A winter’s day at Goose Lake, memories of a time soon lost

COLUMN — One day last winter, I had coffee and sandwiches with George Little at his Goose Lake Ranch, and we went for a drive on his land, enjoying a view from high above Edith Lake, then north in a small valley stretching toward Jacko Lake. When I got home, I made an entry in my occasional journal. This is what it said:

Drove up to George Little’s at Goose Lake, cold but beautiful sunny day, got there at 11:45, George drove me around the ranch, showed me where Ajax wants to build tailings pond, we got stuck in snow drift for about 45 minutes until neighbour came with tractor and pulled us out.

“That’s where I grew up right over there,” George said, as he eased the big 4X4 across the pasture, snow crunching under the tires.

“We and the Mitchells used to ride our horses back and forth to visit.”

We were in a shallow valley just off Goose Lake now, mostly grasslands, a trio of marshes off to one side. George’s childhood home sat in a sheltered leeward at one end of the valley, a collection of decaying farm buildings that were probably one of the many homesteads built all over Knutsford in the early 1900s.

“This must be a major waterfowl area,” I said of the marshes.

“We get ducks,” said George, a man of few words. He turned 80 recently, has spent his whole life on this land. He worries about KGHM’s plans for a giant open-pit mine just to the north of his ranch. The mining giant wants George to sell them this piece as part of the Ajax project.

We stopped to open a gate and continued down the valley, past the remains of a small log home and a larger log barn, roofless but with walls still straight and strong more than a hundred years after it was built.

“Apparently a man named Louis Vic lived here,” said George. I recognized the name. Though he was known as Louis Vic, his name was Louis Victor Bennett, son of once MPP Preston Bennett, who had been married to one of my ancestors, Elizabeth McLean. I hadn’t realized he’d homesteaded here.

As we rolled by the log buildings towards the other end of the valley, George pointed to the horizon and said, “Can you see that fence there? That’s the Mitchells’,” and moving his hand to the right towards an opening in the slope, continued, “I think they plan to build a berm there, to hold the tailings in. Seems like it would be hard to keep it from leaking down towards Jacko.”

He stopped the truck and I stepped out to take some pictures, looking back toward George’s old home at the opposite end. I pictured the bulldozers and earth movers coming in, knocking over the old buildings, Louis Vic’s historic farm, scouring out and levelling the land.

If I was a miner, I’d probably view this little valley not as a beautiful grassland with the remnants of a few historic buildings and a place of memories, but as a great spot for a tailings pond. The slopes of the valley are perfect for containing the toxic sludge that will be left over from the mining process.

It’s a much better place than the originally chosen spot between Lac le Jeune Road and the Coquihalla where it would be highly visible to anyone driving into Kamloops from the south, and where Inks Lake would be sacrificed.

Here, there’s grass, and ducks, and George’s childhood memories. Easy casualties in the name of industry and progress.

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