Chapter 20 - Puppies and Proposals
Life takes another twist
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As summer drew to a close, Trish received a visit one afternoon from Helmut, the schoolteacher. He told her he had received an application from a white family who wanted to enrol their kids in the village school that autumn, and he had concerns.
The family were Americans, he explained, and the father was a draft dodger. They were living illegally in the bush, camping in a teepee quite a distance from Telegraph Creek, a long hike or a short helicopter ride away. Trish had heard of them; people knew they were around but had little to do with them. Helmut was worried about the children’s condition and asked Trish to assess them before allowing them into the school. She was curious, she had never encountered a situation like this before.
Not enthusiastic about walking several miles to the family’s camp, Trish and Helmut approached their friends who had the helicopter in the community. The pilot agreed to fly her to the camp the next day, as a favour.
It was Trish’s first time in a helicopter, and the experience was quite different from the bush planes she was accustomed to travelling in. The small Bell-47 helicopter seemed to be all cockpit. As Trish sat beside the pilot in a glass bubble, she could see out in all directions. After the pilot started the engine, and did his pre-flight checks, the helicopter lifted straight up into the air. Trish watched, mesmerized, as the ground dropped away below them, then the helicopter tilted, turned, and set off over the wilderness. They flew low over the trees so when they came to a clearing, it seemed to appear out of nowhere. The helicopter slowed, hovered, then lowered straight down to the ground. Trish looked out the window, clutching her medical bag, as she waited for the pilot to shut down the engines. She saw a young man and woman, no older than herself, standing by a teepee at the end of the clearing, and three young children peering out from behind them. A faint wisp of smoke drifted from the peak of the teepee.
The rotors slowed, then stopped, and the pilot opened the door. He exited the helicopter and extended a hand to Trish to help her step down. Once her feet were on solid ground, she assured him she would be quick since he was waiting for her.
Trish turned to the family and waved; they waved back and started toward her. After introducing themselves, and the children, they walked together toward the teepee. As they approached, a dog emerged, barking, followed by several puppies, some staying close to their mother, others playfully wrestling with each other.
Trish’s attention was pulled back to the woman, who was asking if she would like coffee. Not wanting to be rude, Trish agreed. The woman walked to the teepee, and, holding the flap of heavy canvas aside, gestured for Trish to enter.
The teepee was basic, with a dirt floor. There was an open fire in the center, which was the first thing Trish saw as her eyes adjusted to the dark, hazy interior. A large pot hung from a tripod over the fire, and beyond it, a few piles of blankets lay in careless heaps on the ground. There was little else. The family seemed to have few, if any belongings. This didn’t seem like much of a life for the kids. Trish didn’t see any food around, though she realized they would need to cache their food to avoid attracting wildlife to their meagre camp.
The woman scooped a black, tarry glob from the pot over the fire. The sight of the goo made the acrid smell of smoke and stale air even more pungent in Trish’s nostrils. Watching the woman add water from another pot to the tarry lump in the cup and attempt to stir it, Trish deeply regretted agreeing to have a cup of coffee.
Trish thanked her for the cup she was holding out to her and, buying time before she would have to take a polite sip, she asked if she could talk with the children.
The woman agreed, and they stepped back outside into daylight. Trish filled her lungs with fresh air, and eyed the thick, muddy mixture in the mug. It didn’t look any more appetizing in daylight. She took the smallest sip she could manage. It was certainly unlike any coffee she had tried in the past, but she was pleased she didn’t visibly recoil at the taste.
Trish turned her attention to the children, who were chasing the puppies around. The youngest appeared to be about five years old, and the oldest no more than seven or eight. All three were grimy, dressed in dirty, ill-fitting clothes, and constantly scratching at their tangled hair. Trish didn’t need to pull out the nit comb to know they were infested with lice.
She looked back at the woman, who was as unkept and grimy as the children. Trish asked if she could begin the health check, and the woman agreed. Trish took another small sip of her coffee, then, after looking around for somewhere to set it down and seeing no options, she handed it back to the woman, who cheerfully accepted it. Trish opened her medical bag, as the woman called the children over.
The kids were curious and showed no shyness as Trish explained what she was going to do. She checked their vital signs and looked in their ears and eyes before finally bringing out a nit comb and a sheet of white paper from her bag. She ran the fine-toothed comb through their tangled hair, and her own scalp tightened at the shower of nits and live lice falling onto the white paper with each tug of the comb.
As she worked through each child’s hair, the oldest–a boy–excitedly told her about their dog’s recent litter of puppies. He claimed their dog had been mated by a coyote. Trish thought he was telling her a tale, and said as much, but then, speaking for the first time, the father confirmed the pups were a cross between their malamute mother, and a coyote.
Trish found this interesting and wondered if such crossbreeding happened often. Perhaps some of the village dogs were similar. They often ran freely, and there were many coyotes around–she frequently heard them howling and yipping at night. But it was only the distance of the sounds that suggested they were coyotes, rather than village dogs.
