Rosses

Ken and Barbie Ross were active and popular residents of Joe Rich for many years. They owned property on the southwest side of Highway 33 next to the Vanderwerf property. They built a beautiful log home there and welcomed bed and breakfast guests to an adjacent cabin. They also had an antique shop and a little museum. Barbie worked as an interior designer and Ken was wood’s boss for Crown Zellerbach Mill and later Riverside.

They were active in the community life and raised a family of four boys here: Ryan, Michael, John and Steven. Gert Weddell and Barbie organized many of the sporting activities for the children.

When Ryan was a toddler, he disappeared and the community was mobilized to find him. Pat Russell finally did. He was locked between the two doors in the old schoolhouse.

Their children have now grown up and left home. Ken and Barbie have moved to her father’s property on the Kelowna lakeshore.

 

Russells

Frank and Pat Russell moved to Joe Rich in 1962 and purchased the property which the Smiths had originally owned. Here, they raised their daughter, Kathy who is now an archaeologist in the US. Their property had passed from the Smiths to the Spencers and then to the Christensons from whom they bought it. The original 160 acres had been subdivided and the parcel on the north side of Mission Creek, the property on which Dunworkin’ has been built and another across the Joe Rich Road had been sold. They sold a small parcel to Pat’s brother and sister-in-law, Ken and Madeleine Hryciw. They still have 120 acres through which Leech Creek flows.

The original Smith home burned down about 1925. Russells have totally renovated the log house built after that. They have added barns and outbuildings in which they have raised Morgan horses since 1965.

Frank, who is now retired, worked for many years in the design department of Western Star Trucks. Pat once worked for the Courier, but for many years now has raised their horses and grown a very large garden. She undoubtedly knows more about riding trails in and around Joe Rich than anyone else. The Russells have always had a lively interest in both organizational and social community activities.

Schram

Many of the early Joe Rich residents were of Scottish descent. Chris John Schram was an exception. He was a bachelor who had come up to the Kelowna area with a wagon train from Pulman, Washington in 1893. (Although we have a list of the settlers who arrived in the wagon train to Black Mountain, he does not appear on that list. Perhaps there was more than one wagon train.) When Belgo Dam was being constructed and the irrigation ditch was being dug, he worked for the Belgo-Canadian Land Corporation hauling mail, supplies and groceries to the construction camps. Camp One was located at Black Mountain near the school, and the second camp was located near the Philpott property. Workers were also located at the dam site itself. On the 26 th of April, 1912, he obtained a Crown Grant of what the Weddells now own and call the Brewer property which is located on the south side of Schram Road on both sides of Joe Rich Creek. He lived alone there in a cabin near the end of the present Schram Road. When Mr. Schram had not been seen for several days, some of the neighbours, probably Leo Fazan and another went to investigate. They found that he had been dead for several days. Pack rats had gotten into the cabin and had chewed away part of his nose. He died at the age of 57 on January 5, 1916.

Behind the Brewer house is an old barn which is probably as old as the house. The bottom has rotted out so that the barn walls are 6 feet lower than they were. Perhaps, Findlay and Band or Black built the house and barn for Schram. Both are skilfully built with saw-cut dovetailed corners.

Behind the barn is a small squat very old log cabin located just 50 metres from where Schram Creek meets the valley floor. It is of a different and probably older construction than the house and barn. The logs in the walls are notched together with an axe. The windows are low to the ground. The floor is laid directly on the earth. It is dilapidated, but intact. Although Jim Weddell has owned this cabin for many years and knows it to be very old, he does not know who built it or when. It seems to us that it is very likely the cabin that Chris Schram built in 1912 and later died in. If so, it is the oldest building in Joe Rich, but those who could verify this fact are all dead.

 

Shepherd

Dr. Shepherd’s cabin was just upstream from Patterson’s cabin on the north side of Mission Creek and on the upstream side of the present Three Forks Park (District Lot 2182). Dr. Shepherd had purchased the property from Tom Smith in 1925. Tom Smith had bought it from Arthur Evans who had obtained it as a Crown Grant in 1921.

The cabin was built about 1920 and washed down Mission Creek in a flood in the spring of 1929. It was rebuilt between 1932 and 1934.

Marcia Aitkens was related to Dr. Shepherd and bought his cabin which her younger sister, Elizabeth Sager had inherited. Marcia had previously spent a lot of time in Joe Rich first as a child when she used to come up to Dr. Shepherd’s cabin, and later as an adult when she had a small A Frame cottage on Findlay’s property. After she retired, she enlarged the Shepherd cabin and lived there almost until her death in 2002.

