It’s written by two former Terrace residents, George Fosty and his brother Darril, historians who are on a mission to preserve and celebrate Canadian history.

The Fostys were researching their first book Splendid is the Sun: 5,000 Years of Hockey when they came across two obscure references to black Canadians playing hockey at the turn of the last century.

They were astonished to learn about the existence of an all-black hockey league that operated in the Maritimes decades before the birth of the NHL.
“We felt that no one had fully explained the history of the league or why it had come into existence,” Darril Fosty told the Terrace Standard.
“At first were were only going to give the league a chapter in Splendid is the Sun, but as we dug deeper into the subject, we found the complexities of the stories warranted its own book.”
The pair spent seven years performing the necessary research. The result is Black Ice, a book that tells the whole story of the Maritime league for the first time.
You’ll never look at hockey – or Canadian history – the same way again.
Black hockey players – the descendants of escaped slaves from the Underground Railroad and black Revolutionary Loyalists – were responsible for transforming the “gentleman’s pastime” of ice hockey into the fast-moving game we know today, the authors say.
The players drew hundreds of paying customers into arenas for their games, the crowds enthralled by the athleticism on display.
Yet the players’ innovations – the slap shot, the offensive style of goaltending, and dropping onto the ice to defend goal – have been ignored or forgotten. (By the way, there were no blacks in the NHL until New Brunswick’s Willie O’Ree laced up his skates for the Boston Bruins in 1958.)
reads like a secret history, tracing the origins of the league and the rise of hockey from a folksy game played on frozen ponds by early settlers to an organized sport – all against the backdrop of political and social realities most Canadians would probably prefer to forget.
It was a time when patently racist attitudes held sway. It was thought black people were physically unsuited to hockey – their bodies weren’t built to withstand the cold, their ankles were too weak for skates, and they simply weren’t capable of the teamwork required.
The league organizers, prominent black community leaders of the day, realized the hockey teams would be an important source of pride for their fans, as well as a force for social change.
The team names – the Halifax Eurekas, Africville Sea-Sides, the Hammond Plains Moss Backs – had dual religious or political meanings. The practice grew out of the use of codifying messages along the Underground Railway that helped former slaves flee to freedom in Canada.
The league officials knew names like the Dartmouth Jubilees (which referred to the anniversary of abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and not the length of the Queen’s reign) would resonate with the fans, and were bound to cause controversy.
Team jerseys bore meaningful symbols. The double S on the Sea-Sides’ logo also meant “slave stealer” – the letters branded onto the face or hands of anyone caught helping slaves escape to Canada. To blacks, the mark that was a sign of heroism. To white Haligonians, however, the name “Sea-Sides” was simply a geographic reference.
“Nobody has ever identified the symbolism or codes before,” co-author George Fosty said. “We feel that this part of Black Ice is revolutionary and important.”
The rise and fall of the league is emblematic of the larger struggle of black Canadians to gain acceptance and equality.
We learn how a prominent activist is forced into hiding after an anonymous letter to the editor in response to a demeaning article about a hockey game provoked outrage in the white community.
The book also looks at the role of blacks in the military defense of Canada and the destruction of Africville, the latter raising new legal questions.
The book contains a number of illustrations and photographs, as well an extensive appendix at the back of the book that includes a list of team rosters and player bios (which is a nice touch) and a bibilography.
Black Ice is published by Stryker-Indigo, a New York company George Fosty founded in 1996. The company has sent hundreds of books and artifacts to the Black Cultural Centre in Nova Scotia.
“Part of our efforts here at Stryker-Indigo is not only to write books on Canada but also to work to preserve Canadian history,” George said.
Nearly all the company’s writers and editors are Canadians who’ve been educated abroad – a fact that gives them the ability to understand the differences between Canadians and people from other cultures, particularly Americans.
“Often as Canadians, we do not recognize our uniqueness,” George said. “Once we leave Canada, however, the uniqueness often comes to the forefront.”
Both brothers share an abiding passion for hockey. George, who was known by his middle name Robert when he went to school in Terrace, got his start in minor hockey playing for the Terrace Esso peewee team in 1970-71 – the first season at the new Terrace arena. One of his earliest memories is playing hockey out on the ice that formed on Howe Creek.
The best part, he says, was lying down on the ice and peering down on the hibernating frogs as they wintered on the bottom.
Darril, who was born in Terrace, learned to skate here as a boy, and played league hockey in Kamloops.
Their father, John Fosty, was a conductor on the Terrace-Kitimat CNR line. Their mother Jeanine stayed home with the kids while they were young. The family moved to Kamloops in 1975.
George now lives in Levittown, New York and Darril lives in Helena, Montana. Being on opposite sides of the continent meant they did much of their writing and research separately.
Darril said they kept in touch by phone or email and came together for one-month intervals.
“Because we look at things so much differently, I believe that we improve each other’s work,” Darril added.
George is working on an upcoming book on the Dieppe raid due to come out next year, while Darril is completing a book on aboriginal culture.
Black Ice is available at www.stryker-indigo.com, from www.blackicebook.com and can be found on the Amazon and Chapters websites.

The remarkable discoveries were made this summer by a pair of provincial geologists involved in an ongoing federal/provincial project to survey the Bowser Basin in northwest B.C. for its future petroleum exploration potential.

