I first met Geordie in the Cheviot Hills, but although I had heard all about his exploits in Europe, I never spent any time with him until 1967 when Min and I first came to Canada. Geordie's story about the guys with the tipper truck reminded me of our first Christmas in BC, when we were living in North Vancouver and Min and I, plus Bill Lang, Bob Thornton and a bunch of Irish guys spent the Christmas/ New Year with Geordie and family up on the shores of Lillooet Lake. We all piled onto the train up to Pemberton, where Geordie was to meet us with his Landrover. Our group was getting into the festive spirit of the season by singing folk songs and passing the bottle around, and en route to Pemberton we attracted a group of Indians who were heading back home to their Reserve at Mount Currie, with huge parcels and packages of groceries (and more than a little of the hard stuff). By the time the train pulled in to Pemberton, our new friends (including the grandmother of the family) were so drunk that we had to give them a hand to unload their groceries from the train, quite a difficult operation because there was no station platform and a foot of snow on the ground. We then helped the grandmother down from the train and she immediately disappeared behind a bush to pee, appearing a little later minus one shoe. Somehow, everyone squeezed into and/or onto Geordie`s Landrover (including mother, grandmother and boxes of groceries!) and we set off for the Reserve. We dropped our new friends off there and after tea and wine we continued on to Geordie's place, crossing a swollen creek in the process and battling our way up the road in the snow.
The next and last time we saw Geordie and family was a few winters later (in 1972 or 73) when they and their large dog spent Christmas with us out at Bartley Road on the west side of OK Lake. Our house then was a very small 1920's two bedroom place on 4.7 acres of land; half of which was covered with grapes that we shared with the bears.
It's interesting reading the stories on the website and looking back on those times, when lack of money or comfort was never considered to be a deterrent. I think that experiences during our apprenticeship days played a part as well as National Service. With Bill Storey beating the bushes in the jungle and me staring over a barbed wire fence (start of the Berlin Wall) at an East German armed with a burp gun, thinking 'is this how it ends?' Happy days, life is an adventure, no doubt about that.
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