Читать книгу Canadian Adventurers and Explorers Bundle - John Wilson - Страница 5

Mountains – and the need to climb them – dominated Phyllis Munday’s life for almost as long as she could remember. As a young girl she lived for a time on Slocan Lake and also on a ruggedly treed hillside high above the western shores of Kootenay Lake, about twenty kilometres northeast of the town of Nelson, British Columbia. All around lay the Selkirk Mountains, one of four parallel ranges in south-central B.C. that form the Columbia Mountains.

On this rugged hillside Phyllis and her younger sister Esmée lived with their parents Frank and Beatrice James and baby brother Dick in a small, basic house that in winter was nearly covered by snow. Access was by either a rough cart track around the end of the west arm of Kootenay Lake – which could take some time, especially in winter when the deep snows blocked the way – or by water. Travelling by water was much easier, and even leisurely. Large paddlewheelers and steamers such as the SS Moyie and the SS City of Ainsworth operated on a regular schedule to serve the people in settlements up and down the lake and to connect the dozens of mining claims – like the Blue Bell Mine at Riondel across on the east shore of the lake, or here, where the James family lived near the Molly Gibson Mine – to the urban centres like Nelson. The steamers moved passengers, food, and machinery as well as sacks of zinc, silver, and lead ore from the mines to the barges and docks that were the terminus for the small railways that then connected to the Canadian Pacific Railway at towns like Revelstoke. Railways provided the transportation and communication links joining the Kootenays to the rest of the province, to Canada and beyond. But travel, whether overland or by water, all but ceased in the long winters of deep snow and a frozen lake.

In this isolated spot in the Kootenays, Frank James was employed as a bookkeeper. Family life here was a dramatic contrast to their earlier brief residences in Manitoba and England, but it was worlds away from what it was in the British colony of Ceylon, (now the country of Sri Lanka) an island just south and east of India. Phyllis was born in the central hill country of Ceylon on 24 September 1894. In Ceylon they had lived as privileged colonists – English citizens occupying the upper ranks in the island’s social strata. Frank James managed tea plantations for the Lipton and Ridgeway companies. The family lived in the hill country on a tea plantation and enjoyed the comforts of colonial life that mirrored their social position. They were pampered, with servants to attend to the household responsibilities and nursemaids for Phyl and Esmée, who was known as Betty. The girls’ mother, Beatrice, lived a life of leisure; she did not need to concern herself with cooking, cleaning, or many aspects of childcare.

Phyllis was only seven when the family moved from Ceylon in 1901, but these early days were imprinted on her memory. They gave Phyllis, in later life, an appreciation for her mother’s strength of character, which allowed her to adapt from such a pampered existence to the one of self-reliance necessitated by Canadian living. Cooking, cleaning, planting and tending gardens, first aid, and other realities of rural domestic life all had to be learned and learned quickly. The Interior wet-belt of the Kootenays – heavily wooded with cedar, fir, hemlock, and birch trees – with its northern hemisphere climate of distinct seasons and dramatically cold winters, couldn’t be more opposite to tropical Ceylon.

But the wild Kootenay country suited young Phyllis and her sister. Although the girls were quite young, here they were given a great deal of independence and freedom, in marked contrast to life in Ceylon, where servants were always present. Together they rambled and explored on their own, spending long days clambering along the hillsides. This tomboy existence was Phyllis’s chief joy, but it was a concealed joy. Her mother didn’t always know exactly where they were on these rambles and would have been distressed to learn that Phyllis’s favourite activity was to walk along the windfalls of trees across the ravines and deep gullies on the hillsides. She pretended to be a circus performer on a tightrope wire. These trees were fun to cross over by balancing along the trunk and scrambling over branches. The higher up the better. As Phyl became more proficient she challenged herself not to be frightened of heights and to focus on the act of balancing rather than the distance to the forest floor below. These skills in concentration and in footwork would be important for her later mountaineering expeditions.

By late 1907 the isolated life and the irregularities of the mining concerns, combined with the fact that Frank James was in his late fifties and wishing to lead a less strenuous lifestyle, prompted a decision to move away from the Kootenays. Evidently the family decided to emigrate to New Zealand. Perhaps this was an opportunity to return to a more temperate climate. At any rate, they packed their belongings and came by steamer across the west arm of Kootenay Lake to Nelson, then by train from Nelson to Nakusp. At Nakusp, a small settlement on Arrow Lake, they transferred to a steamer, travelling to the head of the lake and then on to Revelstoke, where they boarded the Canadian Pacific Railway passenger train to Vancouver. From here they planned to depart for New Zealand.

But Vancouver was as far as they got. Once in Vancouver, the employment opportunities for Phyl’s father combined with the pull of the city amenities and the gorgeous urban setting proved too great to resist. Vancouver was in the midst of a boom period in both population and economy. In 1901 the population totalled about 27,000 but by 1911 grew to 100,400. The city sat between the north bank of the Fraser River and Burrard Inlet. Beyond lay the very edge of the Coast range of mountains. Forests led up away from the populated urban areas to hills and snowy peaks. To the south, the flat, rich delta land of the Fraser River offered some of the best agricultural opportunities in the province. It was an extremely beautiful spot. And it was a much more accommodating climate with mild winters and warm – but not overly hot – summers. The James family settled on Keefer Street near the Grandview area, and it was from here that Phyllis completed her schooling and made the connections that enabled her to develop a recreational interest in hiking and climbing.