Turning her attention back to the task at hand, she combed out as many nits and lice as possible from the children’s tangled hair. She left the fine-toothed comb with the mother, after showing her how to carefully comb through her children’s hair to rid them of nits–the egg casings that lice hatch from–and the lice themselves. She provided specific instructions to the parents about cleaning the bedding, their clothing, and the family itself to keep them free of lice. She also gave the mother a bottle of medicated shampoo, instructing her to wash the whole family’s hair according to the directions on the bottle.
From what Trish was seeing, she understood Helmut’s concerns. As they were, the kids were not in a condition to attend school. They seemed healthy enough, but at the very least they needed to be cleaned up, washed and in clean clothes, and free of lice before Helmut would allow them into his classroom. Trish told the parents as much. She told them she admired their desire to enrol the kids in school, but they had work to do to get them ready. The parents seemed grateful that there was a chance to get their kids into school and agreed to follow Trish’s instructions to rid them of lice and keep them clean.
As Trish packed up her medical bag and prepared to leave, the man asked her if she would like to take a puppy. They couldn’t keep them all, so if she wanted one, she was welcome to it. Her first impulse was to say no, but the pups were friendly and old enough to leave their mother. When she thought about it, she realized there was no good reason to refuse. Having a dog would be useful–if nothing else, it could alert her to wildlife when she walked the trails near the village or made house-calls at night.
She accepted their offer and chose the puppy that seemed the most excited to see her.
Before leaving with a squirming puppy in her arms, she reminded the woman what needed to be done to get the children cleaned up and ready for school. Then, as she started back across the clearing to the waiting helicopter, her attention turned back to the wriggling puppy.
The pilot was far less enthusiastic about the pup than Trish was, but he reluctantly agreed to take it along. She settled into her seat, strapped in, and held the puppy on her lap.
As soon as the pilot started the engine, the puppy yelped and shot out of Trish’s grasp, scrambling over the controls and jumping up the glass bubble windshield! The pilot yelled, and they both lunged to catch the puppy. Trish managed to grab hold of the frightened little dog, then kept him tightly in her arms until they were safely back on the ground in Telegraph Creek.
The pilot was furious. More than once, he asked if Trish had any idea how much it would cost to replace the glass bubble if the dog had scratched it. Trish hadn’t known the first time he asked, nor the subsequent times, but she didn’t think it was the right moment to be cheeky. Instead, she apologized profusely for the unexpected passenger and sheepishly thanked him for the trip. Only after confirming that the windshield was undamaged did she take her new little charge to the Nurse’s Station.
As she and the puppy got to know each other, Trish settled on the name of “Waldo” for him, and it didn’t take long before he was a part of daily life, as if he had always been there. He followed Richard around during the day while Trish worked, and in the evenings he explored nearby as she worked in her little garden. Many of the vegetables she had planted were almost ready to harvest, though a few varieties needed more time, the broccoli and cabbage could wait until closer to the first frost. Overall, she thought, the garden was a success.
One day Trish received mail from her employer, it was notice she must attend a “mandatory” training course in Prince Rupert. She, along with all the public health nurses around the region, needed to report to Prince Rupert to attend an advanced driving course. Trish didn’t hold a driver’s license, or have access to a vehicle, nor were there any roads to drove on in Telegraph Creek. She thought the responsible thing to do was to remind her employer of these details so they could save the expense of sending her for a course she couldn’t benefit from. Besides, she had a new puppy at home that needed attention and training, though she didn’t tell her employer that part! In the next correspondence, which she received back surprisingly quickly, she thought, she was informed the details she outlined; no roads, no car, no license, were not pertinent and she must attend the training. She had heard anecdotes that there had been incidents involving nurses being sent into very remote areas, driving their government cars across narrow plank or log bridges, or maneuvering the cars through creek beds, where the poorly maintained roads had washed away, to get to some of the locations they were sent to. The nurses were returning the cars in rough shape, dented, and scratched. The solution was everyone needed to take the course, whether they drove or not.
Trish grudgingly flew to Prince Rupert, leaving Waldo in Richard’s care. Once in Prince Rupert, she checked into the hotel where she met with other nurses from around the region who were also staying there. It was interesting and enjoyable to meet other nurses who were working in remote locations and compare experiences with them. She had quickly learned there weren’t many opportunities for connecting with her peers in her current role, they were all too geographically spread out. They occasionally heard anecdotes about each other through the pilots, or the visiting doctors, but they didn’t get to sit down and talk to each other. Hearing firsthand accounts of how other nurses were handling cases similar to the ones Trish encountered was reassuring. Trish felt buoyed, as she reflected again that she was a very capable nurse, even, or perhaps, especially, in the unpredictable environments and situations she found herself navigating in remote villages.
Trish completed the classroom-based driving course that brought them all there, and she passed the written exam. When it was time to collect the certificate of completion, the instructor told her that when she obtained a driver’s license, she could apply for the certificate at that time, and she would get a reduced rate on insurance. Trish tucked that information away into the growing category of “government nonsense”. She bid farewell to her colleagues, exchanging mailing addresses with some of them, and took the next flight back to Telegraph Creek.
