(1:23:53) Alice – So the Banff Arts School used to come down (to the Vermillion School of Agriculture and recruit the staff for summer). They had the same type of thing where the food went on the table in bowls…One [school] was in the winter and the other was in the summer and it was done the same. They came down recruiting and we thought it sounded pretty good, so we signed up. We went to Banff and they didn’t have too many chateaus up there at that time. They were building one. They did have a kitchen up in the basement. It wasn’t a fancy thing. It was just like in a cement basement. It was hard on the feet and the legs. After we made beds, cleaned rooms, we did all sorts of things. And by gosh, I got the job as pastry cook (at the Banff School of Fine Arts). So I was the big cheese! Audrey she worked in the rooms and eventually came into the kitchen also. My other girlfriend I met in Vermillion she came in the second year and she was my helper. Well of course we were really good friends and it worked out really well….We were married then when Ole took that course at (Banff School of Fine Arts). It was a six week training course (related to the warden service). They had the Rangers there too. Because it was six weeks some of them had their families with them, their wives and I think just two had their boys there. We used to have banquets sometimes in between. We had 150 Americans one time and the skiers they were from Europe; they were up at Mount Norquay. We had that bunch there for about ten days. This was something through the winter. What they used to do, is when there was no one there they would pay our bus fare to Edmonton; and see, then we could go home for a week or so. Which was fine because we loved to go home. It was great. This one banquet we were having, guess what the dietician put on the menu, Baked Alaskan. Well good god! We’d never seen Baked Alaskan in our lives. But I had this book. I still got it. And there was a recipe in there on how to make it. You know we did it. And it worked really well. We cooked it on plywood boards in the oven…We felt pretty smart after that! Never made it since!
(1:27:50) Ole – Jim Deegan was my assistant for two, three, four years. God, what a guy! You know he was the most honest guy going. But he was a character, a real character.
(1:28:39) Alice – Him and I had a thing. On the old forestry phone. He was bored, I guess. He was in the fire hall at that time. He’d phone me up and he’d say “Alice! What are you having for supper tonight?” So I would think real fast and say “Well, how about squirrel stew!” And I’d make up all these darn names and he’d get so that he would phone me every day. So we had this thing going.
(1:29:03) Ole – One time we were going up to Eygpt Lake with the horses. He was riding old Maude and he had Kootenay for a pack horse and I had Grace and someone else, maybe Charlie. I don’t know. Anyway, we were going along there on the slides and before we got going very far, I looked around and here he’s got black moss hanging (down) like braids. I’d ask him something and he would go “Ugg!” He was a hundred yards behind me so I thought “Oh to hell with him.” We got going and on one of those slides there was a nice beautiful (tree) like a Christmas tree. Only it was about 12 feet high and ten feet wide. I rode past it and just about ten feet from my head there’s a big black bear sitting with his front paws between his hind legs. Nice bear. He was just sitting there looking and he watched me go past and the wind was right. So the horses didn’t smell him. So I thought, ‘I’ll fix you Deegan.” When he got opposite that, he was looking at me instead of the bear and I pointed like this and he looked around and there was a bear right there! He had his pipe in his mouth of course. The bear didn’t move, but Deegan sure did! He grabbed his pipe and gathered up his reins and got ready for a run away and nothing happened. [But] he never said, “Ugg” again!
(1:31:23) Ole – I had to rebuild the corral right away after we got there (to Healy Creek) because Johnny Royal’s horses used to come to town all the time. He didn’t have a proper built trail. So anyway I got some poles, just brushy ones, just little ones and tacked them in the holes to the corral that kept my horses in, otherwise they’d have gone out too. But every week, every time Johnny was home, his horses would come to town. Course that made it so that he could come to town (too) you see. So anyway I had to rebuild this corral and we were getting out the posts and the rails. I said to Jim, “What do you like to do? Do you like to saw or chop? It don’t matter to me.” “Oh, I love to saw” he said. “I sing and keep a tune going and I can saw” “Okay, you saw the posts, seven feet long and no smaller than ten inches.” So that meant he had to fall the tree and everything you know. So we got to working there. We’d been going half an hour, three quarters of an hour and I heard this little voice say “Ole.” I never said a word; I just kept cutting posts and rails with my axe. “Ole!” Pretty soon you could hear him miles away. He was just roaring! I said, “What?” I was just out of distance. I kept away from him cause he’d fall a tree on you. He’d just guess where it would go, then he’d go in the wrong direction. So anyway he was hollering, so I walked over there and I said “What’s wrong?” He said, “Well I’ve got my tie stuck in my saw.” Whether he put it in there or not and sawed it right into the log it was tied up right there. It was one of those old narrow long ties. So I said “Move the bow this way and move your head the other way.” So he did. And I just cut his tie off with the axe. He said, “You cut my tie.” I said, “Yes, and I’ll cut everyone that you got if you keep wearing them to work!”