Mike Boddy, a geologist with the B.C. ministry of Energy and Mines, and his colleague, Dr. Peter Mustard, a sedimentary rock expert at Simon Fraser University’s Earth Science’s department, were walking along a ridge that was once part of an old floodplain. The pair had been keeping an eye out for fossils because they offer useful clues about the age of rocks. That’s when Boddy noticed a fossil he initially thought was tropical leaves.

“When we looked at it more closely, we saw a backbone,” Mustard told The Terrace Standard. “We figured out pretty fast it was a turtle, and that it was a major find.” They were elated – no vertebrate fossils had ever been found this far west in B.C. before.

The men celebrated by exchanging high fives.

“Then I kind of said, ‘Well, we found a turtle – let’s find some dinosaurs!”
As luck would have it, the very next slabs of sandstone they broke off to examine 200 metres up the ridge were dotted with half a dozen footprints, three-toed impressions that look like giant eagle or chicken tracks. “I’ve seen dinosaur tracks before, so I knew what it was – we were kind of flabbergasted.” They appear to be made by different dinosaurs – all theropods, three-toed, upright, walking carnivores.
The biggest ones are about 25 cm long – about the same size as those of a velociraptor, a human-sized dinosaur familiar to many from the movie, Jurassic Park. The tracks date from the early Cretaceous Period, about 125-145 million years ago.

Mustard said the two were mapping the area for the Geological Survey of Canada and the B.C. Ministry of Energy and Mines in a team headed up by Dr. Carol Evenchuck when they made their discovery – 200km due north of Terrace. Mustard said finding evidence of dinosaur tracks, turtle remains and plant material in this remote area means it’s rich in fossils – including dinosaur bones.
The footprints prove dinosaurs once made the trek to the ancient west coast of North America.
The early Cretaceous period in northwest B.C. was very different from today. There were no permanent ice packs or glaciers, and a tropical, or subtropical climate prevailed right up to the north pole. Dinosaurs ranged all over the earth, which looked very different from today.
Western North America was separated from the rest of the continent by a shallow, interior seaway that stretched through much of Alberta and Saskatchewan to the western U.S.
From about 170 million to 90 million years ago, most of the Bowser Basin was an ocean, including the area where Terrace is today. Highway 37 north sits right in the middle of this ancient marine basin.
It’s thought an ancient coastline existed east of Smithers running northwest to the community of Dease Lake. “The tracks were probably right along the coastline,” Mustard said.
The area where the tracks and fossil were found is about 50 km east of Bell II on Highway 37 and 200-km due north of Terrace.
“We knew it was a non-marine part of the basin, but nobody’s ever found any evidence of a dinosaur.”
A lack of dinosaur finds in this region have led some to speculate that there was once an ocean or marine strait that prevented them from migrating. “This changes that idea. Obviously they were here.”
Shell Oil is spending nearly $10 million on a drill program in the nearby Klappan coal beds.
That fills Mustard with hope that oil companies interested in tapping the reserves of the Bowser Basin will fund dinosaur research project in the area next summer as a gesture of goodwill.
Right now the fossils, which are considered property of the provincial government, are on display at the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria. After that, the turtle, which is intact but is missing its head, will likely end up at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta for further study.

Oct 29 2000 – IT WOULD begin with a jug of water, a drinking glass, and a dish of apples.

Then, the two men – such unlikely partners – would get to work. One, a white man with a keen interest in Tsimshian history named Will Robinson, would roll a sheet of blank paper into his typewriter (a No. 3 Underwood).

The other, a chief named Walter Wright, would tell his story – the story of his people, the Gitselasu, the people of the canyon.

Wright would talk for a few minutes before pausing so Robinson could start typing what he’d just heard, faithfully recording the other man’s words.

Once they worked like this for seven hours at a stretch. Over the weeks and months, they would record many stories of the Gitselasu, their mythical origins in a legendary city to the east, and how the Men of Medeek used the stronghold of their canyon to control trade on this part of the Skeena.

Wright, who painstakingly learned his people’s histories by memorizing them, knew the world was changing. He feared the oral history would be lost unless it was written down for future generations to turn to.
The result was a book called Men of Medeek, published in 1962 by Kitimat’s Northern Sentinel Press nearly 10 years after Robinson’s death.
In his will, he urged his surviving family members to publish the rest of his manuscript, Wars of Medeek. No one had any success.
Then, his granddaughter Enid DuPuis found Robinson’s old papers in a box. She showed them to her cousin, Barry Robinson, a businessman from Penhold, Alberta. They knew they held the history of the Kitselas people. And it was time to give it back.
Two and half years ago, Glenn Bennett, Kitselas chief councillor, got a phone call from Barry Robinson, hoping to locate Walter Wright’s descendants. Before long, Barry was in touch with Ralph Wright, Walter’s grandson.
On Oct. 22, the two grandsons held an emotion-filled book launch for Men of M’deek and Wars of M’deek at the Kitselas Community Hall before a rapt audience.
Just 500 soft cover and 50 hard cover copies of the edition have been made. Barry Robinson has given these books, a digital version of the manuscript and assorted files, and the copyright to the Kitselas band.
“We were an instrument, only, to bring this book back into your hands,” he said at the emotion-filled event.
Freda Wright, Ralph’s daughter, presented Barry with a framed black and red felt eagle – her father’s crest – and a Tsimshian Tribal Council pin, one of the evening’s most touching presentations.
“It’s all I have to give,” she said, her voice on the verge of breaking.
Kitselas education coordinator Debbie Moore said she’s grateful she can now read Men of M’deek to her grandchildren.
“We’re all relatives here, and we’re all connected to the history of this book,” she added.
Ralph Wright, a former chief councillor, remembers hearing his grandfather’s stories as a child.
The stories capture thousands of years of history – and provide moral lessons that young people can learn from.
“This history is unique. When you read the book, you’ll understand what I mean.”

