Canada 1973-1974

In August 1973 I came back to Denmark from Iceland and decided that I liked this travelling stuff a bit more than studying Economics. I had done two years at Arhus University, but this was a five-year masters programme and then what? Work in a bank? I loved the outdoors, to do stuff, to take photographs, to travel. I decided to drop out and take a gap year, the student’s famous last words, right? Correct; I started working for a living, and I liked it so much that I never again went back to study full-time. 

At my university course I had met a guy in my class who had worked for a while on the oil rigs in northern Canada, and that sounded a lot more exciting than doing calculus and demand elasticity calculations. So I bought a return ticket good for one year to Montreal, Canada. 

My Dad came rushing down from Norway, he usually didn’t visit us much, but he suddenly felt compelled to urge me to reconsider this move. He was concerned about what would happen to me. My mother drove me and my trusted Fjallraven backpack to the train station one morning in early September, just a week or two before I turned 21. I took the train to Copenhagen to catch the flight from there. It was still dark and raining cats and dogs. I said: “So, soon I will be in Québec ; I don’t know a soul there, and I don’t know what I will do, expect that I intend to hitchhike to Alaska to check out the place and find some work if I can.” My mother turned to me, she was usually very understanding and supportive to me, but I could hear the slight frustration in her voice when she said: “I honestly don’t know why you are doing this!” But it turned out to be probably the best decision I made in my life. My life would be an adventure after that. 

I stayed at a youth hostel in Montreal for a few days and started making my way west, go West young man, right? I hitchhiked all the way, across the province of Ontario (Canada has provinces, not states as you might know) where I met a wonderful family who put me up for a while; they had a son in Calgary, Alberta about my age, and I looked him up as well when I got that far. The Canadians I met on the way were all great people; I never had an unpleasant experience anywhere. 

I followed the Trans-Canada Highwayand crossed the prairie provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. I passed the cities of Winnipeg and Regina but avoided going into town, I much preferred staying on the by-passes and the rural areas. In those days there wasn’t much traffic on the roads and the terrain was immense, with vast areas of plains, forests and moors. Coming from built-up Europe like I did, the country appeared vast and empty. I only travelled by day, and oftentimes I would walk into the woods off the road and camp for the night, then clean up when I got to a truck-stop along the highway. In Camrose, Alberta Province I had an old grand-aunt that I had never met, but I looked her up when I got there and stayed a few days. 

One month had gone by then, and it was the beginning of October by the time I made my way past Edmonton, Alberta. The air had started to turn a bit nippy in the mornings, and the deciduous trees were dropping their leaves in a spectacular display of red and yellow. But the days were still warm, the locals called this ‘Indian Summer’. 

I came to Grande Prairie, next major town on the way would be Dawson Creek across the border into British Columbia province, the start of the Alaska Highway which I planned to follow all the way to Fairbanks, Alaska. 

As usual I didn’t go into town but stayed on the by-pass, and a man in a large saloon car picked me up. His name was Harold, he was coming back from town heading toward Hythe halfway to Dawson Creek, so that was a good lift for me. His car had a strong unmistakable odor of pigs; I knew I was riding with a pig farmer. When I said to Harold, “so, you farm pigs?” He was so surprised: “How could you know that?” he said. After a few weeks at Harold’s farm I couldn’t detect the pig smell everywhere either!?

As luck would have it, Harold was looking for someone to help him over the fall; he was swamped at the farm he said. We drove back to his place and had a cup of coffee and agreed on the terms: Work for as long as I was required, C$10 per day plus room and board. I was quite happy with that. Harold stayed in the big house with his wife (his second wife, his first died of cancer some time back) and a 16 year old daughter who attended high school somewhere, I forget where that was.

The farm was some 10 miles (16 km) north of the turn-off from the highway in Hythe. In those days there were no oil drilling or tar sand production in that part of Alberta, Harold’s farm was about as far north as you had civilization. The land in this area was divided into 1x1 mile blocks, separated by tracks, and Harold had one of those, one section of land, i.e. 2.6 km² or 260 ha. Not all the land was cultivated, some lay fallow as woods. 

This was mid October and true enough, there was tons of work to do on the farm. Much of the crops were still in the field: barley, oats and hay, we had to recover it all before winter came; we were racing against the clock.  It was wet and muddy everywhere, I borrowed a pair of rubber boots and put them to good use. Every day we got up before dawn and had a hearty country-style breakfast. The daughter would catch the school bus, and Harold and I would get to work: We fed all the animals; a herd of cattle out in the woods I would just give some extra hay, they mainly found their own food, at least until the snow got too deep. About 60 calves had been separated and were kept in a corral; I gave those oats and hay. There were also two barns with pigs, they got barley and water. The chicken in the coop got, you guessed it … chicken-feed and left-overs! Then I would drive out into the fields with the tractor and recover the remaining crops, the bales of hay were soggy and heavy; the grain we piled high in the large high-ceiling grain storage barn and dried it.