She was thirteen years old when they arrived in Vancouver, and it didn’t take long for Phyllis to miss the freedom she and Betty had in the Kootenays.

“Don’t you wish,” she sighed wistfully to her sister, “that we could just go out the back door and hitch a ride to the end of the road. We would be nearer the mountains then, and we could just find an old trail and follow it wherever it would go. If we got tired, that would be it for the day and we could come home.”

“It is too far to the mountains from here.” Betty replied. “And besides, Mum and Dad would never let us go off by ourselves like we did before. Maybe we could go to Stanley Park one day soon though.”

Stanley Park officially opened in 1888 as a city park intended to be both a natural preserve and a recreational space. It lies to the west of the downtown core of the city of Vancouver and stretches over four square kilometres to include old growth cedar and fir forest. It is bounded on three sides by ocean and beaches and is wild and largely undeveloped. In the early 1900s Stanley Park was a wonderful retreat for Vancouverites. Driveways ran through the middle of it and circled around “The Hollow Tree,” an enormous western red cedar measuring almost thirty metres in diameter and estimated to be over 1000 years old. Automobiles, pedestrians, horseback riders but mainly cyclists crowded the park on weekends, touring to Brockton Point and Prospect Point, where teahouses catered to thirsty and hungry visitors. Stanley Park allowed the city dwellers to experience wildness, albeit close to home, and was one means for Phyllis to keep in touch with the outdoors.

“Phyllis, let’s go to the tennis club on Saturday,” her father reminded her mid-week. Frank Munday was glad that their move to Vancouver made it possible for him to take up tennis again. In Ceylon, he had been the colonial men’s champion for the island but hadn’t had much opportunity to play since then. Living on Kootenay Lake in the bush precluded the possibility of tennis courts or many organized recreational activities. Once in Vancouver, though, Frank James applied for membership at the Brockton Point Tennis Club and soon became renowned as a veteran player. In 1907 he was fifty-eight years old and one of the more senior players at the club. He loved the sport and really wanted to make a champion out of his eldest daughter, who showed promise.

Phyl’s natural agility, nimbleness, and strength quickly put her at an advantage playing amongst girls of her own age who were less active generally and had little awareness of the outdoors activities that contributed to Phyllis’s athleticism. While Phyl had roamed the hillsides and scrambled up the slopes above Kootenay Lake, girls her age in Vancouver had participated in few athletic pursuits. Girls invariably wore skirts or dresses and shoes designed for indoor rather than outdoor hardiness. Swimming outdoors in the ocean was an acceptable seasonal pursuit, although modesty forbade bathing suits, and girls went in fully clothed. Not an easy way to learn to swim.

Horseback riding – sidesaddle of course – was also acceptable, as was rowing or sailing in English Bay. Exertion was discouraged, in part because of the difficulties perspiration presented for laundering clothes that required hand washing and careful ironing. Bicycles were just beginning to gain acceptance, but for women and girls, sitting astride the wheels and pedalling vigorously was difficult to do while wearing long skirts and petticoats.

“Sure, I’ll come, Dad,” said Phyllis. “But I really want to spend some of the weekend in the wilds. Will you take me?”

“We just went to Grouse Mountain a few weeks ago. Why do you want to go up there again? You’ve been already.” Phyllis sighed. She had a feeling her dad wanted to make her a tennis champion too. But there was something about getting away often, “in the wilds” as the family called it, that appealed to her more than anything else. Even though she and her family had just recently spent the day and had a wonderful picnic on the sunny lower slopes of Grouse Mountain, she wanted to go again. Although she couldn’t really articulate why, it was important to her that she get away from the city and go to the local hills, to the forests.

“It’s a whole day’s planning to go, Phyl,” her dad explained, listing off their route, even though Phyllis knew exactly what it was. First they packed a picnic lunch. They filled glass jars with water and screwed the lids on snugly to prevent leaks, then carefully wrapped the jars in linen napkins to protect them from breakage. They prepared sandwiches of fresh bread spread with pickles and meats, added a few hard sweets to complete their feast, and packed everything into wicker picnic baskets or into a carefully rolled-up wool blanket.

Leaving the house, the family walked to the nearest streetcar stop to catch a trolley heading towards Columbia Avenue and the small ferry terminal on the shore of Burrard Inlet. The ferry carried foot passengers across Burrard Inlet to a small wharf on the North Shore. Disembarking from the ferry, the picnickers hiked to Lonsdale Avenue, one of only three arterial roads leading from the wharf. A streetcar that ran along Lonsdale helped a little bit with the journey. From the end of the streetcar line, the picnickers climbed the rest of the way by foot on woodland trails over hill and valley and along creek-beds up the mountain. It took over three hours’ travel time each way, which meant that if they wanted to spend most of the day “in the wilds” they had to make an early start, and return home late in the evening.

In 1912, Phyllis James and her Girl Guide company climbed to the top of Grouse Mountain in their full

dress uniform and raised the Union Jack flag. Phyl is on the right with her sister Esmée (Betty) beside her.