HISTORY: Families and People: N | NICHOLAS

Frank (Francis) J. Nicholas was another Scotsman. He lived with his wife, Margaret in the log home on what is now High Lonesome Ranch. He had built a log cabin there which he enlarged when he married Margaret. Probably John Findlay, his wife’s brother actually did most of the building. Later, after Margaret died he moved back into the small original cabin.

Mary Shanks, Joe Rich’s second school teacher and the eventual Mrs. Cyril Weddell lived with the Nicholases during the year she taught school in Joe Rich. She was a close friend of Margaret Nicholas.

On January 9, 1934, when Frank Nicholas and Billy Mack were butchering a steer in Nicolas’ barn, Frank slipped on the ice and his rifle discharged shooting Billy in the thigh. Bleeding was severe and a tourniquet was used. A stretcher was improvised and Billy was moved to the back of a truck and then driven over the bumpy road to town. Unfortunately Billy died that night in the hospital from a blood clot almost certainly originating in the injured leg. Billy was a favourite of all the residents in Joe Rich Valley and everyone was devastated by his death.

In 1938, Frank bought a Plymouth car and decided to teach himself to drive. He drove around the field behind his barn, but when he hit the barn, he decided that driving was not for him. After that he often caught a ride to town with Mrs. Uppenborn.

Many years before it was decided to build Highway 33 through from Joe Rich to the Kettle Valley, Frank Nicholas and Cyril Weddell rode their horses up the valley and up the hill where the highway presently goes to the Big White turnoff and McCulloch Road and decided that this would be the best route for a future road connection. For years the government disregarded their opinion and concentrated on the road up the south side of Mission Creek Valley to McCulloch Station. But much later, the road builders decided they were right and built the road where they had envisioned it.

When Mrs. Findlay, who was the mother of John and Margaret and their six siblings, became very elderly, she lived with the Nicholas’ for a few years. This proved unworkable, because she was senile and required constant care. Not long after she was moved to a chronic care home, Margaret Nicholas quite suddenly died from a stroke on March 14, 1930. She was 54.

Frank had become a close friend of the Clements while they had lived in Joe Rich. This relationship continued after Margaret died and the Clements moved back into Kelowna. After the older Clements had died, he continued to maintain a close friendship with Clement’s daughter, Ettie and her family, the Adams. They always spent Christmas together. Years later, Frank became interested in flying saucers and heard about people in California with information about them. He traveled to San Francisco to check this out and was killed when he stepped off a curb and was hit by a car. He was deaf and probably couldn’t hear it coming. In his will Frank left his hand-cranked gramophone and some old paintings to the Adams, and Charlie Adams still has these.