My grandmother used to tell me about what it was like to live in Montney during the years before I was born. In 1931, she and Grampa moved on to their homestead in the valley. They built their first log cabin and began to clear and work the land. Gramma gave birth to my dad the next summer.
One of her favourite stories (and mine) was about an October rainstorm when Dad was only three months old. She said that it was a dark, windy, and very chilly night. The rain was coming down sideways. The sod roof on their cabin began to leak in muddy streams. Grampa valiantly climbed on to the roof to try and do some patching while she huddled with their new baby under a small wooden table… the driest place she could find.
After doing all that he could, my wet and shivering Grampa came back inside and slid under the table beside Gramma and the baby. It was pitch dark so he lit a candle. Gramma said that when she looked at his face and saw the lines of mud running from his hair into his ears and across his face she began laugh. She said it wasn’t long before they were both giggling about how they must look curled up under the table in their mud-covered state. She would be laughing her wonderful laugh while she told the story which she told often.
As I got smarter, I realized that in addition to living in a small log house with a dirt roof, they had no running water, no indoor toilet, no radio, no telephone and nothing even close to electricity (let alone TV, internet, or cell phones!). Neither did their neighbours, the nearest of which probably lived a kilometre away. There were also no yard lights in the valley like there were when I grew up there.
They were basically alone in the cold and dark most nights and considering Montney is located some 56’ north of the equator, the winter nights were numbingly long. Being alone, with only each other to talk to and maybe a puzzle or deck of cards for entertainment is hard to imagine.
Interestingly, we just had a no-power experience of our own a few days before Christmas. We were without power for 77 hours (3 days and a bit) after, what I’m told, is the worst wind storm on south Vancouver Island in generations. Fallen trees took out power to over 300,000 homes, and BC Hydro, despite Herculean efforts, took almost a week to get everyone’s power back on. We were extremely lucky in comparison to the many people whose homes and/or vehicles were badly damaged. We are also lucky that we are on Vancouver Island where the temperature did not drop below freezing.
Once we realized that the power wasn’t going to come back on right away we began to realize how poorly prepared we were. We had about a dozen matches left in a matchbook I’d picked up at a restaurant a long time ago. We also had a pair of decorative scented candles on the mantle. We had a flashlight but the batteries were dead. Fortunately, we later remembered the three headlamps that Deb had bought for snowshoeing a few years back, and the really cool tap-on-tap-off lantern that we’d brought from our cabin. Having a gas stove was handy too.
On day two we were able to find matches, batteries, ice, and candles at the Walmart in Duncan. Then, with not much more we could do, we let the “adventure” begin. During the day, we did some storm clean-up outside, built candle holders and experimented with a homemade ceramic-pot-heater (it didn’t throw off much heat but I warmed my hands by continually checking to see if it was working!). When it got dark, at about 4:30, we cooked, played crib, strummed guitar, made Christmas presents and read books by candlelight. We also did lots of talking about what we are going to do in 2019.
Obviously, I would never compare our 77 hour “adventure” with that of homesteaders like my grandparents, but our no-power experience made us think about how much time they had together without the modern “conveniences/distractions” we have. I imagine that they spent many of their darkness hours visiting friends, playing games, making music, building/making things, and generally just talking to each other… some of the things we may take for granted.
Once the power came back it didn’t take long to slip back into the conveniences that electricity brings (the furnace, Netflix and the World Juniors on TSN, etc.), but Deb and I think that we’ve learned something from our no-power experience that we can take with us into 2019. I hope so!
Happy New Year to you!
Montney Boy 
The resilience people have is such a source of hope for me – thanks for this reminder & lovely story, too! Love & best wishes to you, Deb & your family!
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