George and Myrtle Cartwright
Nostalgia
A REGULAR FEATURE IN THE GOLDEN STAR – January 25, 1978
On a Sunday afternoon, George and Myrtle Cartwright sat babysitting one of their wee granddaughters.
I hadn’t realized they have only been in the valley for 20 years or so since they seem to have so many friends and relatives. There are younger days were quite different from anything I had heard before. George was born in Moose Wallow, Alberta, 1 of 11 children. His father had a good job with the government, running the ferry at Homes Crossing for 37 years. The Cartwright home was the place where people gathered. About half of the eleven children played musical instruments, a ready made orchestra with the fun beginning anytime. Their log house contained a table which could seat 20 people and usually did.
About the age of 15, George got a job, with the Chisholm Lumber company. They cut timber about the same type as around here in the winter and took it to the river in the summer to the mill. No electricity in those days. Horses were a part of the bush. Cross cut saws and axes their tools. After felling a tree, it was skidded out of the bush, by horse, and using a portable jammers tripod, cable and horses again, the logs were lifted up and placed on huge sleighs. Depending on the size of the logs, these sleighs could hold between 50 and 60 logs. Four horse teams, to draw the sleighs to the riverbank, where logs were stockpiled until the spring.
All along the Athabasca River were logging outfits, some small some larger, but all subcontracting for the Chisholm Company. Each having their own stockpile along the river.
Come spring about mid April before the ice would be completely gone from the river and by the first part of May, would come the log drives. It’s 130 miles to Chisholm, a three week trip, working ten hours a day at $1.50 per day. It was a challenge for these lumberjacks, the Athabasca is a river to be reckoned with, fast water with quiet stretches, rapids, which falls six to eight feet in A quarter of a mile, and you ride the logs all the way preventing jamming. Not much need to worry about baths on those trips as dunking wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. George and a friend, were the first two on their first trip, to ride the rapids, standing. At the end, there were some surprised people who really didn’t think they had made it at all. More than one man lost his life on the river. July was high water, but with no so many logs to be floated down, it took to the end of August, before the men were all finished.
Have you heard of Hold when again stock quote, by huge raft, 40 feet wide and 60 feet long which held the floating cookhouse and sleeping tents. It followed behind the log drivers.
To get back up the river, the company had a 40 foot boat, holding forty five men. Another trip would begin.
But it wasn’t all hard work, as though “Wannigans” came down the river, and as Myrtle said, everyone waited for the “Wannigans” there were stops for the night, moonshine wasn’t much of a problem. Baseball games, dances, lots of fun for everyone. A little donkey in the river, helped sober up anyone who took a drop too much. At the end of the drive, was a huge dance which everyone attended. More fun than you can imagine today. George at 28 held the longest distance ball throw, 320 feet, a record he kept for 15 years.
Myrtle was born in Fort Saskatchewan. Her parents died of the flu in 1918. The children went with different relatives, but five out of the six kept in touch with each other. Myrtle stayed with an uncle until at 16 she joined her sister Rose, at Homes Crossing.
Asked where she where they met, Myrtle and George couldn’t really say, probably at a dance, and no doubt at the Cartwright place. A month after George was 21, they married on April 11th, 1934. At 17 George paid $10 for a homestead and by the time he was 18, had finished a log house. It was into this place, that they moved after the wedding. No windows, that first summer and often they would take off on a summer’s day to go hunting or fishing.
One day, a bear and two cubs arrived for a visit and finding no one home decided to investigate well, they found a sack of flour. Seems a lot of fun for the bears, but sure was a mess for Myrtle. Wedding presents in those days included a sack of flour, potatoes, a ram, a dozen chickens and a rooster. An aunt of George’s was a Stony First Nation, who taught him how to tan hides. They bought a cow, so had milk, cream and butter, quite a luxury.
The next few years were busy ones. George helped his dad run the ferry, while Myrtle became a midwife for the district nurse. They built have frame house for their maternity patience, but there was usually a sick child as well. Bronchial asthma, force them to move next came Edmonton, then to the Banff School of Fine Arts, where George was head maintenance man and Myrtle head cooked.
One day a Bunns salesman told them about a farm in our valley. They bought the farm that Roy and Rose Williams once owned, eight miles south of Golden. It had a log house, but it was decided to build another so the four of them George, Myrtle, their children, Marilyn and Buddy (Angelina was married by then to the school bus driver) built another log house across the road. George even cut the shakes for his roof by hand.
On a job at Scott Sawmills, behind Cedar Lake, George was hurt and off work for a couple of months. He was able to do a variety of things, so had no difficulty finding jobs over the next several years. He plumbed 21 units for Sam Thompson of Mary’s Motel, worked as a steam engineer and pipe fitter for Crestbrook in Parson. For one season he worked for Yoho National Parks. In 1960, when they built Kicking Horse Forest Products, he was a pipe fitter. Four years were spent working for our Village, and in 1965 he started with the Department of Highways. Myrtle worked as a housekeeper, for the priest in residence, at the Sacred Heart Parish, for four years, until ill health forced her to stop. Today she’s an active member of the United Church, working at Bazaars, looking after their relatives, whenever necessary.
Their 25th wedding anniversary was a surprise party arranged by the family but on their 40th anniversary, they had an open house for friends themselves.
Theirs had been a life of helping others, friends, relatives, some young boys who would stay for a while, looking for jobs, and then moving on. Their family lives here, Angelina married Hubert Alfano on March 31st, 1956, Marilyn married Paul Kafluk, May 18th 1963, and Buddy who spent most of his school years here, married Penny Evans of Creston on November 23rd, 1974.
Their new home, was destroyed by fire on November 22nd last year, and now with George’s retirement effective in February, there are no definite plans for the future period time alone will give the answer we hope you find whatever you seek.