Until last October, no living Nisga’a person had seen the 30-foot, Western red cedar pole since a Dominion historian named Marius Barbeau took it out of northwest B.C.’s remote Nass River Valley in the 1930s.

It lay inside a storage facility of London’s British Museum for 70 years.

Tait – invited by museum officials to identify the pole – immediately recognized the tell-tale trademarks of a Nisga’a carver. The pole’s sides are rounded rather than squared-off. “That’s the way we do it,” he thought.

He knew he was in the presence of a masterpiece.

“It was breathtaking. It’s so beautifully done. I’m amazed somebody could do a job like that in those days – especially with the tools they had.”

The pole was thought to be the fine handiwork of the legendary carver Oyai in the 1860s to honour Chief Luuya’as of the eagle clan, Tait’s great, great grandfather.

Tait, a hereditary chief named Gadeelip, asked museum officials to let him enter the storage room alone first. One look and he knew.

“It was like showing me a coffin where my father or grandfather was laying. I didn’t say anything for a long time. It was kind of sad. It was really an experience for me.”
To the Nisga’a, a totem pole is no mere wood carving. It’s a living thing; something precious that symbolizes and honours specific individuals, clans and the stories belonging to them.
“It’s sacred to us,” Tait said. “They tell a story about us. On these totem poles are our ancestors. It’s just like a person. You have to treat them with respect.”
Historically, outsiders have found this difficult to understand.
For instance, early Christian missionaries mistakenly thought B.C.’s indigenous coastal people worshipped totem poles.
These days, poles are recognized for their artistic value and their intrinsic historical and cultural significance.
Just last week, Tait was invited to officiate at a special, private ceremony at the British Museum.
On Oct. 17, the pole was lifted into place in one of the museum’s hub galleries, where it will go on display as part of a new exhibit opening up later this month.
The ceremony wasn’t a traditional pole-raising; normally, poles are left where they fall and the ground eventually consumes them.
His presence was requested by the exhibit’s curator, Jonathan King, who was anxious to see the pole treated in a manner that is appropriate to the Nisga’a.
This summer Tait carved a replacement for the large eagle figurine that had once stood on top of the pole. The five-foot eagle is now seated next to the original in the museum.
Tait also completed several replacement pieces as part of restoration work on the Chief Luuya’as pole, which once stood outside a house in Ankid’aa, a Nisga’a village site located on an island in the Nass River west of Greenville (Gingolx).
The river has since washed much of the village away, Tait told the Terrace Standard a few days before he left for England.
The British Museum, home to some treasured antiquities like the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles, has been criticised for not returning artifacts taken from other nations over the centuries.
Surprisingly, Tait is grateful in this case. “It’s kind of a blessing. They would have disintegrated,” he said, referring to his ancestor’s work. “We wouldn’t dream of taking it away from them now. They took such good care of it.”
Today’s carvers can work from photographs, he said.
This isn’t the first time Tait, a master carver, has traveled to a European capital as a cultural ambassador for the Nisga’a nation.
Tait carved a 10-metre totem pole for the Vienna Zoo’s 250th anniversary last summer, performing the “breath of life” dance in full regalia, with his carving tools dangling from a belt around his waist.
A number of his poles also grace the Nass Valley, including the bridge at Gitwinksihlkw.

IN THE SPRING of 1945, Frank Howard, the man who would become Skeena’s longest-serving MP, was released from prison after serving 18 months for armed robbery.

He was just 20 years old, and as he walked through the gates of B.C. Pen in a prison-made suit and just $10 in his pocket, he promised himself he’d never be back.

Less than 10 years later, he won a seat in the B.C. legislature as Skeena’s MLA, embarking on a remarkable political career that saw Howard emerge as a champion for native rights and divorce law reform, among other ground-breaking causes.

When he entered politics, Howard was a rising force as a union official with the IWA, signing and certifying scores of workers at logging camps up and down the coast – including loggers in Terrace – during a tumultuous period in B.C.’s labour history.

In those days, union officials weren’t allowed to recruit members on the job site and could be run off the premises if discovered. At one point, Howard passed himself off as a Macleans Magazine reporter to sign up workers at a logging camp outside Squamish.

The resourceful young logger would sleep alongside the railway tracks outside of camp to get the job done without discovery by the bosses.

“I did submit an article and picture to Macleans,” he writes in a new self-published autobiography, From Prison to Parliament, “but they weren’t able to see the merits of the story.”

Howard first came to Terrace in 1951 to sign up workers at Columbia Cellulose, just as the government was establishing new forest licenses that allowed companies to log huge tracts of land in return for promises to reforest. He based himself out of Terrace, and was soon courted by officials with the CCF – the party that preceded the NDP – who wanted him to run in Skeena.
In 1953 he became the riding’s first CCF MLA by the slimmest of margins – just 13 votes.

It’s a victory he chalks up to his time in Kemano, where he signed up hundreds of Alcan workers who hadn’t been registered to vote. The absentee ballots from the remote powerhouse village put him over the top.

“I think initially, it was my own doing,” Howard told the Terrace Standard in a recent interview. “If I had not gone to Kemano and registered all those voters, I would not have got elected.”

