning with the above-mentioned Feeney, who showed up in 1892, even before construction of the Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway put Salmo on the map.
What struck Jacobsen most was how tough people had to be to survive in the wilderness.
“Self-sufficient would be the best term,” he says. “It came through over and over again. I think some of it is genetic.”...
read the entire review at the Nelson Star

^^Larry Jacobsen, October 2012, Port Coquitlam

also by Larry Jacobsen:

three poems and an essay: Larry Jacobsen

Three Poems

 Wind

The wind roars up the valley

tearing and ripping

     at tall trees

bending before its relentless might

sapping my will to resist

Huddled before its onslaught

I yearn for home

My dog leans against me

bewildered by the gale's sudden fury

      eyes meet

                   pleading

                              What now?

~~~~~~~~~~

Snowflakes

Awareness steals into my being

Who, where, what, am I?

I seem but one of many

in my descent from the infinite

I dance lazily down

sometimes wafting back up

in swirls of random energy,

then downward again

Where am I going?

Then joining the ocean

there is no longer

     an I.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Frame

Unyielding frame of brass

what memories are buried in your alloys?

Do you recall a time when you were joined

by hellish heat in some fiery cauldron?

Your antique shape hints of lovers

soft images once nestled within

your sculpted edges, now gone

What histories do you recall?

Did part of you once dangle

from a mother's neck

enclosing the image of a boy

now disappeared into manhood?

~~~~~~~~~~

essay removed by request (14 June 2014)

~~~~~~~~~~

3 poems:
Used by permission of the author
From: "sfumato" Shoreline Writers' Chapbook series, issue 11, c2011
Posted with  permission of the author. All rights reserved.
(The Shoreline Writers' Society meets on the 3rd Sunday of every month at the
Port Moody Arts Centre , 2425 St. John's St., Port Moody, BC.)

~~~~~~~~~~

also from Larry Jacobsen

JEWEL OF THE KOOTENAYS: THE EMERALD MINE

Soft cover, published, approx. 352 pp. 8¼ x 10½, 

published by, and available from, Salmo Arts and Museum Society, 

 104 - 4th St., Salmo, BC, V0G 1Z0

from: Sultan Minerals review:

"...Tucked away in the West Kootenays, the well-known Emerald mine operated under three different owners, between 1905 and 1973. Now for the first time the history of this mine has been compiled in a book.

Author Larry Jacobsen, himself a former miner and Canex employee, is uniquely qualified to write this book. He worked at the mine for a short period in the 1950s, and it was some former colleagues who sold him on telling their stories.

The book is richly illustrated with hundreds of photographs, with some in colour, as well as a number of diagrams and maps, which all help to bring the mine and its people to life..."

 read the complete review at Sultanminerals.com
 

To book a workshop, learn more about Mr. Jacobsen's presentation or book a school visit, please contact him directly: starrider@shaw.ca. 

Mineral resources Education Program guest speakers program.  Mr. Jacobsen's school presentation is free. He asks that each school purchase two books for the library.

about Larry Jacobsen

Larry Jacobsen came to Canada as a baby in 1929, the third in a family that eventually numbered 12 children. After growing up on farms in BC and Alberta, and deciding that farming was not for him, he embarked on a nomadic career that would eventually include 46 different employers, some of which he worked for several times. He had brief spells in logging (before power saws), sawmill work and diamond drilling, before becoming an underground "hard-rock" miner for 13 years and following that up with heavy construction work. At age 51 having used up nine lives and gone to night school for an MBA, he switched to consulting and worked for another 56 companies in construction, energy and mining.
 Mr. Jacobsen now lives in Port Coquitlam, B.C. He retired for the last time at age 78 (from paying work). Jewel of the Kootenays is his third book.  
Biography condensed  from:  Mineral Resources Education Program

~~~

update September 2012: Larry Jacobsen newest book "Salmo Stories" is now available

from Kootenay Planet: "Author and former miner, Larry Jacobsen, interviewed over 100 previous and present residents for their family’s stories of life in this small mining and logging town from 50 – 120 years ago. This book will leave the reader with a sense of just how tough men had to be to survive in a wilderness community far from family, friends, and access to common amenities. This applies even more so to the women, for many of them bore a load equal to or even greater than that of their menfolk. Hear how one lady once tried to kidnap a former “Golden Gloves” boxer at the point of a rifle to liven up her stagnating party—care to try that today? This free event is open to the public. Refreshments provided by the Friends of the Library"