Category Archives: Flash Back Fridays

NIKKI ELLMAN 1972

Michael, Chilidog and Mary

Nikki was in B.C. from Sept. 1972 until Sept. 1973 with Friends World College. She was 18 when she arrived. She remembers fellow students Mark Hurwitz, Mary Shed and Michael Rewald.  I fell in love with the Pacific Northwest as a result of my year spent at the Lodge, and vowed to come back the first chance that I got. I did not make it back to British Columbia, but I moved to Washington State in 1977, after I finished college, and lived there for seven years. While at the Lodge, I learned useful skills like how to chop wood, heat with a wood stove, split cedar shakes, cook vegetarian food and live communally. Living there opened up a whole new world of wilderness appreciation.

I have vivid memories of taking saunas in the wood-burning sauna down by the lake in the middle of winter and running down to the dock and jumping into the freezing cold water. I also remember when the old Lodge burned down and how helpless I felt to do anything. I did some work on the reconstruction that spring. I also remember Percy the Cougar Hunter, and being really outraged when a wild game meat feast was held at the Lodge. We lived in the College Building and prepared our own meals. We were all vegetarians at the time.

Rebecca Spit, Quadra Island, BC, summer 1973

Nikki was one of the students who built canvas kayaks. Read more

PETER CROFT SR. 1970

Jim and I had worked with Peter at ‘Woodlands School’ in Nanaimo when we first started teaching. Later he came to the Lodge with a group of students including his son, Peter Croft Jr., who is now a well-known rock climber. Peter Sr. was an active par- ticipant at the ‘School Trustees Envi- ronmental Workshop’ held at the Lodge in 1975.

Peter Croft Sr.

Peter tells this story:

The rain was relentless and a gusty wind was boxing the compass. 28 Grade Nine students were divided into pairs and scattered among the trees. They were learning ‘How to survive in a British Columbia rain forest’. Each pair was given a can of cold chicken soup. The task was to light a fire, heat the soup and drink it.

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HORSES

Maria McLeish on Reecy

My horse called Reecy, ‘My Recompense’, was a former race horse given to me by Maggie Rogers when she went off to McGill University. Jim had a big, rather opinionated horse called Stewball who looked something like the horses that the Mounties rode. Jim could shoot a gun off Stewball, and did during a short period when he worked at the Lodge as a Class A hunting guide.

We bought Empress, a Welsh pony, in 1968 for Liz. When Liz was about eight, she remembers riding Empress up the mountain with her father. The saddle kept slipping and Jim would have to get off and tighten the girth. It was almost too steep for the pony.

Some years later when we got our own place on McPhedran Road in Campbell River, Jim Denis, a local contractor, built us a barn for the horses. Jamie would often feed the horses because he was younger than his two sisters and they were too busy getting ready for school. Liz had Duchess, a somewhat spooky Anglo/ Arab and Annie had Sym- phony, an Arabian, who was later sold to Barb Phipps in Campbell River. Read more

RESTORING STRATHCONA LODGE 1959 & 1960

Myrna and Jim Boulding

Jim recruited the biggest and strongest young men that he could find: Cam Christensen, John Godfrey and Godfrey Norrgard. They were digging under the old log Lodge with a jackhammer in order to put the building on a foundation and jack it up high enough to allow for a full lower floor. Fred Burman, a log builder from Rock Bay, carefully fitted peeled logs together all around the perimeter of the lower floor. We went to the bank and bor- rowed $3,000 to al- low us to build two very large upstairs and downstairs fireplaces with heatilators. We hired three young Italian stone masons. They insisted on living on the job with someone, me of course, cooking for them. We all set up housekeeping. We had no water or plumbing and it was winter. The Italians lasted one night. Read more

LAND FOR A BOY’S CAMP 1959

Jim was trying to get land for a boy’s camp from Mr. Dickenson, the Chief Executive Officer of the East Asiatic Company. This company owned most of the timberlands that now belong to TimberWest. According to Jim, Mr. Dickenson was going to help him; however, my dad, Wallace Baikie, said that if Jim wanted a site so badly he would subdivide the acreage that he had received from B.C. Hydro in exchange for the land that had been flooded during the power development. The brothers, Harper and Wallace, had al- ready divided this strip of land between them and my dad had the southern end. It was the end with the somewhat derelict Strathcona Lodge on it. With the help of his friend, the surveyor Gordon Wagner, they subdivided the landalong the lake into about forty lots, most with about 100 feet of frontage and the Lodge on a piece with 300 feet on Upper Campbell Lake. The properties were offered to all of my dad’s former employees, as well as relatives and friends. It was a great deal; $100 per 100 feet a year for nine years and then a bit more on the tenth year and it was yours. My uncle Harper did a similar thing with the land that he had along the lake.