As the weather cooled and there were fewer daylight hours, there were more occasions where weather impacted the sked. Sometimes the clouds hung so low in the morning that the flight was delayed to late in the day. That meant that the plane might be grounded in one of the communities, as they couldn’t take off once it became dark. On occasion, Walter was grounded in Telegraph Creek, and when that happened, as Trish and Walter had become friendly, Trish invited him back to the Nurse’s Station. She would make dinner for Walter, Richard and herself, and they would sit around visiting. Walter slept in the spare bed in the second bedroom with Richard.
On one of those evenings, the conversation turned to the schoolteacher in the village, Helmut. As Trish had gotten to know Helmut, she had developed respect for him and his commitment to the kids in the village school, and Walter’s comments about Helmut only deepened that respect.
In Telegraph Creek, kids could attend the village school until they were about 11 or 12 years old. Then, they had to go to larger schools in Terrace, and some even went to Vancouver, if they had relatives there, for their junior high and high school years. Young kids from Telegraph Creek rarely, if ever, left the village, making the transition to school in a larger town even more traumatic. During their first year of school outside of the village, the kids often dropped out of school and returned home to the village at Christmas break, never going back to complete their schooling.
Helmut thought that if he could remove some of the fear of moving to a larger town, kids might do better and stay in school. Trish knew that he organized field trips each summer with the class of kids who had just completed their final year in the village school. Walter told her Helmut took the kids to Terrace and showed them around. He taught them how to buy a bus ticket, where to purchase things they might need, and provided other basic introductions to life in a larger town. After a few summers of such field trips, it seemed more kids were staying in school once they left the village, and the annual field trips had become a much–anticipated event. Helmut and this year’s class had been out of the village for a long time, but Trish hadn’t asked for details about exactly where they had gone.
Walter told her that this summer, Helmut had first flown to Terrace with the kids and shown them around there. Then, he had picked up his truck and camper, which he had been storing in Terrace until the road to Telegraph Creek reopened. Once he had the camper loaded with food and extra camping gear, he took the kids on a road trip all the way to Vancouver. They visited Helmut’s parents, explored the city of Vancouver, and saw many points of interest along the way. It was an exciting summer for the kids, and Helmut enjoyed watching them become more confident in different settings.
That autumn, just as Trish made dinner for Walter when he was stranded in Telegraph Creek, Walter joined Trish for dinner whenever she had to stay overnight in Terrace. Sometimes she had to accompany a patient to the hospital, and she needed to stay overnight as there wasn’t another flight that day. On those occasions, her employer paid for her to stay in a motel.
On one of her overnight trips to Terrace that fall, after having dinner together, Walter asked Trish if she would marry him.
Trish was surprised by the proposal. She liked Walter, and enjoyed spending time together, but she had never had marriage on her mind. She hadn’t thought Walter did, either. She was even more surprised when she said yes!
She was dazed, her mind reeling. She couldn’t imagine how her life might be as a married woman, she had never even tried to imagine that before. She had been independent since she was 17 years old, when she moved into the nurses’ residence at Alder Hey to begin her training. How would it be to live with Walter? Where would they live? What would she do? Surely, she couldn’t keep her job in Telegraph Creek. Could she find a nursing job in the hospital in Terrace? Did she even want that? Whatever came next, she knew her life was about to change again.
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Author’s Notes
N.B.1: In 1970, as Trish was introduced to the people of Telegraph Creek and Iskut, the language of the time, “Natives”, was used. Today, the people living on the lands where Trish worked, have reclaimed their traditional identities, leaving behind the nomenclature assigned them during colonization.
The communities of Telegraph Creek and Iskut sit on the traditional territory of the Tahltan First Nations. If you would like to read more about the identity and culture of First Nations people in Canada, including insights from Indigenous authors and advisors, here is a resource from the “First Nations & Indigenous Studies” program at the University of British Columbia.
N.B.2: We often see our parents through the lens of their roles in our lives— caregivers, disciplinarians, cheerleaders. Perhaps they are our role models or mentors, but who were they before they became these things to us?
To better understand who my parents were before they were, well, my parents, I set about interviewing them about their lives before marriage and kids. I started with my mom.
Trish Lewis was 17 years old and desperate to escape a mind-numbing administrative job at a factory in Liverpool in the 1950’s. She made the impulsive decision to join a friend to interview for nurse’s aide training at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. That decision changed the trajectory of her life and launched her into an interesting and rewarding career as a nurse.
Trish is my mom, and this is her story, as told to me in a series of interviews in 2024. The story is pieced together from Mom’s memory, photos, and documents. As we all know, memory is fallible. In the telling of this story, some names have been changed, either because they could not be recalled, or to protect the privacy of the person. The Journey is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
N.B.3: If you are enjoying this story, you may also enjoy reading my memoir, “Resilience in the Rubble: A True Tale of Aid and Survival in Kashmir”. The book shares my experience as a first-time medical aid worker in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, after an earthquake devastated the region in 2005. It also tells the story of Nadeem Malik, a local teenager who lived through the earthquake, and his struggle to provide for his family in the aftermath.