January 3

6C Low overcast - more rain coming.
Played short mat yesterday and went to walk-in clinic, as I suspected a sinus infection so now on an antibiotic.
I'll add the last of the Fort Nelson story below. There are probably many more sub stories of my time there such as the floods, some of the anecdotes that are tied to the highway,and a couple of things that cannot be retold. As I said before all these stories of the last few weeks were actual events: it took me a long time to understand my two summers and one winter were a bit of an adventure and perhaps that explains why I actually longed to be posted there again for awhile.

cooperate I’ll advise my boss and we’ll take it from there.

 A couple of weeks later Charleson senior came to my office and asked for a burning permit for a small patch of old fire killed spruce on a mid slope area. I gave him the permit.

A few years after I left Fort Nelson, the elk population exploded out into the Muskwa, Prophet and other drainages. 

 Chapter 12

I had got my confirmation in August that I would be going to the Advanced Training Program in Surrey that fall; in mid September we packed up our household and were lucky enough to be one of the first to have our belongings transported in a large trailer conversion that the Regional Headquarters had made for moving personnel. I had no idea where I would be posted the following year so the destination for our furniture was Vanderhoof where I had, through relatives, arranged for a shed for storage.

We left Fort Nelson early on a weekday morning, Thursday perhaps. We had our first flat tire about a half hour down the road. Before we finally arrived in Fort St. John we had six more! I spent quite a bit of the day hitchhiking either with a flat tire under one arm or one just repaired.

It took us twelve hours to make that trip which normally should have been done in five or six hours. The next morning I bought three new tires before we left on the rest of our trip.

In the following years we returned once to Fort Nelson to visit Art and his family. Then in 1966 I was sent up to take over the district because of a serious out break of multiple fires while the District Ranger had a week long break. (Yes Fort Nelson became a Ranger District and later under a reorganization it became a Forest District).

Then in 1974 and ’75 I made several trips to the district in my role as a Forest Protection Officer.

By this time the rail line had been extended to Fort Nelson and several large sawmills were operating including a mill to manufacture toothpicks. I had occasion to fly by helicopter both down the Fort Nelson river and up the Muskwa. I was appalled at what I saw!

Those two beautiful rivers had been stripped (logged) of all their trees, the yearly flood waters had as their wont risen to their normal flood levels of fifteen to twenty-five feet but now with no forested banks the debris laden torrents had gouged and carried away the silty loam that had supported the huge trees that had grown there.

Young seedlings were planted and replanted on those devastated curves in a futile effort to re-establish new forest.

I took the time to file a report on what was happening and what I had seen, but was told that it was a reforestation problem and therefore none of my concern.

One final small point:  That whole north east corner of the Province had in it’s days as a Ranger District, managed and supervised all the logging and cattle range, fought all the fires and planted all the trees with a full time staff of six and a part time staff of four. When Fort Nelson was declared a Ranger District it was staffed with four full time staff and two part time. When it became a Forest District, the staffing level reached thirty! As we say today – go figure!