Dave Campbell, Jim Boulding & Ron Leversage

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ELDERHOSTEL 1986

After having had guests suggest on three different occasions that our property would be an ideal location to hold Elderhostel programs, I finally agreed to give it a try. Some of the staff almost quit because they didn’t like the idea the idea of working with people over sixty and they didn’t be them to fall on the rough ground on their watch. Elderhostel programs were an imme- diate success. Seventy people enrolled one week, so we had to have seven groups. We had a rule that a maximum of ten students could participate in an outdoor activity, irrespective of the student’s age. One day I was sitting in Jim’s old office and a group of six Elderhostelers came to the door. I thought “this is it; they are here to tell me that this place is unsuitable for those older than sixty”. To my astonishment, they had come to ask me if they could try rock climbing. One older gentleman wanted to have his picture taken while climbing a rock face. Read more

ROB WOOD AND JIM – 1986 A Story by David Boulding

While Jim died in 1986, he is still alive to Rob Wood and other like-minded folks. Rob Wood climbed in the Himalayas, in Yosemite, England, Baffin Island, and of course, Colonel Foster in January. Rob recognized an immediate spiritual kinship with Jim’s restless spirit. Jim was a teacher by profession; his classroom was Strathcona Park and the west coast of Vancouver Island. The untamed geography matched his big heart and big teachings. On more than one occasion he advised his survival students, “If the weather is bad, you have to learn to think like animal.” This wild animal intensity was infectious as his students soon were caught up in his energy and devoured his various teachings. Jim’s animal spirit, best seen in a breaching Killer whale, allowed him to connect with people because he convinced them that they mattered, and that the natural world mattered. For Jim, and likeminded, the natural world was alive and we needed to fit in and not to conquer. He would frequently say, “The natural world is not an obstacle course,” a dig at those who would choose routes that offered only physical challenges. Read more

CHANGING OF THE GUARDS or The Birth of the Friends of Strathcona Park By Marlene Smith, 1985

It was in the fall of 1985 when Myrna asked me to go and visit Jim upstairs; he wanted to talk to me.

I was a relative newcomer to the Strathcona Park Lodge scene. My experience in teaching mountaineering in the European Alps, including teaching rock climbing, map and compass, crevasse rescue and guiding made me fit in real quick. Jim had been battling pancreatic cancer for a few years. The regression of his cancer through diet and the use of various herbs most certainly were of great interest to me as a veterinarian engaged in western medicine and studying Traditional Chinese Medicine! Sadly enough the cancer had returned with great vigour and aggression, something I would learn in the future is not uncommon in aggressive forms of cancer.

I wonder why Jim wanted to see ME!

When I entered Jim’s room I reflected back on his strong presence in the Whale room talking to school groups on the importance of the wilderness and what nature could teach us! In a short flash I was back again on the trail near the bog in a downpour. Everything was wet and the participants of our small group of dedicated students looked like wet cats or rats! Suddenly Jim stopped and told us to make a fire here and now. Those who could not get a fire going and get a can of water boiling within 1⁄2 hour were doomed to die of hypothermia! Dan MacKinnon next to me smiled and whispered he had done this before and we would pal up together! I learned within 10 minutes about the pitch stick, about how to find dry wood and how to get water boiling within 20 minutes! And how to survive in the wilderness!

I smiled with this thought in my mind and looked at Jim. He looked at me attentively as if he was trying to catch my thought!

He then explained to me that his time on this earth was limited and that he was at peace with this. However there was one task Read more

PENNY AND PERCY DEWAR 1979

The Dewars started a homestead in 1979. My dad, Wallace Baikie, had sold them forty acres up behind the Lodge property. Penny was Wallace’s niece. The Dewars had been studying cougars at Northwest Bay, near Nanoose. They wanted to move up Island to be near Strathcona Park because it was an excellent area in which to study cougars. They built a magnificent 4,000 sq. ft. house, all without any heavy equipment, and using recycled materials from a building that they had torn down in Northwest Bay. Read more