This is a story about our stay in High Level AB. Dad shared parts of it at various times with friends. I've tried to tell the parts of the story that Dad used to tell. This all happened in '85/ '86.
Before High Level
We were living in Victoria, on Helmcken St. in Victoria. This is the place where Sophia was born, and is the place where Dad felt poverty and touched desperation so many times. He was working odd jobs and contracts as a journeyman carpenter but wasn't making ends meet. He worked hard over the previous years to get his teaching certificate and finally attained it - but he couldn't find a job for a brand new trades teacher. A few factors would come together and lead to Dad moving our whole family 1,800kms to northern Alberta, for a free house that wasn't actually free and a teaching job offer that was retracted after we got there with all our belongings.
It's not what you know, it's who you know....
Mom (Patricia Vickers) has an older brother, Matt, who the year before had stayed with us while he was going through medical treatment. He and Dad bonded around tennis and other things, and they became closer friends. Uncle Matt also loved us kids, and would later, along with his wife at the time, see us as a true extension to his family. Matt knew that Dad was looking for work, and he was living in a small town in northern Alberta called High Level. He asked around and learned that a teaching job was just opening up at the local High School. He lobbied hard and got Dad an interview... and ultimately was an important part of Dad getting offered the job.
Dad would sometimes defend his decision to move us to northern Alberta: They offered a rent-free house. He'd have a high school job teaching what he was trained to teach. We had family in High Level. And no one was hiring teachers in BC at the time.
The Move, the Condemned House, and the Teacher on the Run
After what seemed like endless months of poverty and stress Dad was happy.
He had a job offer, and he had a small moving allowance. Things were looking up, way up. I had the pleasure of riding with Dad in the loaded up "Budget One-Way" moving van, which had one seat for the driver, and one seat for me, the passenger. I was six at the time, almost seven. Mom and the littler kids including baby Sophia would follow behind in the Volkswagen van. Dad was truly happy on that trip. I remember all his smiles, and his energy seemed infectiously happy. We stopped to look at mountain goats. He treated me to ice cream. Life was about to get a whole lot better and after many years of struggle he'd finally "made it."
I remember, quite clearly arriving in northern Alberta. Dad was euphoric as he leaned forward over the steering wheel for the last few miles. We drove the moving van down a dark road, as Dad searched for the address. "This has to be it" he mumbled. We turn down the driveway, and the headlights highlighted a small, run down house that was completely boarded up. I remember dad just leaning against the steering wheel, staring at the house as if looking at a disaster happening in slow motion. He got out and checked. Yep, that was our house, all boarded up.
Dad's happiness turned to anger, and embarrassment, but he didn't give up hope. Despite it being late at night, Dad drove to the principal's house to straighten things out. I remember sitting at the dining room table, staring around at all the brown decorations on a mostly brown wall, and feeling Dad's anxiety go up.
The house had just been condemned. The principal gave a half-hearted apology. Sorry, we didn't get to let you know it had been boarded up. Apparently the fire department inspected it and deemed it unfit for occupation. No, there wasn't another house. We'd have to find one and rent it - even though Dad didn't have money for rent. But there was more bad news coming.
In Dad's telling of the story, and I've never heard it disputed, the teacher who had the job had committed a serious crime (like murder) and gone on the run. He had not been apprehended yet, and therefore hadn't been served his termination papers. The teacher's union wouldn't allow the school district to fill that position until they'd gone through "due process" which included doing paperwork with the accused teacher in person. Dad was informed that not only did we not have a place to live, they couldn't actually hire him. We were in High Level Alberta - no money, no house, and no job.
Moving in
With help of uncle Matt and some pavement-pounding, Dad got a job teaching grade three at the school on reserve at Meander River, a First Nations community at least 45 minutes north of High Level. As he'd point out, he didn't have any training teaching primary school at all. The job also paid less as it was on Indian Reserve - as Indigenous schools were underfunded then as they are today.
While the free condemned house wasn't available, we were offered a new fully furnished teacherage. It was a typical CMHC box house of the 70s and 80s. It was a prime location for us as it was short walking distance from school. It was one of the nicest houses we'd ever lived in, and had a lot of room. The only problem with the house was that it cost money to rent.
Mom recalls that it was here that they verged on bankruptcy and were under orderly payment of debt. I remember that we were clothed entirely with donated clothes. There wasn't too much to complain about though, as we had a roof over our heads and Dad finally had a full time job - even if it wasn't at all what he'd trained for, and was about an hour drive away each direction.