Occasionally we would load up the truck and drive out and sell hay and grain to neighbors or at the markets in Dawson Creek. Harold bought a new Hereford breeding bull there one time, and I enjoyed watching the cattle auction. The pigs sometimes had piglets and they had to be sent for vaccination and neutering at the nearby vet. The pigs - being kept inside - required a lot of cleaning out, I would haul the pig-s*** out and spread it over the fields, when they got covered in snow I would sprinkle it across the snow. Selling the yearling calves was part of the farm’s cash flow, but we also butchered a few ourselves and cut them into quarters to sell to friends and neighbors; Harold’s wife would make the most wonderful steaks and hamburgers you can imagine out of this fresh meat as well. 

The farm equipment required constant maintenance; I am not a great mechanic, but I can change engine oil and sparkplugs and grease and paint stuff, so I helped with that. 

The weather changed quickly now; the frost started coming, and one morning here was 5 cm of snow on the ground. It never thawed again and we had snow from then on, more and more with each week. In January it really started coming down, by the time I left in late February they said on the radio that we had 80 inches of snow in total – more than 2 meters. It didn’t really stay two meters high of course; some snow will evaporate, and the piles compressed a bit as well over time. Usually the weather was calm, but the least bit of wind would cause the snow to drift and block our driveway and tracks around the farm. At one point even the tractor got stuck, and I had to dig like crazy for hours to get it out and make a passable track out to the cattle in the woods.

As the snow accumulated around the corral, some of the yearlings managed to cross the fence and ran off. Harold and I had to run them down, lasso them in and bring them back. I spent a few days building up the corral a foot higher. 

We fed twice a day, once in the early morning and once late in the day; in between we would do all the other chores. I loved every minute of it, except working with the pigs. Once I came out to feed in the morning, a pig had died overnight and the other pigs were eating on it, that was rather disgusting; the smell in the pens was also pretty bad, but as it got colder less so. 

The work in the fields came to an end, and we managed to recover all the crops in the nick of time. Harold was building a new large barn to keep the calves in for part of the year, and we got to work on that one, hammering two-by-fours till we were blue in the face. Literally; one day Harold looked at me and said: ‘Your nose – NO, don’t touch it, go to the house immediately and warm up!!”. When I got inside and looked in the mirror, my nose had turned white like snow; a few minutes more and I would get frostbite, the tissue can get permanently damaged. I couldn’t feel a thing, but later on when the nose started to heat up it hurt like hell. No harm done though. 

The thermometer plunged: -10 C one morning, -15 C the next week, in December -25. This winter was particularly cold they said, and during January we had three days with below -40, down to -48 one morning before dawn. You could hardly breathe outside in that weather. I did the feeding and a bit of work around noon while the sun was out, but otherwise we stayed indoors those days; the schools in the area were closed and people tried not to drive out; if you break down out there you are screwed. I had to buy extra winter gear: Most importantly wooly long-johns, but also a down-filled parka with fur-lined hood and proper winter boots to replace my army leather boots. We bought all our stuff from a massive illustrated mail-order catalogue the family had, the local bible. Sears & Roebuck - the fall/winter edition - had EVERYTHING you could dream of. Amazon.com didn’t invent mail-order; in fact, I never understood how they could win over Sears who had such commanding market dominance back then: today Sears are virtually bankrupt.  

When I say ‘local bible’ that is not quite right, however. The family worshipped the real bible even more. They said grace at every meal and didn’t work on Sundays. I guess Harold must have fed the animals when I was not there, but while I was, I was the only one doing chores on Sundays. The family quickly realized that I didn’t pray. Every Sunday the family all went to church, sometimes they would go for dinner with some of their neighbors or have the preacher over after service. On Sundays I was free most of the day and went for long walks in the woods. When the snow got too deep I would need snowshoes to make my way across country; even with snowshoes it was heavy going and I couldn’t get far. But the tranquility and grandness of the terrain was magnificent. 

Towards the end of February I was starting to get restless. The days were getting longer and brighter, the temperatures were creeping up; on warm days I could work in just my shirt sleeves. It was time to heard north to Alaska. I told Harold of my plan and was a bit disappointed when he told me that he would pay me C$10 for the first two months I was on the farm, but only C$5 per day for the months of December, January and February. I expected to get C$10 for all the days, I never had a full day off for four months+. Harold now offered me C$10 from now on if I stayed until the spring when work on the farm picked up, but I had already made up my mind: I wanted to move on. 

It always bothered me later on that I complained about my salary and argued with Harold. It was childish and foolish of me, and I shouldn’t have. I learned so much on the farm, and the family there treated me like their son. Harold ran a small business, and I know now that it is tough to get by that way and provide for a family. He needed the money more than I did. During the winter, Harold was right, there were a lot of days when we were bugged down with cold and snow, and we didn’t accomplish much. In the long run, money doesn’t matter; I was too immature at the time to understand that. I am sure Harold is no longer alive; but if he was, I would thank him and his wife with all my heart for the way they treated me on the Canadian farm, and I would give him his money back. In retrospect, I would be happy to do the work for free. 

It was 23 February when Harold dropped me off on the highway where we had first met, and I quickly got a ride into Dawson Creek. I was on my way North to Alaska.