Part 4

At first, there were a lot of individual groups that came up. They just drove up, maybe four to a car. Everybody wanted to see the property. It wasn't until the next year that they started to get ready to let campers come in.

We acquired those first two army trucks and Kenny Woods (48) drove one up. I don't know how the other one got up. They had been battery carriers. They had never been off the airfield so they weren't run very much. They just went out, took new batteries out to the planes and drove back; that was it. So Kenny drove the truck and that was our camp transportation.

We still only had this flat bottomed boat and my canoe. I guess we had to take the campers down the lake in small numbers in the boat. I don't remember taking them up and down the lake in those first years, but that's the only way we could get them up.

The boat was a big flat work boat; it was probably 18 feet long and very wide, very sturdy. I suppose it would hold twelve or so. We started to open up Twister Point and the area in front of the Hub, and gradually worked around the lake.

Individual leaders started arriving, and we put those on the islands. They set up camp there. Then the Rovers sort of took over where Mill Valley cabin is now, up on top, and they called themselves the Redmen on the hill. And they kept a permanent camp going there. They'd set it up, then some would go home and somebody else would arrive. They just sort of kept it going that way all the time. So that is about the way we got through the first year of real camping.

I don't know when Big Bear was opened up, but was probably one of the earlier ones. I don't think we ever took cars down there. We probably used the army truck. The spots where we had access were used at first. From there on, it just grew, like topsy.

The Pine Island [where the Survival Program is now run] and the two islands with the pines on them were used. I don't think we ever used Buck for years, but Doe, I think was used, and the Pine Island. And there was a Heron rookery on there when we first arrived. It didn't last though. I guess there were too many people.

But there used to be a guide that lived in Wilberforce, and he used to bring a group of fishermen over the mud portage and down through by the Trapper's Cabin. He had a boat stashed somewhere up in the bush behind the Trapper's Cabin, and they would fish Kennabi Lake. Apparently he told them that it was the middle of the wilderness, they'd never see a soul, and the fishing was absolutely super. He didn't know of course that it had been sold.

So I was down on one of the islands, swimming. We didn't have any docks at that time and there were some good high rocks down there. I think I'd gone down for a swim and a bit of sun.

I heard Jim with this noisy motor of his coming down the lake, though of course you've got to scream to get any sound over that, it was so noisy. All of a sudden I heard somebody. I hadn't seen them come in or come around from the Trapper's Cabin over because they were behind me. And somebody said, "Thought you said this was a deserted lake. My God, there's even a woman here."

You know the walk they would have, hauling boats? They had been tramping for hours and hours to get through, and here they get through and there's people in boats. I think that was the last party he ever guided into there. But they couldn't figure out how anyone else had ever got into this lake out in the middle of nowhere.

We started taking on more staff, I don't know who was the next one but Walt Barnes (48) was a marvellous mixer. He'd spend all of his time down with the campers. And he was a great story teller and was good at camp fires. He'd go down and have supper with them and talk.

In those days, the staff fed themselves. There was no kitchen because there was nothing there that first year. So they had to sort of fend for themselves, the two of them. I guess Ken probably ate in town. He was in town most of the time. It took hours to get in. In that old army truck, it was quite a trip.

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