Shortly before her death, while she was living in a care home in Rutland, a large part of the cabin, which was then empty, burned down.

 

Slyters

Wayne Slyter was born in 1919 and grew up on a farm in Rimbey, Alberta about 50 miles northwest of Red Deer. His father, Wes had logged in Winfield, another 35 miles north, during the winters and was an expert with horses. He introduced Wayne to the woods and to horses and inspired him with his work and his stories of horse drawn trains of sleighs loaded with logs and skidded in ice ruts down to the mill.

At the age of 20, Wayne was called up and went off to Europe for over five years in the Canadian Army with the 13 th Field Regiment. He was at the Normandy beach on D-Day in a Sherman Tank. Going through Holland, he was shot in the leg, transported out to Ghent and back to England to a military hospital. When he was healed, he returned to his outfit and finished the war with them in Germany.

Back in Canada after the war, Wayne began logging first in Winfield, Alberta. His parents were working for Justin Mccarthy and living in his camp in Joe Rich in March of 1948, when his father died. A woman by the name of Brown was cooking for the camp, but was not aware that she was a typhoid carrier. She infected milk which Wesley Slyter drank. He died of typhoid in Kelowna before the doctors were sure of his diagnosis. Wayne came out for the funeral and never left. His mother, Lena also stayed in Kelowna until her death in 1963.

Wayne married Delphina Lanfranco and together they raised a family. For a while they lived in a cabin on what is now Lindahl’s property. She died in 1965. Later, Wayne married Janet, his present wife.

When Wayne arrived in Kelowna, he was a 26 year old, medium-sized, red-blond headed, wiry young man who during the war had learned how to look after himself and work with other men. He liked people and he liked horses. Justin Mccarthy had a logging camp just down hill from where Philpott Road now joins Highway 33 and Wayne began work there with a bay team that belonged to “Shorty McClelland”. There was lots of work in the woods and many of the workers were inexperienced. He remembers working with a novice Englishman they called “Upside-down Thompson”. He “didn’t know one end of a horse from the other”. He put a horse collar on upside-down and wondered why the horse didn’t work. Occasionally, he worked with ‘Red’ McCulloch, a son of the engineer who had designed the Kettle Valley Railway. ‘Red’ built two donkey engines which he mounted on the backs of large trucks and used to skid and lift logs. The trees were felled with crosscut saws, limbed and cut to length and then Wayne and other skidders dragged the logs out to the landings with their teams. There the logs were loaded onto trucks and taken down the Joe Rich gravel road to Rutland Saw Mill which stood where Mara Lumber is now situated in Rutland. A French Canadian fellow owned the mill and sold it to John Olinger. The trucks were loaded with a cable from a pulley on an A frame. The truck backed under the A frame, the team pulling on the cable lifted the log and then backed up to lower the log onto the truck. The cable was then detached from the log and at this point Wayne’s helpers often let the cable go. It would race back through the pulley and fall to the ground. Wayne would then have to climb the A frame with a line and haul the cable back through the pulley before he could lift the next log with his team. It was a big waste of time and energy. It happened frequently enough so that he threatened to quit, but of course never did.

Logging was always dangerous. Once Wayne was working in the bush when another skidder riding his large draught horse with its harness still on with a singletree attached rushed down the mountain to find him. He told Wayne that Clark, a driver who had been loading his truck on a side hill landing, had been crushed by a log. Wayne and the other skidder rushed up and found Clark under a large log which had rolled down on top of him. He was dead.

The loggers were a close group of men. There was Dick Wigglesworth, a good skidder, but a man with a temper and a large vocabulary of shouted curse words which he continuously used on his horses. He got the job done, but he was sometimes pretty hard on his horses. There were Gerald “Leather cock” Brooks and his brother, Glenn, the High brothers and sometimes their dad, Ivan and Norm Prosser, Clarence Favel, a native logger, Jimmy Lind, who got the first tandem axle truck in this area, Larry Layden with his hippy long hair, Gordy Niel, who was electrocuted when he felled a tree across a power line, Ray Nichols, Oley Larson, Reg Stubbs and many others. They sometimes worked together, but even when they were working in different camps, each usually knew where the others were logging.

