Page 4 - Forest Grove Years 17 Feb

hand to any electrical or mechanical project and was, in addition, an experienced hunter
and qualified electrician. It is not clear how or why the property at Forest Grove was se-
lected but it is likely that Bob and my father had visited it during one of their hunting
trips towards the end of the war. It was, at that time, owned by a man called Eck
(Eclus) Phillips and officially known as the Forest Grove Trading Post. In addition to all
the features associated with a small Cariboo ranch running about 100 head of cattle
there was a store, post office, lodge and guiding business. It was purchased by both
families and jointly operated with responsibilities divided according to the various abili-
ties of the new owners. My father took over the store and advised about the ranch. My
mother became the postmistress and Madelene ran the household and rooming house.
Bob oversaw most of the outside work including the day to day operation of the ranch.
Forest Grove was purchased September 1, 1945 and we all moved from West Vancou-
ver to the Cariboo. I celebrated my third birthday at Forest Grove. Memories of a three
year are at best fleeting, but I do have a few.
Buildings and Rooms

The Lodge was a large log structure on the back of which was a kitchen that had been
added at a later date. The original kitchen was an older wood frame structure and I
have few memories of it. I do know from pictures in my possession that this kitchen was
torn down in 1946 or 1947 and replaced by another similar building. The main lodge
consisted of a large open area on the main floor heated by a barrel stove which in win-
ter often glowed red from the fire which was never allowed to go out. The room as, I
recall, was quite dark as the windows were small and only on the south and east side of
the building. Around the perimeter of the main room were at least three large stuffed
animal heads mounted on wood frames. One was a moose and the other two probably
large bucks with a considerable spread of antlers. I do not recall much about the fur-
nishings other than a large battery radio in the far corner and a library desk with shelv-
ing on each side for books. This desk is still in my possession and has become Mitzi’s
sewing desk. Mounted on the west wall by the entrance door was a hand crank tele-
phone and our number was 5 shorts. Underneath the phone and below the window fac-
ing the store was a nondescript chesterfield.

There were also two bedrooms entered from the main room on north side of the lodge.
The front bedroom facing the store was inhabited by my parents until the new sleeping
cabin was constructed. The other bedroom closest to the kitchen on the north side of
the lodge was originally mine. Neither of these bedrooms had any heating other than
from the barrel stove in the living room which really was very ineffective unless one was
standing within a few feet of it. The glass of water by my bedside in winter was often
frozen in the morning.
A flight of stairs led through a door located not far from the stove on the north side of
the building. These stairs led to an upper floor where were located four bedrooms one of
which was very small. I do not know how these rooms were allocated but remember oc-
cupying for a time the front bedroom on the east side of the building. If it was cold in
the downstairs bedrooms in winter it was very cold in the upstairs rooms where extraor-
dinarily little heat reached. When I was in bed in the east bedroom facing the store, I
could see outside through the gaps in the logs where the chinking had fallen out and
had never been re-placed. For some reason this remains in my mind as being a very
novel feature of that room although I imagine that the problem was quite common