Teaching at Meander River, being humiliated and deciding to leave
Dad had taught First Nations students before, in Kitwanga, but it was in High Level that he'd be galvanized through his experiences teaching on reserve. The school was government run, and Dad recalled that it was designed to not teach the native students anything. In the Alberta public system, you were expected to read and write in grade two - and if you couldn't, you'd be put in special education. In Meander River, Dad would say that not a single student could read or write in his grade three class.
He'd become convinced that the government-run native education system - at this time only a few years removed from the formal end of residential school - was conspiring to sabotage and hold native people back. He would years later express similar frustrations in other teaching jobs where he saw that native students were not only not getting a fair shake, but that they were being oppressed by the education culture and system.
Dad described text books and a curriculum that seemed designed to keep native students from learning anything [I seem to remember him mentioning a useless textbook called rocket ships and raisins?]. Frustrated, he went to his Principal and submitted a new curriculum that would teach his students how to read and write. The principal signed off on the proposed curriculum and Dad worked hard to teach his students. He took a huge amount of pride when after only a few months of love, attention, and an appropriate curriculum, almost all of his students could read and write. He would always underline this point - there was nothing wrong with the students, it was all in the system.
One day the Superintendent came in to Dad's classroom unannounced. He told Dad to stand aside. In front of Dad's grade 3 class, the superintendent raged - and cleared off Dad's desk, pretended to look at papers and then threw them in the air, and dumped out his drawers onto the floor. He then told Dad to follow him to the principal's office.
The Superintendent yelled at Dad and told him to either start teaching the government curriculum immediately or be fired. Dad was humiliated and embarrassed. In Dad's recollection the principal sat back and didn't say anything, despite signing off on the changes. He never forgave him for that. After this experience he decided we had to leave Alberta as soon as possible.
Living in High Level, and leaving High Level
There were highs and lows living in High Level. It was blazing hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. There were some very harsh people and also some very generous people. I remember coming come and finding bags of food hanging on our door handle, once a few grouse, another time some moose or beef. We went for a while to a "Reformed Free" Mennonite church, the most liberal church in town. Mom and Dad made friends with mainly two families in town, the Reedykes and the Quists. Mom ended up working as a part time bookkeeper (even though she had no idea how to keep books) for the Reedykes.
You could choose between two churches in High Level: the regular Mennonite, or the Reformed Mennonite. Mom and Dad chose the reformed one. We got excommunicated after singing a Jewish song and encouraging the congregation to dance when it was our turn to share at the front of the church. Apparently dancing was not permitted - even in the liberal church.
Sophia learned to walk here. Jonathan was little, and stayed at home with Mom. Rebekah and I went to the elementary school, which was a couple blocks away. We usually walked except when it was too cold out. Mom ended up taking a part time job to make ends meet. Dad played his mandolin and still loved to sing psalms and other songs from the bible. He also opened our home a couple times to people who needed a place to stay. We also adopted Doe II, a shepherd wolf cross dog - the dog that battled the bear in the log house.
Dad made us homemade sleds in the winter. He also taught me to skate and swim here - I have a very clear memory of him literally throwing me in the deep end. I was cautious and he had grown impatient. I remember panicking, telling him I was drowning, when I in fact had my head clear above the water and was doing a fine dog paddle. I remember him smiling and laughing, saying "look - you are swimming!!"
I should add that people in Meander River seemed to appreciate Dad and his efforts. He took us kids out there a few times for community events, and he received some gifts from the community in our year there.
The last time I asked Dad about our time in High Level, he finished the story by saying "as soon as I had two dimes to rub together we got the heck out of that place." Uncle Matt had moved to Two Mile near Hazelton, and had found a job for Dad teaching at the two-room alternate school there. The vice-superintendent really liked Dad and between Matt and the vice-super they made sure he got the job. It wasn't his dream job but at least it was teaching high school. We packed up, moved in with Uncle Matt again, found a small trailer to rent, and Dad went into his first proper teaching job of his life.
Maybe why you've not heard this story before...
I recently asked Mom for her memories in High Level and she basically said she doesn't remember much - only that it was not a good time of our life. Dad essentially said the same thing, but I think he was galvanized by some of his experiences there. A lot of those experiences were negative and cut so deeply that he was only just starting to see the humour in it before he died. He'd tell his close friends some of the stories, especially his teaching experience.
Thanks
- Thanks to Mom for scanning the photos
- Thanks to Uncle Matt for finding Dad the jobs all those years ago!
- Thanks to you for reading this whole story to the end!
-jacob