Sometimes they relaxed together, often with a beer or something stronger. Wayne remembers when a group of them got into a batch of home brew beer he was making with a recipe he had gotten from Mary Weddell. It had only been brewing for six days, when Stuart Weddell suggested that they try a little. It tasted good so he, Stuart and a friend by the name of Cleveland got the whole crock, ladled it into cups and drank it sediment and all. When it was gone, Wayne crawled home to where he and his wife were then living in a cabin with a barn on the property where Lindahls now live. His wife was not impressed especially when he was sick and couldn’t get out of bed the next day. Another time, he bought a case of ‘Lemon Heart Rum’ for Christmas, but when the weather turned bad and their pickup was late, he Ivan Prosser and a few others got into the rum. They went back to the bush still drinking, but when some of them couldn’t stand up, the few who hadn’t been into the booze quit and left to return the next day when everyone was sober. On another occasion, Clarence Favel couldn’t start his old Dodge car up Grouse Creek. He asked for a pull to get started. One of the men who had been drinking went out and hooked onto him. When the drunk fellow started pulling, he never stopped until he got all the way to Rutland, and Clarence’s car never did start.

From that camp, Justin Mccarthy moved his camp up to Buck Creek on the northwest side of the Mission Creek valley on what is now the downhill side of Three Forks Road. They logged out of this camp for a long time. Bud Bubar and his wife Pat (Weddell) Bubar were also there when their son, Cyril was a baby. Wayne remembers that there was a women cooking for the camp who had a cat. The cat had just had kittens when Ivan Prosser showed up one day in a logging truck with his Black Labrador Dog sitting beside him. The dog ran into the cookhouse and was snooping around when he was attacked by the mother cat. The dog left the country right out through the screen door with the cat riding on his back firmly attached by her claws.

From the Buck Creek camp, Wayne moved over to a camp at Foolhen. Finally, he started his own logging operation at Grouse Creek on the south side of the Mission Creek Valley across from Bald Range and the present Saura place. For a month or so, they camped out there and then built a permanent camp. They trucked the logs down hill, across the creek and up to the present Highway 33. For years, he managed his crew there. He and the Petches became partners in what they called ‘S & P Logging’. They logged Mildred Wardlaw’s Property beside McCulloch Lake. She was living alone with her animals. One day when he was visiting with her, he noticed three pots on the stove; one for her, one for the dogs and one for the cats. He asked her if she ever got the pots mixed up and she replied, “Sometimes”.

When Wayne retired, he bought and built a home on property right across the Mission Creek valley from where he had worked so long. Quite naturally, he called his place the Grouse Creek Ranch, the property which Hanu Saura now has. Also quite naturally he bought horses. Two of these were a beautiful red roan team of big Belgians just 18 months old and full of energy. Wayne had a steep switch back road down through his property to Mission Creek where the old road crossed the creek. One day he harnessed the team to his rubber tired democrat wagon and with his dog on the seat beside him set off to drive the team down to the creek. When they got onto the steep part of the hill the horses were upset by the wagon pushing forward against their legs and so went faster. They were soon out of control. The wagon shaft broke. The wagon then lost normal steering and pushed harder against the horses. They responded with even more speed. Wayne knew a sharp corner was coming up and that the horses wouldn’t make it so he bailed out on the uphill side. He landed on a pile of rocks and the empty democrat went over his legs. The horses, the democrat and the dog still on the seat disappeared around the corner. Wayne climbed, black and blue, back up the road to his house and drove his four-wheel drive pickup down where he’d been. The horses had made it around the corner, but the democrat had rolled over down the bank. One of the horses had shed all its harness. The other had some harness and broken equipment still attached. The democrat had come apart. The wheels and chassis were in one place. In another was the upper part of the democrat with the seat attached and the dog sitting on it. He had a look on his face that seemed to say, “What the hell is going on here”.

 

Smiths

Tom Smith, his wife, Isabella and their five children moved to Joe Rich in 1922. They owned the 160 acres on the south side of Mission Creek where the Russells now live. Their property also included all the properties between Thelwell Road and Mission Creek, the property now subdivided to Ken and Madeleine Hryciw, the Dunworkin’ property, and the Graham’s and Miller’s properties on the north side of Mission Creek. The remaining portion now owned by the Russells is 120 acres.

