Lac Le Jeune Reminiscences by Hugh Burton, Part 2

As mentioned in the previous article, accommodation for fishermen was provided first by the very rough log cabin constructed by Dave Lusk in 1885, then by the improved second version in 1905. As it turns out there have actually been four versions of the lodge. The second one, Robert Cowan’s, served the fishing public till around 1926 when he apparently became too ill to continue. Thomas Costley who had, for a number of years, been enjoying camping in a cabin he built on the little lake, bought the lodge property and decided there was sufficient increase in the number of people attracted to the fabulous fishing to make it worth while building a bigger and better hotel. This new structure was placed in a position of prominence, which provided a wonderful view straight down the lake from both the full width screened front porch and the equally large comfortable lounge. A huge stone fireplace and comfy furniture completed the aura of hominess in the lounge. Behind this was the dining room where guests could have their meals and beyond this again lay the kitchen and eating quarters for the staff. There were several guest rooms on the second floor offering various views of both lakes. Much later a store was added adjacent to the pantry and kitchen areas, which served campers as well as the summer residents. It is really unfortunate that this old lodge couldn’t be saved as a heritage building when the present lodge was built.

Building construction, over the first period of expansion, was hampered by the poor condition of the road and the limited carrying capacity of the transportation available. The original road between Kamloops and Le Jeune was the Goose lake road. Very little of the original road bed was used when the Iron Mask road was put in, so it is hard to get much of an idea of just how rough and twisty the road was even into the early 1940’s. Try, even now, going down the Goose Lake Road just after spring thaw or an extended rainy period and you will get some indication of these early conditions.

As a result, lumber was pretty well restricted to two by fours, eight feet long. The two by fours of course were a true two inches by four inches, since they were not then the dressed form to which we have become accustomed.

Most of the cabins that were built were erected on a foundation of Lodge Pole Pine timbers cut locally. The foundation timbers were themselves raised on vertical posts that accommodated for the variation in levels of the terrain. The posts themselves were bedded on flat rocks to prevent too much settling - a technique only marginally successful. I know from personal experience that frequent shoring was necessary to maintain some semblance of level. Those of us who have since built permanent homes, were loath to tear down these great old structures but the piece meal construction, necessitated by the materials made them impossible to move.

It is perhaps surprising that there were not more log cabins built given the difficulties associated with stick frame construction. I can only think of three. One was the forestry cabin (now Killik’s), another was Vida Morrow’s taken down to make room for Willis’ house, and finally the one in which John and Drenna Baker now live. The Forestry cabin and John and Drenna’s were built with the logs horizontal to the ground while Vida’s was of vertical construction.

Perhaps the most dramatic evidence of the difficulty of obtaining and transporting construction materials was provided by an addition Dr. Irving made to his cabin. It seems that he wanted to bring some of the comforts available to his family in town, to their summer life at the Lake. So, following completion of the cabin, which had three cedar lined bedrooms, a spacious living room and sizeable screened porch, he decided to have his Chinese cook attend these comforts on site, hence the need for an addition. Rather than build from scratch, he found an abandoned bunkhouse in the meadows west of Little Lake and had it brought to the lot.

This enterprise entailed placing the structure on skids, pulling it with horses to the west shore of Little Lake, then floating it down to where the bridge now stands. The skidding process was then repeated till the bunkhouse reached the cabin site. This sounds like a lot of work but presumably it was more economical than buying and transporting lumber and hiring a carpenter. The newly arrived structure was attached to the main building in a very uneven, haphazard manner that, through the ensuing years, ensured much leaking and shifting - (he definitely should have hired the carpenter). Nevertheless, the cook moved in using the stilted structure to full advantage both as his temporary summer residence and as chicken coupe. By enclosing the area under the “kitchen” with chicken wire, he was able to keep his few chickens, from straying and at the same time protect them from coyote and weasel predation, thus ensuring that they were kept only for the human palate.

There were several dates carved into the wooden wall planks of this building, the earliest of which was 1897. It served heroically as the cook’s summer residence, and cookhouse till Dr. Irving deserted the cabin in the late 1920’s - but that‘s another story.

It also served as our kitchen till we built the new house in 1998.

The forestry cabin was built in 1910 to serve as a residence for the Forest Ranger. The Ranger carried out fire watch over the surrounding forests from a lookout at the top of Ridge mountain - the mountain directly South of the lake up which the old ski hill runs. There was a spectacular 3600 view from this vantage point. On a clear day it was possible to see Mt. Baker in Washington and many of the peaks in the costal range as well as the Raft River range to the North. It was an ideal site for early detection of forest fires that might threaten Lac Le Jeune.

A single phone line connecting the ranger cabin, the lodge and the lookout station provided for the transfer of fire information to the central Kamloops forest service. This tenuous thread that looped haphazardly from tree to tree, swayed precariously over swamps and only in its lowest reaches on the Goose Lake road found purchase on actual telephone poles, was the only means of quick linkage with Kamloops. The phones at the Le Jeune end were of the crank and hope variety and at the best of times provided distorted and patchy transference of information. In fact, I often wondered if the shouted instructions to central (number please lady) couldn’t have been heard just as well had both parties stood outside and bellowed. It was also most inadvisable to use these during thunder storms for fear of severe shock and once the storm passed, communication was frequently terminated anyway, when the line was broken by fallen trees or drowned in the aforementioned swamps.

However, there were times when this much maligned service proved its worth for the summer residents. Our family virtually lived at the Lake from school out in the spring till school in, in the fall. I can remember numerous times when Charlotte, Mother and I would trek down to the lodge in order contact Dad over some need or emergency. Most of the time he had a standard list of things to bring up on the weekend but there were times when the list needed to be augmented with things like lamp oil, wicks or mantels, and of course there were also the occasional emergencies brought on by tooth aches and other ills that made it necessary for him to make a mid week trip. There were even a couple of times when Mother called Dad to come and get us when, in 1948 and 1951, she deemed a forest fire to be too close for us to safely stay on.

More to follow, hb