In those days, elected members of the legislature didn’t receive an annual salary, so when Howard went to Victoria, he slept on a cot in a hotel room he shared with four other MLAs.

In 1957, he won his first federal election. It was the start of a career in federal politics that would span 17 years and seven successive elections – a record no other Skeena politician can touch.

Now, nearly 60 years after his release from one of Canada’s most notorious prisons, Howard has released his autobiography. From Prison to Parliament is a revealing and candid book that details his tragic childhood, troubled youth and incredible political career.

Despite his early hardships, he somehow managed to turn his life around.
“I came to this conclusion many years ago – don’t blame anybody else for your difficulties,” Howard says.

Frank Howard’s early years make for painful reading. He describes sexual molestation by a policeman. And finding out his birth mother was a prostitute.

The only mother and father he ever knew were actually foster parents, an English family that came to Canada after the First World War. He lived with them in Kimberley, B.C., until he was 12.

Then he was sentenced to six years under the care of the Children’s Aid Society for stealing a fresh-baked pie from the windowsill of a hotel.

He battled loneliness and isolation as he bounced between different foster homes in Vancouver, before falling in with a gang of petty thieves on Commercial Drive.

He quit school and went to work in a plywood sawmill. He never completed Grade 10. At 18, he was sentenced to two years for a series of armed robberies. It was easy to blame everyone else for his problems.

“A great deal of things in life are voluntary, or thoughtless,” he says now. Howard is the kind of guy who speaks in complete paragraphs, his voice a deep, rumbling bass.

“I got to the point where I hated the police. I hated the social workers. I hated foster homes. I suppose I hated myself, too. But I still had to come to the conclusion that it was my doing.”

The turning point was a realization while he was serving time that he wasn’t smart enough to keep out of jail, and he sure didn’t want to serve a life sentence – a few years at a time.

He left the walls of prison and never looked back. He only told a few people about his troubled past. When he was persuaded by the CCF to enter provincial politics, he revealed his criminal record to then-B.C. party leader Harold Winch.

“If it comes up, tell the truth,” Winch told the young MLA hopeful in 1952. “Don’t lie.”

It’s ironic that a guy who started out his adult life branded a crook could end up becoming an honest politician, a straight-shooter who kept his word no matter what it cost him professionally.

One of just eight federal CCF MPs that first term, Howard earned a reputation as a maverick – a role that won him respect across Skeena, but meant he was often on the outs with his own party.

Skeena was a federal CCF, and later NDP, stronghold under Howard, the first MP to introduce a private member’s bill asking for the federal vote for aboriginal Canadians. His bill died, but he continued to lobby.

His fight was unsuccessful, at first. But then the cause was picked up when John Diefenbaker’s Conservative minority government came to power.

Aboriginal people in Canada got the right to vote in federal elections in 1960.

“Whether the Conservatives would have done that all by themselves, I don’t know,” he now says. It’s rare for a backbench, opposition MP to be heard in Parliament, and it’s rarer still for one to fight for changes that have a profound and lasting impact on Canadian society.

Howard and another MP waged a three-year-long filibuster that resulted in more modern divorce laws – a battle Howard now counts among his most meaningful victories.

“There’s more to a marriage breakup than just adultery,” he says. “There’s brutality, there’s all sorts of other things that were never considered.” Until the law was changed, divorces required an act of Parliament.

Any politician who’s serious about winning a seat in Skeena should borrow a chapter from Frank Howard’s campaign booklet.

He mastered the art of winning over voters in the diverse, sprawling federal riding of Skeena. He understood the importance of going door-to-door in all the communities. He concentrated on winning the villages, as well as the larger centres of the riding.

He also galvanized a team of supporters to help him get the word out to voters, often months before the writ was dropped, and maintained satellite offices throughout the riding in order to maintain a contact point with voters.

Howard credits his supporters.

“We built a very, I think, effective organization of people all throughout the riding who campaigned for me, or for the party, distributed the literature, and did all the things that helped get the message across to voters. It was an organizational effort. We had a remarkable one, I think.”

Frank Howard’s popularity soared in the 1960s. Then, in 1967, came the day he’d always feared.

He received an envelope with a letter from someone threatening to reveal his criminal past unless he paid $5,000.

Howard doesn’t name his blackmailer in his book. He insists there was no other way to deal with the threat other than confront his accuser head-on.

He made his confession live on CFTK-TV from the Terrace studio.

“I said, ‘This has happened. I got this letter, and this is what I did earlier.’ I recall sort of winding it up, almost in a cheerful way: ‘How many times does one have to pay for a stupid mistake?’”

It was a political bombshell that would make headline news across Canada and earn him a spot on Front Page Challenge.

Howard was met with a tidal wave of support.

Letters and telegrams, nearly all sympathetic, poured in. One even came from a store owner he’d held up.

Six months later in 1968, as Trudeaumania swept the nation and voters went to the polls, other NDP MPs in this province went down to defeat. But Howard wasn’t among them.

He held onto Skeena with 12,471 votes, a drop of just one percentage point, after his wrenching confession.

“I’m very thankful for that,” he says now, adding voters responded to his honesty and willingness to own up to his mistakes.

Voters appreciated the fact that “I faced up to it. That I didn’t equivocate. That I didn’t lie. I didn’t boast, and, in a sense, asked for forgiveness.”

With so many politicians getting into the confession game lately, it begs the question, how would Skeena voters respond to Howard’s confession today?

