Meeting the relatives

I've been in contact with my father's first cousin Dorothy for some time now, emailing back and forth, trying to find out about my Canadian relatives and finding out about how our families are connected. For the past 40 years, she has been travelling to Mara Lake, about 2 hours from Big White, to meet up with her sisters.  So, this year she asked if we wanted to go along too, so it seemed like a great opportunity to meet them, en masse, without having to travel halfway round Canada!
My grand father on my dad's side was one of four siblings and the other three all emigrated to Canada in the 1920's.  The only reason my grand father didn't go too was that he had already met my grand mother and she refused to leave England!  My great Uncle Fred settled on a farm on the Canadian prairies and these are his descendants.

This is Dorothy on the left, with her sister Jean in the middle and her sister Fay on the right.  Dorothy lives in Calgary, Jean lives in Vancouver and Fay still lives not far from where her father settled on the prairies.  Mara Lake is 'roughly' half way between them.

 The bloke on the right is Jean's only son Michael, which makes him my second cousin, and the little girl in the middle is his daughter Ava, who's just three years old.  She is Ned, Charlie and Lucy's third cousin.  Pretty hard to explain all that!

 Ned, Charlie and Lucy with their 'new' cousin!

Ava took a bit of a shine to Ned, she kept saying 'hello boy' to him!  I think he was flattered the first time!!

San Drift Lakes

I know I keep writing about the vastness and remoteness of Canada but I really do find it staggering. Take San Drift lake, as the crow flies it's about 20 miles from Big White, not far really except the only way of getting there is down logging roads, un-maintained, un-tarmaced, made from nothing more than dirt, cutting through the forests with the odd sign of human life when there are patches of active logging.  You definitely do not want to break down, there are animals out there that you can only dream of, bears, wolverines, cougars, moose, most of which would have you for breakfast.  Not the moose maybe, they'd just kill you for the sheer hell of it because they're soooo stupid!  Not even the loggers would provide a safe haven, they are men not to be messed with!
One of Lucy's friends at school was having a birthday and she wanted to go camping for her birthday, but had asked if we would go and spend the day at the lake.  Good job she didn't ask us to camp as there's not a cats chance in hell I'd camp out there!!
So, with no mobile signal and with no sat nav or map we set off!  Just relying on old fashioned paper directions!  Luckily, we made it with no problems at all and it was such a lovely spot, peaceful and so pretty.  We roasted weiners on an open fire, played hide and seek, ate cake and drank beer in front of the lake.  Awesome!

 Lucy and her friend Tosh

Track meet in Grand Forks

Grand Forks is the administrative centre of School District 51.  When Big White first wanted to open a school and approached their local town of Kelowna, the school district there said they would prefer to bus the children to Kelowna rather than have a school on the mountain.  So, Big White approached the district in the other direction who said they had loads of remote schools and one more wouldn't be a problem!  So, Grand Forks is the school district that controls Big White school, and the children were invited to a track meet there, with all the other school from the district. However, Grand Forks is 3 hours away so an early start was required....5am to be precise.  The journey was beautiful, the road follows the Kettle Valley river the entire way, but in the 3 hours we were on the road, we travelled through the village of Beaverdell, the small town of Rock Creek, another village of Midway, which sits on the border to the United States, and Greenwood, which boasts to be Canada's smallest city with a whopping population of 708!  That's it, in 3 hours we came across 4 settlements no bigger than Upottery...crazy!
However, despite the distances travelled we all had a great day, glorious weather and the children got to run on grass...little things!

Big White senior class.