May 22, 2023

Hello Members and Friends,

It has definitely been a while since I wrote!  I was pretty ill – not Covid 19 – for months – it seems to me it should still be March. 

Our Annual Lunch at New Century was fairly well attended.  Frank Schlichting and his wife Sharon were our speakers.  We had a little trouble with the slide show but Frank is very interesting to listen to.  His mine museum – the Yankee Boy – is now open for tours.  You can find further information on his YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtFNKt_IKBpalOWXuIreW7Q,  Despite my illness I’ve managed to carry on and I’m glad to be almost back to my former energy levels.

We’ve heard nothing more about the inheritance from Gladys Floyd but one day that will happen. 

Cher and I drove up to Jewel Lake a couple of weeks ago to take the snow barrier off the door and do a bit of tidying.  Gladys cabin survived our cold winter in great shape. Cher gave us a picture of the Lawless House and it fits in nicely in the decor.  Mel Carroll reported that Wayne Tblus (who was a good friend to Gladys and did a lot of work on the cabin and her house) has offered to donate the mule deer horns that Gladys had mounted and in her house in Grand Forks for the cabin.  A perfect memory to put in place.

Joan Heart, our President, was evacuated from City Park when the flooding happened.  She has moved a lot this year!  Because the camping grounds couldn’t be open she was able to drive to Pia Mission with me this week.  Rose Gobeil travelled there with me a few times.  It is down by Barstow.  Lawney Reyes was a key part of Joan’s project on Sinixt/Doukhobor reconciliation.  This is the first time Joan was able to see the grave stones of Lawney’s brother, Bernie Whitebear, Luana Reyes, his  sister and Lawney’s wife Joyce.  Sadly, Lawney passed away last August.  Joan had always wanted to do more interviews with him but he suffered a major stroke and never fully recovered.  His cremains are interred at the Seattle Indian Centre.

My nephew, Jesse Holtorf, and I went up to the Upper Phoenix Cemetery on May 11th to do a clean up prior to having ground penetrating radar done by Jason Deleurme of Precision Radar Scanning.  The job went pretty quickly.  We have a family of marmots up there!  Doug Zorn and the ATV Club lent us their heavy duty trimmer upon a written request. Thanks to the ATV Club for always supporting our endeavours. We are going to have to fix the back fence for sure. Cher took her little dog up and he saw those marmots and was gone. He is just a puppy so I was worried but that smart little guy came right back to where he got out of the fence.

Joan and I and Bob and Ted drove up to Jewel Lake on Friday – we were measuring for fencing on the left hand side of the cabin.  We’ll get it done this year but not right away – hopefully before our Annual Picnic on August, 13, 2023 (more on that later).  We went over to the cemeteries, too, and figured out where we’d like the picket cradles placed.  We saw three wooden markers that are becoming indecipherable.  Am hoping that we can figure them out and put a memorial plaque on the grave sites – the same type of plaque we used for Hazel Mary Clayton and William John Walters.

Linda Kay Weiss (our Area D Director) and Karen McKinley (new reporter at the Gazette) rode with me up to Gladys’ cabin yesterday and then we travelled over to the cemeteries. We did quite a tour – I took them up to the Jewel Lake Provincial Park, Marshall Lake and Phoenix Ski Hill.  Just showing them around and showing Linda where her grant-in-aid money will be going.

I know the weather isn’t perfect this Victoria Day weekend but still it’s really great if you are planting!!

Historically yours,

Doreen Sorensen/Secretary