“Who knows?” Howard says. He only knows that he wouldn’t handle the situation any differently today. But he’s unsure if voters would be as willing to forgive the past transgressions of their federal representative.

“In recent years, there has been such a decline in the ethics and morality of political parties, that regardless of anything, they’re in general disfavour,” he says.

“There was a much greater appreciation of the sanctity of what government should be that appears to have gone.”

He blames the conduct of politicians for that decline, pointing to a recent example making headlines: the federal sponsorship scandal plaguing the Liberals.

“The activities of the former premier of B.C., Glen Clark, are another example just adding to the deplorable situation.”

Howard would like to see politicians shoulder the responsibility for rampant voter disaffection, but doesn’t hold any illusions.

“There’s an inclination, and this mostly stems from people in politics, that the fault lies with the media, that the media should ‘leave us alone’, but that, in the vernacular, is B.S.,” he says.

“The media doesn’t create these situations – it just delves into them.”

What does he make of premier Gordon Campbell’s Maui arrest in January 2003 for drunk driving?

“I think he lied, right from the beginning, saying he had two or three drinks. It subsequently proved much more than that,” Howard says. “I don’t know if I would condemn it.”

After leaving politics, he weathered more personal tragedy, losing his son, Robert, in 1986 and and his second wife, Julie, in 1999.

These days, Frank Howard lives in Surrey, with his third wife, Joanne Humphrey (J. J. McColl, a broadcaster and playwright), and his cats. He’s working on a novel.

“I try to spend a couple of hours each morning staring out the window, getting interrupted by three cats who want to control my life,” he says.

Writing the story of his life – at the urging of his stepchildren – has been an often painful process he says forced him to face up to and accept “a bunch of stupid things I did.”

Putting it down on paper has helped turn the page.

“It’s all gone now,” he says. “It’s no longer a concern. So healing? Yes, I suppose.”
© Copyright May 14, 2005 Terrace Standard

Second World War veteran Otto Lindstrom knows.

He served with the Royal Canadian Artillery, wading ashore in Sicily on July 10, 1943 as part of Operation Husky.

He’s proud to say he’s a D-Day Dodger – a soldier who wasn’t part of the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

The term was meant as a slur. But the D-Day Dodgers embraced their nickname, and even came up with a song – sung to the tune of Lili Marlene, a popular German ditty.

I am a D-Day Dodger, in sunny Italy…

The lyrics drip with irony – it was paid vacation, with friendly dames and the flowing beer. They took Ortona – known in reality as Little Stalingrad – in stride.

Now 88, Lindstrom has few souvenirs of those days. Just his service medals, a worn army pay and service record book, and one badly faded photograph of himself and his mother, Emma, outside the family’s Remo homestead.

In 1938, during the late, lean years of the Depression, Lindstrom jumped a boxcar bound for a construction job in Prince Rupert building Fort Barrett.

There was a catch; you had to join the army. He was 22.

When war was declared the following year, he stayed in the army. Nobody knew the war would take so long.

“We were going to go over and blow the Germans away in 24 hours and pack it up and go home,” Lindstrom says. “Five years, six years later, we finally did the job.”

Local boys signing up lost touch quickly as they became absorbed into the military machine.

Lindstrom was initially stationed at Manitoba’s Camp Shiloh as an artillery instructor. In early 1942, he was drafted to an artillery training centre in Aldershot, England.

He was 25 or so – practically an old man compared to the teenaged recruits he taught.

His time in England was uneventful. He’d travel to Scotland’s dance halls when he had time off – irresistibly sophisticated to a boy from a town with unpaved streets and wooden sidewalks.

“I loved to dance. Edinburgh had some beautiful dance places.” He preferred Scottish reels, waltzes and polkas to that “jump and jive” swing music.

He exchanged the relative calm of England for the sun and dust, rain and mud of Italy.

Italy is called The Forgotten Campaign because it’s overshadowed by Normandy, even though it held 20 German divisions at bay as the Allies stormed the beaches in France.

“We split the German army on one side, and the Russians had them on the other side. We had some of the Germans top troops in Italy.” D-Day was long over before they could get them back to the Western Front.

The Italian campaign lasted 20 months, and when it was over the bodies of nearly 6,000 Canadians lay buried there.

“We are classed as a forgotten army – period,” he says without self-pity. “Our attitude as far as accomplishment is concerned, if it hadn’t been for the army in Italy, D-Day would have failed.”

Eventually, 93,000 Canadians were part of the campaign. They’re credited with playing a major role in driving out the fascists and ending Nazi influence.

“I don’t see how anybody could expect to do anything in Italy,” he says. Canadian forces eventually made their way north over hundreds of kilometers of impassable, hostile terrain mountains, ridges and raging rivers. Towns were reduced to rubble.

In winter, big equipment got bogged down in the Italian mud. Lindstrom remembers camping in a mud pit dug into the high ground of a field, placing two bunks into the walls of earth. The floor was a puddle, but a sheet of metal over the top kept them dry.

He fashioned a stove out of old ammunition boxes to heat the camping hole.

He traded another one of these gadgets with the signal corps in return for a radio, so he could listen to the news.

He couldn’t believe it when one day he heard a BBC radio broadcaster describing a revolution in his hometown – the Terrace Mutiny in November 1944.

“I said, ‘Let’s get outta here and go back to where the war is!”

In Italy, Lindstrom was a mechanic and driver, doing forward observation with his commanding officer.