For a while Tom worked as foreman on the road. The highway bridge across Mission Creek has sometimes been called the Tom Smith Bridge. The Smiths also grew turnips and lettuce. They had milk cows for family use, but didn’t raise cattle. Mrs. Smith sold milk and eggs to whoever was living at Dunworkin’ which the family called ‘the Willett’s’. The children, Audrey born in 1913, Jenny Elizabeth born in 1915, Donald born in 1917, Winnie born in 1918, and Alan born in 1921 all attended Joe Rich School.

In 1922 and 23, they were living in town and the Philpotts lived in their house while Mr. Philpott built a log home for the family on the present Philpott property. The Smith house must have been hard to heat, because the Philpotts always remembered being very cold that first winter in Joe Rich. Later, the house burned down.

Tom Smith died of cedar poisoning and septicaemia in 1956.

Alan was killed in Italy while fighting in World War II. Don died in 1983 and Jenny (Smith) Giggy died in 1991 in Kelowna.

In 1958, the Smith’s place (Russell’s) was sold for $5,000 by Don and Doreen Smith to Mr. Christianson.

 

Stewart

Duncan Stewart was born in Killan, Scotland on February 10, 1895 and moved to Canada as a child. He first met Cyril Weddell when they both enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1915. They were both sent to Europe, but in separate Battalions. Duncan was taken prisoner, interned in Germany and only released at the end of the war. He returned to Kelowna and again met Cyril Weddell. They renewed their friendship and began looking for ranchland which the Veteran’s Allowance would help them purchase. They eventually decided to buy the Preston’s 160 acre parcel in Joe Rich and to divide it between them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1915 1.Dunc & 2.Cyril ready for war

Duncan ended up with the smaller part of the property, but most of the farm buildings, the house and the flat land as well as the majority of the cattle. He got 65 acres and Cyril got 95 acres. Duncan, a loyal Scot always preferred Aberdeen Angus Cattle even though Herefords were more common and probably better suited to BC. He was well organized and a good planner. When Cyril Weddell found lettuce growing profitable, Duncan Stewart soon followed suit. He was the first to make a specialty of growing turnips, but grew good lettuce also. They both trucked their produce to Kelowna and the packing house. Duncan often took advantage of the trip to make a long visit to the pub.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1921 Dunc Stewart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1935 Dunc's 'John Bull'

Duncan remained a rather stubborn and irascible bachelor. He usually came out on the good side of any negotiations he undertook. He talked little and never committed himself to an agreement in any way that he could not back out of. But he could be charming.

Margaret (Weddell) Hine remembers that for a long time Dunc used to get his bread baked by Mary Weddell, but in later years the Weddells sometimes bought bread in town for Dunc. On one occasion, when Margaret was small, she was given the job of taking Dunc his bread. As she walked up the valley to his place, the bread smelt so good that she dug a hole with her finger through the wrapping and scooped out a little piece to eat. When she gave the loaf to Dunc he noticed the hole and asked how it had gotten there. Margaret told him that a mouse had eaten it. She thinks that he never quite believed her story, but he didn’t get after her anyway.

The Preston’s log house that Duncan Steward first lived in was located on the southwest edge of Joe Rich Creek just upstream from the present Red Star barn. Dunc eventually built the ‘new’ home which still stands across the creek from the Red Star barn and across and downstream from where his old place was.

Dunc remained a bachelor, but in later years was charmed by Mrs. McKenzie. In his old age, he developed cancer of the lip. He had no close family in this area. When he died of a heart attack at age 63, on March 3, 1958, his will was probated in the BC Supreme Court on April 23 rd of the same year. His property was to be sold and converted into money which was to be used to care for his brother, James who probably lived in England. On the death of James, the estate was to be divided into four parts and given one quarter to a nephew, Stewart Palmer in England, one quarter to Edith Stewart, a sister-in-law living in California, one quarter to the four children of Mary Innes living in England, and the final quarter to Teresa Wallace in Joe Rich, Mrs. McKenzie’s daughter, Tessie.

Duncan Stewart’s property was sold to Armstrongs who sold it to Demitors. When Demitors bought it, the creek had moved southwest and the Dunc’s old garage was hanging over its bank. The old log house originally built by the Prestons was also in bad shape. Howard had to get rid of both of them. Gerry remembers that the house still contained some old lamps and a Bachelor’s Pantry, a decorated painted metal cupboard with shelves and bins. She wishes now that she had kept some of these antiques, memorials to Dunc’s good organization.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1961 Last days of Dunc's house and garage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2004 Stewart's barn and 'new' house