“Sometimes we were with the infantry. Sometimes ahead of them, most times behind them,” he recalls. “We tried to stay behind them.”

The job brought him close to the front line, and well back, as he shuttled the CO around.

“It got a little hot once in a while,” Lindstrom says. Anything moving drew fire.

It’s dangerous work. One time they got lost, and nearly paid for it with their lives. They drove right into a German firing down from a ridge.

Under fire, Lindstrom turned their Bren Gun Carrier around in a snap, and hightailed it back the way they came.

“Fortunately, the German guns were far faster than ours, so they weren’t as accurate.”

At San Leonardo near Vino Ridge while waiting to drive the CO back to camp, he and some other soldiers were forced to take cover in a basement just 1,000 yards from the front when the Germans started firing shells.

For three days, they waited for the bombardment to quiet down, expecting the enemy to burst through the door any second.

“We drank a lot of wine,” he recalls.

Conditions in the field were primitive.

Lindstrom came up with a way to boil hot water for tea using gasoline, a tin can and sand – typical Canuck know-how.

“That’s where the Canadians had it over everybody in the field. Because they camped at home. So therefore, we could make do with what we had.”

They’d make bedrolls by stuffing their blankets inside their rain jackets and sleep in the ground.

“As Canadians, we’d done a lot of that stuff for sport.”

He produces a note entitling him to a new blanket – he had to give his up for casualties.

“When the Edmonton regiment got shot up so bad in the break into Ortona, casualties were coming out so fast, they didn’t have enough blankets.”

In 1945, the Canadians in Italy joined the Allied forces in northwest Europe – the march wasn’t over yet.

Lindstrom’s regiment ended up in Belgium for a rest and new equipment. Then they took part in the liberation of Holland, where Canadian troops were to open up a supply route.

“That’s when the war ended for us,” he says.

After so much action, he savoured moments of reckless abandon.

When a sergeant major told them the air force wanted to show everybody what they’d done to the Germans during the war, Lindstrom found himself in the cockpit of a bomber, seated next to the pilot – an Aussie.

They soared high and low over the countryside above the Rhine River, surveying the destruction. They flew over the German cities of Essen and Cologne, virtually flattened by aerial bombardment.

Lindstrom took a mickey of German rum out of his pocket and shared a drink with the pilot.

When the navigator objected, the pilot snapped back: How about minding your own business?

Lindstrom finally returned home in 1946.

Since then, he’s done everything from lighthouse keeping to working at the airport. He maintained his trapline for more than 75 years.

He and his wife Fran live in Terrace.

Did he ever feel sorry for himself or think, Why me?

“I sure never did. I can only say we felt sorry for those that didn’t make it. I hate to say it, but I enjoyed the army. It was a job. We done our job. In most cases, that was all that was necessary.”

Look around the mountains in the mud and rain,
See the scattered crosses, theres some that have no name.
Heartbreak and toil, and suffering gone,
The boys beneath and slumber on.
They are the D-Day Dodgers, who stay in Italy.

A HAND-MADE replica of the trusted lighthouse that has stood guard over an Irish seaside town for centuries now sits in a Terrace front yard.

Jim Allen, who is lovingly re-creating a waist-high version of his County Cork home town of Youghal (from memory), has just completed the final touches on his latest creation.

It’s a white, 14-foot lighthouse tower complete with a revolving beam of light – a 40-watt light bulb that actually works.

“That’s solid stucco,” he says proudly, placing his hand against the firm tower wall.

A painter and plasterer by trade, he may have found his life’s true calling in his retirement – as the creator and self-styled Mayor of Tiny Town.

For the past year or so, he’s been making picture perfect replicas of Youghal’s landmark buildings, one by one, and setting them up in his front yard.

Each is a work of art. They’re solidly constructed, too.

The best part is, admirers are welcome to take a closer look. Jim, who can be found at work outside in his garage most days, will gladly give visitors a tour.

The attention to detail is impressive. A little pile of fire wood is neatly stacked behind one home. Itty-bitty shoes peek out from behind real glass windows at the cobbler’s.

“I used to bring in my football boots,” recalls Jim, whose clothes are spotted with white paint and plaster flecks and has sky blue eyes that match the collar of his work shirt. “The owner would give me his life story and all I wanted was new studs on my boots.”

He starts each replica with a sturdy wooden frame, building the walls from plaster and nailing wooden shingles to the roofs to keep the rain out. Some buildings are inlaid with real stones, adding to the illusion.

The small yard at 5134 Agar Ave. is a genuine tourist attraction.

Admirers come in all sizes (although some question the inclusion of the town’s pub and betting office).

One woman brought Jim a porcelain tile bearing an Irish blessing. It’s now inlaid underneath the roof line of one of the little Council Houses he’s built.

Naturally, Terrace, B.C.’s version of Youghal (pronounced Yawl) is a hit with the neighbourhood kids.

“The kids that come around here, it’s unbelievable, they’re in their glory.”

If Barbie got married, shed insist on having her wedding at St. Mary’s Church, a gothic wonder with a tall spire.

Jim’s planning to build a replica of Youghal’s Anglican Church. Inexplicably, it’s also called St. Mary’s.

Many of the finest homes in Youghal, like that of former mayor Sir Walter Raleigh (who is said to have introduced tobacco to Europe), were at one time owned and inhabited by the British.

Ireland, which is a booming high-tech centre these days, has had a tumultuous past, having endured invasions by the Danes in the 9th century, followed by the Normans in the 12th.

During the Irish potato famine in the mid-1800s, millions fled the Emerald Isle in ships bound for the New World. Many sailed past the busy port of Youghal.

“This light,” he says, referring to the lighthouse, “was probably the last they ever saw of Ireland.”

A lighthouse has kept watch over Youghal since the 12th Century, when the Normans built a 30-foot-high tower in the same location as the present one, town historian Mike Hacket writes.

Its warning lights fires lit in the window during wet weather and on the roof when it was dry were removed in the mid-1500s.

That’s because pirates used to light fires on rocky shores hoping to lure ships to disaster. For 300 years the tower was dark.

The Allens welcomed more than 1,000 visitors this summer. Many signed an autograph book Jim keeps behind Plexiglas in a stand by the front gate.

He plans to put out a collection box for the Canadian Cancer Society next summer.

His next project is Youghal’s distinctive clock tower, an elaborate brick structure with rows of windows and a wide arch.

That, and the lighthouse, will be displayed in the back yard, stresses Jim, who ran into a bit of trouble two summers ago when someone complained to city hall about the height of his miniatures.

Were they lawn ornaments or structures under the zoning bylaw?

Structures would have to be moved. But, after several agonizing weeks, he was simply told to build a fence along his driveway, screening the view from next door.

Jim Allen’s tiny town could have ended up in a yard in Australia instead.

He and his wife, Josephine, an Irish girl from a nearby town he married at 21 in England, decided they would emigrate.

They wrote to the Canadian and Australian consulates, vowing to honour whichever reply came first.

It was Canada. The Allens have lived in Terrace for 48 years, raising six children.

You have to wonder, looking at the miniature town in their front yard, do they miss Ireland?

“No,” Jim and Josephine chime in unison. “We’re Canadians right down to the core.”

The couple has gone back to Ireland just four times in the past half a century.

They enjoy visiting family, but before long they’re anxious to return.

“Especially Terrace,” smiles Jim. “It’s Gods country, here. When the sun shines on the snowy mountains, it looks just like pink ice cream”

IT’S ONE OF THOSE dark, grey days, the kind where it still seems dark outside, even though it’s past noon.

But step into the art studio of Gail Turner Sears, where today she’s joined by friend and collaborator Patsy O’Connell, and the world already seems brighter.

This month they join artistic talents in Persephone’s Keepsakes, an exhibit featuring paintings by Turner Sears and O’Connell’s pottery opening Friday at the Terrace Art Gallery.

Its their second show together; they first paired up in 2002 for A Few of our Favourite Things.
The two women met five years ago, when O’Connell moved to town.

“Our stuff goes together well,” Turner-Sears says.

Their works are complementary, particularly because they work in different media – O’Connell in the three-dimensional material of clay and Turner Sears in oils and watercolours.

When the two artists originally signed on for new exhibit, they realized it would be held in November – just as Terrace enters the dark, winter months.

“We had the idea of summer and winter,” says O’Connell, who found inspiration for the shows theme from one of her friend’s paintings – a bold canvass of deep, sumptuously red tulips.

They wanted their show to conjure up promises of spring and summer, and the inevitable procession of the seasons.

It’s a subject that resonates with Terrace residents. We love our long summer days and barely-there summer nights. But it feels as if we pay for them with difficult, drab winters – especially at this time of year.

“Everybody’s feeling grief over the loss of summer,” O’Connell says.

How fitting that they seized upon the story of Persephone, the Greek goddess who became Queen of the Underworld.

She was kidnapped by Hades, and, after the intervention of her mother, Demeter, goddess of he spring and fertility, she ends up having to spend part of the year with him.

Her return to earth signals the return of spring and the cycle of the seasons.

The theme, OConnell says, has worked very, very well.

“Everything’s from the natural world,” adds Turner Sears, referring to the subject matter of her paintings, and her colleague’s vividly-rendered pottery, with elaborate, languid, flowing glazes that evoke mountains and rock, the foundation of the natural world.

Both artists are looking back at a successful summer.

Each sold their work at Prince Rupert’s Atlin Ice House Gallery, a new artist coop -run gallery in the Atlin Terminal building in touristy Cow Bay, where a regular succession of cruise ship passengers were let loose.

O’Connell, who has a degree in Fine Arts, has been an artist for 26 years.

“It is a medium I like to consider cheap therapy”, she winks.

She has turned her upstairs bedroom into a potters studio. Her kiln, where hours of hard work can be obliterated or transformed, seemingly at the whim of the gods is in the basement.

Turner Sears says she always painted.

Her work is widely collected, with sales to such far-flung places as Oregon, New York, the Maritimes.

It’s remarkable to discover she had no formal art training until, at the age of 56, she sold her house and went to art school.

“It was scary,” she says.

But back in the ’50s when she went to university, art school wasnt exactly a realistic option. After she moved to Terrace to be near her parents, got married and began raising a family, it was difficult to justify the expense of art school.

But she took workshops when she could.

This fall she opened her own studio downtown, a functional, roomy space filled with canvasses, easels, paint pots, brushes and tables where she paints full time and offers art classes to kids and adults.

Persephone’s Keepsakes runs to Nov. 28.

O’Connell promises to have a hands-on activity planned for Friday’s opening.

Look around. There might be a few Greek deities in attendance. “They’ve been invited – they better show up!” O’Connell laughs.

Millions of TV viewers will be turning in to watch the 76th Academy Awards on Sunday. The premier hasn’t seen all of this year’s nominees, but he does think Theron’s portrayal of U.S. serial killer Aileen Wuornos is a standout.

“Charlize should certainly get the Oscar. She does a great job in that,” Campbell confided during a recent stopover in Terrace.

Monster is not typical Hollywood escapist fare.

“It is a dark story,” Campbell said. “It is an interesting story because she is not someone you would think you would have any empathy for at all, but it’s actually a pretty empathetic movie.”

He gives Monster a rating of nine out of 10 – strong praise from a man who describes himself as a tough movie critic.
Campbell also liked Bill Murrays performance in the enigmatic Lost in Translation, which is up for four Academy Awards, including best picture, best director and best actor.
Bill Murray should win best actor, Campbell said.
Insiders say B.C.’s 34th premier enjoys watching the latest movies when his demanding schedule permits.
Hes also a voracious reader, which may explain his reaction to Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, leading the pack this year with 11 nominations. It’s the odds-on favourite for best picture reward, some say, for a job well done on all three installment of the New Zealand-filmed series.
“I think it’s… good, but I don’t think it’s great,” he said, adding he prefers the version of the story his own imagination painted for him.
“It wasn’t nearly as good as the books for me. I also think that the ring wraiths were far more menacing in the book than in the movie,” Campbell said. “They were really good in the book. They were, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on here?’ in the book!”
Campbell, who first picked up J.R.R. Tolkien’s enduring fantasy novels as a young adult while he worked at a school in Nigeria, is not a fan of how the movie portrays hobbits, either.
“They don’t look like how hobbits are supposed to look like in my head. In the books, they’re middle-aged creatures. Theyre supposed to look old.”
Elijah Wood, the wide-eyed actor who plays the hobbit, Frodo, and the other young men playing the hobbits, are just too young-looking, he said.
“That didn’t work for me in the movie.”
Still, Campbell will be rooting for Lord of the Rings: Return of the King to win best picture on Oscar night – he said director Peter Jackson’s achievement on all three films deserves to win an award.
Campbell names four films as among his all-time faves: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Jack Nicholson, Shakespeare in Love, Life is Beautiful, and Elizabeth.
“Shakespeare in Love, for example, I think is just a great movie on how creativity works and how you’re spurred to do something great.”
Hmmm. Theres not a single shoot-em up action flick or war epic among them. “No boy movies? What’s going on here?” he joked.
“I loved the Star Wars movies, particularly the first one,” Campbell said.
He remembers how thrilled children in the audience were 25 ago when the film first premiered.
“Frankly, we really haven’t made another step up since Star Wars in 1977. It’s the same stuff thats being done over and over again in different ways.”
He also enjoyed the Indiana Jones movies, which star Harrison Ford as a swashbuckling archaeologist. “They’re great entertainment.”

© Copyright 2007 Terrace Standard

The entire townsite of Kitsault went on sale for $7 million last week, resulting in two serious offers.
Rudy Nielsen of Niho Land and Cattle Company, the marketing agent, says other new inquiries may pan out, too.

“Within the next 60 days, I think we’ll have the town sold,” Neilsen said Friday.

Kitsault, tucked inside the upper reaches of a fjord north of the Nass Valley, has been virtually uninhabited – save for a caretaker and his wife – since the early 1980s.

That’s when the multimillion dollar mine project closed after barely one year of operation.

It’s a modern ghost town that’s practically good as new, boasting seven apartment buildings, 90 houses, shopping and recreation centres, and a fully equipped hospital complete with an X-ray machine that’s never been used.
All for less than the price of a waterfront mansion in tony West Vancouver.
Kitsault’s two recreation centres and amenities should be the envy of neighbouring northwest communities: there are racquetball courts, a swimming pool and hot tub, a library, theatre, curling rink and pub.

The buildings are in good shape, Nielsen said, because the caretaker puts the heat on during the winter, keeping mildew at bay for more than two decades.

The town’s infrastructure includes underground phone and cable lines, a sewage system and treatment plant and paved and landscaped streets.

“When I was walking down the street last week, there were apples the size of my fist on the trees,” said Nielsen, who owns property in the vicinity and has visited Kitsault several times.

Still, whoever takes it on will have to spend money on improvements to get the town in proper shape.
“The pavement’s fine – it’s the roofs,” he said.

In some cases, moss has taken hold, so repairs will be necessary.

The entire town is being sold as one entity – as is.

Nielsen said it could be revitalized as a destination resort or retreat, cruise ship facility or a buyer could subdivide it and sell recreational homes.

“It’s just gorgeous up there,” he said, adding the glacier stream-fed waters at this part of Alice Arm are emerald-green.

Add the promise of snow-capped mountains and its remote, wilderness location in a relatively dry coastal spot, and it’s little wonder Nielsen thinks Kitsault is a hot property.

A sale will be good for Terrace, he added.

“Terrace is the stepping stone on that road. It can only be good for your economy if Kitsault was put back on the map.”

It’s about 40 kilometres as the raven flies northwest of New Aiyansh, but 88 kilometres by logging road from the heart of the Nass Valley. A securely locked gate keeps trespassers from entering the townsite by land.

Nielsen said the Nisga’a Lisims Government was informed of the intention to sell three weeks before it went on the market.

“I don’t know if they’re interested,” he said, adding he’s spoken with the Nisga’a and provided them with information.

“I hope they make an offer.”

The mining company that owns Kitsault is holding onto the mine, which is eight kilometres from the town.

© Copyright 2005 Terrace Standard